A Quantum Fractal Symbolist Perspective on the Post-Information Attention Economy

Recently at an online symposium, a colleague of mine from the University of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder was quoted as saying, “…the visualization of pure data will be the international language of the future.” It was a comment which elicited a mixture of applause and derisive laughter from the assembled throngs. Someone farted, and then the subject was changed.

The resident AI director facilitating the multi-realm event promptly selected a song from the database which fit the desired customer experience modeling based on the demographic information harvested from billions of spider nanovirus bots attached to the datawake of each entity in attendance at the session. A cloud of keywords was randomly selected and offloaded directly into each entity’s scenseoreum, to enliven the underlying image-essence encoded beneath.

The result was this video, which was broadcast using the accumulated SpiritualData™ Points™ collected and projected by the gathered presence of teleconnected 7GW iPod users:

If the world is to be united under any common framework, it will be more than likely based in pop culture and modern media shared references above and beyond anything else. Information chunks which someone “in a cave in Afghanistan” (with a hand-cranked laptop dropped by an American bomber, along with food and pirated Chinese versions of American media) could upload into the world’s consciousness, have heard and be understood with roughly the same basic response of any viewer, regardless of their background, lifestyle, sentience or experiential point of origin. It would make the internet like some kind of global hive-mind / entertainment and communication forum and almost like equivalent of an electronic UN…

Time For A Break Down

“…the visualization of pure data will be the international language of the future”

Think of what he’s saying like this: each word in that list is a specific chunklet of information, a keyword. But a keyword is essentially the main connector node in a network of linked keywords, a keyword cluster or ‘cloud’. Each of them is a reference point, a URL, a unique RFID identifier. A time-space coordinate.

So each word, each keyword, each reference point can then be linked in a timeline sequence, first-second-third and so on. More commonly thought of as a sentence.

“…the visualization of pure data will be the international language of the future”

Any sentence then becomes a sequence of linked reference points. This becomes important now in regards to the internet. How does the selection and ordering of keywords affect your daily life as mediated by the internet? What about someone from another country who speaks a different language? How can we communicate with one another? How can we harmonize our songs?

Who should be singing right now and speaking these new international data languages, these streaming broadcasts shot back and forth like ping pong ball conversations across the globe. The other day I bought a calculator watch on eBay for $.01 with a $9.99 shipping and handling charge. It turns out to have been sent directly from China. I had ordered it before Halloween for my time-traveler costume, but it didn’t arrive. (Fortunately, I was able to send it back in time to my former self though, and it turned out I *did* get it just in time after all. Whew! What a relief!)

The future of the world rests in these kinds of tiny international transactions. Someone in Pakistan emailing a dude in America who sends him an authentic home-made American folk artifact via WorldPost for a surprisingly low Euro rate. Cool, he thinks, each word, each letter dissolving into an unfolding digital array of reference points and contextual information growing like a caressing instructive flower in his brain, brushing experientially across the tips and nodules of his digital-physical sensors and bristling informational connectors & connectors. Each person becoming like a luna moth for data, a sea anenome for meaning, collecting fluttering bits and pieces collected from here and there or carried in from the sea or the breeze. Collective intelligence, distributed identity, the seas which separate and connect you and me, an endless spinning Indra’s Web of collected and interpolated reference points and interpretations. Wexes and hexes, spells and programs spinning and operating across cyber-space like viruses and memes with people and human behavior chasing behind them in The Vast Vaccuum of our Failed Love™.

Bicycle messengers who cross the ocean to deliver information packages you can plug into your digital interface device and “get high” off of somebody else’s experience of life.

“…the visualization of pure data will be the international language of the future”

The international language, then may very well be made up of our likes, of our dislikes, our media and product affiliations, our school social networks and grocery store shopping club memberships, writ large against a total-surveillance “God-is-always-watching” Theosophist Police State backdrop. What if the new unifying structure for humankind was the total information-collection technologists have planned for us? What if we were free to do whatever we wanted, but with the knowledge that everyone everywhere could watch us at any time and know all about us down to intricate details of our lives. A total open-source society with no secrets. Can everything be known? Can all experiences be mapped? I doubt it, but I don’t doubt that someone is going to try it. Luciferianism runs at the speed of light. FTL travel. 10GW airtricity power grids in the north sea. The rising dominance of Asian media sources on the internet. Time travel. One great big time zone. Everyone interlinked. Interdependent. Independents Days, Autonomous Nights.

“…the visualization of pure data will be the international language of the future”

Does how you act determine who you are or what you think about? 7GW wafer agreements. The visualization of pure data, the Word, the Logos, the Tongues of Flames which came to rest over the heads of the Apostles at Pentecost. Liquid swords. Free-associative states of auto-amnesia. Vast reference point collages and metaphysical collections and suggestions. No disease could ever live here. Veils of secrecy, penetrated, uplifted. Locked doors being opened.

If something bad happens economically or otherwise after the digital TV switchover, and you don’t have a new HDTV, how are you going to find out about it? What if that disaster includes infrastructural damage, to long distance travel options and to the internet within certain localities? WHAT IF A BUNCH OF UFOS LANDED!!!!!! Without free regular television in pretty much every American household, how will the Emergency Broadcast system function? How will we coordinate our defenses in the event of catastrophic invasion by space aliens! Not everybody owns a radio any more. You may not be able to get a good newspaper where you are. You may not be able to get on the internet.

Goddammit, you better get out there and buy a goddammed digital TV! I think my computerized assistants can recommend some good links and shopping places with good shipping times - and just in time for Non-Denominational Seasonal Sector Celebration #UX25™ What more could you ask for?

now is the time for self indulgence! purchase goods and services!