[Writingworkshop] Alternatron D11
Neale Morison
neale at nealemorison.com
Sun Feb 17 15:41:37 EST 2008
Those two SF vignettes took two to three hours each for the first draft.
The second one I finished off during my Psychosemantics session on
Friday. There was this level of background stimulation, but nothing you
needed to cognitively address. Meditative, like having ideas while
shaving; "... while a three year old demonstrates statistically
significant changes in quantifier comprehension. Asked 'Are all the
farmers petting donkeys, more than 70% of subjects..." I was thinking of
giving up the class, but now I'm in two minds. Make that three.
In 1999-2000 I had a weekly column writing this sort of story for an
Australian clone of The Industry Standard, a magazine that was somehow
making huge advertising dollars out of the Internet boom.
http://www.nealemorison.org/theend/index.html
I evolved a system of writing the story framed as a page that might
appear on the web: a report, an email, a press release, an interview, a
chat session. There would be a story underneath that was at odds with
the story on the surface. The rave press release reveals the
shortcomings of the product, or the friendly email reveals the malicious
intentions of the sender. Once I picked a frame, I had a voice, and I
could then start the voice speaking and write down what it said. So
while others were making billions out of the boom, I was being paid to
amuse myself with technoabsurdist vignettes. Then came the Tech Wreck.
I trotted out the same approach for these stories.
I started with an idea like in the future someone actually solves the
mind body problem, or in the future there will be access to alternate
universes, and then I looked for an absurd frame.
With What Mind, I thought at first the person with the key to the mind
body problem might be a young child, so I asked my eight year old "Do
you think the mind is separate from the body?" She said, "I don't
understand the question."
I liked that answer a lot, so the frame was someone talking from a
viewpoint in which people had forgotten what the problem was with the
mind body problem. It was pretty easy to decide it was the anniversary
of the discovery and natural for it to be a commemorative speech by a
pedantic academic. The mind body problem couldn't be solved without
bringing together academics who normally refuse to talk to each other,
like neuroscientists and computer scientists, so it seemed likely they
would meet out of hours by accident. When I was listing the contributors
to the paper I realised the third contributor was organically
challenged, and then I realized that his very existence solved the problem.
I was quite surprised when Rover showed up again at the end.
With the Alternatron the frame was a support call about a malfunctioning
product that harnesses fundamental forces for trivial purposes. I didn't
realise until the end that the universe was going to disappear, but
naturally it would.
I have to say, "I wish to make a complaint" is one of the all time best
opening lines. I don't find it very entertaining when people parrot the
entire sketch, but that's an opening line with possibilities. It gives
you the entire frame.
I also had a recent positive online support experience. I didn't make a
date with the support guy, but it reminded me of the fun to be had with
the conflict between loyalty to the company and its products and
actually helping the customer. A life of glossing over horrific problems
in technical manuals has to be useful for something.
And I'm surrounded by people who take mind-boggling technology for
granted. Think about the philosophical, technological, engineering,
legislative and social problems that were solved to create the cellular
phone, and think about what SMS messages are about.
I had a third friction between the near-zero vocabulary (I'm like so
totally wow) of common parlance and the complexity of the ideas for
discussion.
If there are enough of these dialectics going on, I can just start and
write to the end. Once the people start talking they reveal their
agenda. You still have to come up jokes and events. Jokes are just
confounded expectation. They emerge out of the conflicts. You spring a
piece of withheld information that changes the direction, or you respond
to a piece of dialog with the wrong response, or set up a context and
jump out of it. If all else fails make a list. You need events for the
action, but in a tiny story you only need two or three, and they occur
as you write, especially if you've watched Die Hard often enough.
This morning I went to the AAAS conference, as Julie, my wife, who is
doing some reporting on it and had a pass. If anybody asked about my
name I planned to give one of two responses "Short for Julian, darling,"
or (in gravel-voiced South Boston accent) "Who wants to know'?", but
sadly nobody asked.
The session I went to was 'Mind of a Toolmaker'. It was a
cross-disciplinary symposium on Cognitive Evolution, with a guest
appearance by Naom Chomsky that never eventuated. The speakers were
terrific - Richard C. Lewontin (Why We Know Nothing about the Evolution
of Cognition), Robert C. Berwick (The Human and Chimp Genomic
Interface), Christopher Walsh (Genes that Control the Shape and Size of
the Human Cerebral Cortex), Dean Falk (Hominim Brain Evolution: It's
About Time), Marc D. Hauser (Humaniqueness). So, right away, you can
have fun with just the titles.
One of the questions someone asked was "What about Alex the parrot?"
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_(parrot) (quote: According to
Pepperberg, Alex's loss will not halt the research but will be a large
setback.)
Ever get the feeling you're trapped in a recursive parrot sketch?
The story that emerged from this was that the organizer had put it
together in order to get all these bigwigs to come and listen to her own
theory on cognitive evolution. She's Canadian, so it's a touchy feely
theory, which she calls Paleodoodles: Primitive hominids create
meaningless marks on stones, thus becoming aware of the connection
between themselves and their environment, realizing they can create
their environment, honing the precision of their muscular coordination
and protolinguistic skills by feedback from their environment, then,
wait for it, hairy boy takes the paleodoodle over to hairy girl and
gives it to her and they're married, or in Vancouverese, they forge a
stable social bond. Paleodoodles are a girl's best friend. It's just a
small step from this to community, civilization, the industrial
revolution, online dating and the loop is closed.
"We haven't been treating the ancient hominids as people with feelings,"
said Mimi. Untroubled by the slight unverifiability of these assertions,
she goes on to suggest that the coevolution of human speech and trade is
in line with her theory: after all, the girls had to grunt some kind of
thank you when they got the paleodoodle, hence speech, and the
paleodoodles themselves were a primitive currency, redeemable eventually
for more than sexual favors.
I was loving the symposium before, but at this point, as the entire room
writhed in disbelief, embarrassment and this wonderful, primitive,
palpable academic impatience that happens when the professor is not
holding the floor and knows how to do it so much better, I was beside
myself. Fortunately there was a spare seat next to me.
I have three hours of recorded conference and 16 pages of notes, and I
have no idea how many story ideas.
So much more than you asked.
Daniel Peters wrote:
> "What made her say that?"
> Awesome line. Followed perfectly. How long does this take you from
> inspiration to my inbox?
>
> On 2/16/08, *Neale Morison* <neale at nealemorison.com
> <mailto:neale at nealemorison.com>> wrote:
>
> Alternatron D11
>
>
> I wish to make a complaint.
>
> Select Department: Sales/Billing, Technical Support, Pre-purchase
>
> Technical Support.
>
> Product: Eternitizer 3000, Alternatron D11, MixWhizz 98
>
> Alternatron D11.
>
> Priority: Low, Medium, High, Emergency, Critical
>
> Critical.
>
> Problem Area: Response time, Scan precision, Matter transfer
> integrity,
> None of the above
>
> None of the above.
>
> Please briefly describe the problem.
>
> Like it says in the manual I scan for an alternate and when one
> comes up
> green I press Transfer, Enter but nothing happens.
>
> Submit.
>
> Your support enquiry is being assigned. Please wait.
>
> My name is Troy. How may I help you today?
>
> Is your name really Troy?
>
> No.
>
> Do you look anything like that photograph?
>
> No.
>
> Ok. I just wanted to establish an honest relationship.
>
> Understood.
>
> Did you read my description?
>
> Yes.
>
> So any ideas?
>
> Have you got it plugged in?
>
> Yes, I've got it plugged in. It comes up green.
>
> Sorry. You wouldn't believe the people I get.
>
> I get a green, I press Transfer, Enter, zilch.
>
> Do you have it there?
>
> Yes.
>
> Can you press Transfer, then hold down Enter for three seconds, then
> release Transfer and press it quickly two more times?
>
> Ok, hang on. Wow, there's all this scrolling text and flashing lights.
>
> That's right, now scroll right down to the bottom. What do you see?
>
> The portal has rejected your application for access.
>
> Ok, good.
>
> What does that mean? How can it reject my application?
>
> It's just the message that gets logged, what's really happening is
> they've shut down the portal.
>
> They? Which they?
>
> The guys in the other universe.
>
> How can they do that?
>
> It happens in the preferred alternate universes. There's going to be
> ones that are really crap and ones that are really cool, you know,
> like
> they have world peace and cake grows on trees and they still have
> unicorns and the dolphins can really talk. They end up with all these
> people arriving with attitudes from bad universes and bringing
> them all
> down. So they figure out how to close the portal.
>
> I mean how can they do it? You can't close a wormhole can you?
>
> No, I don't know, they do something with gravitons, we haven't figured
> it out yet.
>
> But it came up green.
>
> We know, the next version fixes it.
>
> When's that out?
>
> We haven't announced the release date yet, that thing has so many
> bugs,
> I tell you.
>
> Well, I don't want to upgrade, anyway.
>
> Ok, there's this workaround.
>
> I'm listening.
>
> What you do, you get your green, then you save the code in your
> favourites.
>
> Ok.
>
> Then you go to your favourites menu and select the one you just saved.
>
> Got it.
>
> Then you choose Show Me More Like This.
>
> Right.
>
> Then you choose the second one from the bottom every time.
>
> Second one from the bottom.
>
> And you keep doing that until you find one that's open.
>
> That's going to take a while.
>
> It doesn't take too long, there's some quantum statistical effect, I
> forget what it's called. Helmholtz?
>
> That's when someone's choking, isn't it?
>
> Heidegger?
>
> Never mind. So the second one from the bottom?
>
> Yeah, and oh, when you find one that's open, right, so you press
> Transfer, Enter, and it goes yellow and says Confirm?
>
> Yeah?
>
> Press Enter again right away. I mean don't even hesitate for a second.
>
> Why?
>
> Just take my word for it.
>
> Come on, Troy. Why?
>
> Well, there's this possibility that they're going to shut the portal
> between the time you press the Transfer Enter, and the Confirm
> Enter. So
> you leave, but you don't arrive.
>
> How likely is that?
>
> We don't really know. Not very. Maybe in some universes it happens
> every
> time. Skip that universe, right?
>
> And where are you, if you don't arrive?
>
> Don't ask me.
>
> Well can you get back?
>
> It's hard to tell, we're trying to find someone who did it and
> came back
> so we can put it in the manual.
>
> What do you think happens?
>
> We were talking about it next to the coffee maker and this one girl,
> Ray, says maybe you disperse into an evenly distributed
> interstitial net
> with psychic access to all universes simultaneously.
>
> What made her say that?
>
> She's always saying stuff like that.
>
> That would be great.
>
> It would be kind of cool.
>
> So you just wait a while before you press Confirm Enter?
>
> Yeah, but you don't know how long you're going to have to wait.
> And I'm
> not saying it does that anyway, you know, Ray is pretty weird.
>
> Anyway, I wasn't trying to turn myself into some kind of Star Child or
> anything, I just wanted to find a store where they haven't run out of
> Ginseng and Lemon tea.
>
> They have that in the MegaHealth downstairs.
>
> Oh, really. Where are you?
>
> Three blocks down in Main Street.
>
> Ok, I'm just going to zap over. Why don't we meet for a coffee? Wait a
> minute, it's not coming up green.
>
> What isn't?
>
> This universe. What does that mean?
>
> -
>
> Troy?
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Neale Morison
> neale at nealemorison.com <mailto:neale at nealemorison.com>
> http://www.nealemorison.com
> 31 Maple Ave #2, Cambridge MA 02139
> +1 617 460 9969
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Writingworkshop mailing list
> Writingworkshop at nealemorison.org
> <mailto:Writingworkshop at nealemorison.org>
> http://nealemorison.org/mailman/listinfo/writingworkshop_nealemorison.org
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> Writingworkshop mailing list
> Writingworkshop at nealemorison.org
> http://nealemorison.org/mailman/listinfo/writingworkshop_nealemorison.org
>
--
Neale Morison
neale at nealemorison.com
http://www.nealemorison.com
31 Maple Ave #2, Cambridge MA 02139
+1 617 460 9969
More information about the Writingworkshop
mailing list