1. The birth of the internet: the shadow casted upon today. What does it mean to be an email baby? Is the baby an email or is the email a baby?
Year of the email baby is upon us:
Trying to tether heaven to earth,
the meta to its material mother.
Trying to tether heaven to earth,
the meta to its material mother.
I thought my parents met in Prague. That was the story I passed to friends in sharing useless but intimate details about ourselves, probably to build trust and connection. Recently, I found out through my mother’s fumbling through time, that they did not meet in Prague as strangers. They met in Prague as already lovers. They met on the internet. Dating for over a year on the first iteration of clunky, thock-keyboarded, and low fidelity, email. They spoke no common language. She recounted they had met on an early dating site. I pictured white forums with blue text and emoticons ‘;)’ winking in lcd displays of broken, but charming, english. Or maybe He translated into cyrillic, no latin flirt to be found. She trailed my imagination along, there was a town shut-in she would visit. He was severed from the locals and tourists that swarmed each summer, except for his notation that he was the one door to knock on if you couldn’t work your new commodore in Yalta. One of the first computer wizards as the floodgate of diverse technology opened to Ukraine’s consumer market. Not so well versed with people, my mother was often the only contact with people he would have. I get to fantasize in detail, us both, talking about this for the first time in over 20 years. She came to him with computer problems, translation bugs, mechanical disadvantages. He fixed them. As is the nature of post-soviet computers and computers in general (given that they are a babbling combination of mechanical attempts at being a brain) it had enough issues to warrant frequent visits throughout the year my father and mother were dating over email.
Soon enough in the late 90’s, my mother walked the email chain of connection all the way to Prague, then to California, where she had been promptly married to a man she still spoke no language with, other than the computer. It wouldn’t be until half a year later, still tethered to Ukraine by the phone, that a friend revealed to my mother that the computer wizard, the shut-in, had tried to kill himself after she eloped. He had failed to take his life, and he headed Moscow bound to where the center of now Russia was having a computer-based technology boom. I imagine him very fondly and with pity, as does She. She told me, “I did wonder what ever happened of him, at first for a very long time, I felt guilty about his suicide. I think my friends knew this, which is why they did not tell me for a long time. I think I was very naive looking back.” She felt the weight of his life, I did too. What do you owe this computer sage anyway? Aside it’s inherent fascination, there's no longer a thread of connection between him or my life at that. Perhaps that was the same feeling he had in his limerence, in that isolating room he stayed put. In that resort town by the sea I've never stepped foot in. Or I poke at the abstract idea that the computer wizard was in an intimate relationship with my mother’s computer, heartbroken that it no longer needing to be fixed. Not so strange when I view that my mother was in an intimate relationship with an interactive text box from an American man inside her computer. My sister and I were born in the following years. The blinking light of a server is my beacon star. The birth of the world wide web is one of blurring barriers; that of stateship post USSR, of language, of where any limits lie, if they lie stable at all, they can be breached from anywhere by anyone, so I could exist. I am an e-mail baby: I cannot exist without the many who nursed the internet’s integration into society.
Where there is connection, people will connect. I am bored of the sentiment that the internet exists in the aether, in a ‘cloud’, in screens. That our own machination and globalized network is untethered somehow to human nature. The internet can only ever be a reflection of us. We wage war via its carved channels and routes, make love, live partially inside each day , sleep tenderly by our mechanical extensions. I mean phones, computers, pagers, anything that can connect and interact with our electrical neural network. The digital age, the Internet, is a conduit for information. Information has a physical weight in our bodies. It is electronic impulses, it is stored inside us and inside our machines alike. Our bodies function like that of the globally curated nervous system; Its fiber optic veins strung around the globe, drawing us nearer to the other through machines and people in tandem. These magnificent developments in computers replicate the biological machines that already exist, and it's a poor resemblance if that. This is what it means to be an email baby. The weight of its information exists equally in our minds and in its physical forms (SSD Cards, golden pins, servers, electricity banks, lithium mining etc). It is here on earth, physically. All that is physical can be altered by information.
This is not a divine, god-fearing combination of machine and flesh, this is not heaven. This is what people have always done. We have always given birth to children and to machines, both made in the mirror image of man, and all that we may be.
Soon enough in the late 90’s, my mother walked the email chain of connection all the way to Prague, then to California, where she had been promptly married to a man she still spoke no language with, other than the computer. It wouldn’t be until half a year later, still tethered to Ukraine by the phone, that a friend revealed to my mother that the computer wizard, the shut-in, had tried to kill himself after she eloped. He had failed to take his life, and he headed Moscow bound to where the center of now Russia was having a computer-based technology boom. I imagine him very fondly and with pity, as does She. She told me, “I did wonder what ever happened of him, at first for a very long time, I felt guilty about his suicide. I think my friends knew this, which is why they did not tell me for a long time. I think I was very naive looking back.” She felt the weight of his life, I did too. What do you owe this computer sage anyway? Aside it’s inherent fascination, there's no longer a thread of connection between him or my life at that. Perhaps that was the same feeling he had in his limerence, in that isolating room he stayed put. In that resort town by the sea I've never stepped foot in. Or I poke at the abstract idea that the computer wizard was in an intimate relationship with my mother’s computer, heartbroken that it no longer needing to be fixed. Not so strange when I view that my mother was in an intimate relationship with an interactive text box from an American man inside her computer. My sister and I were born in the following years. The blinking light of a server is my beacon star. The birth of the world wide web is one of blurring barriers; that of stateship post USSR, of language, of where any limits lie, if they lie stable at all, they can be breached from anywhere by anyone, so I could exist. I am an e-mail baby: I cannot exist without the many who nursed the internet’s integration into society.
Where there is connection, people will connect. I am bored of the sentiment that the internet exists in the aether, in a ‘cloud’, in screens. That our own machination and globalized network is untethered somehow to human nature. The internet can only ever be a reflection of us. We wage war via its carved channels and routes, make love, live partially inside each day , sleep tenderly by our mechanical extensions. I mean phones, computers, pagers, anything that can connect and interact with our electrical neural network. The digital age, the Internet, is a conduit for information. Information has a physical weight in our bodies. It is electronic impulses, it is stored inside us and inside our machines alike. Our bodies function like that of the globally curated nervous system; Its fiber optic veins strung around the globe, drawing us nearer to the other through machines and people in tandem. These magnificent developments in computers replicate the biological machines that already exist, and it's a poor resemblance if that. This is what it means to be an email baby. The weight of its information exists equally in our minds and in its physical forms (SSD Cards, golden pins, servers, electricity banks, lithium mining etc). It is here on earth, physically. All that is physical can be altered by information.
This is not a divine, god-fearing combination of machine and flesh, this is not heaven. This is what people have always done. We have always given birth to children and to machines, both made in the mirror image of man, and all that we may be.
South End, BOSTON, 3ds Video 2024
Life goes on
and those high winds,
make kites of all of us.
and those high winds,
make kites of all of us.
The relationship between humans and metal is ancient. The sensual quality of metal can be brought out by paying attention to its form. It has always been united with the body as ornament, protection, and machinery. Metal can be infinitely recycled, as a result; almost every silver, gold, aluminum, or copper object has some trace of its ancient context. The stored energy of its brutality, luxury, and beauty come with using the material, and it manifests inside the object automatically. As swords, reliquaries, toaster ovens, carriage wheels, teapots, computers, and website servers, metal becomes a chimera that holds all of human history in its molecular memory.