I had a special treat planned for all of you today, but unfortunately I experienced a major set back late last night. I was programming a game using flash for an assignment that was due today, and while I burned the midnight oil to complete it in a timely manner, I asked my wise roomate for advice and as he haplessly clicked on my touchpad, the application suddenly crashed...the file never to be retrieved again. I immediately emailed my instructor informing him of the situation, and he graciously granted me an extension, so you all must wait until next week to play.
Today our class took a field trip to Hermosa Beach for a presentation by Graft at Gallery C. Uncharacteristic for zee Germans, the guy was 45 minutes late, so our instructor filled up the time with some discussion. One of the questions he asked particularly caught my attention: "How strong is the relation between forgetfulness and human interaction?" At first I didn't get it, but shortly after it began to make sense, the jerk ran out of time and didn't bother to explain. I think his point is that forgetfulness is a necessity for humans to continue interacting with one another. In other words, if we are never able to forget afflictions or grief caused by another, it would make it significantly more difficult to continue relations with that person...historically, it's just a part of human nature. So this brings up another thought...in the age of information technology, where computers keep track of everything, including powerade bottles embedded with gps tracking devices that upon purchase can tell the supplier to restock the inventory and can also track whether the end user has been a good recycler, the nature of machines and computers is such a contrast to human nature...how then might our lives, nurtured by a symbiotic relationship with forgetfulness, be affected by the potential of these invasive datum-record-centric technologies?
