Reaching the Enchanted Forest
dansitu.substack.comThe ancient spirits of the enchanted forest, the Greek dryads, the Shinto kami, and Microsoft's Clippy.
> Microsoft's Clippy
How many hecatombs will we have to sacrifice to neo-Clippy to make it go away?
Don't forget slavic Rusalki, or Phillip K. Dick's smart door:
> “The door refused to open. It said, “Five cents, please.” He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. “I’ll pay you tomorrow,” he told the door. Again he tried the knob. Again it remained locked tight. “What I pay you,” he informed it, “is in the nature of a gratuity; I don’t have to pay you.” “I think otherwise,” the door said. “Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt.” In his desk drawer he found the contract; since signing it he had found it necessary to refer to the document many times. Sure enough; payment to his door for opening and shutting constituted a mandatory fee. Not a tip. “You discover I’m right,” the door said. It sounded smug. From the drawer beside the sink Joe Chip got a stainless steel knife; with it he began systematically to unscrew the bolt assembly of his apt’s money-gulping door. “I’ll sue you,” the door said as the first screw fell out.
As an Oregonian, I'm thinking "well, head towards Salem..."
I seem to recall there being a little tunnel you could crawl through under a pathway. My memory is a bit fuzzy as it was about 30 years ago. Anyway, my whole life i have a recurring dream about being in that tunnel and it starting to flood and getting stuck and unable to escape. Did I say dream? I mean nightmare. I should return and face my fears!
I haven't been there since I was a kid in the 1970s. Up to about what age would you say it's entertaining for kids these days? Is there enough to be worth a whole day?
I have, sadly, never been.
That is exact thing I am thinking. Funny enough, going there next weekend, haha.
Have fun! So many memories there. I can't wait to take my kids there when they are old enough to appreciate it. :)
Will do! We went even when the kids were a little on the young side too, but that was mostly because my wife is an Oregon native, but not me. So she just had to introduce me to the place.
I like this idea for a lot of reasons, but I think the best reason to like it is that it presents a compelling technological vision of the future that motivates upending and destroying the incumbent model of the world realized by the modern surveillance state. It's way easier to know what you don't want than what you want, but without even the edges of a goal state it's hard to coordinate the monumental effort it takes to do hard stuff. I don't know which way the causality arrow points, but the rise of solarpunk aesthetics seems correlated and interconnected with what some people are calling a revolution in green energy technologies. As with that revolution, incumbent industries and states supporting them serve as a significant obstacle to this vision, as the network overseers will not withdraw from surveilling our lives without a fight any more than the oil barons are giving up the reins of their machines that poison the earth to drive their "growth". I am a belligerent and easily motivated by spite for tyrants, but most are actually not at the end of the day, and revolutions (whether at the workshop, the polls, the markets, or by the sword) require numbers. A positive vision for what the world could be when the evil is defeated is what motivates the mass of will needed for such an endeavor. And also this particular vision is one I'd love to see realized
To fulfill this inspiring vision of local autonomous private sensing, we'll need optical ("Li-Fi") wireless networking, or large-scale RF shielding for perimeter surfaces (wall, window, floor, ceiling), as 2024-onward PCs and other devices ship with human activity recognition radar a.k.a. Wi-Fi 7 Sensing.
We will also need robust network perimeter firewalls with 10+ years of security updates, preferably based on reproducible, open-source, memory-safe software for all security-critical functions, unlike existing consumer routers that are routinely pwned.