our devices

I am walking away from the house, filled with the noise of builders, drills, hammering, radio, white noise as parasitic noise. I am walking away from the staccato sound of machines. My bag full of the necessary technology for the meeting. I am walking towards the school playground, the high street and public square, past the small local cafes, the avenue of trees, beneath the kites looking for food, the train station… these places are all crowded and I am surrounded by noise. This noise is less an assailment than the building machines in the house, it is the noise of groups, the white noise is intense, invasive and I want to hide and suppress, ah well. As the numbers of people increase it becomes more disruptive.

Here though, after eating the slice of (i have no idea what its called)…… and drinking espresso (the beans are bland and probably old) with a glass of water. Typing words into the notebook, writing others into the notebook. He thinks that white noise is the collective equivalent of the chaos of existence in this society. He wonders how many devices will be in the room — phones, notebooks, pens, recorders, pacemakers, other appliances and security systems — which are designed to prevent us from finding what they’re doing. When malicious software infects them, then — by design — these devices prevent us from knowing anything about it. How many times I have thought this as I have had to leave my phone on my office table as I travelled to carry out some clandestine meeting, work by another name. I sit in the cafe opposite the building with the lecture hall where I will be talking, speaking, presenting the violence of language, I don’t know (yet) how many people I will be presenting to, it varies, sometimes a dozen or more than twenty/\ . The violence of the response of the assembly will hopefully enable new thoughts… machines.