online: 18 december 2003
modified: 19 december 2003

17 december 2003 the extended human


13:35 Having walked early today to catch the sunshine I'm drinking camomile tea again in the outdoor cafe - and still thinking of Pete Gomes' dataclouds etc... I've just made my first call via a mobile phone and I'm expecting a reply in about half an hour...

As I wait for it I'm not sure if I welcome being online during a walk but I want to experience it - perhaps just this once. I like being alone when walking, and especially when in the city forest - but I've been imagining for decades an accord that may exist between electronics and forests... and yes it was in forests in France (and while visiting prehistoric cave art) that I found myself writing on a handheld the notes that became this digitized diary!

At that moment a cat that I've never seen here before jumped down from a wall onto the paving beside me. People, cats, handheld computers, mobile phones, clear winter skies and city forests - as usual the act of listing the ingredients of a situation reveals the poetic of nature, of - everything.

...I drink up the tea that's now cold and look up to see a single bird flying high in the pale blue sky towards Ken Wood. All the trees are still. A man and a woman share a prolonged kiss and a man with a shaved head reads a newspaper.



Parliament Hill. I sit to examine the mobile and find it's signalling 'missed message'. Is the ring tone set too low to be heard from my pocket?... I don't yet know how to change it.

...As I make another call, nine military aircraft in tight formation fly low overhead - and they are gone, over the horizon in seconds. Strange - the military usually keep out of sight in London... I guess that they also constitute a datacloud, one that can become lethal in microseconds...

...and then, as I fail to recover the missed message, a fierce dogfight begins behind me - a young Alsatian dog and a smaller black one get their teeth into each other as their owners pull and shout and fail to get them apart for a noisy minute or two... Eventually each owner is on the ground holding down a still angry dog and trying to pacify and to attach a lead to it... This too is I suppose a datacloud, not of electronics but of the sounds and smells and body language of animals and people, ever-poised for fight or affection.

Yes, our modern marvels are not yet of the subtlety, complexity and effectiveness of the perceptions, skills and evolved behaviours of ourselves as animals - and as people-in-cultures...

Again and again I return to such thoughts as I look in vain for the self-awareness of all this that could enable us to see machines not as threats but as self-extensions to beings that are far greater than we presently imagine ourselves to be - yes every one of us !





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what's new

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© 2002, 2003 john chris jones

You may transmit this text to anyone for any non-commercial purpose if you include the copyright line and this notice and if you respect the copyright of quotations.

If you wish to reproduce any of this text commercially please send a copyright permission request to jcj at publicwriting.net