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its one of those expressions where you know there is a gap in possible identification and yet the force of its purpose is overwhelming, more than what is seeped in the contemporary metaphors and that which is most salient in his own practical engagement with the world (databases, apis, reads/writes)
there's something so powerful in the delivery of the words "might as well never have consumed the media" and the seriousness and weight with which that predicament is treated, while it's also juxtaposed with "depending on how much you give a shit"
i've been impressed with the krigler anecdotes on "so. THIS is what-i-do-on-a-day-like-this" and the striking description of the creative urge, and kearesu's anecdotes are striking anecdotes on the consumptive urge in a similar way
this is paired with an ethic of responsibility to create, which its converse of the responsibility to consume remains implicit in the brief krigler anecdote but which of course is necessary and emphasized elsewhere
there's so much more to say. the ability to focus on the absolute, the contribution to the whole, the marching of time and your place in it, but i think the other thing i want to call appreciation to (at risk of bringing too much of myself into the text) is the understanding of how that engagement
of reciprocity requires translation, interpretation, selection, and formulation for oneself. the concretization of the consumed into new productions requires an amount of discipline and control and will that would not otherwise be developed
theres a certain pull of what the material demands out of you and it brings with it the rewarding experience of the process of having to actually process the data, to familiarize oneself in a more intimate way, to engage on a more rigorous level. the productive act is a love letter to consumption
and in a stronger sense is the only way to consume properly if you want the most out of it. you're not passively receiving the response allowing it to discard itself, you're holding onto the data and writing it to your own database in preparation for proper internal reads for external writes
and that last part is not lost on me either!! not only is this the only way to properly consume the immediate object of consumption, but it is the only way to enable proper consumption of previous and future consumptions by comparison and aggregation!
i'm just totally living for the openness and brimming potentiality in the ambiguity of "other tables and entries". i used the phrases internal and external in a relative sense before as a fairly irresponsible expositing tool but part of makes his metaphor so compelling is how unstructured they are
the precise spatial location is entirely opaque; the continuity is lacking of where the databases are or who is in possession of what data at which moment, its just this swirling mass of associations that morphs itself as each sentence passes
i'm overwhelmed by the force of "you have to" that recurs. in one instance it is moderated by an "in order to", but it is all the more sturdy for that. the elliptical implications of the former expression are all the more punchy with the contrast of the latter's more full formulation.
the "you" in "you have to" is both personal and impersonal in a double sense. on the one hand it is a general statement applying to all "you"s that have the requisite relevant powers of consumption and production, but it is also a specifically audience-oriented "you" to the people listening.
on the second hand, that very audience is both impersonal and personal, in the sense that he probably does not know the individuals on the other side of the screen, who might be watching this where and when, so it is a general peer. and yet it is ultimately consumed as personal and directed.
i suppose another small wrinkle is that there are specific audience members that he has the foreknowledge will be watching this, so the expression can be seen as a furtherly personal, particularly with dedications. and yet theres still an impersonal character to the delivery in its distribution