I have a confession to make.

I’ve been channeling my fictional characters and making what they tell me to make. And I’m not sure that its appropriate. I mean, I’m the one paying to be here, not them. And shouldn’t I be doing something important like exploring cross-cultural technology or new media constructs? Instead, I think I’m trying to help them escape time, and figure out how to get their bodies back.

You see, I think they’re trapped in time. Actually, I know they’re trapped in time. They’re actually us. They are our future us, like generations to come. They used to have bodies, but in the quest for efficiency and technology they replaced them with a bundle of chemical reactions. Then they replaced those chemical reactions with electronic functions, and basically, they became the internet. So, now time doesn’t matter and space doesn’t matter and even individuality is meaningless, and some of them love it, heck they are everywhere always, but others want their bodies back.

Of course, they never had bodies in the first place, and those whose ancestors did are now indistinguishable from those who were code to start with, so misplaced nostalgia or not, some of them want to come back to this time, when people had bodies.

Like this Lincoln Thing. I think its supposed to trap the energy potential of that historic moment before the bullet hit Lincoln, in some infinite loop. And I think some of this is them trying to come to terms with what it means to be biological, to prepare themselves. They’re obviously quite confused, having me build a tree out of plywood, then chop it down, mill it back to plywood, and return it to its creator, who they see as Home Depot. Or save a dead fish by releasing it into the water.

I really believe that the best way to learn about another culture is by coming to understand their misassumptions about your own.