The Glorious Future

As I've mentioned previously, I'm somewhat obsessed with the advancement of mobile technology. Most of my mythological ponderings involve the creeping repercussions of smart phones, and what I think they represent in terms of the very nature of information and how we interact with the world. It's interesting to me to be on the wave of such rampant technological innovation, and to see how quickly people adapt to the convenience of little magical boxes that would have been the subject of science fiction only ten or twenty years ago. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, for example, now basically exists. Evoking the previously unattainable wonder of the Guide reminds us of where we were in the 1980's; to point out that I'm just talking about wikipedia on the iphone brings it immediately back down to the mundane. Oh yeah, I guess I can look up any topic I can think of with my phone...well, I've still got to go pick up the kids and then finish these reports before tomorrow.

Anyway, I just wanted to bring that up to point out something that somebody else made, obviously coming from a similar place. This Spigot isn't as needlessly philosophical as mine tend to be, but it is beautiful. Definitely check this out - explore the options presented by the site. As you're navigating the richly defined menus and musing aloud about what it is that you're looking at, think for a moment about what institutional entity could possibly fund such a professionally branded fictional device. This cost a lot of money, right? How long did they work on this?

And then, when you do find out who's behind this, that's the true gift - the moment where the surreal and the sublime intersect in a perfectly transcendent apex of wonder and confusion.

Happy Thanksgiving.

The Pomegranate NS08