Information
By Daniel Donahoo (2009)

she closes the lid
and unplugs the device
no bigger than her thumb
from the computer.

My lifes work, she says. But, it isnt her lifes work.

You see, we store information like an Escher painting.
It shouldnt all fit in there. But, it does.
And every day we manage to fit more and more into smaller and smaller spaces until one day
she says,
we will be able to fit all the information the world has
everything that everyone knows and believes and dreams
into nothing.

It will all be there. Stored and filed.
Tagged with any keywords you might imagine.

Our hard drives will be thin air.

They will make nanobots look like elephants.
And elephants will be in there too. Tagged. Accessible with search terms
like grey, ivory,
and the largest land dwelling mammal

We will process away at nothing and understand everything.
We will think of a word and the information will slip in, not through our ears or eyes
but straight thorough our skin. Information will breathe in and out of us,
permeate our skin.

Our knowing will be as deep as it is wide.
You see our work here is to learn so much,

to be so full of knowing,
that all there is left to do is unlearn.

Humanity must get to a point where we let go.
We leave the useless ideas and the spent ideologies in the recycle bin.
like an adolescent brain shedding neurons.
like a snake slithering from its old skin.
like an old man who has come to understand so well the point where reality meets the intangible that he is able to decide which breath will be his last. And, he will enjoy that breath more than any that he has taken in his entire life.

And, her lifes work is more than a four meg flash drive.

My lifes work, she says, is the impact that this has.

This is not about what I produce. It is all about what others receive.

Via Hugh. Part of the In B flat spoken word project.

This is a great opportunity for a designer who wants to build their portfolio and work with a creative team, as well as support urban ecology, the reclamation of the commons, and local history. Main contributors to the project (designer, artist, publisher) will invest time in developing the book and then split the profits from the book and related merchandise. The project will contribute to the commons — all outputs will be licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license, allowing subsequent creators to remix and build on it.

Interested? Visit Emily’s site for more details.

I’m (through Artefatica) helping Montreal artist Emily Rose Michaud, the force behind the Mile End’s Roerich Garden, to produce a book that will document community happenings and uses of the lovely and (for the time being) wild field that lies between the east end of St-Viateur street and the Carmelite nun’s residence. The book will be published in the spring of 2009.

To contribute content, contact Emily before the end of November. If you’d like to help produce the book we’re also looking for a designer. See Emily’s blog for more details.