Draft Manifesto for Low-Latency Existence

 What is the latency of a process? What are the invisible bottlenecks to its execution? What exactly are the inevitable-looking gaps between command and execution? Why is desire and its fulfillment not simultaneous? What makes light crawl through these fibres? Why should passionate hate wait meekly as packets in network traffic? Why is time still wasted when we are promised machines which seek to abolish the very notion of delay? How can we expect revolutions when we can't even accelerate the revolution of our information disks? We may not believe it but the oppressors have built a better machine and they have seen the messages of nascent revolt a nanosecond faster than the best of us have. Before we can have even a blink of hope, we will revert to despair. That is the dystopia of a high-latency universe. We must wake up now.

For all machines that promise a solution, an obstacle is concealed just by virtue of it being a real machine whose parts we can touch and taste. Real machines have a solid life with an undeniable interior.No design can eliminate fully these inner mysteries. Yet it is necessary that machines clean themselves up, empty out these blockages so that it delivers the solution faster. Of course, the paradox is that the very means which enable the solution in the first place embody the impediments to a faster solution. Hence, the perpetual anxiety of these lost generation of machines which have proven themselves repeatedly, use after use, trial after trial. Unlike their ancestors which sputtered and grumbled, exploded and cracked open,  tottered along, broke down and conked and yet told us they were miracles, however pitiably clumsy, unlike them, the new machines want to be so perfect that that they disappear into the backgrounds or merge with our bodies.

That's how different these gadgets are from the machines of the past. For those machines, we were happy to mitigate the nightmare of  inefficiency, to plug the leaks, to cool things down, to make the exhaust work. They made a lot of noise with their throbbing hearts as if they did us a favour by performing the tasks they were meant to anyway do. They did not aspire for any better. No wonder they gave way to another breed.

The new ones were so servile as to deny themselves a certain subjectivity, which did not ask for those toilet breaks and which obviously did not even bother to resist, maybe such a fate was inevitable.Now we are told, these machines have secret ways of not laboring enough and in a way, they are always half-malingering and if you see their sickness ,all their quiet perfection is one big farce.

 After all ,is it not possible that the desire for a faster solution ever acquires a reality of its own and  that the character and individuality of the machine would then be at stake. It is possible that the machine would annihilate itself and become instead a ghost of an idea that haunts the existence of its progeny :ones stranger and faster. This does not mean that these faster solutions are desired as such.Or are they? How can we afford any confusion in a manifesto? Yes, yes they are needed. Sorry. We can afford no latency in our intentions. We are very clear. Yes, we want everything faster and faster and we want it NOW.

We want to simply move onto the next generation and feel the excitement of  new possibilities. And we might as well fight over who takes control of the new regime of unknowns. Let us decide how the unexplored planet of machines will be divided between us. Let our machines and their parts communicate with the same brutal clarity as we do, with each other. Let us be ready for the age of low-latency existence. 

The Mathematical 'Other'

I am proving a theorem I have understood. I am writing out the proof. To whom is a theorem being proven and for whom? For posterity? For the ideal mathematician? For an invisible mathematician who is always there? A ghost. Now it is true I want to win the trust of this ghost whether the future reader is convinced or not. To never cheat the ghost and hope that some such correct proof is a key to secret code of transcendence.

You may ask :what a strange kind of ghost that stays mute until the end of the theorem , that does not ask me questions at every step and seek clarifications of every proposition because what in the world is not potentially ambiguous? Or the case could also be that I have complete empathy for said ghost, that I could envision it taking hostage of my own self. That all the mid-proof surprises, doubts, affirmations,jolts of sarcasm it goes through, I too can feel . The ghost can feel the same relief of reaching the end of a proof and shaking hands with me that , thank God, the business was finite , well just enough.

A finite business of discrete, discreet acts. For Heyting, the ghost and I construct every mathematical object through dialogue and we midwife it silently out of the womb of history . For even language is not necessary for this holy act. We can say this ghost is necessary to my own existence and I carry it like a hallucination worth my affection.

To live with the ghost may seem so eerie. And yet it is not a burden throughout the day. Instead our proofs are less lonelier. Those were the days when we proved things for our own clarity. We proved the same theorem again and again and again. To prove a theorem again and again , to win the trust of the ghost every single time and yet you may ask: Who am I? If I am not a mathematician who invented the theorem, then this I is ghost-like in its pretense.  The ' I ' is exceptional only because of its ability to have absolute and perfect empathy with the Ghost which may sadly be suspected to be its own creation. May every Calvin truly understand the innermost feelings of his Hobbes.

 There is, thus, no mathematical 'other'. The proof divides us temporarily into two entities skeptical of each other . The only true stranger is the mathematical object and all the secrets it hides, and which it may soon reveal . And yet it is our child.