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.
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