RUDIMENTS, pt. 164
Making Cars
Alan Turing, a logcian, once
put it thusly : 'In order to be a
perfect and beautiful computing
machine, it is not requisite to
know what arithmetic is.' That's
a very confusing statement. But
it sums up perfectly what it
attempts to say, and, at same
time, encapsulates 'writing' very
well too. Let's call it 'Competence
without comprehension.' That's a
pretty scary concept. A computer
can be built, can be programmed,
instructed, so that "if you observe
a 0, replace it with a 1, and move
left, and if you observe 1 leave
it as is and move right, and
change to state 'n'." A perfect
mathematics ensues, though
the 'machine' doing it knows
nothing of arithmetic. It's like
that, under the assault of
inspiration maybe, for writing,
as it becomes not so much
composing and arranging,
editing and constructing, as
it does simply 'reading' what
input you're given. Being
able to do that and having an
ultra-fine grasp of it, and self,
and being, has often, in religion,
been referred to as inhabiting
a 'state of grace.' God-like.
-
I thought of that a lot. I
tried constructing a language,
in fact, that would get that
across - but I found there
was no one else to whom
I could speak it. Much
like having a telephone,
why have one if there's
no one ever to call or
speak to, nor any desire
for that either. That's me.
There used to be rows
of telephone booths, the
real kind, where the sliding
glass door, hinged in the
middle, would close you
in as you pulled it shut,
the interior wood finish
of the seat and the shelf
as you sat to talk and the
heavier than usual, strange
feeling of the black telephone
in your hand. Once the door
was closed, the light came
on inside, you were enclosed,
cocooned to conduct business,
other maybe could see you,
but knew nothing except
your occupying that space.
There were perhaps 8 or 10
of these in a row, every so
often, along the corridors
and hallways and great-rooms
of the train terminals, bus-stations,
taxi centers and all that. At
the western end of 42nd street
there used to be a large,
Greyhound, bus terminal,
for the longer trips, in sleek
metal Greyhound coaches -
Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Chicago,
Miami, New Orleans, Savannah,
Nashville, St. Louis - all these
great geographic places far off.
I used to love that terminal,
always in the half-dark, it
loomed over that section of
the street - it's all now a
rather unmuffled and fancified
thing called 'Theater Row'. I
don't know where the Greyhound
operations have gone to.
-
I used to go there just to sit around -
groups of fat, old blacks joking about,
or confused transients between trips.
This was before the 'luggage on
wheels' days, so there'd always be
some collection of travelers from
Idaho or somewhere loony fighting
with six suitcases of junk. All you
had to do was be nice and act polite
(and interested in their plight) and
for schlepping or dragging about
with a few bags, to the belly of a
bus somewhere, you could get 75
cents or whatever. No one ever
stepped in or stopped the business.
Bus terminals of this nature weren't
very big on skycaps or redcaps, or
whatever those help guys are called.
All that stuff was airport business.
1960's and 1970s bus terminals were
mostly sleaze; nothing much else but.
Like the rest of New York, it was all a
cauldron - people on the make, trying
to steal or swindle, make off with
someone's wallets or belongings.
There was always a girl of two on the
make, finagling around with slimeball
business guy on his way home to
Harrisburg or Atlanta looking for a
quick hour or two of fun. There were
rooms everywhere for 4 or 5 bucks
for hourly use. I remember, about
1974, whatever, when the People's
Republic of China finally got into
the UN, they couldn't at first get it
together enough to buy and organize
and furnish, and all that, a 'Chinese
Mission to the United Nations,' and
they instead took over, lock and stock
and barrel for maybe a year, the Howard
Johnson's maybe 10 or 12 story hotel
that was nearby. That threw these girls
for a loop - they kept the place pretty
hopping with the hourlies, and now they'd
lost all that service space. It was all
quickly replaced by other little dumps,
but it wasn't the same. 'Declasse.'
-
Anyway, in all these places there would
always be people in the booths, or even
lined up waiting for a booth. It was
amazing. It was also quite mundane;
I'd overhear people stating their
call-business to others, or running on
with a conversation, and it was always
the most ordinary, worldly stuff - rides,
timetables, arrivals, locations. I'd always
figure, who needed that? Certainly not
me. I was determined that my own use
of words wasn't gong to be brought
down to that level of land-chatter, glib
shooting for nothing. Like a transcribed
Eniac (the world's first, large, room-sized
computer, by IBM) all these people as
one seemed programmed with the
perfect mathematics of efficient means
but absolutely no knowledge of the
whys and wherefores of existence and
being first. I couldn't even blame them
for that, really, for what bugged me
more was that that each seemed
completely unconcerned and not
curious about any of this at all.
Competence. Without.
Comprehension.
* Turing was also a computer scientist, and lots of other things.
* Turing was also a computer scientist, and lots of other things.
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