what if we were to put a hole in the screen. what if we were to break through the fleeting glowing pixels hovering on a piece of glass. what if we were to peek around the edges. what if we were to make the invisible and hidden semi-transparent. what if we could be invisible and without scale and go inside...
the factories, behind the hopper windows opened a crack in a screened cage protruding from the edge of a smooth brick facade, glimpses of enormous man-eating machines which have, at their furthest extensions, humans under their control, moving rhythmically. there are wires and steel protrusions and thousands of crossing pipes.
and on cline ave you are above the smooth brick wall you encounter on 12. the beast has grown beyond roofs. it is an entire landscape. at night flames shoot out from the top of the stacks. thousands of tiny lights shimmer in a foreign land where there are no humans and no scale. this is a semi-transparent landscape which attempts opacity with a single 10 foot brick wall at the road. the structures inter-connections are all visible. you can not separate the steel tower structures from the pipes that intertwine them and run to other towers and tanks and burning stacks. somewhere there is somebody who knows what all these pipes do. they could identify them by their connection and relation and position and size and shape and material within the process landscape. there is nothing for show here. nothing to make it consumer-ready. nothing is hidden in the name of ease of use or 'freedom from choice.' there is no graphical user interface. there is no map. the landscape is the map. the physical manifestation is not the representation of the process, it IS the process. this is not a symbolic objectification of the process. the actual process is objectified. there is no referent outside of its self. this is a rational thought process objectified which takes on a life, a function of its own. process diagrams are abstract - lines and symbols. they do not anticipate the physical form that they will take on. the actual physical building process is the objectification of the production process. the production process does not exist until the time-space deficit is overcome through a direct physical interaction. this direct physical interaction does not stem from its anticipation - every detail of construction is not worked out. it is ad-hoc and individual builder specific. there is an infinite number of ways to objectify the process, but it is the actual construction which determines its form. after the process is objectified the diagram is obsolete because the physical form IS the diagram. the process has taken on a life of its own. the thought and materialization are one and the same. all relations are shown physically as they exist physically. every link is shown as a link - not as the representation, map, or diagram of the link - but as the physical link which it is.
what if we were to do better. like an inventor who builds through trial and error. like a mechanic who tests machines and thoughts by running them. that is - there is no diagram to start with. there is only the physical object which exists as thought. the object and the thought can not be separated. they are made in the same instance. they are always separate - at any time the creator can abandon the project and the thought and object creation exists in its own right. if it 'works' it takes on a life of its own - it gains an autonomy of process, as well as the autonomy it has as a physical object. we judge objects by their autonomy, by their separation from our thoughts, as physical manifestations. we judge life by its autonomy of process, by its ability to change and construct its self.
so how can we create process and thought simultaneously? intuitively? we have now entered a meta-world in which we utilize processes, objects, as we create a meta-process. we manipulate life to create meta-life. as before we manipulated objects to create meta-objects - the 'process.' the process was the objectification of objects manipulated in order to create an object manipulator. we form iron to create a factory process which will form oil. we utilize certain ready-made objects, such as pipes (the derivative of another process) to construct our own meta-object, process, life. now we utilize ready-made process meta-objects to create our own meta-process, our own meta-life.
form follows function. this was a pretty good idea, but the fact is: form IS function. 'form follows function' always begged the question - 'which function?' the statement was usually applied to buildings. but buildings are a collection of functions. (enclosing, heating, cooling, light production, noise removal, circulation, waste removal, water supply, privacy, ownership, control, production of other processes, etc.) they do not really have one controlling function. what is the function of a house? perhaps we could say life. but this brings us to a much larger question, what is the function of life? life is a collection of processes which has no product. the process of life is life. there is no end result, no product - there is only the objectification of process. life is process. form is function. (we are what we eat.)
these are the beautiful possibilities of our new meta-life creations - the ability to see our life as process. the ability to see the processes which make us what we are. the construction of a semi-transparent image which simultaneously is us. now we are without scale. now we are without limits. now we can not be separated from our connections and relations. we are these connections and relations. now we have made meta-life. now we can see our genetic code, its interaction with environments. now we can manipulate the processes of our own lives. now our own lives are objects with which we create larger processes. (hasn't this always been the case?) the ability to see our life as process will not answer the question 'what is the function of life?' this is an un-answerable question. that it is un-answerable suggests life has no function - it is meaningless except that it exists. that is, we exist as a process without end or meaning. it is only our death that ensures our individuality. within a meta-life, a process which spans and consumes lives as building blocks, there can be no individuality. there are no limits, life is only a part of the process. the information network is its own entity, its own meta-life which consumes lives as its raw power and building block. process consumes.
and we, as 'smart' parts of the process, get feedback. our individuality, our ability to create change, rests on the fact that we are limited - in the time that we live, in the knowledge that we can know, in the change that we can influence, in the perspectives we can view. we are the mutation producers of the process' evolution by virtue of our limits.
we can never understand wholly the process of life which we are. there is always a time-space gap between your self and the mirror, without it no light is let in and we feel in darkness. there exists the possibility to cut a cross-section. to punch a hole through our understanding. to see all the processes at once, but not know all of their meanings - that's ok, they are meaningless anyway. this is true information overload - to see all the infinite processes of life extending infinitely in time space and scale and to understand that 'you' are a certain position and collection of processes - a meta-process. there is an infinite void beyond meaning. beyond belief. we can understand our self as a meta-process within a meta-meta-process of evolution. we can see the functions of our self as they function. we can feel the resistance as we move. the reaction of our action. we can build our processes like an inventor. the thought and object are the same. we test through trial and error. we do build as inventors our life, our process, with every second. there is no separation of process and its physical objectification. life is materialization as conceptualization. life is process. life is now.