After going through this evening, it just makes me wonder how many more generations humanity has before we completely lose our minds. We have so much stuff piled into our heads, so much more than generations before us. Right now, I could debate with you the finer points of C++ and Java, the future of Lebanon, the original intent of the Constitution framers, or the origin of the species.
As I was going nuts tonight, losing my mind in a controlled, recoverable sort of way, you know what was on my mind? Macaroni and cheese. I had a picture of a bowl of macaroni and cheese in my head. I wasn’t hungry. I think if my subconscious was fully aware of the phrase, it would have preferred “Core Dump.” But it did the best it could, and it gave me something meaningless. I think, to our little mammalian heads, that everything we’re stimulating ourselves with is becoming nonsense.
I remember debating the merits of the character delivery on Star Trek: TNG with Kristin a while back. She said the characters weren’t natural. I retorted with the statement that to hold the kind of stuff they hold in their heads (teleportation, time travel, ...), they would have to somehow change, to somehow grow out of our present conception of humanity.
I submit that the magical nature of our vision of future’s science should also extend to the future’s consciousness. Could a fisherman from the West Bank in AD 20 grasp what we see on CNN and flick the channel out of boredom? We’re all changing. I just don’t know how much longer our minds can grow along with us.
One of the first things I decided when I began this programming project was that “C++ string types are for wussies. I’m using char arrays…like all REAL MEN do.”
Yeah, then I found out the C++ standard library provides std::string types that do all the horrible searching, replacing, and deleting I need with no trouble. So, I’m currently converting all my code.
