06
§ the writer's desk
The Universe Wants What The Universe Wants
The Universe Wants What The Universe Wants.
4:13 AM. This is the time my brain keeps telling me to wake up for the past few weeks by giving me deep and meaningful thoughts to ponder. Thoughts so deep and meaningful they will change the course of history if only I pay very close attention to them. So profound and vital to humanity are these thoughts that I will spend hours in the middle of the night puzzling out their mechanics before announcing loudly to a still sleeping Jenn, “Yes!” I cry triumphantly, “you can totally send a Purdy’s Ice Cream Bar by email!” I’m certain this feeling I have right now is how John Dalton must have felt upon discovering the atom. And like the genius meteorologist and chemist John Dalton, I, too, reasoned that one thing is a lot like another thing, only different. I stand on the shoulders of giants.It’s now 4:37 AM when I realize the simple truth of the matter (atom joke, my mind is very sharp in the early morning) is we can already email “things” to one another — well, recipes of things. If I send you a picture of Jenn’s cat Newton you can see it on your screen, but when you hit PRINT, a series of instructions occurs (a recipe, if you will), which then spits out a physical picture of Newton that you can touch.
Following this logic, I have a 3D printer. I can email a “recipe” of, say, an Octopus SD Card Holder to myself. I see it on my screen and hit PRINT. Two hours later, bada-boom bada-bing, Octopus SD Card Holder sits on my shelf. Fully immersed in this rabbit hole, I reason that the Purdy’s Ice Cream Bar is the most delicious food on the planet and wouldn’t it be nice to just send one to a friend. Of course, that friend would need to have a 3D Atomic Printer, but surely that’s only a few years away. “Earl Grey, hot.” as Jean Luc Picard would say to his replicator. As I was working out how a 3D Atomic Printer would work, I realized that I was missing an important piece. Nothingness. Just as John Dalton discovered atoms, he unwittingly found the space between atoms, and if it’s one thing that I know from listening to David Gilmour of Pink Floyd, it’s the silence between the notes that creates meaning. Ergo, we need as much nothingness (space) as we need somethingness (atoms). Genius. I’m one step closer to figuring this thing out before my alarm goes off at 6 AM.