SILICON SOAPWARE wafting your way along the slipstreams of the Info Highway from Bubbles = Tom Digby = bubbles@well.sf.ca.us = tgdigby@netcom.com http://www.well.com/user/bubbles/ Issue #42 New Moon of May 25, 1998 Contents copyright 1998 by Thomas G. Digby, with a liberal definition of "fair use". In other words, feel free to quote excerpts elsewhere (with proper attribution), post the entire zine (verbatim, including this notice) on other boards that don't charge specifically for reading the zine, link my Web page, and so on, but if something from here forms a substantial part of something you make money from, it's only fair that I get a cut of the profits. For more background info, details of how the mailing list works, etc., ask for a copy of issue #Zero. If you email me a reply or comment, please make clear whether or not it's for publication. ********************* Wild music plays as four dancers emerge from the shadows into the light of the bonfires. There are two men and two women, all about the same height, with the slender muscular build common among dancers. All four are nude. Even in the flickering firelight you can easily tell them apart: There are different hair styles, different hair and skin colors. One of the light-skinned ones is heavily tattooed, while the other is not. One of the dark-skinned ones wears glittering jewelry. All are beautiful to look upon, graceful in their movements. Your thoughts drift, carried along by the movement and the music. Then when your attention returns to the dancers you are surprised to see four men. You could have sworn it was two men and two women. But there they are, four men, with everything hanging out for all to see. You close your eyes a moment to think about this, and when you open them again you see four women. They have the same tattoos and jewelry and hair styles and skin colors as the four men you thought you saw a moment ago, the same as the original two men and two women who started the dance. What's going on here? You watch a while longer, and you notice that every time a dancer spins around, showing a rather androgynous back for a split-second, that dancer changes. It's clearly the same dancer you saw a moment ago, but what was female is now male or vice versa. It's rather disconcerting at first, but as the novelty wears off you once more begin to enjoy the dance without trying to analyze it. At one point two of the dancers engage in a sort of duet while the other two retreat to the background. One lunges at the other, lifts the other, takes the other in his or her arms. Then one or the other twirls around to change, and the duet repeats. Four times they go through this, each time the same two dancers, but each time a different one of the four possible combinations of male and female. You notice that the meaning of each movement is subtly changed by the gender of the participants, even though nothing else is different. Then all four are dancing together again, and as some of the emotional baggage associated with gender begins to fall away you relax and enjoy the pure beauty of the human form in motion. The dance continues for a dreamlike timeless time, with the tone and tempo of the music now and then changing. Then the music fades and the dance ends, food and drink is brought out, and the people gathered there are free to share their thoughts and feelings about the events of the night, or their lives in general, or life, the universe, and everything. ********************* We now take you to the Realm of Thought, where a writer from the Realm of Matter is interviewing the four people known as "the sex-change dancers" for lack of any "official" name. Q. How long have you been dancing? A. For as long as we can remember. Q. How long is that? A. It's hard to say. Some of us in the Realm of Thought came into existence with memories of having lived for ages. It depends on whoever first brings us into being by thinking of us. In our case it's a sort of hazy and indefinite "always". Q. I notice you're still naked. Do you ever wear clothing? A. No. There is no need for it here. And we were created with the idea that our bodies are beautiful, so we have nothing to hide. Even when someone with different standards of beauty criticizes our appearance we feel secure enough to be able to accept the fact of disagreement without being hurt by it. Q. Which were you originally, male or female? A. None of us are really sure. Our memories are of a hazy "always" of constant change, with no definite beginning. Q. How does it feel to be constantly switching from male to female and back again? A. To us it feels normal. What would feel odd would be being stuck permanently as one or the other. Q. Excuse me if this gets a bit personal, but are any of you sexually active? A. Yes, we are. That is one of life's major pleasures, when done in the spirit of true sharing. Q. What do you do in bed? A. Just about anything anybody else does. If the plumbing isn't right for some particular act, all we have to do is roll over to change. Q. Aren't your partners kind of freaked out by that? A. Some were at first, but we've learned to warn them in advance. Q. What kinds of people have you gone to bed with? A. People we've gotten to know and enjoy being with. If we feel comfortable sharing hearts and minds, then we will consider sharing the pleasures of our bodies. Q. What of people who do not look like beautiful dancers? Do they have a chance with you? A. Yes. Different people's bodies were made for different things. Some were made for dancing, some for lifting heavy loads, some for enduring cycles of feast and famine, and many for a little of all of these, with no one thing in particular being foremost. Each is beautiful in its own way, regardless of transient fads and fashions. So don't let your appearance stop you. [The interview continues, but this is all we have time for here.] ********************* In many companies computers are handled by the IS Department. Are there companies in which the IS Department handles existence in general and not just computers? If so, they don't say much about it in trade journal articles and such. Maybe they keep it secret for some reason? ********************* At a recent filk (a get-together featuring science fiction folk songs) they did a number of computer songs, and I got to thinking how strange and incomprehensible many of them would have been to a science fiction fan of 40 or 50 years ago. They're no more far-fetched than songs of hyperspace and alien worlds and time travel and such, except that they include no background explanation. Everybody today knows about computers with interactive video terminals, for example, so you just plunge into some aspect of the human side of using them. In this case, there were a couple of songs about creating worlds inside the computer, and about the fun children would have playing in those worlds. Anyone who has seen (for example) a modern computer game will understand this. And you hardly even need the word "computer". You just mention world- building in the same breath as electrons on a screen and people will know. But to a computer user of 40 years ago, when a computer was rack upon rack of vacuum tubes and a clattering Teletype or maybe punched cards for input and output, such a song would make no sense. Another song had a line about the machine being made from a few grains of sand. Silicon is a major element of sand, and "a few grains" is about how much silicon is in one of the smaller chips. And even though you do need other things besides silicon to make a computer, that's the crucial element that symbolizes today's computer hardware. But somebody forty years ago would have no idea what to make of that reference. They might think the sand was to make glass for vacuum tubes, but for that you'd need buckets of sand, not just "a few grains". And why concentrate on the glass for the tubes? That seems like a relatively minor part of the machine. What of copper and iron for wires and transformers and cabinets and such? Why would they seem less important than glass? Big mystery. When you sing today of the exploits of intergalactic heroes several centuries hence there are standard concepts and images you invoke to set the stage. And many of these have been around in one form or another for decades, so a song written about such things today would have a good chance of being understood were some time traveler to sing it to science fiction fans back in the 1950's. But the science fiction of the past did not in general capture the details of what life is like today. So when singing today of the things of today, you are less likely to be understood by someone from a few decades back than when singing of the far future. ********************* You know those restaurants built on nostalgia for the 1950's? If you were to take photographs of one from today back to someone of that era, how many things would they see "wrong"? Different hair and clothing styles? Too few (if any) people smoking? Strange-looking cash register? What else? Next time you're in one of those places, think about this. ********************* I just recently landed a job doing work that I enjoy doing at a place whose corporate culture seems almost tailor-made for me. This leads me to think back on the last couple of years. If I'd gotten work back in L.A. and hadn't lost the house and hadn't moved to the Bay Area, how happy or unhappy would I have been by now? It's impossible to say. But the question reminds me of the following: Once Around Discontent Like a bird that's taken wing On a morning in the spring When the dew is on the grass and on the flowers, On the road he's runnin' free -- People, places, things to see, With the sunshine only sometimes mixed with showers. Showers? Bein' homeless is a pain By a roadside in the rain When a family's only something to remember. Pass another lonely town -- Thinks he should've settled down With a girl he met in Nashville last December. December? Family gathered round the tree, What a happy sight to see, With the children knowin' Santa comes tomorrow. Father thanks the Lord above For the cheerful warmth and love And protection from the rain and pain and sorrow. Sorrow? Only yesterday it seems He had bright and shining dreams Of a future filled with wealth and fame and power. But he somehow missed his chance, Didn't even get a glance At the view from some Manhattan penthouse tower. Tower? On the fifty-seventh floor With a title on the door He's the leader of a mighty corporation. Lunch at Antoine's French Cuisine Via chauffeured limousine While he dreams about an overdue vacation. Vacation? Not a chance to get away From the pressures ev'ry day, From the voices crying "Throw some money my way!" But he thinks he might rebel, Tell them all to go to Hell, And go looking for his life along the highway. Highway? Like a bird that's taken wing On a morning in the spring When the dew is on the grass and on the flowers, On the road he's runnin' free -- People, places, things to see, With the sunshine only sometimes mixed with showers. Thomas G. Digby written 1425 hr 12/18/76 entered 2025 hr 3/29/92 -- END --