I’m not sure whether this notebook is #3 or #2. There’s a lot of notes from English 318, which would put it in the winter, but I don’t know if it’s from ’08 or ’09.
Not that that matters; ideas are ideas. And here they are!
An empty parking garage with no exit.
Covered this already in a previous post. Strangely, it’s one of the most popular posts on this blog. I constantly get search engine traffic from people googling “empty parking garage” and other such stuff. Who googles “parking garage”? Weird.
Telepathy through instant messaging between microchips interfaced with the brain.
Also covered in the same post.
And they all lived evily ever after.
Bwahahah! I’ve got Jakeson to thank for this line–specifically, from a conversation at LTUE. Good times!
A TV show where the viewers vote between ads what should happen next.
I’m pretty sure I got this idea from an Escape Pod story–one of the Hugo short story nominations from ’06 or ’07, IIRC.
What if the human mind, which we think is so great, is ridiculously broken?
After all, isn’t it true that we only use a tiny fraction of our brain’s capacity during our lifetime? What if the true potential of the human mind far outstrips anything we could possibly imagine?
What if the human brain was manifested as some sort of library / processing building, with short term, easy access, and archival memory sections manifested as bookshelves and long rooms? And there were flies or insects or parasites of some sort that fed on the archives, causing forgetfulness? And you were trapped in there?
I’m pretty sure I was tripping out on the Brain Science podcast at this time, combined with an old Roger Allen McBride novel about time travel and terraforming. Good times.
What would it be like to be God’s intern?
FREAKING HARD.
If perfect, instantaneous communication is possible, doesn’t this blur the individual identities of those speaking, so that they become simply voices in one mind? If so, does this mean that our individuality is based on the ways we misunderstand each other?
At its core, this idea is a take on the whole perfection vs. personality debate: the question of whether our individual personalities disappear as we approach Godlike perfection. I’ve come to the conclusion that this is not the case, but that’s a discussion for my other blog (which I have not updated in a ridiculously long time, dangit).
A middle aged mom at a children’s book fair in Utah who has a tattoo partially showing from under her sleeve
I saw this in the Wilk one day, and started wondering about this woman. Who is she? Where did she get the tattoo? Why is she at a Utah Children’s Book Fair, which is about as far removed from tattoos and tattooed society as you can get?
A robot that was made to suffer, as part of an experiment.
It makes you wonder what ‘suffering’ actually is. Do inanimate objects suffer? Do the rocks and clouds and sky and stars suffer? Do they weep for us?
On that trippy note, I’ll cut this short and finish reviewing the notebook in a later post. Until then, stay awesome.
Lots of cool ideas here. Definitely got me thinking.
* For the human brain thing–all of my neuroscience teachers at BYU said the whole “Humans only use 10% of their brain” or whatever is junk science. But I still think the idea of a broken human mind is very cool.
* God’s intern–lol at your comment. The movie Bruce Almighty took kind of a different approach though–God would use the experience to help you grow. In a way, I guess, aren’t we all God’s interns? Maybe a discussion for your other blog…
* Suffering robot–it’s not quite the same thing, but Ken Scholes’ Lamentation has a robot character that suffers tremendously…emotionally…for being the lone survivor of catacylsm (and more…). Awesome book–I recommend it highly.
“What would it be like to be God’s intern?”
PLEASE write this.
I vote for living evily ever after. For purely selfless reasons, of course… *walks aways whistling*