CURVE YOUR ENTHUSIASM (18)
By:
August 22, 2023
One in a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of reconsidered passions, reassessed hates, and reversed feelings everywhere in-between. Series edited by Adam McGovern.
SIDE-EYE VIEW
Siri, are things closer than they appear?
I’m sorry. I don’t understand the question.
At a certain point in the road everything has a curve to it. In thinking of things revered when young and swatted away later in life, of amended positions and altered states, an image floated before me—the perplexing phrase, “objects in mirror are closer than they appear.” The one etched faintly on sideview mirrors.
Who authored this classic disambiguation? The phrase has a sense of nonsense. Literally, the mirror’s convex surface magnifies the things we’re meant to avoid, such as a closer-than-you-think truck barreling up behind you. About to clip that very wing mirror.
But for those of us hurtling past the half-century mark, the sentiment is not so literal. It mocks, haunts, and taunts. What’s closer than it appears? Eventually, everything. A hidden arrythmia in the heart, a rogue cell, or a forgetfulness about to quicken into dementia.
And beyond a personal crash, perhaps premonitions of a global one? The chatter among the godfathers of A.I. warns of the hyper-evolution of machine learning bots surpassing their coders with exponential stupidity, galloping beyond human comprehension. Is the droning boredom of a bot-generated everything closer than it seems? Bots can now hurl globs of code at each other; virtual food fights. The road ahead feels littered with inevitable screwups and boneheaded catastrophes. We might not end with a bang, nor a whimper, but a white noise hum.
Siri, are you closer than you appear?
Yes, I am. Much closer.
The mirrored wingman, the convex, side-eye reflector is meant to help us with our blind spots. Instead, the message in the mirror is a mystery, along with other double-edged warnings, like “mind the gap” when stepping off a train. What gap? The one under our feet? Or the uncanny valley?
And of course, we all know Siri lies. Her code, like us all, like the humans who built it, adores avoidance. And keeping a side-eye on rearview mirrors invites too much nostalgia. That hitchhiker you passed by and left in your dust, that oncoming cop car, all that roadkill. I used to crave adventure, but rearview thinking reminds me it’s not worth the crackup.
Photo: Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License; Attribution: Pratheep P S, www.pratheep.com
CURVE YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Adam McGovern | Tom Nealon on PIZZA PURISM | Holly Interlandi on BOY BANDS | Heather Quinlan on THE ’86 METS | Whitney Matheson on THE SMITHS | Bishakh Som on SUMMER | Jeff Lewonczyk on WHOLE BELLY CLAMS | Kelly Jean Fitzsimmons on HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER | Nikhil Singh on LOVE ISLAND UK | Adrienne Crew on CILANTRO | Adam McGovern on MISSING PERSONS | Art Wallace on UFOs | Fran Pado on LIVERWURST | Lynn Peril on ELTON JOHN’S GREATEST HITS | Marlon Stern Lopez on ADOLESCENT REBELLION | Juan Gonzalez on STAN & JACK or JACK & STAN | Christopher-Rashee Stevenson on BALTIMORE | Josh Glenn on FOOTLOOSE | Annie Nocenti on SIDEVIEW MIRROR | Mandy Keifetz on BREATHLESS | Brian Berger on HARRY CREWS | Ronald Wimberly on GAMING AND DATING | Michele Carlo on HERITAGE FOODS | Gabriela Pedranti on MADONNA | Ingrid Schorr on MAXFIELD PARRISH AND SUE LEWIN | Mariane Cara on ORANGE.
JACK KIRBY PANELS | CAPTAIN KIRK SCENES | OLD-SCHOOL HIP HOP | TYPEFACES | NEW WAVE | SQUADS | PUNK | NEO-NOIR MOVIES | COMICS | SCI-FI MOVIES | SIDEKICKS | CARTOONS | TV DEATHS | COUNTRY | PROTO-PUNK | METAL | & more enthusiasms!