So, for the next few weeks, I am going to be watching every single episode of the X-Files prior to the release of the new X-Files movie. (Is this yet another thing that clearly betrays my age?)
Just saw episodes 1 thru 5 tonight. Actually haven’t seen all of them - actually don’t remember much of them. Some interesting paranormal motifs… but mostly, it’s interesting to note the traditional mystery/detective story plot technique of information loss applies. That is, Gov doesn’t actually have eyes *everywhere* (albeit they do in most places).
The salient thought is that once upon a time, I thought they would just attempt the simple solution of axing out the people completely. But now, after SL, I guess I can understand why that isn’t possible. It’s interesting that even in a theoretically controlled environment - i.e., where communication can essentially be filtered by a central system - a lot goes on that escapes the view. There’s also the tales of MS tech’s draining out to Google due to the tech behemoth’s increasing inefficiency as it gets to become a more of a megacorp. Information loss and people not knowing the right thing… and basically not knowing the right person to axe out - and the solution of axing out everyone wouldn’t work (lol) since I guess the point of power (the petty kind that people seem to go for) is really to control people.
For me though, it is really about knowledge. Not just encyclopedic knowledge, since I’ve found out firsthand that I can’t seem to access all of that at once - even if I do have all of it in me… rather, memory seems more easily accessed through epiphany. Similar to Hume’s argument about a person’s concluding in a decision based on a spike in emotion…
There’s also the part about going back and watching these after having suffered the toils of a sci-eng deg with a focus more on theory than the other misc items. A lot of the science doesn’t really seem as cool anymore to my kid eyes when I first saw them, and some just seem unlikely. Episode 4’s Conduit, where you have the toddler seeing binary on the static TV screen and constructing complicated segments of messages… really not sure if he can write all that *by hand*, and also whether he can keep organized enough so that they can later decode it (and how are they decoding it, what metric are they using, etc. o.O). Nevertheless, there are some interesting ideas integrated with a good storyline.
