It's amazing that we manage to live a linear existence when faced with such a non-linear network of choices. Given that every step opens up a multitude of new and interesting available steps, it's a miracle there is any coherence to our lives, that our lives' Markov chains have order greater than 1. That we ever complete anything we set out to do. This is most obviously reflected in the multitude of tabs open in my browser. Every interesting page has a few interesting links; every minute brings a new interesting pointer by a friend, every other thought brings up a new idea. I set out to do something, and the very process of doing it brings up a zillion other things I want to do. Clearly I will die before I complete the ever expanding network, so the process of converting the network into a chain that fits my simple linear life is a critical one, one that decides what will get done and what will get left out, simply because I ran out of time. What a joy our future cousins will have, those digital beings who will be able to enjoy a fractal, networked, parallel existence...when every new idea or link will be able to spawn a digital copy of yourself to do it.

Altadena, 9/25/2010