Welcome to Maid Spin, the personal website of iklone. I write about about otaku culture as well as history, philosophy and mythology.
My interests range from anime & programming to mediaevalism & navigation. Hopefully something on this site will interest you.
I'm a devotee of the late '90s / early '00s era of anime, as well as a steadfast lover of maids. My favourite anime is Mahoromatic. I also love the works of Tomino and old Gainax.
To contact me see my contact page.
Consumer technology isn't fun any more. Its too sleek, too accessible, too perfect. There's no need any more for you to fiddle around with a computer for hours just to make it function, in fact its now commonplace for the inner workings to be near inaccessible to the average user, hidden behind layers of UI and warranty. Modern computers abstract the user from the real guts of the machine, making them "just work" but denying us real control over the machine we ostensibly own. Kids these days hardly know what a file structure even is, nor even have a comprehension of the difference between local and cloud storage. It's as if computers have finally been totally enslaved by humanity, tamed into totally obedient and subservient tools. But this, as any programmer will tell you, is a farce. The programmer knows that their craft is often more of an art than a science, wrangling with a powerful yet dumb beast to force it to do your bidding, and even when it does, not really understanding really how it happened. The programmer communes with the little people inside his machine, instructing, ordering, coaxing them into a cohesive team. Its no wonder then that nerds the world over personify their machines, giving their CPUs and auxiliary devices names and ascribing them personalities. This near universal exercise is true across every nation and across time, but simultaneously would be very unordinary if performed by some normie teenager with their iphone. A similar thing has happened with many a machine. Cars used to be crap, breaking constantly and requiring regular servicing. But now they (generally) just work. And so, while it was common among men of earlier decades, naming your car has equally become a rarity; but I am sure it still persists among those engineers who design and build them.
One of the holy texts of the computer scientist is Abelson & Sussmen's "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs". Published in 1996, the textbook covers the fundamentals of programming; impressing the importance of the very foundations of the craft to the apprentice programmer. Known commonly as the "Wizard Book", the book contains several chapters tackling the subject from a more philosophical perspective, including the first chapter which starts with the famous words (at least amongst compsci students):
"Computational processes are abstract beings that inhabit computers. As they evolve, processes manipulate other abstract things called data. The evolution of a process is directed by a pattern of rules called a program. People create programs to direct processes. In effect, we conjure the spirits of the computer with our spells."The author then goes to explain that code, in its base form, is indeed much like a magicians spell: arcane, esoteric and symbolic; able to control an invisible force. These invisible forces, known as computational processes, are beings able to perform intellectual work, but not composed of tangible matter, much like a spirit. These spirits have immense latent power, but can only interface with our reality through computers, controlled by code and in turn by programmers. Society puts great trust in these software spirits: letting them control vital systems which, if they were to fail, would endanger human life. But generally they live harmoniously with mankind intertwined into our everyday lives, you probably have several busy at work in your pocket right now. Because of their undeniable usefulness their population has exploded, now easily outnumbering humans and outpacing us in many intellectual fields such as arithmetic or even chess. The computer spirits live a parallel existence to most normal folk, with most people only really acknowledging their existence in any cognisant way when a bug or glitch occurs, but to the programmer the art of controlling them has become his occupation and his art.
Some interpretations of pre-Christian Anglosaxon beliefs, a topic shrouded in the doubtful mists of time, have uncovered a similar description of such "little spirits" in their cosmology, that is the way in which the Anglosaxons understood the world to function. The various cyclical machinations of the natural world: day/night, the four seasons, the regeneration of flora/fauna: all these things are governed by a force outside the perception of mortal men. Such things are, rather than the consequences of the movement of the heavenly bodies as we believe today, the result of the tireless work of "the beautiful ones", or "elves". These little spirits inhabited trees, rocks and soil, working in the natural cycles to bring about the seasons and the weather and all the inexplicable forces of nature. While some may ascribe "pantheism" to this belief structure, it seems these beings were very much perceived as separate from the world itself. Rather they lived in a parallel world to ours, only sometimes passing into the tangible world of men. But just as the actions of the elves brought mankind both joy and despair, the actions of mankind did also unto them. Whenever we would fell a forest the elves suffered. But whenever we erected a new house or brought in a good harvest they would equally be pleased.
Sometimes, laying aside the physical truth of these beliefs, such a system can aid in our ability to perfect an art. When man personifies his craft in such a way so that he can empathise with it, he is able to bring the full force of the moral human intellect to bear. To "get into the feel" to coin a phrase, to treat your craft as you would treat a small child, or a frightened madman, or even your wife, whatever may be necessary. These emotions are where we as humans can truly excel, and truly find love in our work.
