Processing

Trapped in the basement of a hideous new structure, refusing to subject my wrung out mind to any more abuse today, I stubbornly scribble about matrices and parallelograms, ignoring the ancient repository of knowledge before me. Oh, I also take time out to tap out this pointless and meaningless entry.

I actually like this class. The professor is slow in his speech, but to listen to him is to really learn a great deal. He's interesting, I think. It really is too bad about the timing. 6 to 9 is alright, but I somehow have another 3 hour class before this one. Not reasonable to expect me to focus for 6 hours straight, absorbing information like a sponge. I've never really worked like a sponge anyway. It's more like a filter. I sift out what I find interesting and relevant, discarding the rest. The problem with this is that at some point, the filter becomes clogged, and needs to be cleared out. The useful becomes mixed up with the detritus of college education. A moment is necessary to clear my head, let that which was selected and absorbed be routed into permanent, or semi-permanent memory, toss out the filtered bits and start over.

The crucial thing to note is that the direction of flow is important. I can produce an output continuously for far longer than 6 hours. It is like reading as opposed to writing, except in an odd converse situation. Producing an output is analogous to reading, and absorbing information to writing. Now, I don't know about you, but when I write, as in hand on pen on paper, my hand gets tired after a relatively short period of time. I need to stop and rest for a bit before continuing, or the quality will drop dramatically. In opposition to this is the act of reading. Reading the same sentences over and over does not reduce the effectiveness of the act. It is the act of creation of new information that is tiring and difficult to sustain at a high level for long. To simply lift existing information is far easier. From the words that are already put down on paper, I could read for a long time indeed, rearranging and using the words to generate new sentences and thoughts almost indefinitely.

Perhaps I should try my hand at being a writer or something. Sounds like fun, and suitable to my style of information processing. Take in and adapt new information at my leisure, then from that store, created over time, make copies and weave new constructs. I like to think I'm not too shabby a word worker either. On the other hand, it probably won't pay very well, so that's an unlikely career choice. Maybe I'll take a crack at some short fiction, see if it's any good. You never know what could happen.

Ok, back to math and not listening to a Nobel laureate.