The rest of the world could be into heavy drug use, for all you or I know. They could be taking a complex combination of uppers and downers that somehow balances out, maybe intended to balance them out. Because they need coffee but don't want to get too hyped up, so they smoke a little weed, but perhaps that goes too far, so they do some speed and then pop some valium to smooth things over. Then they go to work just like you and you never know the difference. Some people say this is ridiculous, my theory of counteracting highs, because when you put these things together they don't cancel each other out, but add to make a different sort of experience, but to this I say posh, the existence of inverses. Everything has an inverse.
The day-to-day humdrum begins to set in, even here. That sense of newness which cannot be synthesized again, once lost, like one's freshman year at college, is fading fast for me. Got to get out and see the world and keep the feeling going.
Today I got to experience virtual reality. The room I work in doubles as the "Media Office." There is a giant curved screen at one end, and one puts on bulky stereoscopic glasses like the ones in the old 50's 3D movie theaters, only a little more sophisticated than that I think. Suddenly I was in a factory where orange robotic arms assembled car frames right in front of my face. Usually 3D stuff makes me sick to my stomach, perhaps because I am aware of the illusion. But the illusion was so good this time I didn't even notice it.
There is a lot of really cool stuff going on around me at work. Siemens is not a dedicated software company, so you won't find any people working on ERP systems or scripting or anything like that. The work going on is high-tech. It requires brainpower and computational power, the kind of stuff I've always wanted to do but have been told is a "dead end" these days. Well, okay. IT consulting may where it's at, but as for me, I'm not going to repair software systems but create them, and they're not going to be mind-numbing web development/scripting projects either.
Posted by Alan at May 5, 2002 09:41 PM