The fig tree is pollinated only by the insect Blastophaga grossorun. The larva of the insect lives in the ovary of the fig tree, and there it gets its food. The tree and the insect are thus heavily interdependent: the tree cannot reproduce without the insect; the insect cannot eat without the tree; together, they constitute not only a viable but a productive and thriving partnership. This cooperative “living together in intimate association, or even close union, of two dissimilar organisms” is called symbiosis. […]

However, many problems that can be thought through in advance are very difficult to think through in advance. They would be easier to solve, and they could be solved faster, through an intuitively guided trial-and-error procedure in which the computer cooperated, turning up flaws in the reasoning or revealing unexpected turns in the solution. Other problems simply cannot be formulated without computing-machine aid. Poincare anticipated the frustration of an important group of would-be computer users when he said, “The question is not, ‘What is the answer?’ The question is, ‘What is the question?’” One of the main aims of man-computer symbiosis is to bring the computing machine effectively into the formulative parts of technical problems.

(J. C. R. Licklider, “Man-Computer Symbiosis”, 1960)

This blog is an experiment in the practice of:

1. Posing questions about the ecology of technology, buried in my engagement with the ideas I come across
2. Digested with the help of enzyme, an AI plugin that I built for Obsidian to help with digesting my own notes and highlights from texts.
3. Compromising my voice for the aroma of what I read

The objectives are to probe some fundamental questions that shape our understanding. When a text resonates with us emotionally, we uncover its deeper assumptions in ways that machines only begin to approach with logic. They fail to grasp the emotional nuances we instinctively recognize. This experiment explores how a source’s presence in machine-generated output serves not merely as proof of work, but as a reflection of emotional memory.