The Charmed Circle
An alice (pronounced a’ luh see) is a perfect circle. It has no beginning, middle or end. It lives a life on the order of a dream but with no need of night or sleeping, it lurks between the conscious and the rest, sticking its feet into first one and then the other. The mind first exposed to an alice finds itself charmed in a fundamental way, recesses of itself previously unknown at all, now occupied--- stirring. It now possesses a new kind of middle-consciousness, one that informs the sequential second, but strides always in the wide-open space of the moment.
The story of the alice begins essentially toward the end of the twenty-first century with the development of the first sensory compression languages. When tastes, scents, sights and smells all broke free of the measured-second and into the moment. No longer did a person have to wait for an experience to end before having another because more than could be previously tasted or heard in a single moment could now be consumed in an explosive experience called an Inclusive Compressed Event (ICE).
Although the Field was in the East decades before the West, the ICE was invented by an American and was first employed as an advertisement for Coca Cola in 2072. By 2080 most arenas of information exchange were dominated by the ice (pronounced "eye see" or "I see").
It has been observed with some irony that the alacrity with which advertisers embraced the ice as a means of boosting the commodities market, led in the end to the demise of the market itself. For within a short time of their introduction, the value of the ice was found to exceed the value of the commodities they were being used to sell. This led summarily to the First World Depression (2082-2086) and the subsequent end of the Information Age.
The impact of the ice would soon prove negligible however compared to that of its successor, the alice (All Inclusive Compressed Event), the exact origins of which remained unknown for quite some time. But in the days before the shock, the excitement was infectious. It spread like a sickness in a tropical heat. It flew on nimble insect-wings. It could get to everyone. And so it became the basis for the new economy. It dictated a new kind of social order. And eventually became the basis of language itself, a language of icons and individual selves which opened humankind to the great change and closed a circle of knowledge that was as ancient as the origins of language itself...
The story of the alice begins essentially toward the end of the twenty-first century with the development of the first sensory compression languages. When tastes, scents, sights and smells all broke free of the measured-second and into the moment. No longer did a person have to wait for an experience to end before having another because more than could be previously tasted or heard in a single moment could now be consumed in an explosive experience called an Inclusive Compressed Event (ICE).
Although the Field was in the East decades before the West, the ICE was invented by an American and was first employed as an advertisement for Coca Cola in 2072. By 2080 most arenas of information exchange were dominated by the ice (pronounced "eye see" or "I see").
It has been observed with some irony that the alacrity with which advertisers embraced the ice as a means of boosting the commodities market, led in the end to the demise of the market itself. For within a short time of their introduction, the value of the ice was found to exceed the value of the commodities they were being used to sell. This led summarily to the First World Depression (2082-2086) and the subsequent end of the Information Age.
The impact of the ice would soon prove negligible however compared to that of its successor, the alice (All Inclusive Compressed Event), the exact origins of which remained unknown for quite some time. But in the days before the shock, the excitement was infectious. It spread like a sickness in a tropical heat. It flew on nimble insect-wings. It could get to everyone. And so it became the basis for the new economy. It dictated a new kind of social order. And eventually became the basis of language itself, a language of icons and individual selves which opened humankind to the great change and closed a circle of knowledge that was as ancient as the origins of language itself...
posted by Devin Greenwood at 4:48 AM
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