INNOVATION
In the classroom students are imagining screensthat feel like silk, like silt, fiery as kilns, off kilter.They discuss a future withinto fog and reconstitute as universal organs, pulsing,a future with robot spouses who know when to cuddleand when coffee and when cancer ceases beinghypochondria. Cantilevered bridges swarming with livingconcrete that can heal itself before collapse. Algorithmsto predict crime and epidemics. In the classroom studentsare imagining a future so immaculate they omitturnips, dirt, tantrums, long aimless walks, lust.They trust the relentless process, don’t pause to mournthe prototypes twitching in their mass graves,last words a slur of diminishing whirs and forlornbleeps. Onward! They forget to eat, and when the tears splashonto control, delete, they try goggles until the plastic cupsfill with lacrimal fluid. Then they try bigger goggles.Perhaps two sponges tamping ducts? Tiny flying robotsto slurp up obsolete secretions? It’s a simple matterof separating mass: keyboard from human weakness.Can they imagine doubting this new disposition? Losing faith?To stall, stop, step back. Imagine watching a chameleon turnmagenta then chartreuse without itching to optimize its magic,augment its pigments. To be content having changed nothingin the world except the way they and their kin stumble through it.
