Covid Speaks like ChatGPT
What I’m Learning from Covid about the Internet and other Synthetic Experiences.
I got Covid this week. Likely on my way back from Japan. US immigration at JFK was a zoo, and I stood in there for nearly an hour packed against other people with supposedly expedited “Global Entry” privileges. Yes, I gave Homeland Security my retinal scans in perpetuity and all I have to show for it is a case of this weird virus.
And not to be conspiratorial, but this virus is weird. I had decided to follow my good mate Tyson Yunkaporta’s advice, and use the occasion of this infection to listen to what information the virus may have for us. So instead of completely resisting this awful feeling, I laid down in bed and let it take me over. I just let it spread through me the same way I might surrender to a psychedelic drug if I found out someone had spiked my tea with a few hits of mescaline.
But as I let myself feel the essence of this thing move through me, I got the strong sensation that this virus is not right. I’ve been all sorts of sick before — bacterial, viral, auto-immune, injury, trauma, even violation — but this feels, as its name suggests, novel. Or spikey. Palpably synthetic. If the flu could be likened to a vinyl LP, and a cold to a 45 single, Covid is more like an early CD or under-sampled MP3. Discontinuous, plastic, alien. Not indigenous.
