--- /dev/null
+---
+postid: 038
+title: Humanity's informational archive™
+date: May 3, 2015
+author: Lucian Mogoșanu
+tags: asphalt
+---
+
+The following is a loose translation of a short essay published about three
+years ago on the [old blog][bricks] in Romanian. Bear with me here, for its
+style of writing is, I believe, less succinct and more jocular than what you're
+used to reading on The Tar Pit. I would never publish it, however, if I didn't
+think the content wasn't relevant in some way or another.
+
+They say of the Great Library of Alexandria that it was the vastest and most
+important repository of knowledge in Ancient history, at least until the Romans
+came and burned it. Unfortunately there wasn't a Second Library of Alexandria,
+or at least a Second Library of $X$, where $X \neq \text{Alexandria}$, which
+would contain backup copies of all the burned books; and if it had existed,
+then they would have burned it a second time before the scribes had the time to
+make new copies.
+
+Fortunately for us, modern civilization had something to learn from that and
+by mere chance the Internet appeared out of nowhere, an Internet which keeps
+on growing seemingly without end. And of course, like monkeys that don't see
+the forest because of the trees, we imagine that Internets exist exclusively
+to serve our lusts, fetishes and thirst for communication and connection and
+other crap. Might be, I'm not arguing that, but the fact is that (another)
+important purpose of the Internet is quite similar to that of the library
+mentioned above, a function which I dubbed the "humanity's informational
+archive™"[^1].
+
+It being such an archive, one of the Internet's main purposes is that of
+archiving, that is, keeping information as intact as it is possible, that is,
+as close to the way it looked when it was initially generated. In order for it
+to fulfill this role, the Internet's infrastructure readily comprises fault
+tolerance mechanisms at multiple levels, from RAID technologies to higher level
+protocols such as BitTorrent[^2].
+
+Additionally our internetic library fulfills a purpose that goes two ways:
+ensuring free access to information, a function that is successfully
+implemented by the Internet in its actual form, and ensuring scalability and
+the facilitation of continuous update, so that the network will naturally
+evolve and won't crumble under its own weight. Both are necessary conditions
+for the existence of the humanity's informational archive™; the first because
+a library that does not allow free access cannot be replicated until the
+Romans come to burn it, thus it faces the greater risk of disappearing; the
+second because as time passes, an incomplete archive would not be worthy of
+being called such.
+
+While ensuring the system's scalability is a purely technical matter which
+might prove to bring forth interesting challenges in the future[^3], the
+continuous update of Internet happens in a way such that it can be
+continuized[^4], as I'm now writing a post, $X$ writes yet another and
+meanwhile millions of people publish stuff on various social networks -- let
+me humour you by saying that Facebook's Timeline actually serves a
+well-defined purpose.
+
+It might be that you, dear reader, haven't considered this aspect, but it has
+huge repercussions on the history of the human race. The properties mentioned
+above guarantee that history will be remembered with a degree of accuracy we
+haven't seen until now, as the smallest details about the most unimportant
+individual will exist somewhere and will be a great sight for the people in the
+year 252525, who will laugh their asses off[^5] at stuff that nowadays are dead
+serious to us.
+
+Getting back to the initial idea, we know that modern technology now allows us
+to fill the humanity's informational archive™ with content comprising text,
+audio, video and... that's about it. I'm fairly sure that I'm not lying when I
+say that these three forms of expression comprise but a small part of our
+lives. So how will you, for example, get to record olfactory-gustatory data of
+your culinary recipes, to be later compared by your great-grandchildren with
+what they'll have had then? Well, you can't do that. How will you store that
+intense orgasm that you had when you made fierce love with Jocelyn? Who
+wouldn't want to relive such a moment later in their lives, or, yet again, to
+hope that the weirdos in 252525 will have some terms for comparison[^6]? Nope,
+this kind of thing isn't technically achievable for now.
+
+So for now the question remains: will we get to interact with the Internet in
+this manner in the next hundred of years? Stay tuned and you shall find out.
+
+[^1]: So yeah, Justin Bieber and Kim Kardashian are part of the great mass of
+information that humanity has to offer. Just ask Google and Facebook.
+
+[^2]: So in the great scheme of things it would seem that piracy is doing a
+great service to humanity. There, you've read it here, out of context, but not
+out of importance.
+
+[^3]: For example we can barely speculate about the possibility of extending
+the Internet at an interplanetary scale, although we can freely speculate
+regarding its necessity in the (quite very) possible case when that happens.
+
+[^4]: The opposite of "discretize". There, I've invented a new word for you.
+
+[^5]: Also, but not only due to the fact that the sphincter will have evolved
+into an organ capable of perceiving humour, why not.
+
+[^6]: Ever heard of Eccentrica Gallumbits?
+
+[bricks]: http://lucian.mogosanu.ro/bricks/arhiva-de-informatie-a-rasei-umane/
--- /dev/null
+---
+postid: 039
+title: Aferim!
+date: June 20, 2015
+author: Lucian Mogoșanu
+tags: video
+---
+
+"Aferim" is a word borrowed into various Balkan languages from Ottoman
+Turkish, usually uttered as a sign of appreciation or approval, similarly to
+"bravo". The word is, I suppose, gone from all modern languages[^1] since
+after the First World War, when the Ottoman Empire evolved into what we know
+today as the Republic of Turkey. It's relevant to mention that words of
+Turkish origin have been in use in the Balkans, and particularly in the
+so-called "Romanian countries", for at least five centuries, especially in the
+southern parts, and especially in urban settings, by public servants and
+politicians.
+
+The movie Aferim! takes place in the 1830s Wallachia. While not explicitly
+provided as background, the country's political and social status was at that
+time somewhat uncertain, as the Ottomans were losing more and more ground to
+the Moskals -- that is, the Russians -- after the end of the Phanariote rules
+and the adoption of various so-called "reforms". This also happens immediately
+after the population went through some nasty epidemics such as Caragea's
+plague, which is hinted in the movie by the many graves we get to see.
+
+The movie's plot is slightly uninteresting from head to tail: the boyar
+Iordache sends Costandin and his son Ioniță to find some Gypsy slave[^2] who
+ran away from the estate after fucking the rich man's wife. I'm guessing this
+was commonplace at that time, as it always was and will always be, and such it
+can only be seen as support for the really important stuff, comprised by
+everything that happens in-between. You probably don't see this very often in
+American movies, but we Eastern Europeans are very good at this type of
+storytelling, just have a look at Tarkovsky, Caragiale and Dostoevsky.
+
+So in the end Carfin's balls are cut off and thrown at Sultana's face, but the
+ending is not what's important, although Costandin's, and in the end our
+journey *is*, each scene depicting one or more typical, and purely, Romanian
+traits: the superstitious Christian Orthodox priest who is also a fervent
+antisemite; the old man philosophizing about the nature of life; the
+oppressed, yet free in every other respect, Gypsy slave; the man just
+carelessly passing by near someone in need; the corrupt public servant, and I
+could go on and on. Some people might feel inclined to compare this to, say,
+Twelve Years a Slave, or Django Unchained or whatever Hollywood movies you've
+been watching lately. This is not an apt comparison, by any means: the
+language isn't gratuituous, this is just the way Romanians have been talking
+for centuries; the violence isn't gratuitous[^3]; everything from the mud, to
+crosses stuck in the ground and the guy saying "aferim!" out loud says
+something about how Romanians were, and still are.
+
+This is the thick substance that makes up Aferim!, which ultimately makes it a
+pretty heavy piece[^4]. The authors manage to compress an entire people's
+habits -- especially the ones that an outsider may consider "bad" or just
+plain odd -- in about one hour and a half of film, which on one hand shows
+that the core Romanian character isn't that difficult to express, especially
+since the actors are Romanians themselves, and on the other hand makes up a
+demonstration of the storyteller and director's skills. Well, let's just say
+Radu Jude's Silver Bear Award is a pretty good sign that I'm right.
+
+I for one have gone to the movie with no expectations and left the room
+properly satisfied. My biggest disappointment was to see that the Bulgarian
+state television had more contributions to the movie than the Romanian state,
+which didn't finance it at all, despite it being worth every penny[^5]. The
+leftovers of the communist era have left at least *some* unexploited resources
+in our movie industry and it's good to see that our directors and writers are
+exploring more or less original themes.
+
+At some point in the movie the authors address the public through Costandin
+the zapciu, who is asking his son whether people will remember his generation
+in a century or two, and whether they'll think his generation was a good one
+or not. I think this is the movie's best reflection point, and it should make
+anyone wonder whether their actions will have any echoes throughout history.
+
+[^1]: Modern Turkish uses Beğenmek [among others][ottoman-turkish]. "Aferim!",
+as we Romanians know it, is now only a word in an old
+[Ottoman-French dictionary][ottoman-french], as well as in [our own DEX][dex].
+
+[^2]: The slur "cioară" (or "cioroi", literally meaning "crow") is being used
+throughout the movie, not unlike the American "nigger" used in reference to
+black slaves at about the same time in history.
+
+[^3]: Ok, maybe the violence in Twelve Years a Slave wasn't gratuitous
+either. I don't know, to be honest.
+
+[^4]: Maybe not as much for us Romanians, who can easily recognize every
+little nitpick, as for the Westerners watching this movie, and who, if they
+watch carefully, may get a glimpse of insight into the Romanian's way of being
+and thinking.
+
+[^5]: So if you haven't been able to see through that
+[dumb nationalism][dumb-nationalism] of yours yet, then fuck you.
+
+[ottoman-turkish]: http://www.osmanlicaturkce.com/?k=Aferin&t=@
+[ottoman-french]: https://archive.org/details/DictionnairePortatifTurc
+[dex]: http://dexonline.ro/definitie/aferim
+[dumb-nationalism]: /posts/y00/00b-romania-s-dumb-nationalism.html
projects / thetarpit.git / commitdiff