I dag ble jeg tipset om at denne bloggen visstnok var blant de 100 største bloggene i Norge, noe som absolutt er hyggelig. Hvis jeg nå bare begynner å blogge om mote og slanking ispedd litt innvandringshets, så vil jeg rase opp på topp 10 på null komma niks...
I den anledning tenkte jeg det kunne passe å si noen ord om hvorfor jeg har kalt bloggen min for unfiltered perception. En uhyre pretensiøs tittel.
Begrepet unfiltered perception plukket jeg opp fra den femte boken i trilogien The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy av den übergeniale Douglas Adams. Boken heter Mostly Harmless, og for de få raringer som ikke har lest Hitchhiker's Guide, så kan dere få et inntrykk av bokens og seriens stil ved å lese de første avsnittene:
Mostly Harmless
Anything that happens, happens.
Anything that, in happening, causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen.
Anything that, in happening, causes itself to happen again, happens again.
It doesn't necessarily do it in chronological order, though.
Chapter 1
The history of the Galaxy has got a little muddled, for a number of reasons: partly because those who are trying to keep track of it have got a little muddled, but also because some very muddling things have been happening anyway.
One of the problems has to do with the speed of light and the difficulties involved in trying to exceed it. You can't. Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws. The Hingefreel people of Arkintoofle Minor did try to build spaceships that were powered by bad news but they didn't work particularly well and were so extremely unwelcome whenever they arrived anywhere that there wasn't really any point in being there.
Alle Hitchhiker's-bøkene ser ut til å ligge på nettet ser jeg. Ingen anbefalt måte å lese på, men for de som vil smake litt på teksten, så kan dere se her:
- The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
- The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
- Life, the Universe, and Everything
- So long, and thanks for all the fish
- Mostly Harmless
Selve begrepet unfiltered perception er hentet fra følgende utdrag et godt stykke ute i den femte boken:
"What? Oh, wake up, Arthur. Look, let me try it again. The new Guide came out of the research labs. It made use of this new technology of Unfiltered Perception. Do you know what that means?"
"Look, I've been making sandwiches for Bob's sake!'
"Who's Bob?'
"Never mind. Just carry on."
"Unfiltered Perception means it perceives everything. Got that? I don't perceive everything. You don't perceive everything. We have filters. The new Guide doesn't have any sense filters. It perceives everything. It wasn't a complicated technological idea. It was just a question of leaving a bit out. Got it?'
"Why don't I just say that I've got it, and then you can carry on regardless.'
"Right. Now because the bird can perceive every possible Universe. it is present in every possible universe. Yes?"
"Y... e... e... s. Ish."
"So what happens is, the bozos in the marketing and accounting departments say, oh that sounds good, doesn't that mean we only have to make one of them and then sell it an infinite number of times? Don't squint at me like that, Arthur, this is how accountants think!'
"That's quite clever, isn't it?'
"No! It is fantastically stupid. Look. The machine's only a little Guide. It's got some quite clever cybertechnology in it, but because it has Unfiltered Perception, any smallest move it makes has the power of a virus. It can propagate throughout space, time and a million other dimensions. Anything can be focused anywhere in any of the universes that you and I move in. Its power is recursive. Think of a computer program. Somewhere, there is one key instruction, and everything else is just functions calling themselves, or brackets billowing out endlessly through an infinite address space. What happens when the brackets collapse? Where's the final ""end if''? Is any of this making sense? Arthur?'
"Sorry, I was nodding off for a moment. Something about the Universe, yes?"
"Something about the Universe, yes," said Ford, wearily. He sat down again.
Begrepet kommer altså fra den nye versjonen av Guiden som har denne fantastiske egenskapen at den er konstruert helt uten noen filtre. Eller forklart på en bedre måte:
In Mostly Harmless, the fifth and final book of the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy trilogy, the Guide Mark II is a Vogon-created sentient item equipped with "Unfiltered Perception".
We, being mere three-dimensional beings living in fourth-dimensional space, have extremely limited perception. And because each being's universe is shaped by its perceptions, our six senses mean that we experience very little of the actual world around us. The Guide Mk II has no filters at all. It sees and exists in every possible universe at the same time, sees everything that is as it "truly" is, rather than just what it tells itself it sees.
Because it has Unfiltered Perception, the Guide Mk II is impervious to the flow of time, because it is not trapped by a strictly linear point of view and thus position in time, like we are. It exists in every moment of time simultaneously. If you want it to do something for you, it will merely act in what you call 'the past' in order to make sure that what you wanted would appear naturally in your 'present'.
Da jeg leste Mostly Harmless første gang syntes jeg at begrepet unfiltered perception var så utrolig velklingende at jeg aldri klarte å få det ut av hodet. Dette var vel midt på nittitallet en gang, og da bandet mitt slickerball skulle gi ut et album, kalte jeg det for nettopp unfiltered perception.
Godt og vel 10 år senere startet jeg denne bloggen, og Douglas Adams sitt deilige uttrykk satt fortsatt fast i hodet mitt som en visjon å strekke seg etter. Det å kunne observere verden rundt seg helt uten noen form for filtre. Ta inn over seg realitetene slik de faktisk er, og prøve å si noe vettugt om det i bloggformatet.
Det er selvsagt helt umulig, og mitt syn er like farget som alle andres, men bloggnavnet står hvertfall som et ideal for meg den dag i dag.
