Ëàçàðåâñêîå - áðîíèðîâàíèå ãîñòèíèö, îòåëåé, ñàíàòîðèåâ, ïàíñèîíàòîâ â Ëàçàðåâñêîì. Êîìïëåêñ «Ïðîìåòåé Êëóá», Ñàíàòîðèé «Îäèññåÿ», Ãîñòèíèöà «Èìïåðèÿ», Ñàíàòîðèé «Áèðþçà», Ãîñòèíèöà «Îêåàíèê», Ãîñòèíèöà «Øòîðì», Ãîñòèíèöà «Âîëíà», Îòåëü «Ïÿòíèöà-Äèàìàíä»

Говорят, что у нас на Урале
Деревянный компьютер собрали.
Без гвоздей, топором!
Винт, модем, сидиром!
Мышь живую в сарае поймали.

The teletype was exactly the same sort of machine that had been used, for decades, to send and receive telegrams. It was basically a loud typewriter that could only produce UPPERCASE LETTERS. Mounted to one side of it was a smaller machine with a long reel of paper tape on it, and a clear plastic hopper underneath.

In order to connect this device (which was not a computer at all) to the Iowa State University mainframe across town, you would pick up the phone, dial the computer's number, listen for strange noises, and then slam the handset down into the rubber cups. If your aim was true, one would wrap its neoprene lips around the earpiece and the other around the mouthpiece, consummating a kind of informational soixante-neuf. The teletype would shudder as it was possessed by the spirit of the distant mainframe, and begin to hammer out cryptic messages.

Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music.

And you know (you've got to know!) that this is going to turn into an obsession. First, you'll completely forget to take the dog out. It'll be standing by the screen door, darting its head about, as your eyes devour the code, as your fingers slip messages to the computer.

Thanks to your neglect, things will start to break. Your mounds of printed sheets of code will cover up your air vents. Your furnace will choke. The trash will pile-up: take-out boxes you hurriedly ordered in, junk mail you couldn't care to dispose of. Your own uncleanliness will pollute the air. Moss will infest the rafters, the water will clog, animals will let themselves in, trees will come up through the foundations.

But your computer will be well-cared for. And you, Smotchkkiss, will have nourished it with your knowledge. In the eons you will have spent with your machine, you will have become part-CPU. And it will have become part-flesh. Your arms will flow directly into its ports. Your eyes will accept the video directly from DVI-24 pin. Your lungs will sit just above the processor, cooling it.

And just as the room is ready to force itself shut upon you, just as all the overgrowth swallows you and your machine, you will finish your script. You and the machine together will run this latest Ruby script, the product of your obsession. And the script will fire up chainsaws to trim the trees, hearths to warm and regulate the house. Builder nanites will rush from your script, reconstructing your quarters, retiling, renovating, chroming, polishing, disinfecting. Mighty androids will force your crumbling house into firm, rigid architecture. Great pillars will rise, statues chiseled. You will have dominion over this palatial estate and over the encompassing mountains and islands of your stronghold.

Symbols are words that look just like variables. Again, they may contain letters, digits, or underscores. But they start with a colon.

:a, :b, or :ponce_de_leon are examples.

Symbols are lightweight strings. Usually, symbols are used in situations where you need a string but you won’t be printing it to the screen.

You could say a symbol is a bit easier on the computer. It’s like an antacid. The colon indicates the bubbles trickling up from your computer’s stomach as it digests the symbol. Ah. Sweet, sweet relief.

“Bend near to me!” he whispered in Govinda's ear. “Come, still nearer, quite close! Kiss me on the forehead, Govinda.”

Although surprised, Govinda was compelled by a great love and presentiment to obey him; he leaned close to him and touched his forehead with his lips. As he did this, something wonderful happened to him. While he was still dwelling on Siddhartha's strange words, while he strove in vain to dispel the conception of time, to imagine Nirvana and Samsara as one, while even a certain contempt for his friend's words conflicted with a tremendous love and esteem for him, this happened to him.

He no longer saw the face of his friend Siddhartha. Instead he saw other faces, many faces, a long series, a continuous stream of faces—hundreds, thousands, which all came and disappeared and yet all seemed to be there at the same time, which all continually changed and renewed themselves and which were yet all Siddhartha. He saw the face of a fish, of a carp, with tremendous painfully opened mouth, a dying fish with dimmed eyes. He saw the face of a newly born child, red and full of wrinkles, ready to cry. He saw the face of a murderer, saw him plunge a knife into the body of a man; at the same moment he saw this criminal kneeling down, bound, and his head cut off by an executioner. He saw the naked bodies of men and women in the postures and transports of passionate love. He saw corpses stretched out, still, cold, empty. He saw the heads of animals—boars, crocodiles, elephants, oxen, birds. He saw Krishna and Agni. He saw all these forms and faces in a thousand relationships to each other, all helping each other, loving, hating and destroying each other and become newly born. Each one was mortal, a passionate painful example of all that is transitory. Yet none of them died, they only changed, were always reborn, continually had a new face: only time stood between one face and another. And all these forms and faces rested, flowed, reproduced, swam past and merged into each other, and over them all there was continually something thin, unreal and yet existing, stretched across like thin glass or ice, like a transparent skin, shell, form or mask of water—and this mass was Siddhartha's smiling face which Govinda touched with his lips at that moment. And Govinda saw that this mask-like smile, this smile of unity over the flowing forms, this smile of simultaneousness over the thousands of births and deaths—this smile of Siddhartha—was exactly the same as the calm, delicate, impenetrable, perhaps gracious, prehaps mocking, wise, thousand-fold smile of Gotama, the Buddha, as he perceived it with awe a hundred times. It was in such a manner, Govinda knew, that the Perfect One smiled.

No longer knowing whether time existed, whether this display had lasted a second or a hundred years, whether there was a Siddhartha, or a Gotama, a Self and others, wounded deeply by a divine arrow which gave him pleasure, deeply enchanted and exalted, Govinda stood yet a while bending over Siddhartha's peaceful face which he had just kissed, which had just been the stage of all present and future forms. His countenance was unchanged after the mirror of the thousand-fold forms had disappeared from the surface. He smiled peacefully and gently, perhaps very graciously, perhaps very mockingly, exactly as the Illustrious One had smiled.

“Neige dich zu mir!” flüsterte er leise in Govindas Ohr. “Neige dich zu mir her! So, noch näher! Ganz nahe! Küsse mich auf die Stirn, Govinda!”

Während aber Govinda verwundert, und dennoch von großer Liebe und Ahnung gezogen, seinen Worten gehorchte, sich nahe zu ihm neigte und seine Stirn mit den Lippen berührte, geschah ihm etwas Wunderbares. Während seine Gedanken noch bei Siddharthas wunderlichen Worten verweilten, während er sich noch vergeblich und mit Widerstreben bemühte, sich die Zeit hinwegzudenken, sich Nirvana und Sansara als Eines vorzustellen, während sogar eine gewisse Verachtung für die Worte des Freundes in ihm mit einer ungeheuren Liebe und Ehrfurcht stritt, geschah ihm dieses:

Er sah seines Freundes Siddhartha Gesicht nicht mehr, er sah statt dessen andre Gesichter, viele, eine lange Reihe, einen strömenden Fluß von Gesichtern, von hunderten, von tausenden, welche alle kamen und vergingen, und doch alle zugleich dazusein schien-en, welche alle sich beständig veränderten und erneuerten, und welche doch alle Siddhartha waren. Er sah das Gesicht eines Fisches, eines Karpfens, mit unendlich schmerzvoll geöffnetem Maule, eines sterbenden Fisches, mit brechenden Augen—er sah das Gesicht eines neugeborenen Kindes, rot und voll Falten, zum Weinen verzogen—er sah das Gesicht eines Mörders, sah ihn ein Messer in den Leib eines.Menschen stechen—er sah, zur selben Sekunde, diesen Verbrecher gefesselt knien und sein Haupt vom Henker mit einem Schwertschlag abgeschlagen werden—er sah die Körper von Männern und Frauen nackt in Stellungen und Kämpfen rasender Liebe—er sah Leichen ausgestreckt, still, kalt, leer—er sah Tierköpfe, von Ebern, von Krokodilen, von Elefanten, von Stieren, von Vögeln—er sah Götter, sah Krischna, sah Agni—er sah alle diese Gestalten und Gesichter in tausend Beziehungen zueinander, jede der andern helfend, sie liebend, sie hassend, sie vernichtend, sie neu gebärend, jede war ein Sterbenwollen, ein leidenschaftlich schmerzliches Bekenntnis der Vergänglichkeit, und keine starb doch, jede verwandelte sich nur, wurde stets neu geboren, bekam stets ein neues Gesicht, ohne daß doch zwischen einem und dem anderen Gesicht Zeit gelegen wäre—und alle diese Gestalten und Gesichter ruhten, flossen, erzeugten sich, schwammen dahin und strömten ineinander, und über alle war beständig etwas Dünnes, Wesenloses, dennoch Seiendes, wie ein dünnes Glas oder Eis gezogen, wie eine durchsichtige Haut, eine Schale oder Form oder Maske von Wasser, und diese Maske lächelte, und diese Maske war Siddharthas lächelndes Gesicht, das er, Govinda, in eben diesem selben Augenblick mit den Lippen berührte. Und, so sah Govinda, dies Lächeln der Maske, dies Lächeln der Einheit über den strömenden Gestaltungen, dies Lächeln der Gleichzeitigkeit über den tausend Geburten und Toten, dies Lächeln Siddharthas war genau dasselbe, war genau das gleiche, stille, feine, undurchdringliche, vielleicht gütige, vielleicht spöttische, weise, tausendfältige Lächeln Gotamas, des Buddha, wie er selbst es hundertmal mit Ehrfurcht gesehen hatte. So, das wußte Govinda, lächelten die Vollendeten.

Nicht mehr wissend ob es Zeit gebe, ob diese Schauung eine Sekunde oder hundert Jahre gewährt habe, nicht mehr wissend, ob es einen Siddhartha, ob es einen Gotama, ob es Ich und Du gebe, im Innersten wie von einem göttlichen Pfeile verwundet, dessen Verwundung süß schmeckt, im Innersten verzaubert und aufgelöst, stand Govinda noch eine kleine Weile, über Siddharthas stilles Gesicht gebeugt, das er soeben geküßt hatte, das soeben Schauplatz aller Gestaltungen, alles Werdens, alles Seins gewesen war. Das Antlitz war unverändert, nachdem unter seiner Oberfläche die Tiefe der Tausendfältigkeit sich wieder geschlossen hatte, er lächelte still, lächelte leise und sanft, vielleicht sehr gütig, vielleicht sehr spöttisch, genau, wie er gelächelt hatte, der Erhabene.

Link by link, click by click, search is building possibly the most lasting, ponderous, and significant cultural artifact in the history of humankind: the Database of Intentions.

The mattress, curved like a preacher's palm asking for witnesses in His name's sake, enclosed them each and every night and muffled their whispering, old-time love.

The project begins in the programmer's mind with the beauty of a crystal. I remember the feel of a system at the early stages of programming, when the knowledge I am to represent in code seems lovely in its structuredness. For a time, the world is a calm, mathematical place. Human and machine seem attuned to a cut-diamond-like state of grace. Once in my life I tried methamphetamine: That speed high is the only state that approximates the feel of a project at its inception. Yes, I understand. Yes, it can be done. Yes, how straightforward. Oh yes. I see.

The programmer, who needs clarity, who must talk all day to a machine that demands declarations, hunkers down into a low-grade annoyance. It is here that the stereotype of the programmer, sitting in a dim room, growling from behind Coke cans, has its origins. The disorder of the desk, the floor; the yellow post-it notes everywhere; the white boards covered with scrawl: all this is the outward manifestation of the messiness of human thought. The messiness cannot go into the program; it piles up around the programmer.

Let's be precise about the terminology here. When we talk about the computer “seeing” the differences between documents, that is not to imply that the computer actually understands those differences in a literal sense. Perhaps a better way of putting it is that the computer “registers” the distinction between The Shining and the Apple manual, because it can describe that distinction numerically. The numbers reveal something about the meaning of each document, even if that revelation is an oblique one, like a low-frequency tone shimmering in a puddle. The computer can't hear the meaning directly, but it can catch glimpses of it in its statistical reflections.

The Great Flood

Computers are universal machines, their potential extends uniformly over a boundless expanse of tasks. Human potentials, on the other hand, are strong in areas long important for survival, but weak in things far removed. Imagine a “landscape of human competence,” having lowlands with labels like “arithmetic” and “rote memorization”, foothills like “theorem proving” and “chess playing,” and high mountain peaks labeled “locomotion,” “hand-eye coordination” and “social interaction.” We all live in the solid mountaintops, but it takes great effort to reach the rest of the terrain, and only a few of us work each patch.

Advancing computer performance is like water slowly flooding the landscape. A half century ago it began to drown the lowlands, driving out human calculators and record clerks, but leaving most of us dry. Now the flood has reached the foothills, and our outposts there are contemplating retreat. We feel safe on our peaks, but, at the present rate, those too will be submerged within another half century. I propose that we build Arks as that day nears, and adopt a seafaring life! For now, though, we must rely on our representatives in the lowlands to tell us what water is really like.

If patterns of ones and zeroes were “like” patterns of human lives and deaths, if everything about an individual could be represented in a computer record by a long string of ones and zeroes, then what kind of creature would be represented by a long string of lives and deaths? It would have to be up one level at least—an angel, a minor god, something in a UFO. It would take eight human lives and deaths just to form one character in this being's name—its complete dossier might take up a considerable piece of the history of the world.

For the first time, a machine [the computer] was imagined not as an attachment to our bodies, but as an environment, a space to be explored. You could project yourself into this world, lose your bearings, stumble across things. It was more like a landscape than a machine, a “city of bits”…

I etch a pattern of geometric shapes onto a stone. To the uninitiated, the shapes look mysterious and complex, but I know that when arranged correctly they will give the stone a special power, enabling it to respond to incantations in a language no human being has ever spoken. I will ask the stone questions in this language, and it will answer by showing me a vision: a world created by my spell, a world imagined within the pattern on the stone.

A few hundred years ago in my native New England, an accurate description of my occupation would have gotten me burned at the stake. Yet my work involves no witchcraft: I design and program computers. The stone is a wafer of silicon, and the incantations are software.

We were taken to a fast-food café where our order was fed into a computer. Our hamburger, made from the flesh of chemically impregnated cattle, had been broiled over counterfeit charcoal, placed between slices of artificially flavored cardboard and served to us by recycled juvenile delinquents.

But can that be the whole story? There's a deeper answer to be had at infinitecat.com, where users post pictures of their cats gazing at pictures of other cats already posted on the Infinite Cat site. You see an infinite regress: pictures of cats looking at pictures of cats looking at pictures of cats.

Remind you of anything? Those cats are like so many bloggers sitting at home staring into their computer screens and watching other bloggers blog other bloggers. Cats, who live indoors and love to prowl, are the soul of the blogosphere. Dogs would never blog.

Both Robert Maillart’s Salginatobel and Isambard Brunel’s Clifton Suspension bridges are structures of strength; both attract our veneration for carrying us safely across a fatal drop—and yet Maillart’s bridge is the more beautiful of the pair for the exceptionally nimble, apparently effortless way in which it carries out its duty. With its ponderous masonry and heavy steel chains, Brunel’s construction has something to it of a stocky middle-aged man who hoists his trousers and loudly solicits the attention of others before making a jump between two points, whereas Maillart’s bridge resembles a lithe athlete who leaps without ceremony and bows demurely to his audience before leaving the stage. Both bridges accomplish daring feats, but Maillart’s possesses the added virtue of making its achievement look effortless—and because we sense it isn’t, we wonder at it and admire it all the more. The bridge is endowed with a subcategory of beauty we can refer to as elegance, a quality present whenever a work of architecture succeeds in carrying out an act of resistance—holding, spanning, sheltering—with grace and economy as well as strength; when it has the modesty not to draw attention to the difficulties it has surmounted.