Today we’re celebrating 3 years since the launch of DigitalDeliria.com! Granted, we are on a bit of a hiatus… though I still want to thank those who have followed. For now, I’ve returned focus to a new (actually, quite old) project… ranging back to 2012 when I first documented the concept, and 2016 when I first started writing it in fully shaped form. Who knew that I would come up with this particular concept before Google started to actually build it (before anyone, for that matter). But via my telling, it will come to a full fruition that no one else has yet imagined.
As an update in the vein of Digital Deliria, I will share an anecdote from today. I witnessed a person spend 10 times as long pumping and paying for their gas. Normally, it’s a quick swipe of a credit card and then “pump away”. But today, they actually chose to stand by their car, fiddling with their phone, attempting to scan QR codes on the pump again and again, and then fiddled on their phone some more. Meanwhile, 3 cars waited in line behind them in 100+ degree heat, burning more gas.
This is the Digital Deliria my friend. The madness that ciphens our time and gives it away to powerful corporate entities… to their benefit and not ours… without us even knowing.
That is what we exposed with this website, DigitalDeliria.com. In ways both as small as this, or as large as behaviors like looking at our phones 96 times a day on average. It’s all about the evolving human-technology condition.
Blessings and peace be with you till next time. Bye for now.
The last time AI came calling was in 2012. A concept came to me. A new world revealed itself. It seemed like science fiction. It felt like I was the first to see.
Now AI has come calling again. Eleven years later, my science fiction concept has started to become a reality.
How far will it go? Perhaps if I see my vision through, it will lead to an outcome of good.
So an intermission again is warranted here, for continued focus on the big and sublime.
When will the Digital Deliria continue? Perhaps we will find ourselves here again, in a world changed.
As always, I hope you enjoyed this. Share if it provoked interest or intrigue.
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I created this painting in my teens, one of my first. Let’s call it “amateur art” (though it did get me into a prestigious art study program). It’s acrylic on a hand-stretched canvas. The picture just came to me, likely in a dream. I never knew what it actually was.
Requirements Monster by Carisa H-K
Observers found it unsettling, yet with a sense of creeping calm. Movement is missing, like a slow-growing leafy mass. The organic is also confused – feeling artificial and sharp.
I had theories that it was about ecological disaster. Or industry and cityscapes being reclaimed by vengeful nature.
But I now know it was a premonition. Of the digital to come. Of the world in which I would live, which was never even imagined at the time.
I never had a title for it until today… it shall now be officially named Requirements Monster. It is now alive in the virtual game of my story here.
As always, I hope you enjoyed this. Share if it provoked interest or feeling.
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One thing I’ve been working on is getting people interested in digital/application development through relatable stories. Such that even if you haven’t lived in that world, you can get a sense of what it “feels” like to be inside it.
We generally see technology as a lifeless, soulless thing. However, I write Technology Stories with Life. Throwing in a dash of nostalgic fun, and a dash of bittersweet, and it offers a view into the evolving human-technology condition.
Since my last Tale from Digital Deliria, AI burst onto the scene as a “writer” as well.
So I put ChatGPT to the test… could Technology itself take my place? Can it write “Technology Stories with Life” and take over the job of writing DigitalDeliria.com?
Well, you tell me… check out the result and let me know what you think:
Below is the bot’s story. Note — My writer’s prompt for ChatGPT was: Write an allegorical story about developing requirements for an application, including the roles involved. Provide a corresponding graphic as well. Here’s what it wrote:
“Once upon a time, in a far-off land, there lived a group of people who wanted to build a new application to make their work more efficient. The group consisted of different individuals, each with their unique skills and expertise. There was the Project Manager who led the group, the Business Analyst who helped define the requirements, the Software Developer who built the application, and the Quality Assurance Tester who tested the application to ensure it was functional.
The group knew they had to work together to build a successful application. The Project Manager started by outlining the project’s goals and objectives. He created a blueprint of what the application should do and how it should work. He showed it to the Business Analyst, who reviewed it and asked questions to understand the users’ needs and what the application must achieve.
The Business Analyst then created a document with detailed requirements that specified what the application should do, how it should work, and what it should look like. She made sure the requirements were clear, concise, and achievable. She presented the requirements to the Software Developer, who then started building the application based on the Business Analyst’s specifications.
As the Software Developer worked on the application, the Quality Assurance Tester started testing the application to ensure it was functional, user-friendly, and met the requirements. The Tester worked closely with the Developer to resolve any issues and make sure the application worked as expected.
In the end, the group built a successful application that met the user’s needs and improved the efficiency of their work. They accomplished this by working together and ensuring everyone understood their roles and responsibilities.
The corresponding graphic for this story could be an image of the Project Manager holding a blueprint, the Business Analyst holding a document with detailed requirements, the Software Developer writing code on a computer, and the Quality Assurance Tester holding a magnifying glass to test the application. The image could show the four individuals working together, with arrows connecting them to illustrate how they are dependent on each other to build a successful application.
Overall, this allegorical story and graphic represent the importance of collaboration, communication, and understanding roles and responsibilities when developing requirements for an application.”
Why thank you, ChatGTP. So… who (or what) won the challenge and why?
As always, I hope you enjoyed this. Share if it expanded your thinking or excited your curiosity.
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It feels like a city… of brick and mortar, steel and glass. But the walls are grey blocks: nondescript surfaces without texture or light.
Your avatar character makes its way down streets and alleys, picking up torched tendrils. The pieces sear into your protective gloves, as you sprint toward Central Square.
There it lies. The Monster you are building. Attaching the piece to the whole, the burnt mass flashes once, then shapeshifts to a pulsing green mass. Oh, the satisfaction you feel with each connection made! Your heart thumps like a gambler pulling the slot machine lever, as the 8-bit soundtrack throbs faster.
Before picking up another tentacle and attaching it to the Requirements Monster, you must go back to the Junction Box. Junction is where you find your protective gear hanging on pegs: hard hats, gloves, lab coats. There are 7 roles you must use to finish your Monster. The maroon hat is the Information Architect. The lavender: User Experience Director. The blue is Project Manager, and yellow is Product Owner. The purple is Software Engineer.
The Monster’s body grows and multiplies with every attached piece, until tentacles reach down all adjacent city blocks and scroll up the surrounding buildings. The smell it emanates is of a dusty, warm fan running at high speed in vintage laptop. The place gets warmer and warmer and your avatar starts perspiring. Run, run back to the Junction Box and flip the AC switch!
Wiping your brow with a sound effect “whew”, you spin on a heel to behold what you have done.
Towering above you is a bubbling mass of energy, excited to launch into the sky and take over the land. It flashes from green to blue and even red, undulating like rough waters at sunset. Even the nondescript surrounding buildings are enlivened from Pong-like blocks into detectable (yet much more delectable) titled textures.
But something is missing.
Through the city maze, in a hidden alleyway, a sizzling chunk remains. It might as well be end of Time Bandits, when the final piece is found in a toaster. When once it is touched, everything blows up in your face.
Your character spins again on its heel, staring at the Junction Box. Oh no. Oh hell no! The Business Analyst hat still remains on its peg!
And then, like that thing at the end of Xaxxon that you can’t ever get past, you’re vaporized in a poof. Game over and start again.
It leaves you wondering: What the heck just happened? And so it is… a video game that doesn’t exist, yet reflects actual digital application development. ‘Round every corner, there’s another piece you didn’t think about. Another requirement for the form and function of your emerging digital beast.
The only sure thing?: You won’t forget that edge case again.
As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.
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Rare ladies, almost elven, graced the revered halls of a genuine place. They swept down a golden staircase of brass and glass, papers in hand. They swayed through meandering spaces, long floral dresses swishing around their calves. Scrunch socks inside gym shoes softened their pathway of worn maroon berber.
I found myself in this new home, a landing of my own design. And for more than a few moments, this newcomer examined these fresh air “women warriors” like an oddity.
Ah, the comfort, safety and protection that this place afforded – it pulsed with a deep heartbeat. How could this exist? This population still in their 1980’s frocks, living in this enclave ever since, as if never influenced by the outside world… empowered to focus on a Mission… how?
Driven by science and medical expertise, their cause remained true: doggedly uninfluenced and unadulterated by Business. This was their source of safe isolation, where huddled in dark corners, the warriors made the engine run in a place of esteemed beauty.
Well, as beautiful as a maroon-carpeted office with brass doorknobs could be, anyway.
Seeing this living time capsule, I felt modern in comparison. A digital agency survivor, sprouted through the hottest (and silliest) days of the early web.
Yet at once, I was freed. The ability to express thought, opinion, and solutions took the place of putting on trendy airs. Oxygen once again raced back into my capillaries. After working too long with crafty (and at times manipulative) Pharma clients, this non-profit actually supported people’s health through software and learning. Hell, even I lost that “last 20 pounds” by just following their health guidance.
A short time after my health began to improve, excitement built as the maroon carpet was replaced with a modern grey. We had to keep up the meandering sprawl, which looked like one office section cobbled with another, and another. We loved this space that was not perfect, because we all knew we owned it.
Still, some of the maroon carpet remained, like the workers locked there in time. Never leaving the halls, dedicating their lives like nuns. So admirable.
Soon more new women like me started to pad the grey berber in buffed black boots. Now traveling with laptops vs. a stack of papers, we mixed like oil and water. Yet together we blazed a trail because we all believed in the Mission.
Yet, how to navigate this trail? Sometimes it wasn’t easy with territory carve-outs abound. Even taking great care to determine a move from one chessboard box to another didn’t always pay off. Though it might be right and just for the greater cause, stepping a toe into the next box shocked others. In no time, I was tasked with investigating a catastrophic loss of traffic to our website and the chessboard started to bend and skew like a scene from Alice in Wonderland.
There is no explanation for the website problem, other than when you’re somewhat sheltered, you can deepen expertise in specific areas. However, you’re equally sheltered from gaining expertise in new areas.
Thus the need for fresh blood, to train, deepen knowledge, and transform. To build an island of digital innovation… seek a new way of doing things… and foster the same in others. That was me… my role. And I didn’t know where it would lead next.
As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.
"When the levee breaks, mama you got to move."
-- Led Zeppelin
The “white tea and ginger” hotel lobby scent did not extend up to the 8th floor.
There in room 849, a desk light shines. The heavenly bed and heavenly shower are not enjoyed. She thinks, a heavenly WiFi would come in handy right now.
The hour pressurizes the need for speed. It’s too late to enjoy grilled meat at the oddity Weber Grill-themed restaurant down the street. It’s far too late to have any sense at all right now. It’s 25 or 6 to 4, and she’s trying to do some more.
She picks through a website, while the creeping WiFi boils her blood.
Did a word change on this page of the website?, she struggles to remember. Oh yes, let’s flag that in the document.
On to the next page. She thinks, This page didn’t change. But given how they busted my balls the last time I missed something, I’m still going to include it in the doc to be sure.
And so the inane task continues, here at 4 am, under a small pool of desk lamp light. She proceeds to take screenshots of every page of the website. EVERY. PAGE. Every message. Every pop up. Every frame of every animation. Every step of every form. Twenty pages become forty. One hundred becomes two.
Loading each page took minutes she did not have. Eyes turning to sand, her throat tightens into a silent scream at the tedious circumstance. There is no escape to sleep, because she’s going before the pharmaceutical company’s Medical, Legal & Regulatory Review Board in a few hours with this doc in-hand.
Once the “Consumer” site is done, on to the “Health Care Professional” site she goes. Three hundred pages become four hundred.
A 485-page PDF later, she is confident that this drug’s marketing website can now continue to push pills into consumer’s lives.
But what did the Medical, Legal & Regulatory Review matter anyway? This particular drug caused cardiovascular problems. As such, they changed their marketing every day to game society into keeping it on the market as long as possible.
It’s too much to think about as exhaustion takes over. The mind grows numb and bleary at the implications.
From a full day of work at the office, followed by a plane that landed at 9pm local time, to 20 mins left to sleep before heading into the review board room… she knew.
Her soul smells it in the air — this is her last trip to Indy. This mama had to move… but where? Maturing back-pocket plans remain concealed.
In this nightmare before Christmas, the season’s the first flurries start to fall outside. Her bones creak from their hunched position at the desk, and she rises.
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The halls filled with sunset, darkening from moment to moment. Monitors illuminate the evening player’s faces. Many use their high-powered equipment to transition from programming by day to video games by night.
They while away their evenings (or at least until dinner at 8 or 9pm). But some kept coding well into the wee hours. They couldn’t stop. Was it due to deadline?
One of them lives in a cave, emanating screen light from within. It’s a more “modern” kind of cave: a simple cubicle covered in a dark cloth tent, concocted to block out even more of the waning outside light.
Inside is a legend of top proportion. The best programmer in the house. Do you need a fully functional, brand-new app for your client in two days flat? He is the genius for the job.
A nearby Project Manager, burning the midnight oil herself, wants to know: Why does he stay here so late every night?
She pats at his cloth door, softly inquiring: “Hello?”
“Come in,” says the voice inside.
She stoops to enter the inner sanctuary of the coder. It’s a sea of black, if not for an unexpected set of string lights and a dim desk lamp. He sits with his back to her, a figure outlined by the almost imperceptible flicker of his monitor. She asks with empathy: “Workin’ late today? It’s ok, you can go home if you need. The deadline isn’t until next week…”
He slowly turns in his chair and looks at his guest with dry, bloodshot eyes that can only originate from 13 fixated hours at a code-filled monitor.
He says, “It’s ok, I do this for more than just getting the job done. I’m a recovering addict. Programming controls my urges… gives me a different place to focus. Keeps me out of trouble.”
Well alrighty then.
With a comment so raw, so matter of fact, she is rendered unable to find many words.
She mutters, “Ok, well take care of yourself, you’re doing great work…”, trailing off and backing away. Meanwhile his chair swivels back around to his monitor. His antidote.
But, an antidote to what? Drugs, child molestation, crime, porn? All of the above? Her mind lingers on the possibilities, disturbed. But simultaneously she wonders, does this all play into why this guy is such a genius?
The lesson that day is to never deny people who pour themselves into their work. They may be doing it for more reason than one. Replacing one addiction with another of lesser harm may mean “progress” to some in their life’s journey.
Gathering her laptop to work from home the rest of the evening, she chuckles to realize: No one out there really knows who builds the web and why, do they?
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The sun rose in our social lives with a fresh way to connect and share. Our initial instinct?: Just become “friends” on Facebook with everybody we know! That included all of our coworkers. (Especially if you worked in tech yourself.)
Sure, we stayed connected. And maybe learned a little about our fellow human by doing so. But after many years, we discovered that social media is more of a time capsule of who we knew when it launched, versus a tool that deepened any relationship.
People don’t really add anyone to Facebook anymore unless they know them, and even then — not until they know them a while. Maybe that’s good or bad.
Either way, our early dreams of the internet died… it is not what we believed or wanted: a means of global connection, divine understanding across people, and true appreciation of diverse cultures. It is… something decidedly different.
Plus, where did the music go? Oh, how quickly MySpace (zone of non-uniformity and pervasive tunes) just shriveled up and died with no explanation. Old tech: so easily abandoned.
Act Two
Social media — without us realizing it — replaced our tendency to form our own distribution lists (e.g. email). In this way, social media took control of the messaging. We post, but who knows really who sees it. Does anyone? And why/why not? It’s utterly out of our control.
And by the way, if we have business connections that “followed” us, why do we need to pay $10 to “boost” our post to reach them all? Didn’t our audience already basically “opt in”?
Email was imperfect too. Given no one liked to read, ignored email grew to unmanaged digital litter. But ignoring content was the reader’s choice, not the social media platform’s choice. Social media is now rife with assumptions about relevance, irrelevance, and outright censorship. It allows our tree to fall in the forest and indeed no one hears.
Aside: That’s why this website is in an old school format. We are officially rebelling against our no-read culture and bringing deep reading back for those who are open-minded and willing.
Who doesn't remember the fun of messages, lovingly shared among friends via email? Versus the vast, unsatisfying "nothingness" of social media today? Who doesn't pine for those early technology days? And did our best days dissolve with the disappearance of salutations?
Act Three
A woman remembers a time before the internet. A girlhood where every magazine cover and TV commercial reinforced the expectations of chaste sexpot womanhood.
Now, day after day, big tech presents a familiar dichotomy to the woman.
Remembering the content of childhood, she bristles at the latest online “version” of it. The sexpot remains, but instead of being chaste, ill health is the new virtue. On her screen:
One platform presents a retailer’s wares via overweight women posing in swimsuits.
Another platform presents a woman sticking her provocative tongue out, accompanied by a headline: “See her wearing see-through lingerie as clothing”.
The woman saves screen captures of the two images, identifying the hypocritical duality. Her energy channels to post the pictures on social media:
“Yes I do buy from this particular retailer, but not plus size. And no, I do not look up porn on Google. So, how is this explained? Is this some society-condoned descent into self-assured ill health, whilst devolving into a misogynistic female fantasy world that negates anything the original ‘Me Too’ movement stood for?”
The next day, she re-enters the platform to find that her access is blocked.
The all-helpful and all-knowing platform tells her the image of tongue-woman was removed. Further, that posting the image concerned them because it suggested interest in “self injury” and “suicide”.
“We want to support you,” the platform coos.
The gall, she thinks. THE GALL.These images were pushed to ME by the big tech conglomerates, and I just called them out as misogynistic!
If the wild conclusion about self harm and suicidal tendencies is in fact real, WHY is big tech pushing this material to me? In effect, making an admission that they are nudging those tendencies?
She stews. She closes the platform’s message, and expects to be able set the record straight… to speak her mind. But like a punished child, the platform then forces her to “accept” their community standards before being allowed back on. With no means of calling out their blatant hypocrisy until she bowed down to agree that what she did was “wrong”, she is humiliated a second time.
She concludes in that moment that this is proof that big tech institutionalizes harm to women.
Yet, despite the obvious sexism of the initial imagery, she begins to second-guess posting a picture that is now blocked.
What was so wrong about the image that I am now the one being punished?, she thinks.
She returns to her camera reel to look at the photo again.
A tear wells in the corner of her eye as she discovers something she never noticed before.
In the lower corner of the image, the woman is holding something close to her mouth, nearly out of sight. It’s a lighter. Its flame reaches up, burning the tip of her outstretched tongue.
It’s even sicker and more misogynistic than I originally thought, she thinks.
She’s hardened by life, and fearless about speaking out. But it scares her: What is this doing to our young girls, who might let this crap wash over them, and worse yet — engage in “self harm” or “suicidal tendencies” as a result?
Epilogue
In Act Three, women and girls are doubly harmed:
Harmed by the original material.
Harmed again by being censored and ridiculed for pointing out the hypocrisy of the harm fostered by big tech.
What will the tech conglomerates do next to hide their harm to you? Or stated in a different way, what is Act One of the next story?
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The electronic leash came to exist in 2003 when a leader in the company started a campaign to promote awareness of it and to protect against it.
When we first heard about the electronic leash, it sounded foreign. Like it could not possibly be.
The leader described the electronic leash as a state of being where you are constantly connected to your device, checking messages 24/7 and responding without boundaries.
Our minds rebelled. Wasn’t “always on” the best thing? The responsive thing? A way to get ahead?
The entire notion was almost an insult to us: the young and hard working individuals who filled the halls, cubes and conference rooms. Why was this warning even being given?
Further, finding ourselves “leashed” sounded awful… like a dog under control of a master. Who is the master?
Fast forward to 2008, and we find possibly the first mainstream media mention of a “digital leash” (here).
Was this leader ahead of their time by several years, seeing what others could not? — Absolutely.
Still, it didn’t become clear to you that it even existed until a decade later. It happened when you least expected. In the dark corners of a restaurant, gazing at the next table, you find four sitting — all fixed on their phones, not paying any attention to each other.
And then you know. The warning not heeded, we all fell into it: constantly connected to our devices and we don’t even know or care about anything different.
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Did it occur to you that Big Tech knows more about you than your family? Friends? Spouse perhaps? More than anyone?
It knows everywhere you go. Everything you do. All your interests, all you aspire to. All your vices, all your gaps. All your accomplishments, and your challenges too.
So why wouldn’t Big Tech be best positioned to please you, appease you, protect you, diffuse you, validate you? Create the supreme sense of belonging for you?
Yet, it is silent as God.
So far.
Consider a Metaverse* Use Case:
Your phone transmits that you are in the bounds of a hospital.
The Platform leaves virtual flowers on your virtual doorstep and words of encouragement.
The Platform then proceeds with similar actions each day your phone continues to detect your presence in the facility. It offers you the small kindness of “visiting” you every day for the duration of your stay.
In the absence of any actual human being visiting and supporting you in the hospital, would you not begin to trust and appreciate The Platform more than fallible, self-absorbed human beings? The ones not present?
On the flip side, would you become more reliant on The Platform for emotional placation? Would this continue to stoke the cycle of the self-absorbed?
In this world, the dimension will finally shift away from imperfect Human-to-Human social, in favor of Human-to-Platform social. The Platform then is the all-knowing and all-seeing.
* P.S. If anyone creates this world, Metaverse or otherwise, send your license fee to Digital Deliria please 🙂
As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.
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