"The buffering didn’t bother me, I’d spend long stretches staring
at the little spinning circle on my screen, losing myself in it.
Behind it, I proctored hordes of bits and bets and megabytes,
all beavering away to get the requisite data to me; behind them,
I pictured a giant uber-server, housed somewhere in Finland or Uzbekistan:
stacks of memory banks, satellite dishes sprouting all around them,
pumping out information non-stop, more of it than any single person
would need in their lifetime, pumping it all my way in an endless,
unconditional and grace-conferring act of generosity. Datum set: it is given.
It was this gift, I told myself, this bottomless and inexhaustible torrent of giving,
that made the circle spin: the data itself, its pure, unfiltered content
as it rushed into my system, which, in turn, whirred into streamlined
action as it started to reorganize it into legible form.
The thought was almost sublimely reassuring."
Tom McCarthy
Satin Island
Still Life/Spinning Beach Ball: 6x oil on canvas, 130 x 130