Hi,
After discovering the url for moq.org in Lila, and having recently got a decent
connection to the internet, I decided to join your mailing list. Now that I can
read my mail regularly enough to respond before the subject changes ;) and
prevent my mailbox filling up with out of date mail I thought I should join at
last...
So, I would like to introduce myself to you all - I'm Tom, a 19 year old second
year student of BA in AI (Batchelor of Arts in Artificial Intelligence - a
predomimantley computer based degree which will lead to very higly payed jobs)
at Sussex University, South England.
I was introducing myself to one of my seminar groups yesterday (this term has
just started) and 90% of the people were saying things like "Hi, I have never
used a computer before and I'm doing AI for the money..." or "Hi, I'm too dumb
to do the BSc degree in Computer Science & AI so I'm just doing the Ba in pure
AI" etc... so I said words to the effect of "Hi, I'm Tom and I'm not here fore
the money but because I want to explore the art of programming instead of the
science of programming" which I think shocked them slightly :) Probably I will
hang around with the other 10%
Uhh, background information? Well I first read ZMM about three or four years ago
and was instantly hooked - after spending a year spotting romantic and classic
people everywhere I go (I have got quite good at that :) a freind and I decided
to do some research, maybe for the psycology module in AI. We have certianly
talked about that aspect of Pirsig's writings enough to expand on specific
subjects, for example the type of people who exibit both romantic and classic
aspects etc.
I myself am an intresting case... I have both romantic and classic thoughts,
with neither one being dominant as far as we can tell and I also have a lot of
other "properties" - for example, a high function autism (Asperger's Syndrome),
Synthesia (audio->tactile), Temporal Epliepsy (surrently undergoing diagnosis),
Schizophrenia (currently undergoing diagnosis) allergies and intolerances to
practially everything, and lots of other wierd abstract visual hallucenations
going on, such as migranes, seeing auras etc etc... whatever. I'm me.
My immediate family consist of 1 dog (Rusty), a younger Brother (Edward) and my
mother (Janet) who is very much like me (also a romantic-classic hybrid and has
a lot of similar hallucenations etc). My Dad died in 1995 from a brain tumor (he
was an Engineer and very classically minded) and my Mum remaried a
Musician/psycologist (Peter) who is very romantically minded about a year ago.
I think that's about it for now... except to say that I was slightly
disappointed by Lila for the first couple of chapters (primarily because the
format was different to ZMM) but it IMHO soon picked up and in general I think I
prefer Lila over ZMM for the detail and information it has but I prefer ZMM for
the style of story telling. Heh.
Well, bye for now, and unless I get kicked off the list for writing such a
needlessly detailed introduction email or generally annoy you all I hope to be
staying around for a while with some active participation...
- Tom
btw, I have some miscellaenous "essays" I wrote, would this be a good place to
send them?
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