an ear collector, reallocate corn.

In the 1940s, American linguist and fire prevention engineer Benjamin Whorf proposed that linguistic structure determines, or at least influences, how we perceive and experience the world. Recent research in cognitive science has uncovered that we build our understanding of duration, time's passage and sequences of events from familiar spatial ideas such as size, movement and location. Based on writing direction, the spatial metaphor for the past in Hebrew is rightward, and the future leftward. The past is what you have already written, the future is what you have yet to write.

zombie tick, forever hungry.

Ticks have been known to be kept hungry for eighteen years. To increase the probability that its prey will pass by, the tick must be capable of living a long time without nourishment. For a moment's duration, the world stands still. During this waiting period, the tick is in a state similar to sleep, paused for years, starting again only when the signal awakens it to renewed activity. A tick is either on or off – feeding or inactive. Is it a machine or a machine operator? Is it analog?

internet of things except nobody knows where the information goes, or where it came from.

A SmartKettle stands on a nearby coffee table, hinting at the possibilities of gathering data and providing feedback about domestic energy use in so-called real time. Its collected information and subsequent behavioral nudge are stuck in a causal loop, a paradox of time travel that occurs when a future event is the cause of a past event, which in turn is the cause of the future event. At one point in spacetime you drink your tea very hot and that information is shared with the SmartKettle community. In another point in spacetime, your SmartKettle tells you that people in your vicinity drink their tea very hot and, therefore you begin to drink your tea very hot too. Both events then exist in spacetime, but their origin cannot be determined.

we know so much about the chickens.

Several initiatives in China are working on applying AI in the national healthcare sector. AliHealth, a healthcare subsidiary of Alibaba, has partnered with hospitals to launch China's first AI medical laboratory, which includes a "smart diagnostics" system to remotely assist doctors in clinical decisions. WeDoctor collects medical data from rural areas in exchange for free village checkups, medical services, health insurance, pharmaceuticals and healthcare education. Fueled by patient data, the AI developed by these companies can process a scan in seconds and can assist with diagnoses and treatments, calculated from a database of over 5,000 symptoms and 2,000 diseases.

the chicken was just a forerunner for what I am experiencing now.

The Aymara people of the Andes conceive of the past as something in front of you, and the future behind you– the past is known and seen while the future is unknown and unseen. The Yupno people of Papua New Guinea understand the future as uphill. It doesn’t matter if the ascending slope is in front of you, behind you, to your left or to your right. This conception of time is anchored not to the body, but to the world and its contours.

please place your ear against the glass.

–Lucy Chinen