Hyperobjects, Cthulhu and You

—That is, they're Gaussian (non-Euclidean), a term that Einstein wonderfully translates as a “mollusk”-like space he calls a “reference mollusk” (Relativity). It's how Einstein visualizes time and space as inside objects (like Harman does), rippling through them rather than containing them in an empty box. By analogy, hyperobjects are squishy because they last so long. They are what I call temporally foreshortened.

The even more disturbing thing about relativity is, this also applies to you. The tiny clocks on your eyes moving across this screen are telling a slightly different time from the tiny ones on your knees that rest under the laptop.

I post on this over at Arcade and I've talked about it at Rice; and will do so again at Rutgers.

In his non-Euclidean city of R'lyeh, Cthulhu, an octopus-headed being (that is, like a mollusk), waits dreaming. Ecological awareness means: we have summoned Cthulhu-like beings into social, ecological and psychic space.