Cracker Jacks surprise inside

It seems that communications innovations have rendered everything more transparent. In the main, I think this is a good thing for the Righteous and a blow against the Wicked. But it comes as a loss for the Oblique and Obscure.

When I was growing up in the '70's-'80's, I remember fondly the joy of stumbling onto new worlds through friends or just random occurrences. Since my peers and I were isolated in our worlds- confined by geography, communication networks, social ineptness, etc.- the Brave New Worlds we found in print or on vinyl slabs meant so much. Unlike the ease and mindlessness of mouse-clicking, there had to be intention driving us to discover, with risks attached.

Now, I'm not saying we were Shackleton or anything, but risk was present because we had to be out in the Real World and had to touch Real Things. There was a physicality to it: a material object, space to traverse, and new atmospheres: a room in a house, an urban street, a patch of woods, or a record store.

We touched things and they touched us. The pranks RE/Search publication, Omni magazine, prog rock classics (Discipline, the Lamb), a Hundertwasser biography, Beat authors, and being gobsmacked by Codex Seraphinianus, were just a few touchstones from that era.

Along the same lines as the obscure in Olden Days, the recordings of the "numbers stations", compiled in the The Conet Project, is a good example of something that survives all good attempts at explanation, without getting all Grassy Knoll about it.

It's good to know that transparency doesn't expel all mystery; and that the weird is still as inscrutable as ever.