Of that of which we cannot speak, said Wittgenstein, we must be silent. And humility, said Eliot, humility is endless. But still, I would like to try. Computer programmers often learn to think in terms of top-level languages like C but nested in those friendlier languages are languages like assembly that describe the operations of computing at a different level of precision. These days, assembly language is often difficult to distinguish from machine language.
Machine language organizes how logical processes operate.
But the process of manufacturing logic is too complex for humans alone, so the chips themselves contain many of those processes. Our network is manufactured by a symbiosis of human beings softwired into designs in turn hardwired into millions of invisible switches. When we try to look under the level of machine language to the flow of electrons or photons, we spin dizzily down into the depths. Our identities cascade into a recursive process that spirals down into the darkness. Our identities both as individuals and as civilizations seem to emerge from a recursive process acting on an unknowable initial condition.