Their way of thinking is so different from ours. To interact with them programmers are obliged to think like the computer, but computer code syntax and grammar are so alien. It s no wonder that it s so difficult to make software that behaves in a humane way. I think I enjoy working with computers for this very reason. They constantly remind me that my world-view and cognitive methods aren t universal, that there are other ways of thinking.
Most dreams are banal.
Most interpretations of dreams are even more banal, but very occasionally a dream surprises us with an insight, an image, a juxtaposition of objects or situations that we never thought we were capable of imagining. It s the strangeness and surprising qualities of dreams that I strive for in my fiction. I m working now on a novel about a man who wakes up in his own childhood. Whether he is dreaming now or whether his whole adult life was a dream he can t tell, but he s desperate to get back to his lost adulthood. He feels he must try to re-enact his adolescence exactly as he lived or dreamed it the first time.