Short Story Week: Day Four -The CORE of PSD

This one came from my graduate school years. So many of my assignments in Library School required me to read and summarize academic articles, and after about the ninth one I began to wonder if the people who wrote the articles actually WANTED to write them. I honestly got the sense that they were deliberately overloading their prose with large words just to make it all sound important.

As a result, I came up with my own library themed academic article, which I never worked up the brass to try sneaking into a reputable journal.

The CORE of PSD

The role of the Proliferate System Designer in the history of the Great Information Superconductor is often met with nearly as much disdain as the superconductor itself. The PSD is a collection of thoroughly minded individuals, whose sole purpose did in fact originate with the noblest of intentions, i.e. to analyze a living system, comprehend it, and provide a plan for simplification and efficient functionality.

To date, the collective has yet to demonstrate any results of that third goal. And claims of either of the first two goals’ success remain inconclusive, as there is nobody who isn't part of the collective capable of analyzing and/or comprehending the collective’s analyses and/or comprehensions. As such, the value of the Proliferate System Designers remains ambiguous. The effect on the other hand is quite concrete, and one need and/or dare look no further than humanity's entrance into (what we laughably refer to as) the information age.

Since the birth of cognitive thought, there has been an unquestionable inclination towards mental overload, probably. From the moment communication was granted ease of access to a variety of outlets (penmanship, typeface, audio recording, tattoo parlors) the potential for information overload reared its stupid, stupid head.

When it comes to the isolated overload of the individual, known colloquially as 'intellectual noise' (at least in this publication) the remedy is as simple as a few weeks of bedrest combined with healthy doses of raw opium. But in the case of the freaking system; a complex web of individuals each believing themselves to be the sole exception, the information overload leaves a financial, social, and emotional impact on the system as a whole.

The fundamental problem, as it were (or was, I can never keep that straight), is the circular reasoning behind recorded history. Once something is written down, its 'having been written down' also becomes a measurable fact. And when a system begins recording its own process of recording, the already subjective sense of assigning value to information becomes irrelevant. For an illustration of the global threat one need not look further than the 2011 abstract The Intranational War on Moroncy; in fact not much further than the title.

The potential for overload was first recorded in the early 1970’s when the Archives of Congress demanded a simplification of all the material available. Enter the Proliferate Systems Designers, who created the RPIR (Response Program in Response; that’s what they called it) to begin the arduous process of going through all available records. Which they recorded. To say the least about the results, one would have to have shut up decades ago, and even then it wouldn't have mattered.

As it became clear over the next three years that the complexity of intellectual noise was worsening, the Proliferate System Designers pretended to place confidence in the idea of an expansive Council on Redundancy Elimination (or CORE as it came to be forgotten) to sort through the mess; made up of a hearing committee, which did exactly what it sounded like, a Magistrate to oversee stuff, and all votes being decided by an eleven seat entity called the board of chairs, because Proliferate System Designers aren’t very creative.

On March 8th 1976, the first joint session between the board of chairs and the hearing committee was held in the Louis Isaac Memorial Atrium, whoever that was. Walter P. Simmons was appointed behind his back to the position of Magistrate. Two days later, Magistrate Simmons received his first notice for suspension having not shown up for two days worth of meetings, the irony being lost on the entire council.

There was a call to remove Magistrate Simmons from his position, presumably from him. The board of chairs voted it down with a margin of eight to three. Thus with no speaker on the floor, and nothing for the hearing committee to hear, the rest of the meeting continued about as well as you’d imagine. Of note was the committee member who pantomimed a request to end the meeting early which was voted down by the board with a margin of six to five.

By August of 1976, fifteen meetings had been held in silence when Magistrate Simmons made a surprise appearance at the atrium to submit his letter of resignation. The board voted against it with a margin of nine to three, the extra vote being from the atrium’s bookkeeper who had just poked her head in to say hi. Self-evidence suggested that the council’s model was ineffective, and Magistrate Simmons called for a restructuring, which was voted down by the board with a margin of six to one; by then four members had nodded off. Simmons then called for the board of chairs to shove itself, which was unanimously voted down by a margin of one member’s finger.

The Secretary of Something We’ll Figure it Out Later, who up until that point had been keeping track of the minutes by hatch marks, took it upon himself to collocate what he felt were the council’s primary inefficiencies. The full documentation of which would eventually appear in Gormon’s Annotated Anthology of Unabridged Footnotes Index, now available on ebook and ASMR. According to Professor R. G. Labrador, in his introduction on page ninety-three, an early draft of the document found its way into possession of the Commission on Inefficiency Negation (or COIN, just because).

Based on this commission’s advice which nobody asked for, the Council on Redundancy Elimination agreed to host the Proliferate System Designers Convention of 1978, which attracted the top minds in the field of information analysis, as well as the slightly less than top minds, several hundred who overestimated themselves, and some of their friends. The convention proved to be such a success for everyone not in attendance that a second one was fast-tracked, and then delayed three years, to become Also the Proliferate Systems Designers Convention of 1978 of 1981.

As morbid fascination with PSD-Con reached a global audience, the Commission on Inefficiency Negation, now the special guest of its own convention, was relegated into using the same space as the Council on Redundancy Elimination. A decision that nobody will admit to was made to rename both entities as the Commission on Eliminating Redundant Council Inefficiency of Negation as it was the only way to combine both COIN and CORE into a single eight letter word. Unfortunately that word was COERCION, and the task of reversing the decision became the primary goal of the Proliferate System Designers Conventions of 1982 through 2005.

By 2006, the expenditure of the convention seemed to have outlasted its practicality. This, combined with an increase in publically inappropriate Melvil Dewey cosplayers, prompted a proposition to expunge Proliferate System Designers, and everything they ever stood for, wrote, or made eye-contact with from the council’s ipseity; and yes, that's a word Grammarly. The proposition was deposited in front of the board of chairs via brick and subsequently disacknowledged with a margin of nine point three to one stick and a used banana peel.

In fact in 1983, history records the only time the board of chairs ever voted yes. Due to copier malfunction the daily agenda had been printed backwards; the meeting opening with the farewell address followed by those opposed and then in favor before the situation was rectified. Had they managed to go ten measly seconds longer the unpresented motion surely would have carried.

In 2007, the future of the Council on Redundancy Elimination was brought into question when Magistrate Walter P. Simmons shot himself in the head during the November meeting’s welcome and announcements. A motion was put forth to have him removed from his position which the board voted on; the results of which were never recorded, but provoked the hearing committee into taking action to overturn the board physically. The Magistrate’s final act was carried on the floor, then off it.

Two months later he was dug up for the appeal and reinstated. The temporary Magistrate, who had been acting as temporary Magistrate, and quite well, proposed that the board of chairs be disbanded permanently, although nobody bothered to call for a vote. They got one anyway. It was shot down with a margin of a hundred million billion and seven to three. In response, the council stenographer called for a vote ensuring the board be allowed to continue to vote, which they voted against, leaving the council in a legal conundrum.

As of this writing, the Council on Redundancy Elimination remains in a state of flux. The Proliferate System Designers have filed for a sixty-five thousand dollar government grant to scrap the whole system and start over. The Archives of Congress has offered them seventy thousand not to, but they're holding out for eighty-five.