A science-fiction novel the title of which escapes me achieves the dream of the programmer. In it, a personage regards a certain computer afficionado sitting at his terminal, accessing so many co-ordinated input devices in his quest for efficient transfer from mind to machine, that far from performing the cycloptic monologue modern developers carry out, he sits positively embraced by the tentacles of the machine, speaking, twitching, dancing a stream of knowledge into the appropriating silicon. We have but the clumsy keyboard, and the equally meagre mouse. The cyclops stares at us blindly until we hit 'Enter,' or complete some other such sequence that momentarily makes him rise, then ask "Is this what you meant?" The beauty of machine-fixated humans is their strife to make the recording of our very minds, the beauty that is within, as transparent, as removed from process and approached to effect as possible. Yes they put beauty on hold for centuries longer than we can suffer to enprison it, but they only envision greater beauty at its release.