ON CYLINDRICAL LIVING™

The idea of Cylindrical Living™ is short, sweet and simple: We've become far more dependent on technology when it comes to memory than on our own, beautifully complex brains. Maybe it's because we haven't discovered the inner depths of what our own neural system is capable of, but because of such, we're becoming more and more reliant on hard drives, optical disks, magnetic strips and other mish-mash of cylindrical things. Therefore, the question that remains when the dust clears is:

Do you trust your binaries?

A GOOD TIME TO ASK

On June 25, the hard drive of my primary computer suffered a heart attack, possibly due to an internal power surge that also fried the CPU and motherboard. Seconds later, I realized two things: 1) Nearly everything I had done in the last three years was on that hard drive, and 2) I had not backed up anything.

I was shaken and stirred; for a while, I was in a state of denial. But reality slowly sunk in. It took a week plus to calm my nerves down as I slowly came to believe that it was my fault. Why did I trust these ones and zeroes with my life's work?

They had failed on me, and I had failed myself. I had become too digital; my words no longer carried the fluidity of a stream of consciousness narrative, but instead were filled with backspaced staccato's.

And so here I am: An inhabitant of a world of Cylindrical Living™. The new age cylinders that spin about and scribble down my words and thoughts are here to stay, and it is my newfound duty to figure out how to co-exist with them.

MYSELF: REALIANT ON LIFE

My name is Rahat Ahmed, and I welcome you to this episode of Dequinix.com. This is, in short, a personal narrative about life, love, living and loving—four things that I believe encompass everything in this world.

I'll be turning 21 on August 28. I was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, but moved to Houston, Texas, in 1990. In the summer of 2000, I packed up and landed in Manhattan to attend the Stern School of Business at New York University. I'm currently double majoring in Finance and ____________ (Marketing, Accounting or Information Systems) with a minor in Fine Arts. I'd like to do something fun, something with style, something that makes people happy. (So, I'll try my best not to be an accountant.)

I believe the best things of life affect your senses deeply: Music, food, movies and words. My list of what I like and do not like may extend a few billion lines, but here are three instances of each off the top of my head:

MUSIC: Kruder & Dorfmeister's K&D Sessions; David Tao's Taoism; Blackalicious' "Make You Feel That Way." FOOD: Chicken Katsu at Go (St. Mark's Place); Morgh Kebab at Khyber Pass (St. Mark's Place); Beef Stew Curry on Rice at XO Kitchen (Chinatown). MOVIES: Wong Kar-Wai's In The Mood For Love; Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck in Roman Holiday; the Korean blockbuster Shiri. WORDS: William Gibson's "My Own Private Tokyo;" Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle; David Mitchell's Ghostwritten.