To be fully honest, I have very little control over how I think. As the "person" behind my brain, I can maybe make a few suggestions in directionality, but not much else - not speed, width, density, or amount of thought. I struggle to find the apt verb for this thought process, as thinking about thinking is itself pretty overwhelming, but the closest verbs would be: spiral, race, rev, splinter.

After reading the assignment prompt, I pondered for a few days about what kind of process would most likely capture my thinking process. I became fixated in this idea (as always), and while I revved my brain, I couldn't get any answers until one night I saw what felt like the closest visual representation of it.

This is the view from my bed. My bedroom overlooks a 4 lane-road (Bedford Avenue) that dump trucks, heavy-duty vans, and cars pass by in both directions while shining their headlights through the window. I block out most of the 24/7 light with curtains, but I still see the headlights pass through the slits in the curtain ruffles. My thoughts are like this: they are unexpected and outside of my volition; they always enter in multitudes and fragments; and they radiate all over the territory of my brain, even with curtains. Once in a while, a huge garbage truck charges by, and the whole room is illuminated by thick beams of high-density light that I can't possibly overlook. If my intention and autonomy over my thought are curtains, the constant stream of headlights through the slits canvassing over the ceiling are my thoughts.

Partly because of the unpredictable and annoying way my thought stream behaves, I instinctively rebel against the idea that the human mind can be accurately captured by computational algorithms. They are surprisingly similar - after the multiple branches, overrides, commits and collaborative push/pulls, the resulting computational web of thought resembles the complicated nature of consciousness. It would arguably create much more complex structures than any individual - or maybe collective - consciousness. But for me, what fundamentally makes my thinking exasperatingly different from just a complicated web is the in-comprehensible intention behind it. Computation is built on logic. Everything can be traced back and repeated through a concrete binary system; even the pseudo-random() function follows deterministic rules. But for me, consciousness is the complete helplessness of never finding a logical pattern or retraceable pattern in thinking. Did I just think about an elephant because it was social convention, personal trigger, or random occurrence? If I trace time back and return, will I again think of an elephant? Are these elephants one and the same?

For me, consciousness is being comfortable with the incomprehensibility of how consciousness behaves. And maybe rejoicing in it, or struggling to comprehend it well knowing it's impossible. So for me, the presentation of technology - VR devices, Artificial Intelligence, psychedelics - really can be as close and as far to the conscious human experience. The proximity of these devices to human consciousness is not just a matter of better user experience, but dependent on the realization that intention and effect is never really comprehensible when it comes to the human brain. Especially one that notices light beams through curtains at 2am.