Chaos

Sometimes, reading can feel like being on a roller-coaster–one of the classically vertiginous stomach-hurtling superstructures, like Coney Island’s Cyclone, say–but, of course, better.

“High Compression: Information, Intimacy, and the Entropy of Life” by Brian Christian, an essay in the latest issue of AGNI, made me giddy with the thrill of following the writer’s logical freefalls from chaos to probability to predictability to the problem with text autofill technology to why it is that small talk might make you want to kill yourself.

This particular essay is available only on paper, so you should go buy a copy of the consistently excellent AGNI at your nearest bookstore. In the meantime, you can read other essays by Christian online here and here.

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Reese Okyong Kwon's writing is published or forthcoming in the Believer, American Short Fiction, Gulf Coast, Kenyon Review, Missouri Review, and elsewhere. She has received scholarships from Bread Loaf and the Norman Mailer Writers' Colony, and was named one of Narrative's "30 Below 30" writers. She can be found at www.reesekwon.com.

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