11/15/12: Book Synchronicity

Ah, the classic book synchronicity. It's a repeating phenomenon, I've learned, often involving two random books read back-to-back -- yet containing the precise same things.

The books, this time, were The New Alchemists by Dirk Hanson, and Cosmic Trigger by Robert Anton Wilson, read in that order (arbitrarily, out of a pool of over a dozen recently-bought books). The formats and subject matters of these books could not have been more different, one being a clinical retrospective on the burgeoning computer industry, the other a personal memoir of drug trips, bizarre "coincidences," and their possible implications. Yet, they contained several parallels.

1) Both detailed the life and career of Nikola Tesla, sometimes in overlap.

2) Both quoted Timothy Leary.

3) Both mentioned Thomas Edison.

4) And last, but far from least: the books both outlined RCA's Spectra-70 computer, even mentioning, specifically, how it was discontinued. (To my knowledge, I did not know of the Spectra computer beforehand, or that RCA had ever dabbled in the trade.)

I bought the books on two separate occasions, several hundred miles apart, without prior knowledge of either's existence. Then, I Just Happened to read them back-to-back.

(Also, as implied, this is not my first such experience, nor is it the tenth.)

(Furthermore, it bears mentioning that, just hours before reading the part of Cosmic Trigger in which the Spectra-70 was mentioned, I had the thought of, I need a significant synchronicity, since I haven't blogged of one for so long. This, too, is not the first such time I've had such ask-and-ye-shall-receive.)

(And, more: In The New Alchemists, one chapter detailed how computers were, at the time, being groomed for speech recognition (the book was written in 1981). On the very same day I read this, literally hours apart, I received an old newspaper clipping from my father, completely randomly -- which detailed how computers were being groomed for speech recognition (the paper was from 1984). I had not discussed anything from the book with my father, nor has he ever given me clippings from decades-old newspapers before.)

(Did I mention that Cosmic Trigger was primarily about just such synchronicities?)