Immigration at Newark International Airport“No, there are no gifts from other people in my suitcase. Nobody gave me anything.” He looks at me, with a flirtatious smile, yet contrarily states, “Yes. They did.” I stare blankly at him, what does he mean? Flirting with him let me control the situation, or at least makes it more familiar, but I feel that control slipping as I say “No!” as I guiltily rack my mind, wondering whether I’ve forgotten something. Have they found something in my suitcase? What would it be? “There’s something in the suitcase somebody else gave you,” he repeats. Oh no, it’s what my parents and grandmother warned me about when I was a kid: someone’s slipped drugs in there and if this had been Singapore I’d be facing the death penalty. “If there is, somebody put it in there after I checked in,” I tell him. He laughs, strangely reverting to flirtation, winks at me and tells me I passed the test. I can board the plane. But not before my shoes set the metal detector off and a woman runs her hands down my arms, my breasts, my hips and from my crotch right down to my toes.

I have three seats to myself on the plane though. I stretch out at cross angles to our flight path and sleep through the miles. We arrive an hour early and there’s no line at immigration. The man ahead of me cheerfully slips his finger onto a small pad and smiles at an eyeball shaped camera. I don’t have to: I’m a citizen of a country in the Visa Waiver program. The immigration officer just grins at me, stamps my passport and welcomes me to America. I smile back and walk happily across the border.

3 thoughts on “border

  1. hanna

    Ooh, you’re in the US! How exciting! Will you be coming to the Implementation reading in Philadelphia at the weekend?

  2. Jill

    Of course! Might even snap a picture or two šŸ™‚

  3. hanna

    Yay! šŸ™‚

Leave a Reply to Jill Cancel reply

Recommended Posts

Triple book talk: Watch James Dobson, Jussi Parikka and me discuss our 2023 books

Thanks to everyone who came to the triple book talk of three recent books on machine vision by James Dobson, Jussi Parikka and me, and thanks for excellent questions. Several people have emailed to asked if we recorded it, and yes we did! Here you go! James and Jussi’s books […]

Image on a black background of a human hand holding a graphic showing the word AI with a blue circuit board pattern inside surrounded by blurred blue and yellow dots and a concentric circular blue design.
AI and algorithmic culture Machine Vision

Four visual registers for imaginaries of machine vision

I’m thrilled to announce another publication from our European Research Council (ERC)-funded research project on Machine Vision: Gabriele de Setaand Anya Shchetvina‘s paper analysing how Chinese AI companies visually present machine vision technologies. They find that the Chinese machine vision imaginary is global, blue and competitive.  De Seta, Gabriele, and Anya Shchetvina. ā€œImagining Machine […]

Do people flock to talks about ChatGPT because they are scared?

Whenever I give talks about ChatGPT and LLMs, whether to ninth graders, businesses or journalists, I meet people who are hungry for information, who really want to understand this new technology. I’ve interpreted this as interest and a need to understand – but yesterday, Eirik Solheim said that every time […]