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SURFPUNK Technical Journal 035
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 93 19:47:47 PST
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From: surfpunk@osc.versant.com (sbyybjf arngyl naq pyrireyl sebz frireny fgngrq nkvbzf)
To: surfpunk@osc.versant.com (SURFPUNK Technical Journal)
Subject: [surfpunk-0035] ZINES: Balsamo & ahawks on CNN and WIRED
Keywords: surfpunk, Wired, Andy Hawks, Anne Balsamo
| I was extremely SCEPTICAL that any of ABIAN's claims
| were TRUE, but after I E-MAILED him for a more
| thorough DESCRIPTION of his THEORY, I was able to
| determine that it is CONSISTENT of itself and EXPLAINS
| adaquately many WELL-KNOWN and ACKNOWLEDGED
| PHENOMINONS. ALL of his EQUATIONS follow neatly and
| cleverly from his several stated AXIOMS and
| POSTULATES. FURTHERMORE, his THEORY makes several
| PROFOUND STATEMENTS that apparently have never before
| come to the attention of OTHER SCIENTISTS!!! They are
| in fact so PROFOUND and EARTH-SHATTERNIG in their
| IMPLICATIONS that I will not reveal them except in
| private e-mail, but SEVERAL LABS have been notified
| and are setting up EXPERIMENTS to test WHETHER the
| UNFORSEEN IMPLICATIONS are indeed TRUE!!! Preliminary
| results from one of the labs support the brilliant
| THEORY of DOCTOR ABIAN, but of course only time will
| VINDICATE him COMPLETELY.
|
| Eric CHINTER, PhD Berekeley
| <echinter@flash.tamsun.edu>
| sci.math sci.physics sci.chem sci.bio
|_________________________________________________________
I finally saw a santa clara county bus parked in front of the stanford
quad that had a big orange GET WIRED sign on it.
CNN allegedly had a thing on the new magazine WIRED on their
futurewatch program. Here's two reflections on it, by gatech prof Anne
Balsamo <ab45@prism.gatech.edu>, who was interviewed by CNN, and
by Andy Hawks, curator of the FutureCulture <future-request@nyx.cs.du.edu>
mailing list, where all of these were nandoed from. Then also andy's
annotated transcript of the program. SURFPUNK adds value to these
simply by listing them in reverse chronological order.
--strick
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
From: ahawks (stoned immaculate)
[...]
To keep ya buzy, here's somethin' from Anne Balsamo.... If you
remember right, you'll know her from the CNN segment (wehich becomes
apparent immediately in this message)....And if you remember left,
back in the haze-daze of this list, she sent me this great
bibliography and resource list of books and magazine articles - most
of the books were adapted to the FC FAQ, and if text didn't take up so
much space, I'd've kept the magazine article index as well...
[reprinted with permission]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I had a chance to see the WIRED issue that was the focus of my CNN interview.
My main point was to say that WIRED was coming in on a scene that was alreday
happening: namely the existence of print magazines and zines that all say that
they are the "Official house organ for the cyberpunk/edge." I showed the
reported doing the story the dozen or so mag/zines I've collected that all
roport to cover the intersections between art/technology/computer/underground:
(VR, too): Everything from Detials to Mondo to Verbum to CyberEdge to Presence
to Leonardo to bOing bOing to the Futurist to SF Eye to Interzone to...etc.
My second main point was that it is very difficult (IMHO) for a PRINT
magazine to be a very convincing channel for what's going on in a primarily
ELECTRONIC medium. WIRED, like the Mondo Guide, tries to be "outrageous"
through experimental print techiques: i.e., scattered paragraphs, colored
ink, high-design value layouts.
The media I told them to REALLY investigate if they wanted a glimspe of the
future, is e-zines. AND I mentioned FutureCulture, Scream Baby, and
SurfPunk, as well as the alt.groups. (The ones I most familiar with.)
The final point was a lesson in the media philosophy of magazines: When the
reported asked me if I thought that WIRED would do a good job of covering the
new edge "scene"--I replied that that wasn't what a magazine does. COVERAGE
of something that already exists isn't the way it works at all. RATHER
magazines (like 'zines) actively produce the "scene" that they cover. To
the extent that they develop an audience relationship by helping that audience
make sense of a range of related phenomenon, they will be successful.
Besides, WIRED isn't about the future, like other works of science fiction,
its about what is hot now.
I had one piece of criticism that comes from being a Marshall McLuhan-influenced
scholar: Taking McLuhan as "their patron saint"
WIRED takes on a very specific critical/cultural agenda. McLuhan was
relentlessly critical of technological extensions of our CNS...that is he
argued that for every new technological extension of a "natural" sensing
organ, a different sensing function is lost. He tried to analyze not only
what was gained by new technology, but also what was lost or irredeemable
transformed. (I teach this in my science, technology and culture courses).
The point is, in brief: We will not be well-served by a golly-gee-whiz
(uncritical) reverence/fascination for new technology. We've got to learn
how to have a healthy skepticism about things we're seduced by.
The first issue of WIRED does include a very interesting article on "The
Inslaw Affair" that includes some investigative journalism. THAT to me
is the promise of WIRED....critical investigative reports on what the '
hell is going on.
Anne Balsamo
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
________________________________________________________________________
From: ahawks (farting in your general direction)
Subject: On Being Wired
Date: Wed, 20 Jan 93 17:05:41 MST
On Being Wired:
A RealTime Improvisational Rant on The Magazine Wired
In Relation to Technoculture.
by Andy Hawks.
I began hacking in 1986, about the time I turned 13. I remember the
first time I was inside a computer I shouldn't've been in. It was the
first time I felt high - felt the information and the power flowing
through my fingernails. It seemed as if the energy in my hands was
such that the circuits that seemd to lay dormant under each individual
key on the keyboard might explode at anytime, it was that intense.
There was noone there but me. 'who' command, what's that?
'accounting'? screw that, no one looks at that. I was alone, aside
from the sounds of Standing on the Beach by the Cure being pumped
through my ears via my walkman.
Standing on the Beach - The Singles. That was the title of the tape,
and it was the embodiment of my thoughts. Standing on the Beach - The
Singles, alone in front of this sea of information, it is mine. I own
it. I can swim, I can surf, I can taint the waters, I can.....
It's my beach. It was Case and Wintermute personified in present day
reality. I had not heard of William Gibson.
When I was about 17 or so, I took acid for the first time. I took a
lot of acid that first time. I realizaed I had been wrong. The beach
was not mine, it did not belong to me - I was only a presence on it.
Sure, I affected it, but so did the wind, so did the millions of
microscopic creatures compromised it's seemingly dormant ecosystem. I
could still surf, I could still swim, but it wasn't the same. I was
no longer alone. In fact, in the seemingly infinite ocean, I mattered
just as much as any one of those microscopic organisms, and they
mattered just as much as me. Matter. It's an amazing concept. To
know that my matter is the same matter of the organisms, ultimately.
That the waters and sand and other creatures all come together at some
ultimate point of existence. Only then do you truly understand the
exponential possibilities of reality. Hyperreality - this is it. Now
I knew who William Gibson was, I knew some stuff about cyberpunk, I
knew some stuff about my place in a world that was also changing
exponentially. The vast space and time, at once a void and at the
same time so incredibly fast and dense. Flowing energy lines,
particles, memes that were subjective amoebas, these were the very
constructs of my reality. My hyperreality.
Or so I thought. LSD for me provided that jump into hyperspace, the
jump that some feel will eventually reveal itself as a primordial seed
of the future evolution of man. Beyond the beach, out of space, out
of ime. Pure energy. It seemed to be a break from the confines of
the constructs of my subjective realities. Ultimately it was all
real, somehow. Then, one day, I had a video camera. An everyday
item, nowadays, an icon of modern society. I picked it up, and looked
through it, unconsciously projecting my childhood teacher, television,
onto my world. The video camera was the way to show people what I saw
in my own world, how I perceived things.
Suddenly, the LSD relevations seemed to take on a whole new infinite
degree of possible meanings as I could reflect and refract my own
world via digital eyes to the rest of the world. I began taping
everything around me - every movement, every non-movement, every
sound, every color, everything. I didn't jsut tape Christmas or a
Wedding, and I certainly just didn't tape myself getting kicked in the
balls to send in to some anonymous entitty in the hopes of winning
$10000 on some poor pathetic application of communal human experience
reflected back to me to define and provide evidence for the relative
idiodicy of the current state of humanity.
So, my world was on tape. My reality, recorded for others to examine
and critique, admire, learn from, or ignore. Fast-forward, rewind,
slo-mo, dub, it was all there. Beyond the subjective reality of
sitting at my Apple //e and finding myself in some unknown virtual
entity for my own unconsciously selfish phun, beyond the plateau of
acid revelations that brought to me the potential expansiveness of
existence, I reached a new plateau of communal, time-escaping reality
via the digital eye of the camera.
And then, I thought that was it. All there was. But then came a new
generation in the continuing processes of my mind which previously
might be checked off in some sort of Darwinistic linear mode as
Subjective -> Hyperreal -> Objective. I'm sure others might find
similar reference points applicable to their own realities. At any
rate, the next reference point to tack on is Transreal.
Transreal. I took my seemingly objective video tapes and used them
for *myself*. Me. I watched myself. So many people talk about
having an out-of-body experience and the possible means to achieve
that, like via acid or other psychedelic or consciousness-altering
means. You want to have a out of body experience? Tape yourself.
Don't have other people tape you, because that's just seeing yourself
through their eyes. set up a camera in a room where you are, and just
tape yourself. Tape yourself being you - eating cereal, typing on the
computer, playing basketball with friends, shopping, driving, working.
When you tape yourself, time and space become completely coherent,
real in both subjective and objective means, you are not limited by
your own subjective interpretations of the world and reality, which we
always seem to be victim to, since we are always ourselves, within
ourselves.
When you view hour after hour of yourself being you, you gain insights
into yourself that you can via no other means. And it is important to
do this in a multitude of environments, under a multitude of different
situations, emotions, perceptions. It is truly incredible. To me,
this is what transreal is all about. You notice yourself in the first
and thir person, with your own eye, through the eyes of others, and
through an objective eye. Your perceptions are altered, your senses
explode, your reality changes, you change yourself both consciously
and subconsciously. Transreal. The video camera can be the wire to a
hyperreal or transreal existence. Get yourself wired.
Which conveniently brings us to the new magazine, Wired. In writing
up the transcript for the CNN segment, which I just did today, I was
viewing the gestalt reality of Wired. Not only viewing it, but
analyzing it via slow-mo, rewind, fast-forward, in a transreal way
that even the participants themselves have probably not done.
Contexts pile on top of contexts which pile upon perceptions, it is a
wonderful mindset to engage in.
That brings up the key point - analyzing this new reality of
technoculture and the part Wired plays in that. We find ourselves
entrenched in an infinite hall of mirrors, constructed from the
infinite variety of cultures and subcultures and memes available to us
through the communal reality of the American (and global)
here-and-now. Wired, is analyzing us. We who propagate
technoculture, we who analyze it, we who feed it, and we who receive
its feedback. All of you who are reading this, here-and-now find
yourselves as part of this gestalt. We shape, mold, construct,
deconstruct, appropriate. We learn, grow, evolve, alter, morph
technoculture, and it ultimately does the same to us, since ultimately
we are it. We are technoculture.
At the same time that Wired is analyzing us, we are analyzing it via
the same methods, as just one portion, one expanding self-replicating
construct of technoculture. It becomes a 4th-dimensional Moebius. We
are technoculture. We are Wired.
I have yet to see a copy of the magazine, but from what I have analyzed
via the CNN segment, what I hear from the communities and community of
the net, and what I construct from those perceptions whether
consciously or subliminally, I know Wired.
We are all wired to varying degrees. My connections, my circuits are
a lot clearer, crisper, definite and real than others. And yet at the
same time it is all relative - there are others out there who might be
comparable to Stelarc, in terms of information and applying
technoculture as reality, while I am working on an abacus.
Thus Wired provides itself as a gridpoint in hyperspace, even literal
cyberspace, and it is our forum, it is our reality to mold and shape
and evolve. Some may argue that it is dated before its inception as
compared to the realtime global communication available via
e-mail-lists or Internet Relay Chat. Yet to others, it is a new
doorway to be opened, a new perception of reality to be explored and
mapped.
Wired is the past. It is the future. Yet it exists in the
Here-and-Now. Wired is transreal. It is hyperreal. Yet also very real.
Wired, ultimately, is who and what we are.
________________________________________________________________________
From: ahawks (E)
Subject: CNN Wired Transcript
Date: Wed, 20 Jan 93 15:33:26 MST
Ok, here it is, the transcript of the CNN thing On wired, plus a whole
shitload of unsolicited and inappropriate ranting and raving and crap
on my behalf and I'm tired, I'm not wired right now.
PS, I wasn't high when I wrote this, tho it comes across that way.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANCSCRIPT OF CNN "FUTREWATCH" SEGMENT
AIRING WEEK OF JAN. 11 1993
PIECE ON "WIRED"
version 2.1, The rebirth of Ast1gma.
with thanx and in[per]speration improvly given to PKK and the
hallucinogenres of postmortem, err modern, culture.
| NOTE: A primary aspect if this piece is the visuals proided from
| shots of tha magazine, which I obviously can't reproduce here.
INTERIOR some club in CA that I can't remember the name of right
now... Very brown....Dialogue is voice-over....
demonstrative shot of person reading copy of Wired, live jazz playing
in the background, very beat-pomo atmosphere. Cover of wired has the
word WIRED covering top 6th of page, all caps, letters encased in
alternating checkerboard pattern of orange and background-light-blue.
The majority of the background of the cover is a picture of the top
3/4 of Bruce Sterling's head, picutre cropped and spliced in unusual
boxy pattern. Upper-half of cover scattered with
white-Shaston-looking "in this issue" type of text, most noticeably
"Bruce Sterling ... Has Seen the Future of War".....
CNN: It may not look like your idea of a great party; people off in corners
reading. But for a San Francisco group launching a new magazine
about the digital age, this is just what they wanted.
cut to shot of older guy in black reading a copy, cut to shot of Jazz
band playing, with a copy of Wired where heir sheet music should be
(how cute.)
INTERIOR CNN STUDIO....reporter Donna Keley (heretofor CNN)....Shot of
Wired cover in upper-left....
CNN: Tha magazine is called Wired. Backers are hoping the
combination of high tech information with rock-and-roll delivery
will catch the eye of a wide audience: all those trying to keep up
with how increasingly smarter machines are changing the way we live.
Martin Hill plugs us into Wired.
cut to cheezy John-Tesh-synth music, some kinda dumb CNN graphic....
cut to close-up of some Macintosh screen with (you-guessed-it!) the
Wired cover on it....
INTERIOR WIRED'S TOP-SECRET NUCLEAR FACILITIES WHERE THEY PUBLISH
WIRED TO COVER THE TRUE HIDDEN CONSPIRACY OF THE SUBLIMINAL MESSAGES
WITHIN THE TEXT THAT ENCOURAGE A D.I.Y. NUCLEAR APOCALYPSE.
[it's just a trendy thrtysomething/DAA looking design studio, with a
whole crapload of Macs, a window here and there, some feaux-brick
walls and oak-tiled floor, obligatory Braun-esque lighting, etc.,
etc.]
Martin Hill is heretofor CNN.
JANE METCALFE: Wired is about the world we're living in now, and the
mindstyle of the digital generation.
cut to shot of a couple trendy guys (black turtleneck under denim
shirt rolled up to just below his elbows, requisite
red-pencil-in-ear. - the other guy looks like a raver, so we won't
make fun of him since he's obviously cool. =)
cut to the dreaded red pen marking over sections of a page of Wired.
cut to shot of LOUIS ROSSETTO (ed/pub) in his SunlitCorner (tm) office.
LOUIS ROSSETTO: We're looking not at products, but we're looking at
the people and the companies and the ideas that are transforming our world.
cut back to Mr. Raver [get a haircut ya hippe - he looks kinda like RU
Sirius] and Mr. Angst-Filled Trendie, and we are now joined by the
esteemed presence of Mr.90's-Beat-Black-Suit-Keeping-My-Beard-Lest-You-Forget
-My-Mildly-Revolutionary-Roots...Actually, I should probably be able
to identify these guys in the soundbyte-"let's-look-like-we-actually-work"
-aura they bring to the report, but I don't know who they are so screw
it. ObExcuse: Don't entertain the notion of an icon-based hyperreality.
CNN: They are attepting to make what they call the least-boring
computer magazine in the world.
cut to shot of original Rolling Stone 1st issue cover.
CNN: The editors at wired are drawing inspiration from another
magazine that went from fringe to mainstream, Rolling Stone.
[c'mon, if they really wanted to be Rucker-esque they'd compare
themselves to Reality Hackers]
cut to shot of another Wired cover, maybe an early prototype, or the
one that didn't make it, or the
useless-"let's-completely-change-in-the-second-issue-and-isolate-ourselves"
soon-to-be-at-a-theatre-near-you cover for the
boy-these-hyphenated-words-are-obnoxious-generation, geared towards
frustrating the semanticly-challenged into a coma.
[I'm feeling quite the PKK-enhanced 2day, BTW.]
anyway, the cover looks like Jesus taking a crap upside down on the
cross as he falls into the NYC sprawl from 20000 feet up. [if you
taped this segment, go back and freeze frame it on this cover and have
yourself a merry little chuckle. let your mind be light. from now on
our bubbles we be mostly trite.]
[oh, just say no, kidz. =)]
CNN: Their objective: a rock-n-roll Mtv look-n-feel.
ok, cut to Mr. Girlfriend-in-a-coma-Trendie who is now sporting a Sony
walkman with intensely unfashionable in-your-lobe ear-phones that he
picked up at K-Mart on the way to his quote-unquote job.
[god, I'm cracking myself up here, it's so damn fun. I hope
the people who are in the segment, especially Mr.
Eddie-Bauer-meets-the-Gap-managed-by-early-Ken-Kesey-Trendie
doesn't see this, but maybe they'll hire me if they do. =) ]
Ok, when we last left the Motley-Cappio-Krue.....
CNN: They're also hoping for Rolling-Stone-type success in
explainging the digital age to the post-baby-boom generation.
cut to LOUIS ROSSETTO's SunLit Corner (tm) Office. [get a new couch]
LR [the egg-man]: We're covering the most exciting topic of our day,
and that's the transformation of our world at a very fundamental
level. Technology is changing our lives - it's rewiring our heads -
it's making a new world appear right before our very eyes. Wired is
going to be the magazine that focuses on the people that are making
that happen - they are the most interesting and powerful people on the
planet today.
[where's the gestalt interview with FutureCulture? seriously..]
cut to Mr. My-Shirt-matches-the-oddly-inserted-copy-of-Ray-Gun-I'm-Reading.
Behind Mr. Shirt-reading_ray-Gun is a nice piece of pop/techno art
that hovers over Mr. Shirt's shoulder like Freud on a neroses. And,
on the other side is another piece of info-art featuring
yet-another-subliminal-but-obvious "Jesus-takes-a-crap" artowrk (but
this time he's on a tightrope). I see a theme developing here.
Overall, the construction of the appropriated elments of the scene
creates a very Jungian environment that propels onesself into a
transreal exploration of primordial consciousness.
[get these spiders off of me.]
CNN: The Wired headquarters isn't Suit-and-Tie, it's
Sneakers-and-Jeans.
Pan-down the oh-so-juicy body of Mr. Shirt, to
reveal some desperately-seeking-style black Levi's and a
"could-we-clash-a-bit-more-here-please?" pair of white Nike's with
grass-stains on the insole. [get some new carpet].
cut to a "what-the-hell-is-that?" shot of a grey parrot attempting to
partake in the delightful luxury of consuming a Pier-1 wicker chair.
CNN: Free spirits? Even on deadline for the premier issue, the
attitude is casual.
pan from parrot to LR-EggMan [hmm, subconscious parallel cuts, or
coincidence? You be the inquisitor general.....]
Mr. Neo-Info-Hippie (yeah, the guy in the beadr with the black suit)
can be heard saying in bg "I think next time we do Wired and Tired we
should do the scoring" (or something like that - my pause->rewind
finger is tired and my tape is decaying quickly into the wormhole of
cyberspace). "Some people are wired and some people are extrmeley
tired".
[Hey man, don' mess with me man, cuz I'm wired man. Man,
I'll do you good man, I'll kill ya man, cuz i'm WIRED. U
just tired man, you just tired. You tired, you ain' wired,
man, so you won't SURVIVE man, cuz I know what's like, man.
I've been there, man...I've seen it all, jack. I know tired,
man, an uze tired!!!]
-Washington Citycouncilman Marion Barry giving
his inaugural address as mayor.
The EggMan looks on with intense oo-koo-kachoo-ness and then releases
the non-tension with a delightful giggle into the camera.
Ok, cut back to the Capp-fest party, shows a table with copies
of Wired laid out, eds/pubs/writers appear to be autographing them for
the masses of eager-socialists who've been waiting in line for days to
get one slice of this informational bread. There is no room for
despair in this Room of Despair Lounge and Cafe at the HoJo Plaza.
They sit in anticipation, they rise in existential pain, hoping,
yearning for just a quick glimpse of the EggMan himself.
CNN: Even though the digital revolution is, by nature, steeped
[sic{k}????] in hardware, it's the people using it and afected by it that
the editors of Wired plan to feature.
ok, so, we cut through all these *extremely* parallel shots of a bunch
of people perusing through copies of Wired as they mentally masturbate
[whackwhack], and, ooops, I shouldn't've used that metaphor since it
seems extremely rude and unwarrented as we cut to a shot of JANE
METCALFE who is very beautiul and intelligent, and definitely has some
sense of style.
[ahem, umm, yeah, umm, can I get, uh, can I get an application?]
[(apologies to Ms. Metcalfe if she reads this [but hopefully Wired
isn't so self-oriented that they're monitoring all net.traphic related
to themselves])
JM [co-ed/pub]: One of the things Wired will try and do is focus the
attention more on content, more on human beings, and how those
technologies can be incorporated into human lives as opposed to how
the humans can adapt themselves to the tecnhnology.
[wow, is this post-Ronell-ism we're seeing here?]
cut to EggMan and fellow editors hanging around. Background chatter
revolves around maladjusted individuals [hey, I didn't know they
interviewed me! I must've dissociated that day!?!?! ]
CNN: The premier issue features a story about a member of Japan's
"Digital Rat Pack" who is also accused of being a mass-murderer.
Also, Wired's take on computer sex talk among digital revolutionaries.
grafix from the magzine float by, and you see this quote "Sex is a
virus that infects new technology first." - Gerard Van Der Leun.
[Hey, hey, hey, we'll have none of that here. Maybe it's time
for Gerard to get out of the EFF HQ a bit more!! =) Just
kidding - I better watch myself cuz I think he's still on the FC
list..... ]
CNN: And a cover story on high-tech war by Cyberpunk maven Bruce
Sterling.
[Hmmm, CNN calls Sterling a cyberpunk maven and Sterling
called me a net maven...Wow, I feel parallels eclipsing! =)]
The story is called "War is Virtual hell"
CNN: -- topics designed to appeal to people already holding membership
cards in the digital generation.
[Oh, sorry, folx, I haven't gotten around to mailing out yer
membership cards yet...But, this damn snail-mail post office -
so slow at times...]
cut to shots of the mag. I have to comment on this Wired and Tired
section. It's an in-out list with an oh-so-OUT let's-hide-behind
-catchy-cath-word-phrase-crazez.....
Here's what I can see on my cheap 4 head SVHS-challenged VCR:
with all-new fresh-scented grape-flavored unsolicited comments by me:
Tired Wired
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Cindy Crawford Jane March
REM The Jayhawks
[if they had any sense of hyperreality thet would've compared
REM to Alex Patterson, or Prodigy {the group} or Ministry]
Clinton Gore
[what about Gore's wife, folx? Ms. Fascist-Reigns-Supreme]
Car Phones Videophones
Manhattan The WELL
[I'm taking this as a cut to MindVox. Completely uncalled for
- MindVox has always been more over the edge than the WELL
will ever be]
Energizer Bunny Ads Sega Ads
[no, Nintendo, because they steal 808 State, which wired of
course has never heard of because they are already appearing
in the mirror as unhyperreal.]
Chaos Theory Complexity Theory
[is it just me or are they just bum-rushing the constructs
of technoculture just because they can identify them and
want to appear hip?]
Nintendo 3DO
[the obligatory "we don't know it was hip til we wrote an
article about it and labelled it as such, inclusion]
Baudrillard McLuhan
[no argument there other than that *both* are necessairy
gridpoints need to survive when postmoedrnism is applied to
reality]
Japan Indonesia
[my ass. Indonesia doesn't even rave, let alone appropriate
to an extreme the bowels of global-tinged-pop-culture.]
NPR BBC
[pirate radio, you wankers]
California Real Estate Intellectual property
[oh, wow, man, like totally groovy in a humourous kinda
vibe. ]
Performance Painting
[I guess that's cool.]
John hughes Francis Coppola
[yeah, replace a mainstream parallel with a mainstream parallel,
good way to show you're on the cutting edge folx.]
Virtual anything Virtual anything
[AAAAGH!]
WIRED: Take a look at Mondo 2000's completely sarcastic Good/Bad Art
DAmage. The rests of these lists WANK! Even Esquire's "Curve" list,
which they dropped a bout a year ago, was tons hipper than this, and IT
WAS DROPPED. Now, I don't wan't to have to come up there.......
This pisses me off - stop trying, start doing. Words don't mean crap
unless you apply them to your life, so don't just talk about the
culture, start liivng it, like the rest of us have been doing for SOME
TIME NOW, if you want to succeed.
cut to shot of McLuhanism spouted through funk-ee fonts and shit.
cut to shot of Prof. ANNE BALSAMO [yeah! another FC-familiar] in front
of some flying toasters.
AB: It will synthesize things for people in a way that helps them
make sense of their own interests. So, it'll be more interactive in
its audience appeal.
cut to more editors performa-ing their magic. god.
CNN: The look is hip and trendy [gawd, like, gag me, like, totally] --
typestyles change, stories seem unanchored to a single page, unusual
artowkr abounds. But, if Wired is on the cutting edge of a high-tech
takeover, what's it doing on paper?
[not only what's it doing on paper, but what's it doing on a
publishing schedule, why isn't it real-time global
interaction, like, oh, I dunno, say.....FUTURECULTURE!?!?!!?]
[and FC is free, damnit. Like Gumby, damnit.]
cut to Mr. Clinical-Psychologist-Classic-Look-#423
PROF. JAY BOLTER: If it's prediction is true that the digital
revolution will come to pass, then in some way this magazine will have
to go out of existence, transmute itself into a computer program that
appears before us on a video screen, or a hologram or a 3d image that
appears in our living room [damn, turn off Star Trek, bud].
[oh, gee, better yet, let's go one step further and create a
real-time global e-community, like, oh, I dunno, say
FUTURECULTURE!]
cut to JANE METCALFE.
JM: You get beautiful images, full color, it's a fully interactive
product [keywordkeywordkeyword] and as far as we're concerned that's
the best use of the available technology.
cut to yet more editing shots of te mag.
CNN: The editors do have plans to expand Wired beyond the limits of
paper, but that's down the road a bit.
cut to LR in guess where.
EGGMAN: A cable-television show, on-line interactive magazine, it
would include perhaps a book range, it would include a wide variety of
products for a much more wide-ranging audience then we have today.
[dude, it isn't even out yet. whaddya mean audience?]
[anyway, sounds to me that in their conquests they're
planning to combine stuff like FutureCulture, FringeWare,
FutureWatch {this CNN show}, the Beyond Cyberpunk stack, and
MindVox all into one giant easily-digestible info-pill.]
so, anyway, the Eggman walks through the feaux-brick office littered
with wires and cables and empty Cappios and Gap receipts. For all yo
cineman fans out there, there's a definite element of German
Expressionism and entrapment in this shot that forces me to go back to
the beginning hallway scenes of Pink Floyd's The Wall - if you get the
analogy between Eggman and Pinkerton Floyd, you heard it hear first.
HEY! It's Mr. Ray-GUn-Mstching-Shirt! Eggman is pretending like he's
doing something, involving himself in a Miles Drentell [sp?] sort of
way with Mr. Ray-Gun-Shirt.
CNN: Before Wired can become the Rolling Stone of Silicon Valley, it
must first survive the lean start-up times, for most magazines that's
about 3 years.
cut to even more editors, one of whom we'll call Ms.
One-too-Many-X-Concerts-Back-in-1981-with-Bubblegum-Hair.
cut to some guy reading Wired, and, boy (can u guess what am I gonna
say), boy am I TIRED.
CNN: So it could be awhile if we know if the public is really plugged
in to Wired. MArtin Hill, CNN, Futurewatch.
CNN: Wired will hit the newsstand on january 26th and come out every
other month. The cost, $4.95 on the newsstand.
Screw this, it's 3:30 in the afternoon and I need to take a shower.
Be back in a sec. N-Joi my rants intertwined so appropriately with
the boring report.
Yawn.
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My analysis and apologies to the zine to follow after I take a shower.
--
ahawks@nyx.cs.du.edu FutureCulture: In/f0rmation
ahawks@mindvox.phantom.com future-request@nyx.cs.du.edu
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The SURFPUNK Technical Journal is a dangerous multinational hacker zine
originating near BARRNET in the fashionable western arm of the northern
California matrix. Quantum Californians appear in one of two states,
spin surf or spin punk. Undetected, we are both, or might be neither.
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Balsamo, Anne. "Reading Cyborgs Writing Feminism." Communications,
1988: 331-345.
Balsamo, Anne. "The Virtual Body in Cyberspace." Journal of Research
in the Philosophy of Technology, forthcoming.
