Copy Link
Add to Bookmark
Report
The Lawless Society issue 012
////// // //////
// // //
// // //////
// // //
// ////// //////
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
The Lawless Society
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Issue #12
February Something, 1993
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Bored to Hell and back.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==
Stardate - Oh hell, sometime in early February.
I recall sitting in my car in front of Fuzzballs house for
close to a half hour reading a textfile that Fuzz printed out for me.
It described the extreme emotional boredom that a good friend of mine
experienced while he was temporarily "separated" from his modem, and
the rest of Cyber/Space.
I remember reading it, and thinking "Boy, he must really be
into this stuff a lot to be so distraught over this" but i didn't
quite know how he felt. Not honestly. His file seemed to describe a
few VERY funny Cyber/Withdrawal symptoms. Well, soon after the release
of this file, he was once again, reunited with his modem and
concurrently rejoined the cyber/community.
Therefore, after the humor end of his file wore off, most of
it was forgotten. But WAIT! There's MORE.
A week ago, while my mother was in one of her favorite loony
bins, (this one being in Arizona) my stepfather (also a clinically
insane person - has escaped from 3 institutions in NJ) decided he
didn't need to take his lithium anymore.
Let me divulge a tidbit of history on this moron. While in
Marlboro (Mental Ward) he escaped. He didn't run away...he ran into
the woods....stripped off all of his clothes, found a patch of poison
ivy, and proceeded to roll in it. Not only that, but he started
rubbing clumps of it all over his Genitalia and even shoved some into
some orifices not meant for these purposes. This is not an
exaggeration. He has told me this himself, and to my face. Yes, this
is the man my mother loves. This is one small incident in his long
history of loony tricks (but I thought this one is one of the
funniest). All of this was brought on by one small factor. He stopped
taking his lithium.
Now wonder boy remembers this incident very well, but for
some reason, thinks it normal. Anyway, to make a long story very
short, while mother-dear is away in the
A.H.F.T.W.W.T.P.L.A.O.M.T.H.P.D.N.B.L.T.Y. (Arizona Hospital For Those
Who Want To Pay Large Amounts Of Money To Have People Do Nothing But
Listen To You,) brain-child (my step father) decided he doesn't need
lithium anymore. So, he goes on a rampage, yelling at everything I do.
I decided I wasn't going to stay and take shit from him anymore. So,
while he was away at work, I collected a few cyber/geeks and loaded up
a U-Haul with everything I own, INCLUDING the business. By 2pm I was
on my way to Edison, NJ to live with my grandparents at least till
I get into and out of college.
Today I finally got finished unpacking my stuff, and realized that
I have even less of a life than before. Now, I know no-one, do nothing
socially, go nowhere.....its enough to depress the best of us.
To top it all off, my friends from where I used to live, called
me, and wanted me to come down and party with them. I had to decline -
I have no money for that much of a commute.
So, I decide to call a number that Tal Meta gave me. A local BBS
to me. Ya know, even re-locating in Cyber/Space stinks. Again, I know
no-one, don't find much in common with this new bunch up here, and its
a much different BBS crowd. Back home, people meet on the systems and
party....I don't think anyone knows anyone here. Seems like people
here don't do anything for entertainment.....the just cope and
survive. I'm too young to stop having fun.
Now don't get me wrong, life is still sorta interesting....like
yesterday, my grandparents took me out to dinner. Number one, dinner
with the Grandfolks is NOT the best way to meet women. You look like a
nerd! Anyway, We ate, and my grandfather left to bring the car around
for me and my grandmother. He parked in the back lot. Anyway, my
grandmother saw a blinking light in a car (burglar alarm light) so
what does she do? She walks over to the car, puts her hands on the
window and looks in....Yes, she set the alarm off. I don't feel TOO
stupid. Anyway, the owner shuts it off, and she tries to explain to
the owner what happened (without seeming old and confused). After the
owner of the car goes inside again, we see my grandfathers car waiting
in front of the restaurant down the street. Sheeesh. Good 'ol Al-Zimer
strikes again. So, after we laugh for a while, I walk down the street,
and alert him to his mistake.
So, as you see, its not uneventful-.....just much different than
I am accustomed to. And not very fun.
Strange things run through your mind when you are separated from
your Cyber/'Hood. Like I recall thinking up possible solutions to the
worlds pollution problem, cures for cancer, what would the child of a
monkey and a dolphin look like....and who the president will be in the
year 2012.
NOW I understand what my friend was describing in his textfile.
If there is such a thing as Cyber/Withdrawal, I got it.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Anyway, I saw a copy of TIME Magazine today.......the cover story
- Cyber/Punks. Not about the Books or Games, but about us. I read it,
and found it to be full of in-accuracies and confusion. BUT I must
say it is still probably the best report article on the topic that I
have seen to date. At least they catch the general concept.
I have transcripted the article for you since I am so bored.
(Taken from TIME Magazine, Feb 8th Edition, 1993. Originally
written by Philip Elmer-Dewitt.)
In the 1950s it was beatniks, staging a coffee-house
rebellion against the LEAVE IT TO BEAVER conformity of the Eisenhower
era. In the 1960s the hippies arrived, combining anti-war activism
with the energy of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll. Now a new subculture is
bubbling up from the underground, popping out of computer screens like
a piece of futuristic HYPERTEXT (Now they explain what Hypertext is).
They call it cyberpunk, a late-20th century term pieced
together from CYBERNETICS(the science of communication and control
theory) and PUNK (an anti-social rebel or hoodlum). Within this odd
pairing lurks the essence of cyberpunk culture. It's a way of looking
at the world that combines an infatuation with high-tech tools and a
disdain for conventional ways of using them. Originally applied to a
school of hard-boiled science-fiction writers and then to certain
semi-tough computer hacker, the word cyberpunk now covers a broad
range of music, art, psychedelics, smart drugs and cutting-edge
technology. The cult is new enough that fresh offshoots are sprouting
every day, which infuriates the hard-core cyberpunks, who feel they
got there first.
Stewart Brand, editor of the hippie-era WHOLE EARTH CATALOG,
describes cyberpunks as "technology with attitude." Science fiction
writer Bruce Sterling calls it "an unholy alliance of the technical
world with the underground of pop culture and street-level anarchy."
Jude Milhon, a cyberpunk journalist who writes under the byline St.
Jude, defines it as "the place where the worlds of science and art
overlap, the intersection of the future and now." What cyberpunk is
about, says Rudy Rucker, a San Jose State University mathematician who
writes science-fiction books on the side, is nothing less than "the
fusion of humans and machines."
As in any counterculture movement, some denizens would deny
that they are part of a "movement" at all. Certainly they are not as
visible from a passing car as beatniks or hippies once were. Ponytails
(on men) and tatoos (on women) do not a cyberpunk make-though dressing
all in back and donning mirrored sunglasses will go a long way. And
although the biggest cyberpunk journal claims a readership approaching
70,000, there are probably no more then a few thousand computer
hackers, futurists, fringe scientists, computer-savvy artists and
musicians, and assorted science fiction geeks around the world who
actually call themselves cyberpunks.
Nevertheless, cyberpunk may be the defining counterculture of
the computer age. It embraces, in spirit at least, not just the
nearest thirtysomething hacker hunched over his terminal but also
nose-ringed twentysomethings gathered at clandestine RAVES, teenagers
who feel about Macintosh computers the way their parents felt about
Apple Records, and even pre-adolescent vidkids fused like Krazy Glue
to their Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis games-the training wheels of
cyberpunk. Obsessed with technology, especially technology that is
just beyond their reach (like BRAIN IMPLANTS), the cyberpunks are
future oriented to a fault. They already have one foot in the 21st
century, and time is on their side. In the long run, we will all be
cyberpunks.
The cyberpunk look-a kind of SF (Science Fiction) surrealism
tweaked by computer graphics-is already finding its way into art
galleries, music videos and Hollywood movies. Cyberpunk magazines,
many of which are " 'Zines" cheaply published by desktop computer and
distributed by electronic mail, are multiplying like cable-TV
channels. The newest, a glossy, big-budget entry called "wired",
premiered last week with Bruce Sterling on the cover and adds from the
likes of Apple computer and AT&T. Cyberpunk music, including ACID
HOUSE and INDUSTRIAL, is popular enough to keep several record
companies and scores of bands, cranking out CD's. Cyberpunk oriented
books are snapped up by eager fans as soon as they hit the stores.
(Sterling's latest, The Hacker Crackdown, quickly sold out it's first
hard-cover printing of 30,000.) A piece of cyberpunk performance art,
Tubes, starring Blue Man Group, is a hit off-Broadway. And cyberpunk
films such as Blade Runner, Videodrome, Robocop, Total Recall,
Terminator 2 and The Lawnmower Man have moved out of the cult market
and into the mall.
Cyberpunk culture is likely to get a boost from, of all
things, the Clinton-Gore Administration, because of a shared interest
in what the new regime calls America's "data highways" and what the
cyberpunks call CYBERSPACE. Both terms describe the globe-circling,
interconnected telephone network that is the conduit for billions of
voice, fax and computer-to-computer communications. The incoming
administration is focused on the wiring, and it has made strengthening
the network's high-speed data links a priority. The cyberpunks look at
those wires from the inside; they talk of the network as if it were an
actual place-a VIRTUAL REALITY that can be entered, explored and
manipulated.
Cyberspace plays a central role in the cyberpunk world view.
The literature is filled with "console cowboys" who prove their mettle
by donning virtual-reality headgear and performing heroic feats in the
imaginary "matrix" of cyberspace. Many of the 'punks real-life heroes
are also computer cowboys of one sort or another. Cyberpunk, a 1991
book by two New York Times reporters, John Markoff and Kate Hafner,
features profiles of three canonical cyberpunk hackers, including
Robert Morris, the Cornell graduate student whose COMPUTER VIRUS
brought the huge network called THE INTERNET to a halt.
But cyberspace is more than a playground for hacker high
jinks. What cyberpunks have known for some time-and what 17.5 million
modem-equipped computer users around the world have discovered-is that
cyberspace is also a new medium. Every night on Prodigy, CompuServe,
GEnie and thousands of smaller computer bulletin boards, people by the
hundreds of thousands are logging on to a great computer-mediated
gabfest, an interactive debate that allows them to leap over barriers
of time, place, sex and social status. Computer networks make it easy
to reach out and touch strangers who share a particular obsession or
concern. "We're replacing the old drug-store soda fountain and town
square, where community used to happen in the physical world," says
Howard Rheingold, a California-based author and editor who is writing
a book on what he calls VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES.
Most computer users are content to visit cyberspace now and
then, to read their electronic mail, check the bulletin boards and do
a bit of electronic shopping. But cyberpunks go there to live and
play-and even die. The WELL, one of the hippest virtual communities on
the Internet, was shaken 2.5 years ago when one of it's most active
participants ran a computer program that erased every message he had
ever left-thousands of postings, some running for many pages. It was
an act that amounted to virtual suicide. A few weeks later, he
committed suicide for real.
The WELL is a magnet for cyberpunk thinkers, and it is there,
appropriately enough, that much of the debate over the scope and
significance of cyberpunk has occurred. The question "Is there a
cyberpunk movement?" launched a freewheeling on-line FLAME-fest that
ran for months. The debate yielded, among other things, a fairly
concise list of "attitudes" that, by general agreement, seem to be
central to the idea of cyberpunk. Among them:
-Information wants to be free.
A good piece of information-age technology will eventually
get into the hands of those who can make the best use of it,
despite the best efforts of the censors, copyright lawyers and
DATACOPS.
-Always yield to the hands-on imperative.
Cyberpunks believe they can run the world for the better, if
they can only get their hands on the control box.
-Promote decentralization.
Society is splintering into hundreds of subcultures and
designer cults, each with its own language, code and life-style.
-Surf the edges.
When the world is changing by the nanosecond, the best way to
keep your head above water is to stay at the front end of the
Zeigeist.
The roots of cyberpunk, curiously, are as much literary as
they are technological. The term was coined in the late 80's to
describe a group of science-fiction writers-and in particular WILLIAM
GIBSON, a 44 year old American, now living in Vancouver. Gibson's
NEUROMANCER, the first novel to win SF's triple crown-the Hugo, Nebula
and Phillip K. Dick awards-quickly became a cyberpunk classic,
attracting an audience beyond the world of SF. Critics were intrigued
by a dense, technopoetic prose style that invites comparisons to
Hammet, Burroughs and Pynchon. Computer-literate readers were drawn by
Gibson's nightmarish depictions of an imaginary world disturbingly
similar to the one they inhabit.
In fact, the key to cyberpunk science-fiction is that it is
not so much of a projection into the future as a metaphorical
evocation of today's technological flux. The hero of NEUROMANCER, a
burned-out, drug-addicted street hustler named Case, inhabits a sleazy
INTERZONE on the fringes of a megacorporate global village where all
transactions are carried out in New Yen. There he encounters Molly, a
sharp-edged beauty with reflective lenses grafted to her eye-sockets
and retractable razor blades implanted in her fingers. They are hired
by a mysterious employer who offers to fix Case's damaged nerves so he
can once again enter cyberspace-a term Gibson invented. Soon Case
discovers that he is actually working for an AI (artificial
intelligence) named Wintermute, who is trying to get around the
restrictions placed on AI's by the TURING POLICE to keep the computers
under control. "What's important to me," says Gibson, "is that
NEUROMANCER is about the present."
The themes and motifs of cyberpunk have been percolating
through the culture for nearly a decade. But they have coalesced in
the past few years, thanks in large to am upstart magazine called
MONDO 2000. Since 1988, MONDO's editors have covered cyberpunk as
Rolling Stone Magazine chronicles rock music, with celebrity
interviews of such cyberheroes as NEGATIVELAND and TIMOTHY LEARY,
alongside features detailing what's hot and what's on the horizon.
Mondo's editors have packaged their quirky view of the world into a
glossy book titled Mondo 2000; A Users Guide to the New Edge
(HarperCollins; $20). Its cover touts alphabetic entries on everything
from virtual reality and wetware to designer aphrodisiacs and
TECHNO-EROTIC PAGANISM, promising to make cyberpunk's rarefied
perspective immediately accessible. Inside, in an innovative hypertext
format (which is Echoed in this article), relatively straightforward
updates on computer graphics, multi-media and fiber optics accompany
wild screeds on such recondite subjects as SYNESTHESIA and TEMPORARY
AUTONOMOUS ZONES.
The book and the magazine that inspired it are the product of
a group of brainy (if eccentric) visionaries holed up in a rambling
Victorian mansion perched on a hillside in Berkeley, California. The
MTV-style graphics are supplied by designer Bart Nagel, the
overcaffeinated prose by Ken Goffman (writing under the pen name R.U.
Sirius) and Alison Kennedy (listed on the masthead as Queen Mu,
"domineditrix"), with help from Rudy Rucker and a small staff of
free-lancers and contributions from an international cast of cyberpunk
enthusiasts. The goal is to inspire and instruct but not to lead. "We
don't want to tell people what to think," says assistant art director
Heide Foley. "We want to tell them what the possibilities are."
Largely patched together from back issues of Mondo 2000
magazine (and its precursor, a short-lived 'zine called Reality
Hackers), the Guide is filled with articles on all the traditional
cyberpunk obsessions, from ARTIFICIAL LIFE to VIRTUAL SEX. But some of
the best entries are those that report on the activities of real
people trying to live the cyberpunk life. For example, Mark Pauline, a
San Francisco performance artist, specializes in giant machines and
vast public spectacles: sonic booms that pin audiences to their chairs
or the huge, stinking vat of rotting cheese with which he perfumed the
air of Denmark with to remind the citizenry of its Viking roots. When
an explosion blew the thumb and three fingers off his right hand,
Pauline simply had his big toe grafted where his thumb had been. He
can pick things up again, but now he's waiting for medical science and
grafting technology to advance to the point where he can replace his
jerry-built hand with one taken from a cadaver.
Much of Mondo 2000 strains credibility. Does physicist Nick
Herbert really believe there might be a way to build TIME MACHINES?
Did the CRYONICS experts at Trans-Time Laboratory really chill a
family pet named Miles and then, after its near death experience, turn
it back into what its owner describes as a "fully functional dog"? Are
we expected to accept on faith that a SMART DRUG called
centrophenoxine is an "intelligence booster" that provides "effective
anti-aging therapy," or that another compound called hydergine
increases mental abilities and prevents damage to brain cells? "All of
this has some basis in today's technologies," says Paul Saffo, a
research fellow at the Institute for the Future. "But it has a very
anticipatory quality. These are people who assume that they will shape
the future and the rest of us will live with it."
Parents who thumb through Mondo 2000 will find much here to
upset them. An article on house music makes popping MDMA (Ecstasy) and
thrashing all night to music that clocks 120 beats per minute sound
like an experience no red-blooded teenager would want to miss. After
describing in detail the erotic effects of massive doses of L-Dopa,
MDA and deprenyl, the entry on aphrodisiacs adds an afterthought that
in some combinations these drugs can be fatal. Essays praising the
beneficial effects of psychedelics and smart drugs on the "information
processing" power of the brain sit alongside RANTS that declare, among
other things, that "safe sex is boring sex" and that "cheap thrills
are fun."
Much of this, of course, is a cyberpunk pose. As Rucker
confesses in his preface, he enjoys reading and thinking about
psychedelic drugs but doesn't really like to take them. "To me the
political point of being pro-psychedelic," he writes, "is that this
means being against consensus reality, which I very strongly am." To
some extent, says author Rheingold, cyberpunk is driven by young
people trying to come up with a movement they can call their own. As
he puts, "They're tired of all these old geezers talking about how
great the 60's were."
That sentiment was echoed by a recent posting on the WELL. "I
didn't get to pop some 'shrooms and dance around naked with several
hundred of my peers," wrote a cyberpunk wannabe who calls himself
Alien. "To me, and to a lot of other generally disenfranchised members
of my generation, surfing the edges is all we've got."
More troubling, from a philosophic standpoint, is the theme
of DYSTOPIA that runs like a bad trip through the cyberpunk world
view. Gibson's fictional world is filled with glassy-eyed girls strung
out on their walkman-like SIMSTIM DECKS and young men who get their
kicks from MICROSOFTS plugged into sockets behind their ears. His
brooding, dehumanized vision conveys a strong sense that technology is
changing civilization and the course of history in frightening ways.
But many of his readers don't seem to care. "History is a funny thing
for cyberpunks," says Christopher Meyer, a music-synthesizer designer
from Calabasas, California, writing on the WELL. "It's all data. It
all takes up the same amount of space on disk, and a lot of it is just
plain noise."
For cyberpunks, pondering history is not as important as
coming to terms with the future. For all their flaws, they have found
ways to live with technology, to make it theirs-something the back-to-
the-land hippies never accomplished. Cyberpunks use technology to
bridge the gulf between art and science, between the world of
literature and industry. Most of all, they realize that if you don't
control technology, it will control you. It is a lesson that will
serve them-and all of us-well in the next century.
-Reported by David S. Jackson/San Francisco
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Time Magazine's Definitions of Cyberpunk Terminlogy
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Acid House - White-hot dance music that falls somewhere between disco
and hip-hop.
Artificial Life - Inspired by the behavior of computer viruses,
scientists are wondering how sophisticated a
computer system or robot would have to be before you
could say it was "alive". One computer-software
company, Maxis, has marketed a whole line of
simulated animals, ant colonies, cities, train
systems and even a planet-like organism called Gaia.
Brain Implants - Slip a microchip into snug contact with your gray
matter (a.k.a. wetware) and suddenly gain instant
fluency in a foreign language or arcane subject.
Computer Virus - The cybernetic analogue of AIDS, these
self-replicating programs infect computers and can
destroy data. There are hundreds loose in cyberspace,
although few are as destructive as the internet
virus-which is now classified as a "worm" because the
writer of the program did not mean to do damage.
Cryonics - For a price, a terminally ill patient can be frozen-as in
the new movie Forever Young-until some future time when a
cure has been discovered. Some people save on storage costs
by having just their head frozen.
Cybernetics - Norbert Wiener of M.I.T. was designing systems for World
War ][ antiaircraft guns when he realized that the
critical component in a control system, whether animal
or mechanical, is a feedback loop that gives a
controller information on the results of its actions.
He called the study of these control systems cybernetics
(from kybernetes, the greek word for helmsman) and
helped pave the way for the electronic brains that we
call computers.
Cyberspace - SF writer William Gibson called it "a consensual
hallucination . . . a graphic representation of data
abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human
system." You can get there simply by picking up the
phone.
Dystopia - Utopia's evil twin. Merriam-Webster defines it as "an
imaginary place which is depressingly wretched and whose
people lead a fearful existence."
Datacops - Any department or agency charged with protecting data
security. Most notorious: The U.S. Secret Service, whose
1990 Operation Sundevil launched constitutionally
questionable predawn raids on computer hackers in a dozen
U.S. cities and provoked international outrage in the
cyberpunk community.
Ecstasy - Enthusiasts describe this New Age psychedelic, which
heightens the senses, as "LSD without the hallucinations."
The drug was outlawed in the U.S. in 1987.
Flame - Sociologists note that, without visual cues, people
communicating on-line tend to flame: to state their views more
heatedly than they would face-to-face.
Industrial - Mixing rhythmic machine clanks, electronic feedback and
random radio noise, industrial music is "the sounds our
culture makes as it comes unglued," says cyberpunk writer
Gareth Branwyn
Internet - The successor of an experimental network built by the U.S.
Defense Department in the 1960's, the Internet links at
least 3 million computers, many of them University- and
research related, around the world. Users can connect to
the Internet by phone to share information or tap into
data-banks.
Interzone - The wasteland setting of William Burroughs' Naked Lunch
(1959) has become a favorite haunt for cyberpunk writers.
It is here, in Gibsons words, that "the street finds it's
own uses for things," subverting cutting edge technology
to suit the needs of the underground.
Microsofts - Without apologies to the software company by the same
name, Gibson has his fictional characters alter their
reality by plugging into their brain these angular
fragments of colored silicon, which house a
read-only-memory chip.
Mondo 2000 - Mondo is Italian for world; 2000 is the year. Says editor
R.U. Sirius: "I like the idea of a magazine with an
expiration date."
Negativeland - Better known for media pranks than records (Helter
Stupid), this band canceled a tour in 1988 after a
Minnesota teen axed his family to death. The band's
press release said the family had been arguing about
Negativeland's song Christianity is Stupid. The story
was a hoax, but the press ran with it, turning the band
into cyberpunk heroes.
Punk - Cyberculture borrows heavily from the rebellious attitude of
punk music, sharing with such groups as the Sex Pistols a
defiance of mainstream culture and an urge to turn modern
technology against itself.
Rants - A hyperbolic literary form favored by cyberpunk writers, these
extended diatribes make up in attitude what they lack in
modesty.
Raves - Organized on the fly (sometimes by electronic mail) and often
held in warehouses, raves are huge, nomadic dance parties that
tend to last all night, or until the police show up.
Psychedelic mood enhancers and funny accessories (white cotton
gloves, face masks) are optional.
Simstim Decks - These simulated stimuli machines are what television
might evolve into. Rather than just watching your
favorite characters on TV, you strap some plastic
electrodes to your forehead and experience their
thoughts and feelings-slightly edited, of course, to
spare you the headaches and hangovers.
Smart Drugs - "Don't eat any of the stuff they say will make you
smarter," says Bruce Sterling. "It will only make you
poorer."
Synaesthesia - From the greek SYN (union) and AESTHESIA (sensation),
synaesthesia is a merging of sensory input in which
sounds appear as colors in the brain or words evoke a
specific taste or smell.
Techno-erotic paganism - Sound interesting? That's probably why the
editors of Mondo 2000 put the term on the
cover of their book. Unfortunately, they
never get around to explaining what it means.
Temporary Autonomous Zones - These are the electronic analogue of
mountain fortresses and pirate islands,
but they can be formed or dismantled in a
flash, says cyberpunk essayist Hakim Bey.
As political systems decay and networking
becomes more widespread, he envisions a
proliferation of autonomous areas in
cyberspace: giant worker-owned
corporations, independent enclaves
devoted to data piracy, Green-Social
Democrat collectives, anarchist
liberation zones, etc.
The Well - Compared with million-plus member networks such as
CompuServe, Prodigy, the Northern California-based Whole
Earth 'Lectronic Link is a tiny outpost in cyberspace. But
its 7,000 subscribers include an unusual concentration of
artists, activists, journalists and writers. "It has a
regional flavor," says co-founder Stewart Brand. "You can
smell the sourdough."
Time Machines - Anyone who has read H.G. Wells or seen Back to the
Future knows how these things are supposed to work.
Certain obscure results of Einstein's relativity
theory suggest that there could actually be short-cuts
through the space-time continuum, but it's unlikely
that a human could squeeze through them.
Timothy Leary - Yes, he's back. At 72, the ex-Harvard professor who
encouraged a generation to "turn on, tune in, drop
out" now counts himself a cyberpunk. "The PC is the
LSD of the 1990s," he says.
Turing Police - British mathematician Alan Turing predicted in 1950
that computers would some day be as intelligent as
humans.
Virtual Reality - An interactive technology that creates an illusion,
still crude rather than convincing, of being
somewhere in an artificial world. The user generally
dons a computerized glove and a head-mounted display
equipped with a TV screen for each eye. Now
available as an arcade game.
Virtual Sex - The way it would work, says Howard Rheingold, is that
you slip into a virtual-reality bodysuit that fits with
the "intimate snugness of a condom." When your partner
(lying somewhere in cyberspace) fondles your computer
generated image, you actually feel it on your skin, and
vice versa. Miniature sensors and actuators would have
to be woven into the clothing by a technology that has
yet to be invented.
William Gibson - Gibson knows precious little about cybernetic
technology. When the success of Neuromancer enabled
him to buy his own computer, he was surprised that it
had a disk drive. "I had been expecting an exotic
crystalline thing. What I got was a little piece of a
Victorian engine that makes noise like a scratchy old
record player."
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
My views on this article.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
It is funny, to me, the amount of BAD PRESS that we (computer
users/cyberpunks) get. This article, combined with the recent blast of
"Computer Pornography" reports on various news stations, are making it
hard for US to get our message across.
I wouldn't consider myself a cyberpunk as these reporters
explain it, but I would call myself a cyberpunk as defined by US, the
people who know. Number one, not even close to a Majority of
"cyberpunks" take these new-age drugs. Many are totally clean to begin
with. Number 2, I do NOT like industrial music much at all, and the
line about cyberpunks liking RAVES and DISCO MUSIC cracked me up.
I was, however, glad to see mention of Operation Sundevil,
and its unconstitutional side (even though they sort of hid it in with
the definitions.)
I read the line about cyberpunks "dressing all in black, and
donning mirrored sunglasses.." and laughed. Reminded me of the
"stereotyping" done to many other people.
I cant quite figure out how they can make an analogy about
cyberpunks and "hippies". Cyberpunks are everywhere....as many a bad
Rehab has stated, (a cyberpunk) "could be your Doctor, Lawyer, and
even your professor." Just like Alcoholism, eh? We do not all LIKE the
same music, dress the same way, act and feel the same (like the
"hippies" did). And as far as REBELLING against something, it is not
rebelling against the "system" that is important....but getting the
message out that it is time for a change, and it is time for our
"elected government" to realize, technology is more than just the
MILITARIES problem. WE (as modern citizens) have to be taken into
consideration too.
How long can the FBI consider our property in computers DATA
instead of TEXT? Why does it NOT follow the first amendment? Nowadays,
you are in an outdated office that still uses paper for memos, and
notes. This is the 90's and we are progressing (technologically) as we
should BUT we are being held back by the governments present policies.
Why is it, a business's files are considered private, but regular
computer users files are considered DATA instead of speech, and we can
be held accountable for its content.
Unfortunately, I think it will take many years for our
government to realize the problems of todays society (electronically).
And destructive false articles like this will never help our cause.
This article seemed to infer that all cyberpunks are
disillusioned, and think they live INSIDE a computer. It seemed like
they were saying that cyberpunks want to live in a drugged out
anarchists world. I know to US this article is just plain ignorant,
BUT what about the computer-illiterate society? They will think we are
plain psychotic.
The Well? I'm sure its a large system, but I never heard of
it. You can tell that this article was written on the WEST COAST.
Seemed like they blamed all of the social problems of California on
cyberpunks.
Do I consider myself a Cyberpunk? I would have to answer not
really. Number one, I never played cyberpunk. I never read any
cyberpunk books, and I am not as REBELLIOUS as the public thinks they
are. But according to this article, I do many of the same things that
"cyberpunks" do. Seems they categorized all who call BBS's and all
who participate in the NETS are evil-ungood trash. Unso.
And the statement about one guy "accidentally running a
program that erased all his messages on a net" is plain bullshit. If
that happens, there's only 200 more places where your messages are
still at. Duh! No, this article wasn't written by a computer
illiterate, now was it.
So, in essence, it looks like TIME Magazine screwed up again.
What else is new.
////// // //////
// // //
// // //////
// // //
// ////// //////
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
The Lawless Society
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
-Powerslave
