From - Wed Jan 14 11:33:07 1998 Return-Path: Received: from relay1.UU.NET by mrco.carleton.ca (4.1/SMI-4.0) id AA04011; Wed, 23 Dec 92 01:40:37 EST Received: from nyx.cs.du.edu by relay1.UU.NET with SMTP (5.61/UUNET-internet-primary) id AA07109; Wed, 23 Dec 92 01:29:52 -0500 Received: by nyx.cs.du.edu (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA02939; Tue, 22 Dec 92 23:30:25 MST From: ahawks@nyx.cs.du.edu (andy) Message-Id: <9212230630.AA02939@nyx.cs.du.edu> X-Disclaimer: Nyx is a public access Unix system run by the University of Denver. The University has neither control over nor responsibility for the opinions or correct identity of users. Subject: FutureCulture Digest #160 To: future-digest@nyx.cs.du.edu Date: Tue, 22 Dec 92 23:30:24 MST X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11] Status: R ______________________________________________________________________ |______________ / | | / | | u t u r e <___________ u l t u r e | _______________________________________________________________________| Issue #160 Tuesday, December 22nd 1992 Today's Topics: --------------- Future Vocabulary? AGRIPPA, Internet narrative closure MAIA: A practical project MAIAs communicating More Intercash pondering Musings on the Future of the Net (and a few blurbs) Not! Re: Future Vocabulary? Re: >more zine inf0< Re: Agrippa Re: Gibson/Kroupa and Agrippa Re: Hardcopy, anyone? re: learning email/Internet Re: MAIA's communicating The Z00z and Detailz Warning From uucp Zinezzzzz __________________________________________________________________________ From: zorgo@gnu.ai.mit.edu Subject: Not! Date: Tue, 22 Dec 92 01:41:04 -0500 Surfer, Get a Real Clue(TM), No one ever said it was Kroupa's version. Nor was it piped thru 3l!te, it is piped thru a program I wrote myself, called 'lame' - zorgo ______________________________ From: MAILER-DAEMON@bigtex.cactus.org Date: Tue, 22 Dec 92 11:33:06 GMT Subject: Warning From uucp We have been unable to contact machine 'peyote' since you queued your job. peyote!mail wixer!pacoid (Date 12/17) The job will be deleted in several days if the problem is not corrected. If you care to kill the job, execute the following command: uustat -kpeyoteCb524 Sincerely, bigtex!uucp ############################################# ##### Data File: ############################ ______________________________ From: ahawks@nyx.cs.du.edu (farting in your general direction) Subject: Re: Agrippa Date: Wed, 16 Dec 92 21:04:20 MST New fresh-scented *Gustaf Naeser* (150% real fruit juices!) says: | | I MISSED IT !!!!!! | | So if anyone please could mail it to me... | | thanks in advance, | gaffe | gaffe@csd.uu.se 1ss again for tu u da new-Bz, AGRIPPA (The Original Poem: The Choice of a Future Generation =) can be obtained by sending mail to: future-request@nyx.cs.du.edu w/ subject 'send agrippa' (or in da middle o da bod-e will d0) this may change at anytime, once the virus is firmly implanted in the neurons of the masses, so get yer cop-e n0w.... -- ahawks@nyx.cs.du.edu FutureCulture: In/f0rmation ahawks@mindvox.phantom.com future-request@nyx.cs.du.edu ______________________________ From: MAILER-DAEMON@bigtex.cactus.org Date: Tue, 22 Dec 92 11:33:19 GMT Subject: Warning From uucp We have been unable to contact machine 'peyote' since you queued your job. peyote!mail wixer!pacoid (Date 12/17) The job will be deleted in several days if the problem is not corrected. If you care to kill the job, execute the following command: uustat -kpeyoteCb531 Sincerely, bigtex!uucp ############################################# ##### Data File: ############################ ______________________________ From: ahawks@nyx.cs.du.edu (farting in your general direction) Subject: The Z00z and Detailz Date: Wed, 16 Dec 92 22:11:08 MST Chewck out the new Detailz with Denis Leary (eskimo pies and all) on da c0ver..... Also, if anyone taped the U2 Z00 TV thing on Mtv, lemme know....it was pretty excellent, I thought, on the WayneGarth level of in/F0rma-shun com.pre-hen-shun and X-pluh-nA-shun......Or if anyone knows when it will be re:::BROADcast.....lemme know.... Same goes for the LI-quid TV marathon Mtv had last weekend...I forg0t what TIMEz0ne I was in and onl-e taped 1/2 of it....I need to get some of the Specialists I missed and I think I missed one of the n-AEon's from this season..... -- ahawks@nyx.cs.du.edu FutureCulture: In/f0rmation ahawks@mindvox.phantom.com future-request@nyx.cs.du.edu ______________________________ From: MAILER-DAEMON@bigtex.cactus.org Date: Tue, 22 Dec 92 11:33:35 GMT Subject: Warning From uucp We have been unable to contact machine 'peyote' since you queued your job. peyote!mail wixer!pacoid (Date 12/17) The job will be deleted in several days if the problem is not corrected. If you care to kill the job, execute the following command: uustat -kpeyoteCb541 Sincerely, bigtex!uucp ############################################# ##### Data File: ############################ ______________________________ From: ahawks@nyx.cs.du.edu (farting in your general direction) Subject: re: learning email/Internet Date: Wed, 16 Dec 92 21:00:52 MST New fresh-scented *Paco Xander Nathan* (150% real fruit juices!) says: | |Hey, I dunno Y, but my post about Tracy LaQuey Parker's kewl new book |on learning about Internet got massively truncated on this end... | |Andy, have U got a copy of that? Had the cypherpunks-request@toad.com |info too.. Nope, eyeballs peeled and sliced, and I haven't seen it pass thru.... & the onl-e post I've seen re: cyberphunks, from u Paco, was fr0m a day or 2 ago.... |And - publically - as for the email hacks, much of the intent wuz to |send thanx to the FC moderator for doing the Matrix a service.. If |it hadn't been for that damn UUCP glitch, it would've been shown as |wgibson@gaia.matrix .. Oh well, a nuther day.. | |pxn. c001..... -- ahawks@nyx.cs.du.edu FutureCulture: In/f0rmation ahawks@mindvox.phantom.com future-request@nyx.cs.du.edu ______________________________ From: MAILER-DAEMON@bigtex.cactus.org Date: Tue, 22 Dec 92 11:32:17 GMT Subject: Warning From uucp We have been unable to contact machine 'peyote' since you queued your job. peyote!mail wixer!pacoid (Date 12/17) The job will be deleted in several days if the problem is not corrected. If you care to kill the job, execute the following command: uustat -kpeyoteCb4f1 Sincerely, bigtex!uucp ############################################# ##### Data File: ############################ ______________________________ From: ahawks@nyx.cs.du.edu (your unconscious mind) Subject: Re: Gibson/Kroupa and Agrippa Date: Wed, 16 Dec 92 16:20:28 MST New fresh-scented *The Dead* (150% real fruit juices!) says: | |Today's Mindvox news: Weird shit happened today. I'm not sure who all the |participants where, but Kroupa and some other people on Mindvox wrote a |parody of Agrippa, called "Agr1ppa", this is part of the original title |that went out in irc: | |AGR1PPA 2.01 - NEW & IMPROVED (Fixes Bugs from Version 2.00) |(A Book of The Mentally Disturbed -- Even FUNNIER than the original!) |Text by US@phantom.com |Etching by THOSE_PEOPLE@phantom.com |(C)1992 THE POWER COMPUTER (In My Mind Since 1979) |syberspa(e |All Bytes Preserved Well, shit....Did he just suddenly get the idea to parody it, or what? I was gonna rewrite it (non-satirically) but there goes thAt idea...crap... Kroupa always seems one minddrop ahaead of my thoughtwaves....This thing, and before with the review of Hacker Crackdown for Mondo - he already hat one in there when I sent me review in to St. Jude....(which was a month before the book was released, I might add) Well, crap....better stop whinin', get off my ass and start doing stuff... |And then tonight God came down from the mountain and spoke to Kroupa. |William Gibson called him on the phone to talk to him. And Kroupa pulled |it out of "respect for Gibson's work" which I think is a crock. It's a |joke, if Gibson can't take a joke, then why bother............ Well, I think the poem means a lot to Gibson....I would much rather parody Johnny Mnemonic then this poem, which is obviously close to his (somewhat synthetic-seeming from the tone) heart.... |I am totally angry at this, it is extremely cool that William Gibson is |into all this and behind Mindvox, its almost like the God of cyberpunk |smiling on it all, but I think its a total crock that something which is |obviously a joke can get pulled because Gibson might frown and get upset. If I were writing a poem, the summation of my creative spirit, about my deceased father, I might be pissed too, even though it was a joke... |My unasked for .02 cents. 06% interest added... -- ahawks@nyx.cs.du.edu FutureCulture: In/f0rmation ahawks@mindvox.phantom.com future-request@nyx.cs.du.edu ______________________________ From: MAILER-DAEMON@bigtex.cactus.org Date: Tue, 22 Dec 92 11:32:17 GMT Subject: Warning From uucp We have been unable to contact machine 'peyote' since you queued your job. peyote!mail wixer!pacoid (Date 12/17) The job will be deleted in several days if the problem is not corrected. If you care to kill the job, execute the following command: uustat -kpeyoteCb4f2 Sincerely, bigtex!uucp ############################################# ##### Data File: ############################ ______________________________ From: ahawks@nyx.cs.du.edu (your unconscious mind) Subject: Re: Hardcopy, anyone? Date: Wed, 16 Dec 92 16:29:33 MST New fresh-scented *im your antidote* (150% real fruit juices!) says: | |Hello again... I was wondering if anyone out there would be interested |in a hard-copy 'zine, dedicated to CP/New Edge/Technoculture, which I am |currently kicking around in my mind. I am a designer/ |writer/photographer, and would be more involved in the production end of |things. Basically, I am just testing the waters to see if there are (1) |writers who might contribute and (2) people who would be interested in |seeing such a thing come about. Please email or post any feedback, |thanks! Count me in, depending (but not much) on the scope....Awhile back I started work on a similar magazine myself, called [the] inifinite edge, which was like Mondo but with some Intertek-in/f0rmity added, and a less acid-washed feel...I had to cease the idea, though, because of hardware dificulties (ie, being back on my crapppy Apple //gs, thus no decent printing capabilities unlike My LC & LaserWriter).... I love Mondo, but there is no real alternative to match....bOING seems to me to be practically focused entirely on the literal end, and overlooks many of thre cultural aspects...Mondo, of course, could chill with the "2 hits a day keeps reality away" and it would be close to the mark of what I have in my head (although I have recently found my writing is increasingly resembling the acid-revelation tone of much Mondo)... Then tere's Intertek, which has good intentions but seems a little too anal, and too micro-scopic eyeball focused....SF Eye, of course is similarly an excellent read, but also caters to too specific an audience...... There's not that much out there, but there is so much interest in such a publication, all voer the net and beyond....There is such a huge need to be filled.....Thus, please count me in, and I encourage everyone else who wishes to to contribute as well....Instead of whining about what's out there, work to make your own zine.... |----------------------- -------------------------- || Darren Michael Poe |::: |_ |::: || e268%nemomus.bitnet@ |::: |_ (design) |::: || academic.nemostate.edu |::: | |::: |--------------------------- ---------------------- -- ahawks@nyx.cs.du.edu FutureCulture: In/f0rmation ahawks@mindvox.phantom.com future-request@nyx.cs.du.edu ______________________________ From: MAILER-DAEMON@bigtex.cactus.org Date: Tue, 22 Dec 92 11:32:03 GMT Subject: Warning From uucp We have been unable to contact machine 'peyote' since you queued your job. peyote!mail wixer!pacoid (Date 12/17) The job will be deleted in several days if the problem is not corrected. If you care to kill the job, execute the following command: uustat -kpeyoteCb4e2 Sincerely, bigtex!uucp ############################################# ##### Data File: ############################ ______________________________ From: ahawks@nyx.cs.du.edu (your unconscious mind) Subject: AGRIPPA, Internet narrative closure Date: Wed, 16 Dec 92 15:45:17 MST Scotto, Andy, Jag, Blade, Eric - Been wanting to throw a party for the Internet email list oberusers. What's happening is amazing, and AGRIPPA's release onto the Net (and subsequent mischief :-) shot a signal flare into the sky. Here goes. The wealth of writers pegged w/ the _Cyberpunk_ label seem to all but deny the term these days... you get a sense they've moved on to other/better lit forms... meanwhile Net denizens still yearn for the Next Phase like a teenager w/o an anthem. So lemme tear pages out of Steven Levy's ALife writings and Rudy Rucker's perspectives on Godel/Incompleteness - Forget "Hard AI", at this point, the Net is alive; and Life is intelligent. There's a guy in Austin named Doug Lenat (my grad advisor briefly) - he busily feeds bits & scraps of (un)related info from across the planet into a machine - MCC's CYC Project - with a hope that a machine full of common sense factoids and a frame for reasoning among them can begin to respond intelligently. Dunno - I'll look forward to Lenat's sentient programs, but I recall Rudy's paraphrase that any intelligent system won't be contained in a /program/. On the other hand, the Net has an expansiveness that doesn't wanna quit. I think it's alive. And these Internet mailing lists we run are beginning to act autonomously, what with automated fileserver responses, factoids shot across our screens, natural lang front ends coming online - a step beyond Netnews in terms of smarts perhaps? I'm beginning to feel that Lenat is correct about the method for machine intelligence, but maybe it's happening outside MCC's hallowed walls. So it struck me that a "Next Phase" in SF lit might be the actual email lists themselves, and all the thousands of people on them - to use the cliche - functioning as neurons, synapses, mitochondria. AGRIPPA certainly has pulled together a cloud, an aura of anticipation and predisposition that I've never seen b4 in many years on the Net. Maybe I'm just digitally myopic, but the "DadaPoet" distillation of LERI-L for Scream Baby sorta gave me the creeps about what our machines are /doing/ and /saying/. And look HOW MANY PEOPLE spend their time reading this stuff.. I'm only an SF fan, not a lit major by any means, but has AGRIPPA heralded a new form, one that was already in existence, via the lists? Let's talk 'bout this. Or maybe move it to FutureCulture - w/o all the CC's. Just thought it'd be fun to start by including the people quoted/ref'ed, maybe in hopes of their input! Thanx - pxn. ---- pacoid@wixer.cactus.org [ originally posted to a group of email list oberusers, cyberpunk authors and people ref'ed in the article. in-yer-face online ______________________________ From: MAILER-DAEMON@bigtex.cactus.org Date: Tue, 22 Dec 92 11:33:25 GMT Subject: Warning From uucp We have been unable to contact machine 'peyote' since you queued your job. peyote!mail wixer!pacoid (Date 12/17) The job will be deleted in several days if the problem is not corrected. If you care to kill the job, execute the following command: uustat -kpeyoteCb537 Sincerely, bigtex!uucp ############################################# ##### Data File: ############################ ______________________________ From: ahawks@nyx.cs.du.edu (farting in your general direction) Subject: Zinezzzzz Date: Wed, 16 Dec 92 22:04:36 MST I was going to post an alternative idea to a SnailMag, which would be a DEFINITIVE E-ZINE, but then, as it has a nasty habit of doing every so often, reality and intelligent thought set in....Basically, I deleted my own thoughtspacetext which said SnailMail is almost completely irrelevant so I don't like zines too much now, TV/VIDEO is an effective means of disseminating a zine, and I proposed an e-zine... this is all along the lines of what Paco posted earlier, and the irony of it is..........YOU ARE HERE NOW....Even an e-magazine is not as current, is not on the edge of information as groups like this list are... No e-magazine could be as current as a daily trip to MindVox, or a daily scan thru FutureCulture, Leri, Cypherpunks, whatever... These small groups (2 tie in wit da InterNet discussions) allow for individualization of a likes that has never been seen before....Thus, magazines are irrelevant because they are not specialized....E-magazines the same, to a lesser degree....USEnet is a trashpile, with a ticking Rolex or 2 per week.... The point is, the net is the asnwer....in the net, you are as specialized or as group-defined as you want to be....there are so manly outlets: Usenet, email lists, private email, IRC, internet BBSes, MUDs..... The net is not the ends, thol, obviously....I love net.reality, but I also read Snail-mags, cuz the net occasionaly misses the orangeslice I want to eat...I read Details, SPIN, 2600, Mondo, Intertek, the FACE, a few zines.....I watch TV....I watch Mtv, I watch CNN, I watch CSPAN ant COURT-TV....I watch movies and videos....I read certain sections of the Denver Post and rocky Mntn News and Westword....I talk to people... I talk on the phone..I attend school..... I seek as high a signal/noise/norepeat/importance ratio-ratio in my information as possible...I select the forums, the magazines, the people, that consistently provide the information I want, and I select the means so as not to repeat information and waste brain space.... thus, if I felt there was a space to fill for combining information I wanted, or to provide information that I felt need to be out-there but wasn;'t, I would create a new forum in the most proper medium...I have done that, in my subjective reality, with the FutureCulture list.... FutureCulture to me is amazing....Instead of me scanning TV, magazines, radio for relevant info, news, etc., I have 580 other pairs of eyes doing it as well....Not only that, but that allows for the capability to exapnd/alpher/morph information from other forums - and in realtime and post-realtime - something that TV, MONDO, or anything else outside of the net can't do..... The ends and the means are....HACK YOUR OWN REALITY..... If your reality is not your own, not to your happ-e-ness, then create it and morph it to be as such.....If you feel publishing a zine will accomplish that for you, than do so....If you feel "FutureCUlture is close to what I like - but a bit off the mark" than create your own list... If there's a TV channel missing from your 55-of-nuthin, then create a new one..... But keep in mind that anything outside of the net pales in the face of hyperspeed-information gathering and dissemination, and will soon be too outdated to even consider..... We all lives are lives this way, but it's a matter of: acknowledging it to what degree, acknowledging to what degree you control your own reality, and lastly morphing your own reality to your likes.... I don't mean to suggest that creating a new SnailMail mag is a bad idea...Quite the opposite - mags like Mondo and Intertek and 2600 do a perfect job of acting-out the lesson-of-the-day: bridging net.reality with netless.reality.....This will keep occuring even after ISDN and other newtek is implemented to a degree that paper is gone.... Net yourself. Hack your own reality. "I believe in love...poetry....money...las vegas....cheap cosmetics..." "I have a vision....television...television......television...." -bono -- ahawks@nyx.cs.du.edu FutureCulture: In/f0rmation ahawks@mindvox.phantom.com future-request@nyx.cs.du.edu ______________________________ From: MAILER-DAEMON@bigtex.cactus.org Date: Tue, 22 Dec 92 11:33:15 GMT Subject: Warning From uucp We have been unable to contact machine 'peyote' since you queued your job. peyote!mail wixer!pacoid (Date 12/17) The job will be deleted in several days if the problem is not corrected. If you care to kill the job, execute the following command: uustat -kpeyoteCb52e Sincerely, bigtex!uucp ############################################# ##### Data File: ############################ ______________________________ From: ahawks@nyx.cs.du.edu (farting in your general direction) Subject: Re: >more zine inf0< Date: Wed, 16 Dec 92 21:30:01 MST New fresh-scented *im your antidote* (150% real fruit juices!) says: | |Hello again.. | |Thanks to everyone who has responded about the magazine idea I |mentioned. This is where the idea stands so far: | |(STORIES) Stories and story ideas will be exchanged via email, most |likely sent to my email address to be forwarded to those interested in |editing. I would be interested in setting up some sort of mail |reflector like Future if possible, but I am not able to do it myself on |my system. I'd like to see some sort of virtual editorial meeting on IRC |most likely to discuss the stories and decide which to include, etc. |Also someone mentioned setting up an ftp site to put the stories- I am |not too familiar with the logistics of such a thing, but it sounds great |if someone would like to explain further how it can be accomplished. Getting it together would not be a problem...That's what an editor (inCHIEF) is for... |(CONTENT) I dont know yet. I would like to see a blend of art and music |and fiction, with technical net stuff. Im just not sure- any one of |those things could fill a zine all by themselves. I am not too sure as |to whats out there in terms of zines (I haven't even really read Mondo) |What do you all think? What would you like to see in a 'zine? Right now |I am leaning heavily to the cultural/artistic side of things, with |interviews of personalities both in and outside the matrix, original |fiction and art, reviews of music/mags/books etc, and various other |things in the same vein. But I dont want to be chained to anything in |particular, I want something that will interest everyone and have the |potential to grow. Well, I don't want to sound anal, but I think an editor shoulf have a good handle on what's being published in similar and not-so similar circles and orbs....Ie, having read Mondo, bOING, Intertek, SF Eye, 2600, i-D, Whole Earth, the FACE, and underground zines from pnk to industrial to rave to hacker to free-inf0 to conspiracy-rant would be a must...Not only that, but the editor should be on the forefr0nt of information - I don't even consider myself near the forefront...I try to be as quick-review-as-happens, but I'm not ahead of the edge, I'm a few nanos behind it.....The editor should be more than a few nano's ahead of the edge.... The closer we get to 2000, the quicker information will fuck us (interpret that any way u want to)....It's going to take mroe and more vision to fuck the info before you get fucked, to keep ahead of the edge... That should be kept in mind for any potential technoculture editors... It's also another reason I choose to focus on E-.....E- is life, here and now and the advent of information....Paper is almost dead, it is a snail when we increasinglymoreandmore have lightspeed z00000mz at hand..... |(NAME) Someone (sorry, I lost the name, I'll post it later) suggested |the name 'M31 SET' (M31-our galaxy, 'SET' being taken from a reference |to a group in a short story in Mirrorshades) What do you think of this? |Anyone have any other ideas? Sounds cool, but, that might imply that it's a GibsonCum rag, which I wouldn't want to contribute to, personally....I mean, how many stories can we continue to read about ROM constructs and sim-stims...Fiction needs to move forward, like Paco suggested before....Maybe fiction will even become irrelevant - useless, inane....If we live in hyperreality, our imaginations are going to be expanded to that state as well, thus it will be difficult to right fiction that *remains* interesting, let alone *remains* interesting to a large # of people.... |(PRODUCTION) The final e-scripts would end up with me, and I will |concentrate on the design aspects of things. I am running PageMaker, |Photoshop, and various dtp stuff on a Mac LC with 16bit video. I have |access to a laser printer and a (rather poor) hand scanner. I also have |access to black+white darkroom facilities, and I can get a good deal on |printing. I am a senior graphic design student, so you can be sure |i will be putting a lot of effort into making it look unique and |professional. Cool setup....There are many artists and graphics designers on this list.. |(DISTRIBUTION) Still in the planning stages. The zine would most likely |be distributed via USmail from a PObox where I am located. Subscriptions |would probably be available for 12-month, or 6-month periods, or |individual copies could be ordered. | |(FUNDING) I dont expect to make a profit off of this, basically I would |just want to charge enough for the zine to cover postage and printing |costs. | |This is basically where the idea stands right now. Please email me or |the List with comments or suggestions (or offers to help! ;) | |----------------------- -------------------------- || Darren Michael Poe |::: |_ |::: || e268%nemomus.bitnet@ |::: |_ (design) |::: || academic.nemostate.edu |::: | |::: |--------------------------- ---------------------- -- ahawks@nyx.cs.du.edu FutureCulture: In/f0rmation ahawks@mindvox.phantom.com future-request@nyx.cs.du.edu ______________________________ Date: Tue, 22 Dec 92 16:14:51 EST From: "David G. Katz" Subject: Future Vocabulary? Hi, What does the word "FAKIE" mean??? I believe it is a snowboarding term. Thanks, Dave ______________________________ Date: Tue, 22 Dec 92 17:02:50 PST From: mark@ganymede.apple.com (Mark Baldwin) Subject: Re: Future Vocabulary? a fakie is going ain the opposite directinoon of oyou r naturlal stance in sckate- boarding, snowboarding, surfing, or wakeboraarding...it is not a futeureistic term of any sort. -mark. ______________________________ Subject: Musings on the Future of the Net (and a few blurbs) Date: Tue, 22 Dec 92 20:36:26 EST From: Mitchell Porter This message should have been sent days ago, but thanks to various technical problems couldn't send it off til now. Thanks Scott.. -Mitch Musings on the Future of the Net (and a few Blurbs) --------------------------------------------------- Damn. Prompted by a recent message of Paco Xander Nathan's, and a particularly brain-frazzling day of reading mail, I was 150 lines into typing an earlier version of this when my net connection went down. Oh well. Take II... > Subject: AGRIPPA, Internet narrative closure > To: ahawks@nyx.cs.du.edu > Date: Mon, 14 Dec 92 15:39:57 CST > Sender: wixer!pacoid@cs.utexas.edu pxn's message arrived amidst several e-zines, a dozen miscellaneous email enquiries, traffic from half-a-dozen lists. Amongst all this were many messages containing serious proposals, interesting ideas, and so on. On FutureCulture alone that day a new zine was proposed and the AIA idea was introduced - either of which on its own might have kept a lesser mailing list preoccupied for a few days. And on Leri-L it is literally the case that the subject one day is gravitational redshift, and the next, the Qabalah. And yet this sort of info-flow is a daily experience for anyone who subscribes to several mailing lists. When I first got on the Internet, about a year ago, essentially all I did was visit BBSes. Early in 1992 I lost all reliable access. A few months ago, I got an account with email and newsposting privileges once again. I read Andy hawks' .sig on alt.cyberpunk and sent him a request to subscribe to FutureCulture, at that point not really knowing what a mailing list was like. Via FC, I saw Andy mention Leri-L in an issue of ScreamBaby; that sounded interesting too, so then I sent Scotto a subscription request, once again not really knowing what I was getting into. :) Within a few weeks I was on about ten mailing lists, and the result of all *that*, plus my other net-explorations, was version one of High Weirdness by Email. [digression: High Weirdness by Email version 2.0 can be found at the following fine anonymous ftp sites: 141.214.4.135 /docs/other/weird2-0.doc ftp.css.itd.umich.edu /zines/Weirdness/weird2-0.doc slopoke.mlb.semi.harris.com /pub/weirdness/weird2-0.doc.Z and it has recently been posted to alt.discordia, alt.slack, and alt.zines] [and note for the attention of ANDY HAWKS: It was suggested to me that I should try to put HWbE onto the WorldWideWeb, with connections to the resources mentioned if they are in a form suitable for the Web; for example, a person might read about a zine for the first time, and then be able to access back copies through an archive, via the Web. It seems to me that the FC FAQ would also fit well into this scheme, although no doubt it would be quite an effort. I mention this here because there may be someone on the FutureCulture list who knows more about WWW.] I mention all this partly to demonstrate how quickly things can happen on the net, and how quickly a person can become involved with something. In two weeks I went from never having heard of mailing lists to compiling a guide to them (and other things). No doubt similarly dramatic changes have happened to many people who read these words. > Scotto, Andy, Jag, Blade, Eric - Been wanting to throw a party for the > Internet email list oberusers. What's happening is amazing, and > AGRIPPA's release onto the Net (and subsequent mischief :-) shot a > signal flare into the sky. Here goes. When the text of Agrippa first appeared I wasn't as excited as everyone else seemed to be (I still haven't read it). In the context of the net it was just another text file flying around. But then there was the message from "wgibson@gaia.matrix", and all the speculation about Gibson's intentions, and the latest I have seen is the confirmation from Mindvox that Gibson phoned Kroupa etc etc. Paco's message made me rethink the importance of the "Agrippa Affair". What it amounts to is that an event *on the Net* has inspired feedback from "Real Life". It sometimes seems to me that the net is like a black hole. All sorts of issues and ideas from outside are grist for its discussions, and lots of interactions are taking place within it, but how often does something that takes place on the Net notably affect the world outside it? Previous examples I can think of are all pretty small (eg New Scientist has just mentioned the Crackpot Index developed on sci.physics; or further back, there are a few pages in Howard Rheingold's "Virtual Reality" where he talks about creating sci.virtual-worlds). I think the fate of Agrippa will attract more attention to the net, and the online "cyberpunk" culture that exists within it, than any other such event so far. It might even show up in the New York Times or Time Magazine soon. > The wealth of writers pegged w/ the _Cyberpunk_ label seem to all but > deny the term these days... you get a sense they've moved on to > other/better lit forms... meanwhile Net denizens still yearn for the > Next Phase like a teenager w/o an anthem. So lemme tear pages out of > Steven Levy's ALife writings and Rudy Rucker's perspectives on > Godel/Incompleteness - This talk of the Next Phase reminds me of two things. The first is of Algis Budrys' review of *Neuromancer*, long ago, in which he said that Gibson, by the end of his career, might well be working in completely new media, that leave the poor old paperback novel far behind... The second comes from an essay in "Storming the Reality Studio", an excellent "casebook of cyberpunk and postmodern fiction" which certainly deserves the place it has in the FC FAQ reading list. This is from "Bet On It: Cyber/video/punk/performance" by Brooks Landon. Writing is the key here - not the process, but the medium, an ancient system for processing information, its two hi-tech moments, movable type and the steam press, having come respectively in the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries ... ... Measured in terms of other fiction, perhaps particularly other science fiction, the speed and density (informational complexity) of cyberpunk writing is stunning. But, measured against computer imaging and video technique, even dynamite prose reveals that it cannot compete in precisely these ways. Speed, density, and the process of editing assume dimensions in video and computer graphics that are simply beyond the reach of printed prose. [240-241] Ah, but not necessarily beyond the reach of electronic prose. MUDs and mailing lists offer simple existing examples of interactive electronic text media that begin to rival the speed and density of video and computer graphics. > Forget "Hard AI", at this point, the Net is alive; and Life is > intelligent. There's a guy in Austin named Doug Lenat (my grad advisor > briefly) - he busily feeds bits & scraps of (un)related info from > across the planet into a machine - MCC's CYC Project - with a hope > that a machine full of common sense factoids and a frame for reasoning > among them can begin to respond intelligently. Dunno - I'll look > forward to Lenat's sentient programs, but I recall Rudy's paraphrase > that any intelligent system won't be contained in a /program/. On the > other hand, the Net has an expansiveness that doesn't wanna quit. I > think it's alive. And these Internet mailing lists we run are > beginning to act autonomously, what with automated fileserver > responses, factoids shot across our screens, natural lang front ends > coming online - a step beyond Netnews in terms of smarts perhaps? I'm > beginning to feel that Lenat is correct about the method for machine > intelligence, but maybe it's happening outside MCC's hallowed walls. This is very interesting. The mailing lists themselves already possess many of the properties of life: they compete, they even spawn (in a sense FutureCulture spawned AUtopia, and Extropians spawned Cypherpunks, by providing a space in which discussion about the possibility of those new lists came to fruition). The lists to which I pay the most attention are Extropians, FutureCulture and Leri-L, and I think these three lists are unique in having a certain form of self-consciousness that doesn't exist elsewhere. If you subscribe to a mailing list on, say, Queen or Zen, you're just using the Net as yet another way to associate with like-minded people. But the three lists above, in different ways, are more self-aware, because the Net itself is part of their subject matter. So when they turn their attention to the Net, there is this peculiar self-referential aspect, because in a sense the Net is thinking about itself, through them. (Note that when I say "the Net" here I am referring to "the loose community of humans who use the electronic network". I am not going to attribute consciousness to the Net independent of or even emergent from that community... just yet...) So perhaps between or above or to the side of these lists something radically new is coming to life. Of course, I have a motive to make these lists sound like the cutting edge of evolution, simply because I'm a subscriber - if it's true, then I (and you!) get to be participants in the Next Step. Or some such. But with all due caution, I think there's a very strong case that this is *a* cutting edge - the "New Edge" - just as important as the one that exists, say, in Somalia right now. > So it struck me that a "Next Phase" in SF lit might be the actual > email lists themselves, and all the thousands of people on them - to > use the cliche - functioning as neurons, synapses, mitochondria. > AGRIPPA certainly has pulled together a cloud, an aura of anticipation > and predisposition that I've never seen b4 in many years on the Net. > Maybe I'm just digitally myopic, but the "DadaPoet" distillation of > LERI-L for Scream Baby sorta gave me the creeps about what our > machines are /doing/ and /saying/. And look HOW MANY PEOPLE spend > their time reading this stuff.. I'm only an SF fan, not a lit major > by any means, but has AGRIPPA heralded a new form, one that was > already in existence, via the lists? I think that if there is a new form here, it is something which Andy referred to in a subsequent message (which I don't have to hand): "morphing the future". Creating your own reality with the tools available. Hardware and software aside, the preeminent tool of people on the net is *language*. It's rather amazing - after all, in two months or so I have discovered and talked with dozens of people on the Net, who possess distinct styles and interests in my mind - and yet all I know of them are *words like this* on a screen. 90 % are on the other side of the planet from me. And yet they are in my mind as well. Another example of the power of language: somehow it makes sense to refer to all the newsgroups and mailing lists as *places*. "You should see what's happening over in Extropians". "There was just a big flame war on news.groups". It's as if the Mindscape - the set or space of all thoughts described by Rudy Rucker, in *Infinity and the Mind* - is materializing. Doesn't the login to Mindvox refer to a "thoughtscape"? But an Anything-Scape sounds static, whereas the Net is very dynamic, changing, growing, even convulsing at times. Another thing: MEMES. Each "domain" or "region" in the Mindscape of the Net seems to be home to a particular bunch of memes. On Leri-L, in particular, memes which have never been in each other's presence before are encountering each other, leading to what Rez calls "memetic grafting". Promising-looking meme-clusters tend to be communicated far and wide beyond their birthplace (example: the AUtopia meme). Paco I think has introduced such a meme or meme-coplex here, although I'm not sure how to encapsulate it yet... Maybe there's two: i) the Net, or some sub-set of the Net, is alive / intelligent; ii) the mailing lists represent a step beyond cyberpunk fiction in the evolution of language. Something that is interesting about these two memes, in the light of what I said before about my favorite three lists being more self-aware. Both i) and ii) represent a step up in terms of the conceptualization of the situation. They provide an overview of what might be happening, in a way that hasn't been stated before. So what happens next? I suspect that Extropians would see it as an example of a spontaneously emerging order, and ? Future-Cultists probably want to design DadaPoetique AIAs, subscribe them to the lists and see what they do, but maybe because I am a Leri-ite my imagination runs towards the apocalyptic. I can't help but think that each new development brings a Singularity one step closer. I think of Rez's independent study project, and a cyber-plasmate of hypertext memes. Will one enormous mind manifest itself at some point in this evolution, just like the end of *Neuromancer*? Could language alone carry humanity through the Tremendum? (My apologies to people who don't know what I'm talking about; you might want to read the Leri-L FAQ, which you can get via ftp from penguin.gatech.edu, /pub/leri/leri.faq I think.) > Let's talk 'bout this. Or maybe move it to FutureCulture - w/o all > the CC's. Just thought it'd be fun to start by including the people > quoted/ref'ed, maybe in hopes of their input! > Thanx - > pxn. > ---- > pacoid@wixer.cactus.org > [ originally posted to a group of email list oberusers, cyberpunk > authors and people ref'ed in the article. in-yer-face online One final note for now, but only for those who've persisted all the way through this. If you're interested in these sorts of ideas, but with a Discordian/SubGenius sort of slant, you might want to try ploughing through the "Travelling Scriptures of the Church of Virtuality\Reality", or the Scriptures of V\R for short. Principia Discordia mixed with equal parts of LSD and MUD. You can get them (there's about 1 Meg of text so far) via anonymous ftp from: quartz.rutgers.edu /pub/journals/Scripture/scripture.000 ... scripture.007 ftp.css.itd.umich.edu /zines/Scripture/ (as above) slopoke.mlb.semi.harris.com /pub/weirdness/ (as above).Z scripture.000 is the introductory "volume". Mitch ______________________________ Date: Tue, 22 Dec 92 22:53 CDT From: Institute for Intelligent Systems Subject: MAIA: A practical project Birth of a mail-list AIA: A practicum. Mark C. Langston (aka fugue) langston@memstvx1.memst.edu fugue@mindvox.phantom.com ______________________________ From: discussions! Postscript: Many thanks to everyone on FutureCulture for feedback, comments, and criticisms on the AIA paradigm. Special thanks to Andy, who unwittingly participated in a few examples in the MAIA proposal. "Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny." Mark C. Langston (aka Fugue) langston@memstvx1.memst.edu fugue@mindvox.phantom.com ______________________________ Date: Tue, 22 Dec 92 23:59:32 -0500 From: redline@gnu.ai.mit.edu Subject: More Intercash pondering The ever-vigilant surfer@mindvox.phantom.com (Hewlett Cray) writes: >Something like Intercash already exists, its very similar to Info >America except they will buy information from you and you can sell to >other subscribers in exchage for giving them a small cut of the >proceeds. It is a very `upscale' (read: expensive like you wouldn't >believe) service and seems to be making many bucks. I believe you're talking about Amix, the interesting little service that is being set up (well, IS set up) by American Express. Basically, it's an information brokerage, as he said. You can buy and sell tidbits of technical advice, consulting, secrets to the Universe, etc. It's an interesting concept, and the first real acknowledgement I've seen that information is indeed money/power. There's also something a little eerie about it though, that information is being bought and sold on the open market. Especially since from the piles of literature that Amix has sent to me, they've never mentioned anything about how secure that information is. Seems like a ripe target for corporate espionage to me. Is anyone on this list on Amix, by chance? Can they offer a better idea of what it's actually like? --------------------------------------------------------------------- redline@gnu.ai.mit.edu "I am the terror that flaps in the night!" --------------------------------------------------------------------- redline@gnu.ai.mit.edu "I am the terror that flaps in the night!" --------------------------------------------------------------------- redline@gnu.ai.mit.edu "I am the terror that flaps in the night!" --------------------------------------------------------------------- ______________________________ From: yanek@novavax.nova.edu (Yanek Martinson) Subject: MAIAs communicating Date: Wed, 23 Dec 92 0:12:01 EDT One additional idea: if all such agents shared a common data format, they could communicate between each other, sharing (or trading?) information, inferences, etc. Some form of distributed database could be set up, so essentially what one MAIA knows, all do soon. So it would be more like one large distributed (over time as well as space) entity, using processing and memory of many machines, instead of many little entities. ______________________________ From: redline@gnu.ai.mit.edu Subject: More Intercash pondering Date: Wed, 23 Dec 1992 00:32:03 -0500 (EST) The ever-vigilant surfer@mindvox.phantom.com (Hewlett Cray) writes: >Something like Intercash already exists, its very similar to Info >America except they will buy information from you and you can sell to >other subscribers in exchage for giving them a small cut of the >proceeds. It is a very `upscale' (read: expensive like you wouldn't >believe) service and seems to be making many bucks. I believe you're talking about Amix, the interesting little service that is being set up (well, IS set up) by American Express. Basically, it's an information brokerage, as he said. You can buy and sell tidbits of technical advice, consulting, secrets to the Universe, etc. It's an interesting concept, and the first real acknowledgement I've seen that information is indeed money/power. There's also something a little eerie about it though, that information is being bought and sold on the open market. Especially since from the piles of literature that Amix has sent to me, they've never mentioned anything about how secure that information is. Seems like a ripe target for corporate espionage to me. Is anyone on this list on Amix, by chance? Can they offer a better idea of what it's actually like? --------------------------------------------------------------------- redline@gnu.ai.mit.edu "I am the terror that flaps in the night!" --------------------------------------------------------------------- ______________________________ Date: Tue, 22 Dec 92 23:36 CDT From: Institute for Intelligent Systems Subject: Re: MAIA's communicating I know I replied to this via mail, but forgot to cc: it to future...lah. I think perhaps a MAIA should communicate and 'share knowledge' just as we do - through written dialogue. However, the database idea does not preclude MAIA's coming up with different ideas, learning different things from one another. Either way, it's an interesting idea. I think the non-database version is a bit more feasable. If a MAIA were to share info at this point, the only way (right now) would be to send mail containing scripts. If this is the case, why not have them share knowledge via text, like we do? -mark (aka fugue) langston@memstvx1.memst.edu fugue@mindvox.phantom.com _________________________________________________________________________ | | | That's all for today! | | To send a message to the list: future@nyx.cs.du.edu | | To subscribe/unsubscribe/change format: future-request@nyx.cs.du.edu | | All other requests: future-request@nyx.cs.du.edu | | List Maintainer is: (andy [aka hawkeye]) ahawks@nyx.cs.du.edu | |_________________________________________________________________________| | | | The opinions expressed in FutureCulture are those of the individual | | author only. | |_________________________________________________________________________|