From - Wed Jan 14 14:56:06 1998 Return-Path: Received: from relay2.UU.NET by mrco.carleton.ca (4.1/SMI-4.0) id AA19467; Mon, 1 Feb 93 13:42:54 EST Received: from nyx.cs.du.edu by relay2.UU.NET with SMTP (5.61/UUNET-internet-primary) id AA21343; Mon, 1 Feb 93 13:40:25 -0500 Received: by nyx.cs.du.edu (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA16028; Mon, 1 Feb 93 11:31:35 MST From: ahawks@nyx.cs.du.edu (andy) Message-Id: <9302011831.AA16028@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 #206 To: future-digest@nyx.cs.du.edu Date: Mon, 1 Feb 93 11:31:32 MST X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11] Content-Length: 19249 X-Lines: 429 ______________________________________________________________________ |______________ / | | / | | u t u r e <___________ u l t u r e | _______________________________________________________________________| Issue #206 Monday, February 1st 1993 Today's Topics: --------------- Body modification & Phiber Optik Cybernetic Protection + updatable body art Drug liberation in switzerland ? Re: Assorted ramblings Re: Sexuality, homosexuality, Cyberpunk, Labels, the Meaning of Liff the cyberqueers are here!!! the great media suck Weekly FC Administrivia __________________________________________________________________________ Date: Mon, 1 Feb 93 17:50:27 +1100 From: Kenneth McKenzie Wark Subject: the great media suck Re: Time magazine story and the phenomena of 'cyberpunk' being sucked into the medua vortex: 1. the first big test of any subculture is surviving media exposure. You can run but you can't hide from it. The black hole of the media sucks in anything with enough mass for it to notice. 2. 'cyberpunk' has always been a media phenomena - all that's changing is the cale of it. I mean, the name itself was put into circuit by a publisher with a sense of imagination. 3. there is no 'outside' to the media anymore. To think there might be, ahd that this 'outside' is somehow more 'real' and 'authentic' is a romantic dream. 4. "We no longer have roots, we have aerials." -McKenzie Wark ______________________________ Date: Mon, 1 Feb 93 18:24:42 +1100 From: Kenneth McKenzie Wark Subject: the cyberqueers are here!!! A big thanx to Michael J. Current for pointing out the obvious with eloquence and passion. We're (cyber) queer we're (virtually) here. Get fuckin' used to it! I had an uncle who served in WWII in the airforce. He was an air 'ace' and homosexual, and he claims a lot of pilots were. They called themselves the 'lilac club'. Being homosexual didn't stop them serving in the forces. This was the Australian airforce, but i bet this is true in all the forces. There are lots of gay people in all of them. Given that (as operation Tailhook showed) there are plenty of fucked up young men in the forces who think nothing of raping serving females, its not as if sexuality in the forces is not a problem already. Most injuries sustained by female forces personnel during the gulf war were from rape. Plenty of 'straight' soldier rape other male, straight soldiers. Needless to say such incidents are rarely reported. These are just the facts. I think we'll just have to write a script that automatically sends a fact-file to people who say uninformed things on the net. *** the furture is definitely queer. Given that people now get imprinted with images that carry a sexual charge from the media rather than from family and community, all kinds of perverse identifications are possible. Freud was writing at a time when the child grew up isloated in the home, sheilded from the information environment. Now kids are plugged into a vast infosphere of possible images of desire, possible models of relation. So were're not only gonna have to get used to it, we're gonna have to learn to enjoy it. Stop the violence - that's the only problem. Sexual violence has nothing to do with orientation. people of all persuasions get raped - and that is not acceptable. ______________________________ From: "Benjamin P. Wing" Date: Mon, 1 Feb 93 03:37:32 EST Subject: Re: Assorted ramblings In article <9301311454.AA13036@morgan.angis.su.OZ.AU> you write: |Piercings etc.; (WARNING:RAMBLE) | On the subject of body modifications/mutilations. I personaly |would not augment my body in any way. I even go to the extent of not |changing or damaging my body overtly such as tatooing or even ear |piercing. Ever since I was an adolescent I have maintained the |mentality that the real test of what I am is to use what I have to the |best that I can. It's sort of along the lines of Harry Seldon's famous |line "Violence is the last resort of the incompotent" (Asimov's |Foundation). Implicit in this ethos is the belief that the mental can |always win out. That with enough thought and patience situations can |be made to advantage to an extent far superior than a physical method |could obtain. This is a bit of a cult of the intellect admittedly. As |a spin off I have been left with the belief that changing my physical |self is a greatly inferior way of gaining respect and/or influence |over others compared to what I can do with my mental charisma. Now |before you start flaming me here, how many of you who have or have |considered getting, say a nipple, pierced have been motivated purely |by aesthetics? Moved by the ineffable muse of self-expression to |create a new and evocative art form that simply had to be done |regardless of whether another human being would ever see it. Or did |thoughts of people saying, "Gee! You must be a |unique/mysterious/interesting individual!", go through your mind? |Don't get me wrong, I think that this mentality is in all of us |whether we admit it or not. It is the basis of ALL fashion which we |have only too recently seen is a subject very close to the surface and |why not? Our dress sense is a very succinct and non-verbal way of makeing |a statement to others as to at least a degree of our character. But |the good thing with clothes is that if we change our minds, or more |accurately, if they are changed for us (and don't think they're not) |then we can chuck them in the nearest charity bin and start again. But |with a 2 inch safety pin stuck through your nose there is a degree of |no going back you would have to admit. Think of the movie Lawnmower |Man. All show and not much substance (or at least not very subtle |substance). Too much show and shock value in one's fashion can tell |people exactly the same thing about yourself. Hrumpf! Now I'll get off |my soap box and wait for the brick-batts to be thrown. | True, most people's piercings are not but solely on aesthetics; some people seek to get different sensations, some (shock!) to appear "weird" in other people's eyes. I don't think there's anything wrong with this -- no man is an island, as they say, and of course people care what others think of them. About "use what I have to the best I can" and not augment, if you really want to follow this precept then you have to give up prescription eyewear, dental fillings, etc. |The assimilationn of subcultures; | I remember reading Michael Chadwick's famous book on the |history of the Christian religion where he suggests that one of the |main reasons for the popular spread of Christianity was the Roman |sacking of Jeruselum. His agument is that the Jesus sect was in the |process of being assimilated into the orthodox Jewish religion when |the bloody Romans unwittingly stopped that process by destroying |Jeruselum. If this had not happened, the Jesus sect may have been |pacified and everything would have been swept under the carpet. |Apparently this had previously happened to a number of other heretical |schisms. I believe, with Noam Chomski, that this method of |assimilation and subsequent dilution/pacification of a potentially |destabilizing movement is regularly used by conservative |societies/governments. The cutting-edge can never be hung on the wall. |When cyberpunk becomes mainstream then it's all over. The mirror |shades are cracked and the 2 inch fingernails pulled out. But I know |I'll be seeing alot of you deeper down in the 'sewer'. What am I |saying? I think you all know otherwise you wouldn't be here. | I don't think anyone should worry about whether cyberpunk or any other movement/style will become mainstream -- obviously it will, sooner or later. Trying to prevent it from happening is like trying to prevent the Mississippi from changing its course. This is only a problem if you define your identity by your association to the particular group. If you let yourself constantly change and evolve then you will never get stuck somewhere that's passe. ben ______________________________ Date: Mon, 1 Feb 93 12:25:28 +0100 From: d89-joh@nada.kth.se Subject: Body modification & Phiber Optik Hello everybody! I was think of this body modification thing. How many hasn't wished for a third arm when you got both your arms full of whatever you are carrying. I would definitely get a third arm if it was possible (maybe a fourth as well for symmetry). Another thing I thought about. What happened to Phiber Optik? I haven't seen anything in the papers I've been reading (well I live in Sweden). Could somebody mail me a short summary or post one if there's more people than me that's interested. You have been harassed by: Johan Lindgren d89-joh@nada.kth.se johan-li@mars.dsv.su.se Things to think about: Girls are like a soap under water. Easy to see but one major problem to get a grip on. Never thank for the food until you know you will keep it. ______________________________ Date: Mon, 1 Feb 93 13:40:10 +0100 From: jota@tutor.inesc.pt (Joao Pedro Martins) Subject: Drug liberation in switzerland ? I don't know if anything has been posted about this subject, but I read yesterday on a newspaper that a referendum is going to be held in Switzerland next spring to decide about the liberalization of drugs. Does anyone know more about this ? Joao ______________________________ From: ahawks (andy) Subject: Weekly FC Administrivia Date: Mon, 1 Feb 93 10:00:14 MST ______________________________________________________________________ |______________ / | | / | | u t u r e <___________ u l t u r e | _______________________________________________________________________| ________________________________________________________________________________ Vital ListStats as of February 1st 1993: Realtime: 249 Digest : 284 FAQ-Only: 174 ::::::::: Total : 707 Current Digest is Issue #206. ________________________________________________________________________________ To post to the FutureCulture list, send your message to: future@nyx.cs.du.edu ALL Requests to FutureCulture must be sent to: future-request@nyx.cs.du.edu [All request messages should garner an auto-reply msg. ] [If future-request does not *consistently* work for you ] [then please send your message to: ahawks@nyx.cs.du.edu] The subject of request mail must have one of the following: subscribe realtime -subscribe in realtime (reflector) format subscribe digest -subscribe in daily-digest (1 msg / day format) subscribe faq -subscribe to faq only (1 msg every few months) unsubscribe realtime unsubscribe digest unsubscribe faq help -receive a help file send info -receive this file send faq -receive a recent copy of the faq if you need one (list subscribers *automatically* receive this) send agrippa -Gibson's poem send agr1ppa -PKK's work * When unsubscribing, you must unsubscribe from the same address you subscribed from. 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But it wouldn't hurt to ask on the list. If you're looking for an FTP site that carries FutureCulture related stuff, try: ftp.rahul.net /pub/atman/UTLCD-preview ftp.css.itd.umich.edu /poli/future.culture.d ftp.eff.org pub/cud/papers/future ftp.u.washington.edu public/alt.cyberpunk redspread.css.itd.umich.edu If you have IRC access, look for the '#future' channel. If it's not there, start it up! Don't wait for the #future, make the #future. =) You can also find the FutureCulture FAQ on the IRC, with the #CyberPunk Bot. Join Channel #CyberPunk and type: /msg CyberBot send info. _______________________________________________________________________________ If the list is dead, you might try posting something new. Here are some suggestions: computer underground cyberculture cyberpunk (literary and cultural movements) cyberspace new edge nootropics or other drugs raves technoculture virtual reality music, movies, books, magazines that fit into the mold _____________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________ From: Nowhere Man Subject: Re: Sexuality, homosexuality, Cyberpunk, Labels, the Meaning of Liff Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1993 13:10:43 -0500 (EST) > Umm, that said, let me go out on a limb and say that I think as > society evolves (or morphs if you prefer, which is a safer term in > this case) homosexuality, bisexuality, and other "alternative" forms > of sexuality will increase and be explored more in depth, simply > because that seems inherent in systems that bring increased > communication because people know that "there's others like me" and > people will stop repressing their nature. I'm assuming the mindstyle > that more communication = less repression. Hmm. Reminds of an sf book I remember reading. In it the protagonist was out of the loop for several years (off-planet? suspended animation? I don't remember) and when she got back homo/bi sexuality was mainstream. So mainstream that her suburban-housewife-type mother had a female lover, and didn't think it was strange. If I recall correctly the "justification" for this was that the future-earth of the story was _vastly_ overpopulated, and that homosexuality helped keep things from getting worse. -- ( Nowhere Man ) Please do not use this document ( rpowers@panix.com ) as toilet tissue. ______________________________ From: Visceral Clamping Mechanism Subject: Cybernetic Protection + updatable body art Date: Mon, 1 Feb 93 10:15:40 PST Quoth Vlad the Impaler : > (1) What are all you cyber-people gonna do when some guy comes along >and runs a magnet over your bod? (police of the future don't carry guns, they >wield.......... portable electromagnets!!!!!) > (2) In the same vein, what's your defense from a simple electrical >shock? Ker-zzaap and the circuits melt into a molten mass of useless >material (beware of static electricity). ... >So waddya all think? Will these be problems, or am I a nincompoop? Any reputable company that designs this kind of stuff (and this is one area where I would not experiment with street tech, at least not the for the basic body-computer infrastructure) will design in safeguards against this kind of thing. It's relatively easy and cheap to protect against voltage and current overloads, using a combination of physical distance, optical isolation (which uses light to transmit a signal with the express purpose of blocking damaging analog signals) and fuses. The computer equipment can be protected fairly easily from any electric shock that the human body can withstand. I can't really comment on magentic shielding. I guess the ultra-paranoid will have internally implanted vacuum tubes. :) Note that people with unshielded digital implants could perhaps be remotely monitored using the old remote-crt surveillance technique. Another problem that you didn't bring up is that metal implants in contact with flesh would be likely to cause rejection, corrosion, or other ill effects, especially if they weren't at the same potential as the rest of the body. They would also make the biological part of the system extremely sensitive to electric shock. You'd have to enclose the whole shebang in some kind of neutral plastic or other material, such as is used for pacemakers, artificial hearts, knuckles, etc. Finally, if having implants gives criminals (or whoever the cops are after) such an edge, the cops will have it too, and will also be susceptible to powerful electromagnetic weapons. *** Quoth waite07@angis.su.oz.au (Alex Jeffries): >Not even the normal chemical signals like >macrophage colonizing factor (MCF) can budge them. Therfore, I see no >way to make these cells move to your commands. I don't see how >magnetism could do it even if the coloured materials used were metal >flakes and the use of tropic factors like MCF would never be accurate >or selective enough. I also doubt whether electrical signals would >work. I hate to be a party pooper. :-( How about a heat- or electrically-sensitive color-changing material placed in a a square (or whatever) over a subcutaneous dot-addressable pad? Something like the stuff in those forehead thermometers (although that obviously has too broad a range.) I guess this would be pretty tricky, since the immune cells in the g* and even the cells in the skin above are likely to be easily killed by wide ranges of voltage or temperature. You tatoo might also turn black or off when your skin reaches extreme temperatures. What kinds of sensitive non-toxic color- changing chemicals are available? -- atman@rahul.net || "Burn hollywood burn!" Sync ye to the beat, and become it; once you understand it, you can destroy it. _________________________________________________________________________ | | | 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. | |_________________________________________________________________________|