From - Wed Jan 14 17:17:03 1998 Return-Path: Received: from relay2.UU.NET by mrco.carleton.ca (4.1/SMI-4.0) id AA02471; Fri, 19 Feb 93 13:44:07 EST Received: from nyx.cs.du.edu by relay2.UU.NET with SMTP (5.61/UUNET-internet-primary) id AA19920; Fri, 19 Feb 93 13:38:32 -0500 Received: by nyx.cs.du.edu (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA26991; Fri, 19 Feb 93 11:30:26 MST From: ahawks@nyx.cs.du.edu (andy) Message-Id: <9302191830.AA26991@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 #244 To: future-digest@nyx.cs.du.edu Date: Fri, 19 Feb 93 11:30:26 MST X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11] Status: RO X-Mozilla-Status: 8001 ______________________________________________________________________ |______________ / | | / | | u t u r e <___________ u l t u r e | _______________________________________________________________________| Issue #244 Friday, February 19th 1993 Today's Topics: --------------- Admin (READ) Early vectors of the meme meme iNet: the medium-sized message Medium: the ultimate virtual massage r3: /\/\3[>|u/\/\ |z +|-|/-\ /\/\3$$/-\g3 Re: r3: /\/\3[>|u/\/\ |z +|-|/-\ /\/\3$$/-\g3 Re: the medium is the message __________________________________________________________________________ Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1993 06:49:20 -0500 From: Sean Michael Carton Subject: Re: the medium is the message The schtick may have been around in theory since deconstruction began, but in practice, Agrippa is the first. Let me relate a little personal anecdote... Picture this--I go into my thesis defense with a hot off the presses copy of my thesis under my arm, knowing full well that the only person on my committee who really groks what I'm doing is my advisor. Out of the other 2, one I quoted, so he's cool and the other, well, he's the stickler. My thesis was called: _Bring the Noise: Art Technology and Hypermedia in the Postmodern Space_---you can guess what it was about. Anyway, my defense went as I suspected--most of the profs had no idea why anyone would want to "read books on a computer" or, in fact, what the usefulness of such a work would be. I panicked. How would I get them to understand. Then, it hit me like a flash-- Agrippa! They would understand that! and the short end of the story is this: they did. They really for the first time saw the computer for what it was, a new medium, and that works of art could be made that took advantage of this medium in such a way that would be impossible in any other medium. This is what I think is the importance of Agrippa: not that it is the best poem ever published (its not) but that it takes advantage of its medium and that it was hyped enough to get people thinking about using computers as art. (when I say people, I'm referring to those burbclave braindeads--sort out the implications later). Its performance, impermanence, neo-oral lit, and concrete ephemera for the future... Sean ______________________________ From: jluhta@cs.joensuu.fi (Juhani Luhtanen) Subject: Medium: the ultimate virtual massage Date: Fri, 19 Feb 93 14:32:36 EET Andy has shared this bit of info with us all: :i've said this before, and [prev.], but i liken it to something like :cave drawings. noone remembers the first few folx to draw on the :caves, right? and that's what we're all doing here. but then you may :so, "no, that's crap, because the technology allows for everything to :be recorded with name/date/blahblah" and yeah, it does, but we have :proven, so far, as to be incabable of moving from a linear to spacial :mindstyle in coping with the seemingly logrhythmic (sp?) expansion of :communications and technology, thus we'll find ourselves on the :oppositie end of the spectrum (relatively) from the cave walls. not too :little clear information, but too much, so that lots of schtuph [thanks :freeside, or whoever it was on irc] gets lost. I wouldn't compare the net stuff to the cave drawings but to the first writings (alphabetic). Loads of books have been written about how writing has restructed the human conciousness during the past 2000-3000 years. One writer Walter Ong in his 'Orality and Literacy' regards writing as the most "drastic of the 3 technologies". Writing initiated what print and computer - and I think Ong here includes the net as part of the computer - only continue. Writing reduced the dynamic sound world of the oral culture to quiscent space, it separated the word from the living present, where alone spoken words can exist. I think our list has news for Mr. Ong. I am not saying that he is totally wrong but the net is as big or even bigger player in this game than the computer itself. Computer as a stand-alone system in the corner of the room is merely a sophisticated typing machine and an effective database engine. Nothing explosive about that but when this computer gets outside blood in its veins or bits from the net the user better start preparing hir mind into the matrix. Andy continues: :rather we produce it and it affects us which affects how we produce :it, etc. ie, more like a sine wave then an amoeba. (sp?) The it here is the net. Awright there is this community that produces the text-mass. As an individual user each of us interacts with this text-mass - or maybe in few years time with pictures, textual links, moving pictures and finally the virtual reality - so we could say that the only proper strategy to understand the net is to picture it in one's mind as a place where one meets ppl and certain social structures are needed. Andy again: :at any rate, whatever strategies are developed are morphs of earlier :strategies, and the increased communitek : :*BOING!* bun-chak *BING!* : :neologism alert up there, i'm actually proud of that one. kind of :like community, actually it's communit-e [ie virtual comms.] + tek, :communitek. Hey, I wanna cite you man in my M.A. thesis. But could u plz elaborate on this neologism of yours. Andy, our virtual shaman chanting his wisdom: :Wow, see, I'm such a stud ;), i can operate on both the meta- level :and within the bounds of the topic, and exemplify what's being :discussed On the Spot. And, yes! yes! I can still engage in :Shameless Self Promo at the same time....I am BMON. (or rather, BMOI, :that sounds cool, another neologism alert, cuz it has moi in it, so :there's still that subtle self-referencing) Net discourse at its outmost best. Can I add something to that? NO WAY. How 'oral' or better yet 'alive' can u get with your fingers and your keyboard? Andy's comment on mine: :|I haven't yet printed the poem because that would be like changing :|the whole piece into something which it is not. : :So? who's setting the rules here? Information wants to be free, :right? so print it out, rip it up, print it out again.....Put it in :emacs, or better yet make a shell script, and randomly reorganize the :lines [e.g. Paco-esque]. Insert your own verses. Post 50 copies to :alt.cyberpunk.... E-poetic terrorism, a la Bey. This is e-art. But :it is moot relative to how PKK has morphed and reconstructed Agrippa. :So, buddumpbum, then you work on Agr1ppa.... : :^ live hypereal, do the above. And don't do what I've said, do your :own, *re*construct my ideas. Well, for a start *I* am settin the rules here (I still control my diskquota on cs.joensuu.fi and my 386sx here at home). What I am saying is that the recipient owes something to the sender of the message. In order to have a succesfull act of communication both parties must comply to make an effort to co-operate. Spot Mr. H.P. Grice with his co-operative principle lurking behind my shoulder. Just because the technology allows us to process the information we receive in every possible way does not mean that we should do it. I do disagree with this anarchistic point of view. True that anarchy is the essence of the net communication and I go along all the way to a certain point with net anarchy. That point is where communication becomes so blurred that the ppl involved fail to understand each other. Of course that point is drawn on the surface of water so u have to find it everytime a new. :|As if I would record :|only the soundtrack of a film and then listen to the sound only and :|forget about the visual images. : :aargh, finishes off a decent post by parallelogramming back to the :mediums of the past. boo, hiss. send in the next victim! Why not make the parallels? If u don't know your past u don't know your future. Juhani -- .signature ????? did you really expect a .signature? Sheesh. ______________________________ Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1993 15:01:15 +0100 From: cardell@lysator.liu.se Subject: r3: /\/\3[>|u/\/\ |z +|-|/-\ /\/\3$$/-\g3 Andy wondered into the void why B1FF and k00L has survived, and I think I have the answer. BIFF, B1FF and B!FF is a mythological creature, biff@bit.net, who is 14 years old and just got his hands on a terminal. So B1FF is used as a name for all those people clinging to the wierd spelling of the elites of the early eighties... mikael cardell S P U N K P R E S S ______________________________ Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1993 10:28:46 -0500 (EST) From: Peter Breton Subject: Re: r3: /\/\3[>|u/\/\ |z +|-|/-\ /\/\3$$/-\g3 > Andy wondered into the void why B1FF and k00L has survived, and I > think I have the answer. BIFF, B1FF and B!FF is a mythological > creature, biff@bit.net, who is 14 years old and just got his hands on > a terminal. So B1FF is used as a name for all those people clinging to > the wierd spelling of the elites of the early eighties... Actually, B1FF is the name given to a spirit, a loa to be precise, who "possesses" folks who read the Net too long and makes them post articles or send email. One of the interesting aspects of voodoo is that the loas almost always have very specific mannerisms that enable people to recognize them, even if they haven't manifested for years. Well, the B1FF loa causes its "horse" to type in all caps and use all the usual B1FF-isms... Peter ______________________________ Date: 19 Feb 1993 09:41:55 -0600 (CST) From: "free agent .rez" Subject: iNet: the medium-sized message juhani: >The it here is the net. Awright there is this community that produces >the text-mass. As an individual user each of us interacts with this >text-mass ... yet another reading of iNet would be: iNet *is* the self-writing/reading text. just as wave/particle are 2 ways of the flux manifesting itself, so reader/writer are 2 ways the un.bounded text unfolds and enfolds itself... through us, iNet becomes. (this is the ultimate text pointed to by deconstructionism, and the argument about AGRIPPA being the first seed that stretches to the outside of iNet is right on.) >Just because the >technology allows us to process the information we receive in every >possible way does not mean that we should do it. I do disagree with this >anarchistic point of view. True that anarchy is the essence of the net >communication and I go along all the way to a certain point with net >anarchy. That point is where communication becomes so blurred that the >ppl involved fail to understand each other. Of course that point is >drawn on the surface of water so u have to find it everytime a new. not necessarily: your projection assumes that the 2 people do not have as their primary goal *effective communication with each other.* imho, in a case where the person playing the role of the writer in a transaction is trying their best to be meaning-ful and the person doing the reader thang is genuinely trying to grok, there rarely *can* be that breakdown. what would happen, imho, is that new neologisms would be grafted to fill in gaps in conversation, and readily accepted. the people in the community may well end up with their own specialised dialect of the lingo, but *they* won't break down in and of themselves, imho. .rez ______________________________ From: ahawks (rave on) Subject: Admin (READ) Date: Fri, 19 Feb 93 10:43:23 MST Ok, I am going to be out of town Today (Fryday), Saturday, and Sunday. However, in all likelihood, Procmail will be installed on this list when I am gone. *SO* there is a big possibility that mail to the list might be bouncing for the next 3 daze. If that is the case, don't panic, just wait until next week if your message to the list bounces faster than a rubber bullet. And, no, you do not need to send me the headers of the bounced mail or anything like that, cuz I get em all anyway autofrustraticly. Digests may look kinda weird as well. Done my best to make sure procmail won't cause any initial problems, but, umm, you never know. And if I don't get my stapler back, i'm, i'm going to set the building on fire. if they make me move my desk one, one more time, i'm going to set the building on fire. ok. you can take my stapler back but now i have to burn down the building. -- andy ______________________________ Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1993 09:52:56 -0800 From: Marc Rettig Subject: Early vectors of the meme meme Days ago, .rez said, i first encountered use of the word, "meme" on the Net. how about you? this is a straw poll i'm *very* interested in. anyone here read it in dawkins or a paper.bound source first? I was infected by the meme meme when I read Doug Hofstadter and Daniel Dennet's "The Mind's Eye." I don't have it in front of me, so I can't quote from the essay. But much in that book is relevant to the discussions here. Hey, it's also where I first encountered Rudy Rucker! I'm surprised no one has brought up Douglas Hofstadter. All his stuff is very, very tasty. Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Vintage Books, 1979. Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern, Basic Books, 1985. The Mind's I (I misspelled the title in the previous paragraph--the book is a collection of essays about "the soul," AI, and the sense of self). I don't have publication info for this one. If you're interested in logic, creativity, art, music, language, puzzles, and how all these things relate to AI and computing in general, Hofstadter is your man. _________________________________________________________________________ | | | 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. | |_________________________________________________________________________|