From - Wed Jan 14 17:26:26 1998 Return-Path: Received: from relay1.UU.NET by mrco.carleton.ca (4.1/SMI-4.0) id AA08319; Sat, 27 Feb 93 19:32:25 EST Received: from nyx.cs.du.edu by relay1.UU.NET with SMTP (5.61/UUNET-internet-primary) id AA11592; Sat, 27 Feb 93 19:31:00 -0500 Received: by nyx.cs.du.edu (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA14893; Sat, 27 Feb 93 17:30:45 MST From: ahawks@nyx.cs.du.edu (andy) Message-Id: <9302280030.AA14893@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 #263 To: future-digest@nyx.cs.du.edu Date: Sat, 27 Feb 93 17:30:44 MST X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11] Content-Length: 16682 X-Lines: 434 X-Mozilla-Status: 8001 ______________________________________________________________________ |______________ / | | / | | u t u r e <___________ u l t u r e | _______________________________________________________________________| Issue #263 Saturday, February 27th 1993 Today's Topics: --------------- ABUSEnet Conspiracy Internet History IRC forray/net.culture.evolving Re: Usenet greppers Re: Bury Usenet, but make sure you remember where you put it Re: conspiracies Re: Ok, I was expecting thia Re: Returned Life: Purpose Unknown Re: Returned Life: Purpose Unknown Returned Life: Purpose Unknown trance-formation __________________________________________________________________________ Date: Fri, 26 Feb 1993 23:25:16 -0800 (PST) From: Al Billings Subject: Re: Ok, I was expecting thia On Fri, 26 Feb 1993, Dean Joseph Sanvitale wrote: > Maybe some grand puba of the Invisible College, out there, want to > relate his/her/its/pub story to me. There is an Internet Invisible College that works on projects. ______________________________ Date: Sat, 27 Feb 93 00:25:43 -0800 From: mirage@leland.Stanford.EDU (Dean Joseph Sanvitale) Subject: Internet History I missed the Post of Bruc Sterlings Inet hist. Where can I get it? (i.e. ftp) mirage@leland.stanford,edu ______________________________ Date: Sat, 27 Feb 1993 19:50:12 +0100 From: cardell@lysator.liu.se Subject: Returned Life: Purpose Unknown OK, Andy, you hate Fidonet. It's obvious. I can see the parallell to your "abandon Usenet" posting too. I mean, Fidonet echos are sometimes as bad a some Usenet newsgroups, but I don't think C_ECHO is as bad as alt.cyberpunk f|r obvious reasons. Well, perhaps I shouldn't say anything, because it was some time now I experienced Fidonet echos, but Fidonet as an original idea wasn't that bad. Now, however, things has gotten somewhat out of control with people arguing about policies. Even Tom Jennings now prefer Internet... But back in 1982 things were different; Fidonet was the poor man's e-communications. mikael cardell S P U N K P R E S S ______________________________ Date: Sat, 27 Feb 1993 19:52:37 +0100 From: cardell@lysator.liu.se Subject: Re: Bury Usenet, but make sure you remember where you put it Al is right when he says that mail isn't compressed, but that's largely up to the provider and the reciever of mail. If they agree on compressing the mail I can't see whats stopping them from doing so... mikael cardell S P U N K P R E S S ______________________________ From: ahawks (scooby dooby doo) Subject: Re: conspiracies Date: Sat, 27 Feb 93 12:08:03 MST The dimension of sight and sound known as Mitchell Porter: | |surely the existence of conspiracies in abroad sense is not in doubt. a |conspiracy exists whenever people hide their intentions, hoard |information, etc. what your question appears to be about [althogh i havent |seen the original yet!] is whether there is a conspiracy that secretly |runs the world, and that is another ballgame entirely. yeah, if conspiracy exists between a group of people, then it at one time had residancy on an individual, ie, a conspiracy of 1.....in your [sub|pre]conscious mind.. your pre-conscious mind is a conspiracy, because it is a door where empty space might be....it is the unknown depths of consciousness that gives rise to conspiracy theories and truths..... you are potentially part of the conspiracy against yourself... -- andy ______________________________ From: ahawks (scooby dooby doo) Subject: Re: Usenet greppers Date: Sat, 27 Feb 93 12:18:13 MST The dimension of sight and sound known as James "Kibo" Parry: | |> All you people looking to grep Usenet; why don't you ask how Kibo does it? | |find /news/spool -name core -prune -o -type f -print | xargs agrep -i 'kibo' | |That's the basic version that simply searches all articles which |currently exist at your site. You can add all sorts of bells and |whistles, i.e. remembering which articles were already looked at last |time you ran it, or stripping out references to skiboots or Newsgroups: |lines, etc. or, how bout this... set up a database of mail addresses you have evr received mail from, and then autoremail all the articles you find matching frpm the above line to this [amazingly huge, probably] list of people.... or autoremail them to random usenet groups via anonymous-poster/remailers... or, for each article found, turn the subject into a potential newsgroup name (ie, "Re: Kibology is Long Since Dead" becomes alt.kibology.is.long.since.dead and then send a message off to the control group...) a couple days of this and alt might be gone.... | -- K. -- andy ______________________________ From: ahawks (scooby dooby doo) Subject: Re: Returned Life: Purpose Unknown Date: Sat, 27 Feb 93 12:22:53 MST The dimension of sight and sound known as cardell@lysator.liu.se: | |OK, Andy, you hate Fidonet. It's obvious. I can see the parallell to |your "abandon Usenet" posting too. I mean, Fidonet echos are sometimes |as bad a some Usenet newsgroups, but I don't think C_ECHO is as bad as |alt.cyberpunk f|r obvious reasons. | |Well, perhaps I shouldn't say anything, because it was some time now I |experienced Fidonet echos, but Fidonet as an original idea wasn't that |bad. Now, however, things has gotten somewhat out of control with |people arguing about policies. Even Tom Jennings now prefer |Internet... But back in 1982 things were different; Fidonet was the |poor man's e-communications. O definitely...I'll be he first to admit that back in the hayday of 31|+3 AE's and such and after that timebomb, I was equally as interested in IBM boards and other "foreign" (non-Apple ][) systems that had these links.... but, now, we're sitting here on the edge of communitek, and Fidonet is a Stumblebum....Fidonet is the 55th floor of the Internet World Trade Center, in other words.... |mikael cardell | | S P U N K P R E S S -- andy ______________________________ From: zane@ddsw1.mcs.com (Sameer Parekh) Subject: Re: Bury Usenet, but make sure you remember where you put it Date: Fri, 26 Feb 93 18:16:00 -0600 In message , Al Billings writes: > > Not until e-mail is compressed before it is sent. If I get a 40k message > in talk.whatever, it is compressed first and uses less resources (my > resources for my BBS) to send but if I get mail, I get the whole 40K plus > headers. > On my site (according to my sysadmin) email *is* compressed before it is sent. I think it uses standard 16-bit UNIX "compress." I''m not sure. ____________________________________________________________________________ | Sameer Parekh-zane@ddsw1.MCS.COM-PFA related mail to pfa@ddsw1.MCS.COM | | Apprentice Philosopher, Writer, Physicist, Healer, Programmer, Lover, more | | "Be God" - Me ____________________________________________________________/ \_____________/ ______________________________ Date: Sat, 27 Feb 93 12:27:40 PST From: alves@xanadu.llnl.gov (David Alves) Subject: trance-formation Last night I traveled down to Santa Cruz to attend the following, _______________________________________________________ Timothy Leary: Trance-Formation Session Friday February 26 at 8:00 p.m. Porter Dining Hall UCSC Students $6.50 General $10.50 The performance includes a video demonstration designed by Hyperdelic Video of Tokyo and featuring music by Psychic TV Presented by Millbrook West Anubis Warpus Aries Arts The Santa Cruz Comic News The Island Group ________________________________________________________ I thought I would share my impressions of what happened. Got there about 1/2 hour early and got in 15 minutes after it started due to a slow ticket line. Missed some lady's intro and then out came Tim Leary in a blaze of trancy techno music and cyberdelic videos. I was excited to be there and hear him speak. He has an incredible sense of timing - it reminded me of a stand up comic's except with a psychedelic twist. He spoke slowly and left out a lot of normal sentence structure but had a knack for choosing his words carefully and effectively. He said SC was hippest spot in galaxy etc and then said we were part of an experiment tonight. He would count to 5 and the say CHAOS ON - the music and vid would go full blast - CHAOS OFF - just him talking. Memorable TIM LEARY catch phrase - EYEBALLS AND EARBALLS Lots of posturing and ranting and raving on stage sortof in sync with the music and video. I picked up on two main points amid a lot of amusing stories and anecdotes. The TV generation started in the 50's when everyone had a TV in their house and this programmed everyone to accept TV. When pong came along a new generation was raised who became accustomed to breaking thru the TV wall. All of cyberspace is an extension of pong. He was also fascinated by the style that TV is adopting - MTV fast, falshy and above all CHAOTIC. The chaos is too much for the left brain to handle - this opens up your right brain - the only way you can process the superfast info - and then BAM a cold beer or an icy Coke. A single image or product that is sortof a mini climax to a chaotic brain massage. The use of rhythmic changes in the brightness and color in a commercial along with the music help put you in a receptive trance. [an experiment that I am fond of - turn on prime time sitcom, turn off lights, mute the sound, look away from TV at walls - it is pretty easy to tell when commercials come on. This of course doesn't work witk MTV which is a 24hr commercial] So the only way to beat this programming is to do it yourself and ultimately this is how we will all communicate because it is so effective. Well now all the lights come on and we start a Q&A session. Of course, everyone is still half stunned by the whole display and an awkward silence ensues. Guy with roving mic springs up and jumps around the room. Tim speaks for awhile and then the Q's start flowing a little more. Bruce Eisner plugs something. As more people start asking questions a girl asks the first non-blow-sunshine-up-Tim-Leary's-ass Q and wierd vibe takes over. [ok a little too much of a generalization there] Her valid question was something like - "what does any of this have to do with me, it seems exclusive, with all the chaos in the world why would I want more?" Tim did an ok job except with the chaos in the world part. Then tons of people wanted to ask Q's but Tim says he has to go. What was the experiment?? other than a new jazzy multimedia lecture technique [which I can't see of being much use, in say, my thesis defense. but anyway ...] I think the experiment was all about how no one was prepared to ask any Q's when the lights came on. Everyone was thoroughly tranced out. Maybe the whole thing was a demo on how to beat someone into passivity. Then it seems then to be more of a warning - BE AWARE PROGRAM YOURSELF This makes me wonder how valid his point is about everyone eventually communicating with multi-media trance inducing commercials. Do I really want to just beat my message into a tranced out super fast info absorbing zombie who is unable to effectively respond?? Will this foster any useful discourse? I had a lot of fun. It would be interesting to hear comments. Dave ______________________________ From: ghoast@gnu.ai.mit.edu Subject: Re: Returned Life: Purpose Unknown Date: Sat, 27 Feb 1993 18:16:46 -0500 (EST) > > but, now, we're sitting here on the edge of communitek, and Fidonet is > a Stumblebum....Fidonet is the 55th floor of the Internet World Trade > Center, in other words.... > > -- > > andy > Perhaps this floor will be subject to the same force that removed a 200 by 100 foot section 6 stories deep in you allusion, or at least the equal: loss of intrest due to more effective modes of communication... ______________________________ From: ghoast@gnu.ai.mit.edu Subject: IRC forray/net.culture.evolving Date: Sat, 27 Feb 1993 18:52:01 -0500 (EST) I recently had a halfway disquieting experience in a recent attempt to gain some on-the-spot informatoin via the internet: A friend of mine calls me up telling me that he is doing a rather extensive report on Neuromancer, its background, and its [and other generally cyberpunk pieces] affects on culture. He needed some more in depth info on W. Gibson than was provided in the about the author section.. The report was due the next day, so I said that I would go ask around on IRC. I hadn't tried to pummel information out of anyone on the irc in the last two years, and last time I needed information I just went in, asked away, got the relevent info and took off. This time was different. I jumped into #hack, thiking, that they would be the most likely to have information on popular authors writing about the thigngs that they portend to do.... the responces ranged from, "William Gibson? Never heard of him." and "Lam3r!" to getting kicked out. So I cruised over to the #circle, #future, and finally #leri areas that I had heard mention of on the fc list. No one was in them. Finally I hit upon #cyberpunk, where the people immediately gave me the fcFAQ, and there was a bot that gave me cpFAQ, neither of which were any help, but at least there was an effort to assist instead of blatent condecention. Not to say that I expected an especially warm reception, but I think the environment has changed from an open to an inclusive community. Whatever. That is to say that I guess if I had been hanging about in IRC for the last month, I would have had easier access to these random peoples information (if they had any, probably not), or at the least a more cordial referance to a more likely source... who knows? ______________________________ From: wixer!bladex (David Smith) Subject: Conspiracy Date: Sat, 27 Feb 93 15:20:45 CST Last time I was in one of those Big-Mall-Chain-Bookstores I saw a recently published boo on conspiracies. It described them, the players involved, and the evidence that either supported or worked against plausibility. There was about 50+ listed, each with it's own 3-5 page entry. Unfortunately, I can't remember neither the author's name(s) nor the title of the book. But Big-Mall-Chain-Bookclerks are usually trained to be friendly (unless you're from the Northeast) and so if you went with that bit of information they might be able to track it down with their computers. I believeI saw my copy in the social sciences section. Code hounds, go fetch! ______________________________ From: wixer!bladex (David Smith) Subject: ABUSEnet Date: Sat, 27 Feb 93 15:35:02 CST The titlesums up my attitude towards Usenet as a "communications" technology. It is not. It is an information-delivery system. There are nuggets of gold hiding in Usenet (FAQs) but you have to root them out yourselves, in the same way pigs paw through the ground for mushrooms. Communication empowers individuals. Communication makes a difference in people's lives. Some times it happens aon Usenet, but it's generally accidental in nature. Because "information wants to be free" the relationship that most have towards Usenet is that of a parasite to host system. The word "contribution" and "community" are foreign to these modes of information-delivery system. _________________________________________________________________________ | | | 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. | |_________________________________________________________________________|