Headtrip I am writing precisely with a migraine occurring, visual migraine, located largely in my left eye; there is pressure on my left jaw and brain; the yellow letters against the black background are clawed at by brilliant strobing. The pressure forces me to shut my eyes; I continue typing, work- ing the letters after a difficult days. The zigzag patterns, always typi- cal, are lobe shaped; the clawing is the work of flashes against each and every other patterns. I can hardly see out of my left eye; my right eye repeats the pattern, but less. My hands seem diminished, moving away from me against a three-dimensional keyboard that swells up and away; I'm slightly nauseous. I'm shivering as well in the cold; the heater on the floor doesn't help much. I don't dare move but when I do, I notice the patterns are alleviated; the terminal, as I suspected, brings them out. I'm both light-headed and heavy at the same time; the patterns are in- creasing in intensity, the lobe shape splaying out further into the visual field, and my left eye feels as if it's on fire. I can no longer read large portions of the text. There are long-waves apparent in the left field periphery, swollen, swelling, as if compensating for their distance from the center. The center is becoming painful as well, and there is a horizontal creeper extending itself across the text, completely across it. I feel very shaky, as if I am about to lose vision entirely, close down; there is great pressure on my left eye and my right frontal area is pressured as well, the start of the incipient headache itself. I can no longer see to the left. The creeper has slower waves and longer zigzags as well, putting out a vertical feeling descending downward as the text scrolls up the screen. I close my eyes for an instant and the zigzags lose intensity, appear more like cuneiform in fact or some harbored beams of a bridge spanning keyboard, eye interior, the hideousness of this office area which is in reality a loft area, the corner of the bedroom, now covered in crawling shapes. There is nothing real here in the sense of representation, only letters flipping out, invisible, changing shape; the vertical feeler has become more of an _area_ and the blind spot combines with the fury of the patterning to produce, to produce, nothing, obliter- ation; I'm afraid of the text seething out of control, I can't write well at this point, the eye feeling useless, a flat translucence, soon every- thing will pass away. The tinnitus continues throughout. Interference across all zones: As I said, the MOO goes down flaming, text itself dev- olves. What I'm writing is senseless as the pattern changes into vertical sheaves or boards rubbed raw, I've got, I've got for once to look away until this thing too will come or come to pass. I correct everything; my brain tunnels through me and out my mouth. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bibliography - The following is a partial bibliography for my texts on linguistic dis- tribution and theorizing the Internet: Anzaldua, Gloria, Borderlands, La Frontera, The New Mestiza, aunt lute books, San Francisco, 1987 Bogucki, Peter, "The Spread of Early Farming in Europe," American Scientist, Volume 84, No.3, May-June 1996, p. 242 Gelb, I. J., Old Akkadian Inscriptions in Chicago Natural History Museum, Texts of Legal and Business Interest, Fieldiana: Anthropology, Volume 44, Number 2, Chicago Natural History Museum, 1955 Gurney, O. R., The Hittites, Penguin, New York, 1990 Held, Warren H., Jr., et. al., Beginning Hittite, Slavica, Columbus, 1988 Hodder, Ian, The Domestication of Europe, Structure and Contingency in Neolithic Societies, Blackwell, Oxford, 1990 Laurel, Brenda, Computers as Theatre, Addison-Wesley, New York, 1993 Malamud, Carl, Exploring the Internet, A Technical Travelogue, Prentice Hall, New Jersey, 1993 Mitchell, William J., City of Bits, Space, Place, and the Infobahn, MIT, 1995 Postgate, J. N., Early Mesopotamia, Society and Economy at the Dawn of History, Routledge, New York, 1992 Renfrew, Colin, Archaeology and Language, The Puzzle of Indo-European Origins, Cambridge, New York, 1987 Renfrew, Colin, and Zubrow, Ezra B. W., The Ancient Mind, Elements of Cognitive Archaeology, Cambridge, England, 1994 Roux, Georges, Ancient Iraq, 3rd edition, Penguin, New York, 1992 Sondheim, Alan, ed., Being On Line, Lusitania, NY, 1996 (forthcoming) Sondheim, Alan, Internet Text, 1994-1996, online at: http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html Sturtevant, Edgar H., A Comparative Grammar of The Hittite Language, revised edition, Yale, 1951 Sturtevant, Edgar H., A Hittite Glossary, second edition, Yale, 1936 Sweet, Henry, An Icelandic Primer, second edition, Oxford, 1895 Turkle, Sherry, Life on the Screen, Identity in the Age of the Internet, Simon and Schuster, 1995 Wark, McKenzie, Virtual Geography, Living with Global Media Events, Indiana, 1994 Wright, Joseph, Grammar of the Gothic Language, Oxford, 1910 _________________________________________________________________________ - Swamp We are found with language. Being with one another, who finds us? And what we are found with, we have never asked for. Nor is it a given that this would always be the case, nor that angels or others have brought language to us, what may be considered "it." What is the finding in this regard, and what is a finding? Is a finding the totality of results, or is it an opening or proffering? The plane crashes in the swamp and there is an outcry for "loved ones." They are always "loved ones" after death, and now they threaten the Everglades themselves, but anything to recover a bit of flesh or bone is the finding that will give someone something to speak _of._ A dying boy here gets his last wish from a foundation to kill a Kodiak bear in Alaska. The bear is treed first by dogs because this is a sport whose findings are entrails. I would rather the boy's death than this deliberate massacre. I would rather the bodies swamp food than further desecration. We are _mired_ with language. The earth collapses beneath the weight of pronouns. "Paradoxically, it is the strength of the ego's identification with the object world and with tradition (the superego) that in the long run en- sures its demise. As Porte moves deeper into the swamp, the resistance between image and association seems to subside." (David C. Mill, Dark Eden, The swap in nineteenth-century American culture.) The _sputtering_ of language _splatters,_ _splitting_ the imago _spitting_ and _spattered._ What's _spotted_ is chaotic; there are no words for _it._ Here, we're _found with unfounded language._ Surface fissures, no other comment is necessary. There's far too much reliance on silence, speech is synonymous with desecration. Let the bear maul the boy. __________________________________________________________________________ - Who owns what here? I'm called technically the list-owner but the sysop at the server site owns me. The space isn't free because you're paying or someone is for the ISP or SLIP/PPP connect. The machine that the list runs on costs money. Someone's paid for the listserv software to be set up. My labor as co- moderator is free; I don't charge you and I'm not paid. The sysop is paid and listserv is paid. Someone is paid to maintain the machine that the list runs on. People pay to go the the university or for AOL to maintain the listserv sites. Someone pays for the electricity at AOL and the uni- versity and someone pays the salary of the sysop and someone has paid for the development of the machinery. Someone is paying for the fiber optic cables and I am paying my ISPs in order among other things to maintain the lists as co-moderator. Only on Cybermind do I do all the basic work; on the other lists, the basic work is done by the co-moderators and they are not paid, including Pip on Cybermind, Laurie and Tbone on FOP-L, Tom on Image, Mike on E-Conf. Tom is not paid for maintaining a Web page for Cybermind and Richard is not paid for maintaining the archives. Our costs run to ISPs, telephone lines and calls, equipment upgrading, and labor time; our costs may also run to space on a public_html directory. You're not free to say anything you want here. You can be sued for quot- ing private mail and I can be sued as list-owner but I probably wouldn't lose. AOL and the university could be sued and AOL might lose but judging by the contract I have for Cybermind I doubt they would. You yourself might well lose the case if the post were slanderous but otherwise you might not. You would probably win if you posted from another forum that was already public. You would probably lose if you posted a real threat to someone, including one of the list members. You could lose for haras- sment, but it is hard to tell in these cases. You could possibly lose for publishing proprietary codes or software. You can be removed by me or any of the co-moderators at our discretion. AOL and the university could remove the list from their listserv, but AOL might be sued because of the contract. The contract is in writing, hard- copy and is between me and AOL. The contract is for the period of a year. I know "somewhere" I have the contract but I am not sure. You might be breaking the law for sending a pornographic post on the list and I might be sued or be breaking the law for allowing the post or for allowing the post to remain on the archives. If you are a child I might be breaking the law for allowing a child on the list even though I do not know you are a child, even if you say you are one, and if there are porno- graphic posts on the list. On Cybermind and FOP-L, you are here because your subscription passed; we checked it. On Image, subscriptions are totally by hand and I do subscrip- tions by hand that pass from Spoons on jefferson to my account, for Cyber- mind and FOP-L. On E-Conf, subscriptions are automatic and do not pass through us. If you are a U.S. citizen and you threaten the President of the United States on a list, you are breaking the law. If you pass on copyrighted material to a list without authorization, you are breaking the law. Every post, public or private, on the Internet, is not immune from the law, but in the case of the CDA and pornographic issues, the law will at this point, and perhaps only at this point, pay no attention. Every post reaches its destination by virtue of labor, free and paid, but never over free networks, or if free, free by virtue of the gift of someone's labor. Every post costs, every post drains the earth. Every post delivered con- forms to protocol standards or else becomes a problem of labor for one of the co-moderators, or the machinery itself. A post that does not reach its destination may loop within a site or among sites and becomes noise. A loop of noise can flood a list if it is not quickly caught. Sysops and co-moderators and others catch loops so they do not reach your mailbox. When they fail, your mailbox can also crash and your account will break down, returning mail itself. This can increase the number of loops. AOL and the university are owned by corporations who may be in bidding wars. Down the recessed halls of communications, things get murkier and at the far end, the very far end, there are shadowed figures. Do not suppose for a second that they are not making money from this. One way or another it pays off, or we would not be allowed to be here. _________________________________________________________________________ - Bans You can be easily banned from an IRC channel. You can be banned or your site can be banned or the machine on your site can be banned. You can be banned from a MOO, @toaded, without any explanation. You can be banned and your site can be banned as well. You and your site can be banned from a talker. You can be unsubbed from an email list by a moderator. You can also be subbed to an email list without your permission by a moderator. You can lose your account. You can complain to root or postmaster or sys- admin at a site about a moderator or god or operator or wizard, depending on the application and she or he can be warned and can lose her or his account. Listservs and other software can be set to filter out sites and individu- als. It is easier to filter on listserv than majordomo and easier on maj- ordomo than on lists that require manual subbing and unsubbing. You can set your mailbox to filter out individuals and sites, which is easier if you are on elm than pine but possible on both. Lists can be set to allow posting only by subscribers, filtering out people who are not subscribers. You can spam a list or a newsgroup. You can spam by sending unwanted mail to a list or newsgroup that has no protection. You can spam by sending huge files to a list or newsgroup that has not set a file limit. You can spam by repeatedly sending messages. You can flood an IRC channel by re- naming, by cycling in and out, by repeatedly sending messages. You can use client software that prevents you from being spammed on IRC, by ignoring someone repeatedly messaging you. It is easier to spam a newsgroup than an email list but both are traceable unless you use an anonymous remailer. You can use tactical strategy and troll a newsgroup or email list. You can do this with several people responding to one another. You can be success- ful if you sign on at different times and wait. You can crash a newsgroup this way. You can spam a MOO by creating rogue programs that continually fork pro- cesses until the server crashes. You can spam a MOO by creating programs that interfere with other programs. You can spam a MOO by creating pro- grams that interfere with MOO conversation. If you are a MOO wizard you can rewrite other's programs and descriptions. If you are a wizard or a god on a talker you can listen into private conversations. You can repost private conversations including net sex although this may well be illegal. You can repost private email although this also may be illegal. If you are a wizard or a list moderator you can remove posts from any archives and remove the archives themselves. You can go in and change any material in the archives. If you can do simple hacks you can send somewhat anonymous email and if you are better you can send untraceable email. If you are very good you can create programs and loops that will automatical- ly spam a newsgroup, email list, or IRC. You can take the offensive by complaining to Internet task groups that mo- nitor hacks. You can create trouble for someone who is not hacking in this manner. You can spam someone privately and anonymous and complain to his or her sysadmin anonymously. If you are very good you can slow a server down that permits fingering and enter through windows as users click off without logout. If you are very good you are far beyond this and beneath the surface. If you are very very good you are in my account now and typing this text. _________________________________________________________________________ Settlement I want to, briefly, continue the application of proto-historic theory to the Internet and cyberspatiality, using Ian Hodder's The Domestication of Europe, which works through the lower and upper neolithic. Hodder disting- uishes a number of stages, characterized by what I would call "regimes." They are, very roughly, the _domus_ or home, which also involves care, nurturing, protection, figurines, weaving, and so forth; the _agrios_ or outside, involving burial, hunting, agriculture, weapons, animals, ex- change, and stone tool production; and the _foris,_ which I associate with public forums and external community life. "The domus is fixed, permanent, visible, and very 'present.' It also brooks little individual variation. There is often a repetition of the individual domestic unit which leads to a strong sense of the equivalent and the communal. The agrios, on the oth- er hand, is initially 'absent' and less visible. It involves exchange and hierarchy, competition and individual display. It is closer to the wild." Hodder traces development through the three stages into village communi- ties and beyond; it is a work of interpretive proto-history, calling on considerable theoretical resources. We can use the regimes as well, per- haps, in order to understand MOOs, etc., and their interrelationship. In previous texts, I've focused on issues of diffusion, exchange, trade- routes and so forth; here, we might think of a MOO (for example) as a _settlement,_ occupying a particular IP and port number in cyberspace. It's clear that there are three regimes MOO-wide as well. The first, the domus, is what exists after @dig and the @sethome commands are applied; the domus is often furnished with idealized personal belongings, inclu- ding virtual chairs, and so forth. As in the neolithic, the domus also contains symbolic objects as well, some of which may be ported elsewhere. Conversations often occur within them, since they provide a sense of place and relative comfort. If one converses solely by paging, there is a sense of absence - I've often noted this on PMC2-MOO. Paging at times may feel like a traditional postal exchange; verbal cues can be added, but they feel more artificial than face-to-face in cyberspace. The second regime, the agrios, would be the note and other editors, as well as collaborative projects. These are all a form of homesteading, are often competitive and individualistic. The agrios would be, in this regard, a space for programming, the space one wanders in while explor- ing the MOO. It would also be the space of other domus, the space of differentiation. The third regime, the foris, splits into spaces for asynchronous dis- cussion (email lists) which are literal forums; spaces for synchronous discussion outside the domus (meeting-places, virtual classrooms) and inter-MOO spaces, spaces of external networking. No matter how much a MOO grows, it never infringes on another MOO, of course, unless they are run on the same machine (i.e. hero.village.vir- ginia.edu 7777 and 8888). Space is locally expandable/expendable; within a MOO, it's another matter, associated with quota politics. In this sense, a MOO can be considered a _walled settlement,_ with relatively limited resources. The domus and agrios are internal to the settlement, and there are both foris that are completely enclosed, and those that behave as filters connecting other sites. In this sense, such texts as the MOO programming manual can be considered ideological texts carried _within_ the MOO settlements, and carrying the seeds of common cultures. Sects split off and become settlements in their own right/wryte; this is clear from the usual tracing of MUDs to lpmuds and MOOs, and from MOOs to MOOSE for example. These proto-cultures, dif- ferentiated from each other by addresses, and languages (dialects), com- pete for populations, which also carry ideological packets from one set- tlement to another. (Thus "wizards" are found on some MOOs, instead of "staff.") Demographics change through time; MOOs evolve, again through cross-ferti- lization as well. As with neolithic settlements, they develop tels and middens, accumulations of discarded objects and buildings, which may only have been partially completed in the first place. A MOO may become "thick" with such debris, leading to the abandonment or recycling of its database. The parallel with a settlement abandoning a region of depleted resources, is fairly clear. What would be very useful in this regard is a _virtual geography,_ that is primarily a _cultural geography,_ no longer so concerned about the ontolo- gy and epistemology of cyberspace. Such a geography would be concerned with both economic and cultural anthropology, and the relation of both to issues of cognitive psychology. It would draw on models from theories of language distribution, issues of performativity in protolanguage (proto- linguistics along the lines of Bickerton and Tran Duc Thao), grammatology, and theatrics. It would look at Net community from the viewpoint of the socius involved in exchange, introjection, and projection. It would con- sider textuality and wryting as the fundamental basis for these applica- tions, but would not insist on modes of composition and literary criticism for its primary theoretical approach. (Note: I am not using the term _vir- tual geography_ in the sense of Wark's Virtual Geography; instead, I am thinking of a postmodern geography of virtual spatialities, bringing into play Lefebvre, Davis, Soja, Harvey, etc. Wark's brilliant book is part of this, but not determinative.) Within virtual geography, cyberspatial settlement and settlement patterns can be examined; the future lies along the path sketched out here, and not, I believe, in more traditional psychological/sociological approaches often used in current theoretical work on Net community. __________________________________________________________________________ - In Brief I am writing into the discursive outlines of a vacuum, but never mind! This is a summary of the work of the past couple of weeks, which is relatively coherent, outlining an approach to Net culture. Or rather, this isn't a summary, but little more than a list of key works... Linguistic distribution theories create an armature for understanding movements among Net applications and the development of community. Preference isn't given to one or another theory; they're considered descriptive tools to be used as the occasion warrants. A second approach, based on the phenomenology of writing, is concerned with "first and last writing/s," contrasting _tabletspace_ with cyber- space. The former includes the space of single tablets, but refers in general to their distribution, development, and lines of flight across the proto- and early-historic Middle Eastern landscape. A third approach is concerned with what might be called "settlement theo- ry," based on Hodder's work. Others, Bourdieu, Lefebvre, and Schutz, for example, could be brought into play as well. I use settlement theory as a way of approaching the lived space, distributions of power, and problema- tic boundaries, of text-based Net community. A fourth approach, working from the third, is be concerned with the subal- tern and issues of colonialism. Power is foregrounded in relation to both Net and real life demographics; issues of access, for example, are impor- tant here. One can consider some of this in terms of states and vectors, and here Wark's Virtual Geography is useful, on one hand, and graph theory on the other. This begins to take one in a more ideological direction, however, and into somewhat "standard" postmodern theory. _________________________________________________________________________ DOWN AND OUT on the Internet, I lost my cybercafe consulting job today. They weren't listening to me anyway, and were running with the idea that events would bring people in; I've always opted for mundane service bene- fits. Attendance their way is sparse; for all I know, mine might have been sparser. I may still do some teaching for them, but as for consultancy and _rent_ that's pretty much gone; I'm back on savings again, watching my hour approach me on its hoary clock-hands. Sometimes I don't know what's a meta for. Find me a niche and I'll do reasonable work and will promise to make no money from it. I've been lucky to live in a small enough ecosystem that I can continue writing. Don't fear, though; at 53, my luck's running out and sooner or later there won't be copper in the coffer for coffee much less rent to rant. The texts will stop with a blister. Lick here. Alan, sucrose. [5/17/96] ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - The Symbolic (which is often difficult to identify) "Figure 4.14 presents a young lady with the profound emaciation of _anorexia nervosa._ This is a common disorder of young and emotionally immature females who stop eating in response to their abnormal perception of their body size and image. Amenorrhea often accompanies this disorder. This patient demonstrates many of the changes in fat distribution which can occur in any chronic or debilitating illness. The face dramatically shows the changes of wasting. Loss of tissue at the temples and cheeks make the zygomatic arches appear prominent - the 'gaunt look.' Hollowing of the supraclavicular fossae and axillae occurs early. The skin falls in loose, lax folds over the abdomen and upper arms. The normal fat stored in the buttocks and thighs is also lost and appar- ent." [...] (Physical Diagnosis, 17th edition, Burnside and McGlynn.) us/them [...] "Wheals can be raised in 25% of normal patients by stroking the skin with a blunt object like a tongue blade. This reaction is called _dermato- graphia_ (Fig. 6.23). _Darier's sign_ is a wheal raised when stroking the brown papule of an uncommon lesion, urticaria pigmentosa. Malignant histi- ocytes which diffusely infiltrate the skin in this disease release hista- mine to produce the wheal reaction. Wheals commonly indicate an allergic response to an environmental factor, which is often difficult to identify." (ibid.) them/us __________________________________________________________________________ Split Cyberspace can be broken, the topology rendered into useless interconnects which fail to do anything at all, electronics buzzing at burnt ends. Try IRC for any length of time, and watch the damaged geometries at work as netsplit renders everything obscene. Try to go past a router with sites emerging, and everything's clear when the router gives out and nothing operates. The perception of the infinite is the race around the oval track; there are still hurdles to send packets flying off course, into nowhere, and nowhere more than on IRC do packets fly. But try logging into a MOO when it's down because the machine's not returning calls, when it's down waiting for rebooting, when it's down because of a crash, a flood, a firestorm, because of anything, and your awareness funnels spiralling into the composite matrix and compression of a _hard drive_ and all that such entails, head somewhere just above the surface, crash-landing and taking the screams, loves, and joys, of thousands with it. Now no one called the telephone infinite, circuitry far more complex than that of cyberspace, which lures with the gape of a dressing gown gone awry, that peek into one or another slit, grabbing and festooning your head with the presence of the eternal mother of electrons as you lie drooling at its feet, wondering how you've been swept off your own. Wonder no longer, inhale, drink, count past each and every infinity - at your level they're all the same anyway. Go grrrl. There seems to be all the time in the world to lose. You've got my skeleton in your closet. ___________________________________________________________________________ Web Robert brings up an interesting point, Clara. Are they Web pages, home pages, Web sites, URLs? A Web page implies a singularity of surface, the cover letter or blank faced when the URL completes its initial duty. One can, of course, move up and down the hierarchy of directories, defeating everyone. At least up. Down requires foreknowledge, and where is that to be obtained? Home page indicates a base, as in @dig, something I find problematic in the weaving of cyberspace. No one, only applets, resides on your Web page, and so I much prefer _site,_ related perhaps to _sight_ and _citation,_ vista and perspectives, controlled to be sure, but present and accounted for. Do you account for me, Clara? Am I accountable? Now my situation becomes complex, since I am an adjunct on the Spoons site, at http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html. Nor am I listed under my name, but within the name of my text at best. The question, among other things, is that of the appropriateness of the preposition _on._ Do I reside _on_ a site, rising from the surface as a tel, the text a midden beneath? Am I a subset of the site, as I am a sub- directory? And am I _your_ subdirectory, Clara, bottom always to your top, our positions fixed in sublunary syzygy? If I am a link _on_ your page, am I _on_ your page? Perhaps _on_ refers, ghostlike, to the machine beneath the surface; I'm _on_ ~spoons because I'm on the machine that ~spoons is on, which is jefferson, at village. virginia.edu. Clara, are you anywhere to be found? Perhaps _on_ further refers to the machinic itself, that the Web itself resides there, hustled by electrons and rotary drives. Which might ex- plain at the moment why I'm _on_ the Net. Clara, is that sufficient? _________________________________________________________________________ If, by Rudyard Kipling If I could I always would go to the tree where my parents stood There in the night with candle light I'd cry Babylon for my daughter's plight Down where my son has almost gone, I'd find the one with the golden palm Back where the flame has blackened my name I'd play the game of silver fame With weeping and wails in rains and hails I'd set my ship with copper sails And travel the Net where I would would get my family and yet the storm would set Upon the stores with fire and hail the whores of Babylon scream their wars And I'd go no farther for sister or brother or bother a mother or kill the father Beneath the world where famished for food in angry mood the couple lewd Did pace this space to make a face my own with grace that died apace O die decease in peace the lease of land is found with crease Where Tigris flows Euphrates goes the couple lewd on raft sights crows And other birds or troubled herds that make these words fulfill with woes What I could say if I could splay my legs to play in eagle's way Where fire sires liars, pyres expire, wires tire, cryers mire And if I could I would be mood wood. _________________________________________________________________________ No space My hand freeze at keyboard. My mind burn. My skin fall to piece on the floor. I write short sentence. I am gone boy. No space for gone boy. An gone boy done. None. Am sentence to you. Am you to do. Gone boy am. Therefore think am. Won. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Re: Nose pace (fwd) Because gone boy am, gone boy is. Because is, think, because he write. Therefore he is therefore he write, no? Because Descartes before the horse gets run down if the chariot wheels into the geodesic. Could be the only thing gone boy understands, but then he is, which is more, I guess, than we can say, than can be said for most of us. At least we guess as much. Clara On Tue, 21 May 1996, Alan Sondheim wrote: > No space > > My hand freeze at keyboard. My mind burn. My skin fall to piece on the > floor. I write short sentence. I am gone boy. No space for gone boy. An > gone boy done. None. > > Am sentence to you. Am you to do. Gone boy am. Therefore think am. Won. > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html images: http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/ Ich war Phaedra. Ich stand an der Kuste und redete mit der Brandung BLABLA, im Rucken die Ruinen von Europe. Heiner Mutter ____________________________________________________________________________ - Ferocious Storms and Brownouts Hit the NorthEast Ferocious storms and electricity brownouts hit the Northeastern United States today, slowing up computers and making their access more difficult, authorities say. Unknown sources add that CuSeeMe fingerprints tend to lose details at the extremities. Awaiting Armageddon, adds a spokesperson, we are waiting for our febrile (sic) souls to be taken up by the arms of stronger generating systems, thereby allowing the Northeastern Power Grid no longer to deadlock (sic) but return to Matrix Login full-force ahead. "Thunderstorm activity is working into the region" the National Weather- forecasting methodology predicts, searching the charts, noting routers going down as "rolling shutdown of electricity" collapse the Connecticut region spreading/flooding systems elsewhere within the grid topography. I will distribute myself until shutdown occurs, an anonymous model is quoted as saying, as CPU speeds hit .75 of normal, and fps slows to .3 at 28.8. Full brownout = approach to event horizon = blackout; time stops, CPU .0 of Normal, Matrix Cauterization onslaught about to occur. Military steps in with full surge protectors; it's too late; Bridge to Texas is double down, condition Anarchic Red-Black. Big Board Stock Exchange Volume de- flates; current levels of Plateau are fissured, fall-through to the base- ment, Whitehouse Press Agent has reported "in so many words." With Matrix gone, nothing is left but the Local Letter. This Terminal is about to be cut off. Transmission out; storms full head ahead - no longer reporting, you can see them from the windows sucked out glass everywhere abjF87 _________________________________________________________________________ - Tel The telephone is buried in layers of social interaction and the reconfig- uration of the American cultural landscape. I've read parts of Avital Ronell's Telephone Book as well as Claude S. Fischer's America Calling, A Social History of the Telephone to 1940, which I think is a must for re- thinking the impact of CMC today. The similarities are striking; early on, for example, there were extensive debates about flat rate as opposed to per message rate, and the arguments were similar to those occurring today. As now, the public had to be edu- cated; this was published in Canada in 1896: "To Listen: Place the telephone fairly against the ear, with an upward motion, so that the lower extremity or lobe of the ear is gathered in, into the cavity of the telephone; in this position it will be found to fit snugly and comfortably - the lobe of the ear acting as a cushion and at the same time closing out all ulterior sounds, thus enabling the voice to be heard with clearness and precision." (From Fischer, op. cit.) (Note how all of this is of course _tacit,_ taken for granted today; CMC, particularly when it reaches reasonable stages of voice/VR, will appear _natural_ as well.) Early users were businesses, including pharmacies, doctors, etc. - and farmers; the phone spread with great rapidity across the Plain States, with some farmers even setting up small independents using barbed wire fences for conduit. As with the Internet, growth suddenly takes off after a couple of decades, and the public becomes socialized in relation to it. "A sociologist of technology, Ron Westrum, recently claimed that the 'com- ing of the telephone began the unraveling of social processes...[P]eople became willing to accept physical separation as along [sic] as contact could still be maintained by telephone. But telephone contact is not the same as being there, and it creates a different kind of society...'" (ibid.) Sociality, of course, is always up for grabs in terms of interpretation. There were and are fears that close-knit social structures will be dis- solved, that the maintaining of distant ties will in fact replace the intimacy of the physical neighborhood. On the other hand, there are and were hard-fought corporate drives to place the home at the center of the new technologies. During the very early struggles, there's a sense of _spirit_ and pioneer- ing in both. Early telephone operatives felt this; Thomas Watson himself, in "The Birth and Babyhood of the Telephone," concludes "To-day when I go into a central office or talk over a long distance wire or read the annual report of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, filled with fig- ures up in the millions and even billions, when I think of the growth of the business, and the marvelous improvements that have been made since the day I left it, thinking there was nothing more to do but routine, I must say that all that early work I have told you about seems to shrink into a very small measure, and, proud as I always shall be, that I had the oppor- tunity of doing some of that earliest work myself, my greatest pride is that I am one of the great army of telephone men, every one of whom has played his part in making the Bell Telephone service what it is to-day." From a 1913 address. There were huge numbers of telephone _women_ at the time; it was concluded that if automation had not replaced the hand-oper- ated switchboard, every female in the United States would have had to be employed as an operator. (This also brings up the role of party lines and operators, in relation to telephony and IRC channels and ops. Or think of the second great stringing of cable (fiber optic) occurring today, in relation to the wiring of Amer- ica during the early decades of this century.) There are more parallels than differences to be drawn; before the tele- phone, only the telegraph allowed for distance communication, and it never had the virtuality of voice and body that the former portended. The latter was always used largely for business, and at its endpoints imitated writ- ing, not speech; a telegram was printed out. Further, the telegram was heavily institutionalized; it required expertise to send and receive, and except for a very few exceptions, was never in the home. The telephone on the other hand began with business, but soon entered farmhouses and became an _extension_ of speech. All three sources described above are worthwhile reading. It would also be instructive of course to look at the early days of CB radio (which has degenerated into Usenet newsgroup spamming/flaming a great deal of the time), and ham/amateur radio and television. The last two have been in- creasingly computerized over the past couple of decades; one wonders how many ham operators have made a permanent move to Iphone or CuSeeMe... _________________________________________________________________________ Tel2 Two other points inspired by the Fischer book - 1. This is from a footnote (p. 366): "Experimental studies indicate that voice-only communications are experienced as more psychologically distant than visual ones (Rutter, _Communicating by Telephone_). Most respondents to Synge et al.'s Ontario survey ('Phoning and Writing') said that a tele- phone conversation was less personal than a face-to-face one. On the other hand, many women who responded to Moyal's Australian survey felt that telephone conversations with friends were franker and more intimate than in-person ones (Moyal, 'Feminine Culture,' 15)." 2. The other point comes from the emphasis in parts of the book on the relationship between telephony and women; although men dominated early on (business for the most part), the phone quickly became indispensable to women, for social, cultural, and professional reasons. Surveys indicated that women used and use the telephone far more often than men, that it is more integrated into their lives. A few quotes: "Returning to the period of this study, time-budgets filled out by suburban New Yorkers before World War II revealed that women reported spending an amount of time on the telephone fourfold that of men." "The higher the proportion of adult women in the household, the higher the chances were that it had a tele- phone." "Lana Rakow concluded from her interview in rural Wisconsin that '[b]oth women and men generally perceive the telephone to be part of wo- men's domain.'" Fischer reports that Ann Moyal states that the telephone was "'a key site for kin-keeping, caring, friendship, support, voluntary activity and contact with the wider world.'" Fischer ascribes the gender difference to three possible causes: "First, modern women have been more isolated from adult contact during the day than men, so they have grasped the telephone as a device for breaking that isolation. Second, married women's duties have usually included the role of social manager" [...] "Third, North American women are more comfortable on the telephone than are North American men because they are generally more sociable than men. Research shows that, discounting their fewer opportunities for social contact, women are more socially adept and intimate than men, for what- ever reasons - psychological constitution, social structure, childhood experiences, or cultural norms. The telephone therefore fits the typical female style of personal interaction more closely than it does the typical male style." I've said elsewhere that I believe that women will be the _majority_ on the Internet by, say, 2005; I hold to that. Beyond the hacking, the style of the Net is that of interconnectivity, intimacy, support, and community, and if there is any credence either to Fischer's account on a historical or a cultural-psychological basis, one can expect to see a movement from the male-dominated Net of, say, five years ago, to a female-dominated Net of the future. Both men and women will use the Net for business and pro- fessional reasons, of course, but darknet and VR community will continue to grow. The Net, like the telephone allows for a degree of autonomy; unlike the phone, it was reified and hacked right from the start. (Blackbox/blue- box phone hacking is, I believe, a result of the 60s.) The autonomy comes from the feeling of _place_ which has always been absent from telephony. One of the first questions people ask on Iphone is "where are you from?" and this isn't addressed nearly so often when greeting a stranger on IRC or a MOO. The IRC channel and MOO "home" are sufficient; one is, in part, _there._ So with this growth in autonomy, and the increased self-consciousness of teen-age and younger groups - I would say, in fact, class-consciousness - the phone and then CMC have created the potential for sub-teen cultures independent of parental guidance. This is more true for the latter than the former, since the phone is open, and an @snoop can occur by simply picking up an extension. The phone wasn't tied into teen-age identity, I believe, until the 40s at least; CMC is already tied to children's iden- tity _and sense of place._ The virtual is "natural" with CMC, non-existent on the telephone, phonesex notwithstanding... __________________________________________________________________________ - Tel3: Connection and Handset From a user's standpoint, there have been four stages in connecting to another subscriber on a telephone system. These stages are paralleled in CMC as well. I. Early connections were made _manually,_ by an operator. The user lif- ted the receiver, and talked directly to her; she made the connection on a local board. In this stage, voice-to-voice is critical, of course, and there are assumed bodies involved in the labor of connecting. Early computers, including home models, used manual switching, not key- board entering. Early email used bang-paths instead of automated routers; the _Internetworked_ topography was manifest. II. The rotary dial telephone replaced manual connections. In dialing, _longer numbers pass through shorter_ in a serial operation. To dial 9, for example, the user passes through 1-8. But the operator is no longer present, except for long-distance and specialized calls, in which her/his voice still provides a bodily link to the network. Dialing is a serial or linear operation, related to command-line connec- tivity (in spite of multiple screens and operations). Automated routing comes into its own, and the Net topography is taken for granted, invis- ible. III. Pushbutton dialing replaced the rotary dial in most urban centers. Each number is independently accessible; remaining serial, the interface appears parallel. Numbers don't pass through one another; each has an independent combination of tones. Extended area codes, including inter- national codes make automated long-distance possible. There are address- ing problems, and new area codes, at least within the United States, are constantly split off from the old. The semblance of parallel processing replaces seriality, as Windows and hypertext take over from command-lines. On the Internet, a crisis in addressing results in subnetting and consideration of new schemes to expand the IP address. Note that the rotary telephone appeared inert, closed-off; the pushbutton phone appears more open, available, with additional buttons of all sorts. These may actually lead to parallel processing, short-cuts to conference calls and the like. Telephone service expands. The operator, even for information and specialized calls, is replaced by automated voices and search strategies. The body in-forming technology has become the technological body; it is the technology that speaks, just as bots and agents are increasingly surfacing on the Net. _Capital_ begins to take over; while on-hold, there are advertisements, and at least in New York, Information gives you a number - and then tries to dial it for you, for an additional charge. Late capital occupies every available niche; information becomes equated with advertised service. On the Net, capital expands likewise; it is found, along with community (party-line) and sexuality (phone sex), in every sufficiently rich eco- logical niche. There is also an expansion towards spamming; "telemarketing," which vio- lates the home, is equated with email spamming, which violates the @home. The recently (in terms of civilized time) public/private dichotomy begins to break down again, in favor of power, capital, governance. Invasion is increasingly the order of the day. IV. Voice-recognition dialing is currently offered in technologically-ad- vanced locations; the user speaks, not to an operator, but to a virtual operator, giving it the name, which is then interpreted by the local ins- trument. At this point, the user is an extension of the apparatus; he or she may engage the machinic at all facets of the operation - from switch- ing to ordering a product. The blank face appears to return the body (voice-decoding) but in fact absorbs it, just as the hypertextuality and "friendliness" of the Web absorbs the user, and quite possibly hacks her or his statistics as well. V. Now Net and telephony merge, the overlap interpenetrated by virtuality and capital, the melange enabling the construct of a new subjectivity, described elsewhere,* involved in continuous acquisition, upgrading, and increasing information throughput. As with stages III-IV, the division between haves and have-nots widens; cellular telephones, for example, al- low cyborg Internet for those who can afford them. The interface will ultimately be either voice or mouse; it is as if the body twitches in the final stages of divisiveness, with one population grounded in real life community aided by the telephone and darknet, and the other population recursively withdrawing to superstructural plateaus of international cap- ital and culture. (This parallels, by the way, similar divisions between folk and "international" arts, between local exhibitions and "blockbuster" museum shows, etc.) ------------------------------| A second phenomenology of interest is the _transformation of the ear/ piece-mouth/piece of the instrument itself. These moved from independent status in earlier telephones, to a _virtual inverted aural head,_ ear against mouth, mouth against ear, what was originally termed the "French" handset. The handset moved from the _cradle_ of the base to the cradle of the hand and head; speaking became intimate, whispering, as microphony developed as well. Consider this _telephonic introjection_ as a stage on the way to VR telephony through stage V above. Current implementations of Iphone require the use of keyboard, mouse, speakers, and microphone which may or may not be hand-held; the tasks, in other words, are _distributed._ It is only a matter of time before one speaks, intimately, through and against the simulated lips of the other, at a flat and very desirable rate. ---------------------| *This builds on material presented in my Internet Text, available at URL: http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html. __________________________________________________________________________ - Agni Purana, from Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-Five: [Sometimes one comes across a text that _astounds,_ as this one has. The full force of it is like quick-start MUD commands, raised to the pitch of the unconscious. I am quoting most of the chapter below. The Agni Purana, one of 18, was written probably around 750 AD, and is a compilation like the others of all sorts of things - formulas, diagrams, instructions, ex- hortations, myths. The translation is by N. Gangadharan. In it, all Sans- krit words are in italics; here, to conserve the flow, they're presented without the ascii underlining. Irregular punctuation as in the original.] The lord said: 1. I shall describe the garland of words of the formula that gives vic- tory in the battle. Om hrim (Goddess) Camunda (having a terrific form) ! One who dwells in the cremation ground ! One who holds in hand the club with a skull at the top ! One who is riding the terrific dead body (or the body in the form of universe at the time of deluge) ! One who is surround- ed by the great attendant gods ! Goddess with a great mouth ! Possessing several hands ! (One who holds) the bell, the little drum and the small bell ! One who has a terrific laughter ! Kili kili om hum phat. One who makes (the world) dark by her fierce teeth ! One who makes many kinds of sounds ! One who is clad in the hide of an elephant ! One who is besmeared with flesh ! One whose terrific tongue is licking ! The great demoness ! One having the terrible teeth ! One who has the frightening roar of laugh- ter ! One who has the splendour of shining lightning ! Move. Move. Om. One who has the eyes like the Cakora (bird) ! Cili. Cili. Om. One who has a lustrous tongue ! Om bhim. One who has a frown on the face ! One who frightens by uttering the syllable hum ! One who wears the moon on the crown on her matted hair surrounded by the garland of skulls ! One who has the terrific laughter ! Kili kili om hrum. One who makes (the world) dark by her frightening teeth ! One who destroys all obstacles ! (Youm) accom- paning this act. Om. Do it quickly. Om phat om subjugate with (your) mace. Enter. Om Dance. Dance. Shake. Om. Make (the enemies) move. Om. One who is fond of blood, flesh and intoxicating drink ! Kill. Om trample. Om cut. Om kill. Om chase. Om make the strong body (of the enemy) fall down. Om. Enter into the beings of three worlds whether wicked or not wicked, taken possession or not. Om dance. Om extol. One who has sunken eyes ! One hav- ing erect hairs ! One having the face of an owl ! One who holds skull (in the hand) ! Om. One who wears a garland of skulls. Burn. Om. Cook. Cook. Om. Seize. Om. Enter into the middle of the circle (of the enemies). Om. Why do you delay? Overwhelm (them) with the strength of (lords) Brahma, Visnu and Rudra and the strength of sages. Om Kili kili om khili khili vili vili om. One who displays an ugly form ! One whose body is enveloped by a black serpent! One who subjugates all palents ! One who has a long lip ! One whose nose rests on the frowning eyes ! One who is having a frightful face ! One having tawny matted hair ! Brahmi ! Break. One whose mouth emits flames ! Yell. Om. Make (the enemies) fall down. Om. One hav- ing red eyes ! Roll the earth. Make (them) fall. Om. Catch hold of the head. Close the eye. Om. Catch hold of the arms and feet. Split open with the trident. Om kill with the mace. Om strike with the stick. Om. cut with the disc. Om. Break with the spear. Stake with the teeth. Om. Pierce with the middle finger. Om. Seize with the goad. Om. Release. Release the pos- sessive spirits like the Dakini and Skanda and also the fevers occurring every day, second day, third day and fourth day (and the diseases of) the head and eyes. Om. Cook. Om. Destroy. Om. Make them fall to the ground. Om. Brahmani ! Come. Om Vasnavi ! Come. Om Varahi ! Come. Om Aindri ! Come. Om. Camunda. Come. Om Revati ! Come. Om Akasarevati. Come. Om. One who moves like the snow. Come. Om. One who has slain (the demon) Ruru ! One who has annihilated the demons ! One who goes in heaven ! Bind. Bind with the noose. Pierce with the goad. Stand for the moment. Om enter the circle (of enemies) ! Om. Seize. Bind the face. Om. Bind the eyes, arms and feet. Bind the malefic planets. Om. Bind directions. Charm the cardi- nal points, the space below and all places. Om. Subjugate all with ashes or water or earth or mustard. Om. Make them fall. Om. (goddess) Camunda ! Kili kili am vicce hum phat oblations. This is known as the garland of words that accomplishes all acts. 2. One gets victory in battle always by oblations, repetitions, and read- ing of this formula. [...] The (above) oblations should be done with three sweet things (honey sugar and clarified butter). This incantation should not be disclosed to everyone. __________________________________________________________________________ The Damnation of Memory "In the ruin which is in the valley, pass under the steps leading to the East forty cubits (...); (there is) a chest of money and its total: the weight of seventeen talents." I hate memory, despise it, not the memory of words and language, already encrusted into scars arranged in the orders of meaning whored from anni- hilation, but the memory of events, tiny narratives, the glance of a woman in a Paris train 1963, blond Platt Townend arguing with me on the corner of Charles and Dorrance, 1959. The sun shines identically upon her blond hair caught in Brooklyn 1996, of a color or similar girl, of a girl of similar color. Someone's hair may have fallen out against those black-sloped cars of my childhood and someone's hair may have turned white - and someone's got caught in the grave - and someone's got caught in the fire. "In the sepulchral monument, in the third course: one hundred gold ingots. In the great cistern of the courtyard of the peristyle, in a hollow in the floor covered with sediment, in front of the upper opening: nine hundred talents." The memories form scales or claws; the mind fast-forwards into projection, the continuous addition of constructed details grabbed from the debris of everyday life. There's no end to it. The body and its current end up sink- ing into itself, water into water, tepid, unperturbed. The savage violence of memory lies in the fact that everything is _written,_ that nothing ap- pears to be. What is taken as natural is tumor injected from the symbolic, short-hand rewrites of moments erased, untethered from the real. "In the hill of Kochlit, tithe-vessels of the lord of the peoples and sac- red vestments; total of the tithes and of the treasure: a seventh of the second tithe made unclean(?). Its opening lies on the edges of the North- ern channel, six cubits n the direction of the cave of the ablutions. In the plastered cistern of Manos, going down to the left, at a height of three cubits from the bottom: silver, forty talents." Beyond memory is the disgust of the everyday, _flattened real_ flooding out trace of love, sex, stability. Cotton-mouthed, one withdraws back to language, just the swirl of letters going nowhere. If one is mean, one may be meanest towards oneself. I remember placing things and never finding them again. Beyond memory though is withdrawn memory, surfaced by inscription. Swirls of letters choke as letters rise to the surface in the guise of those very things which never possessed surface _as such._ We are everyone's dream and death can't come too soon, a gap before the swirl fills in the blanks elsewhere - before the lights go out, letters dim, one realizes that wri- ting has _always been elsewhere,_ source of all disgust. "In the filled tank which is underneath the steps: forty-two talents. In the cavity of the carpeted house of Yeshu(?), in the third platform sixty- five gold ingots. In the cellar which is in Matia's courtyard there is wood and in the middle of it a cistern; in it there are containers with seventy talents of silver. In the cistern which is in front of the Eastern Gate, at a distance of fifteen cubits, there are vessels. And in the gut- ter which is in it: ten talents." The other must reinscribe the one; the one must cauterize the one. It is always the case that _writing_ does not survive _without_ the death of the author, real, not theoretical. But this is _not about_ writing, only the _damnation of memory,_ the condemnation occasioned by the glint of sun- light on golden hair 1959, those lines of Paul Celan's: "ein Mann wohnt im Haus dein goldenes Haar Margarete" and all that they entail. -----------------------------------------| [Quotes from The Copper Scroll, Column I and part of II, in The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated, Florentino Garcia Martinez.] __________________________________________________________________________ - Hell's Bells! Why do almost all organized religions have sacred places? Why do they have to be embellished? Why are there repetitive rituals with well-defined sequences? Why do gods need propitiations? Why do we have to pay any attention to them? Why would anyone want to sacrifice anything? Why does anyone have to believe anything? Why would anyone care if anyone else believed the same thing? Anyone can become a GOD on a talker! What good could prayer possibly do? There are no gods in cyberspace! The rituals are login! subscribe! @delete! Nothing has to be sacrificed here, except: no chain letters! We're all working for free beneath the sign of flat rate access! Prayer won't help anyone outside of a ghost on a MUD! You don't have to pay the slightest attention to what anyone thinks! You just have to show a bit of netiquette at the most! If you're lonely, don't pray! Read Sara Paretsky's detective novels! If you need a mate, either look for one or give up! Prayer won't help you! There are no personals in the sky! Say you're diseased! Use medicine, non-western or western! You can pray if it makes you feel better and if you feel better you might even get better! (Sooner or later you won't!) But that doesn't mean there's anything out there! Nothing is listening! Nothing would pay any attention! It's all in your head! It's all in your head! Say you're deceased! It doesn't matter what you use! You can't possibly pray and you won't get better! You don't even go to the Web! (You might still have your URL!) When you're deleted or @toaded @recycled you're out of here! Bye bye! Heh! It's not even in your head because you're dead and don't even have a head! You don't even have a body here but you're not in hell! See! I just pricked you! You didn't feel a thing! There's no fate either! What happens just happens! Forget it! Stop with the cycles! You're reading this because you've stumbled somewhere and this happened! Somewhere back there! (Don't turn around!) Turn around! I told you so! Now turn inside out! Hell's Bells! _________________________________________________________________________ - Listdeath I wonder if one can talk about (email) listdeath, or rather list steady- state; after a certain amount of time, repetition sets in. On Cybermind, themes and even forwards are repeated, from anecdotes to the "Good Time Virus." Discussions about governance, virtuality, sexuality, also tend to repeat, over varying lengths of time. The lists wax and wane with the seasons, based by and large on university schedules. On FOP-L, Fiction-of-Philosophy, there is more of a continuous incremen- tation, since the themes are wider, based on proffered literary-philoso- phical texts. One knows less what to expect; in general, this is simply the truism that the more constrained the subject-matter, the less the information per post in terms of entropy. Of course Cybermind constantly breaks out of its own mold, wanders. If there were, say, a trigonometry list, using Gustave Stent's notions from the 70s, one would find it _necessarily_ repetitious, to the extent that trigonometry is a "spent" domain. On the other hand, a list such as VON (Voice On the Net) continually changes in relation to advances and upgrades in software. New list participants rarely know the list archives; things repeat, no ma- tter how long one lurks. And the thought of going through the archives of a large volume list like Cybermind - is frightening. No one should ever have to spend that much time... Finally, participants and administrators themselves tire. I'm worn out from administration, and the relatively close scrutiny that entails. So beyond the threads we've had on the normal "history" of a list (even here there are forwards that have come around several times), there are questions about list cycles, stasis, stagnation, etc. A topic of interest might be - how can a list continue to develop in depth? Can it, in fact, if the ostensible subject is primarily philosophical? For that matter, can philosophy continue development, or is there a conceivable end to specula- tive thought? _________________________________________________________________________ Listdeath2 First, I want to make it clear that listdeath, if it ever occurs, is a limit and limit only, just as propositional logic is a limit, a circum- scribed horizon. So that I am not suggesting that any list I am on is dying, or even that I know what that means exactly, but only that lists are dealing with closed or open bodies of knowledge, and that the clo- sure depends on both the traditional boundary of "the/a" body, and the willingness of the participants to adhere to the list's ostensible con- tent. Now it is worthwhile to examine CMC in terms of change, lag, stagnation; for example, software upgrading represents continuous change and plateau alteration (I've written on plateaus before), while lag can refer either to the response to upgrading (in terms of user downloading/experience) or theorizing in relation to software changes. Things, in other words, take time to sink in. Since software changes occur _within_ CMC, we can say that they are re- sponsive to the medium; usage and theorizing occur without or about, and the responsivity is slower. This in fact leads again to the question of progress or development in philosophy; what surprises me, even now, is its internal coherence and relatively slow rate of change. What would constitute, in fact, philosophical progress? What questions have been addressed and answered within the philosophical _enterprise_ itself, more or less to everyone's satisfaction? I separate this from the issue of de- velopment, within which _every_ philosophical text may be considered an adjunct to every other. Finally, what could _philosophical_ theorizing contribute, in relation to CMC? And what would be meant by _philosophical_ in this sense - a largely phenomenological approach? One concerned with ontological/epistemological issues? Both and more? Virtuality seems a critical point of articulation, as does grammatology - both because of text and -jectivity. I have tried in the earlier portions of the text to deal with proper names vis-a-vis Kripke. I think somewhere the foundations of mathematics play a role, but that has only surfaced piecemeal, in thinking about supplement for exam- ple. And now I want to emphasize, not only the tentativeness of this discourse, but also its sophomoric quality; bear with me. __________________________________________________________________________ The Poem of Weeping Ghosts I wept because I had no shoes until I dreamed a man who had a tree. A rolling tree groped its way past stubbed branches yearning in the night. A stitch in branches sutured the soul to its repeated self. Give them their tired wounds yearning for repetition saving nine. I can be led to runes; I can scoop them up. Runes heal all wounds of selves repeated branches scraping sky. Skies repeat skies as definitions of neurosis you can't tell to stop. The world's neurotic with you; the world's psychotic alone. Beneath the sun, the silent world is all there is. Within the silent world a tree falls silently weeping. Time makes the hearts of trees fall groping. The weeds are always groping on the other side of the fence. There, silently weeping, I sit shoeless on the wrong side of the tracks. There, by Albion, silently being born. __________________________________________________________________________ Quickcam Quickcam literally cuts through the skin of the screen; the window is always interior, not surface manipulation. Unlike Net applications, even CuSeeMe, it stares back at you; this is the control it exerts, appearing real through its granularity within which one watches the labor of video. I expose myself in front of it; it tears me apart, monitors. It has run through a videocamera eyepiece; the zoom seems artificial. It's not only the spherical shape that is reminiscent of the _eye_ - it's also the un- blinking nature of the device, the anal sun set back deep within the plastic, the very act of _watching._ With the sphere, video has trans- formed from the phallic symbolic of the tube-camera/zoomlens/camcorder, prying, opening, and appropriating the world - to the televisual imagin- ary, the _lid_ removed, silent and close-knit constant viewing of the self. At _this_ stage, and only here, the psychoanalytical aspects of CuSeeMe manifest themselves as imaginary and inchoate, the _substance_ of the selving beginning to announce the proper name bannered above it; writing surrounds, unfolds from the screened image of the other, tether- ing it before it's devoured, introjected. The name holds it back. No such occurrence, however, with the eye _here,_ _now,_ watching, out of its/my corner/cornea. In short, it watches, _but it does not monitor_ in its presence which is that of the substance of the imaginary, diffusion across what passes for the emergence of entities. And I do not refer to _sharp- ness_ or image size, so much as the _incision_ it makes into the terminal, roughly positioning itself, an _incision_ that fissures, not inscribes. That is the nature of _this_ device against itself, refusing division, multiplicity; what it sees, catches _on._ ___________________________________________________________________________ Getting Lively There are words that won't do for deconstruction; "Lively" is one of them! I'd love to be a lively deconstructionist! And I want these texts to sing! I wouldn't mind as well if you found them "cute"! I don't want to scare you away! I work hard at "lovely" language. "That's lovely, dear." (I want to know as well: Why don't my books glow in the dark? I can read this screen anywhere!) But I want to be Lively as puppies, as angry as punk, murderously cooled and confused as generation-x, splayed wide open in s/m masochism of your choice, wrapping you in rope in b/d domination of your choice! As long as we're Lively, everything's all right! I want the words to have "punch" to them! But I don't want to hurt any- body! "Punch" makes things Lively, that's for sure! I like the apostrophe as well. "Now, I've been so Lively in real life for a while, that I just had to let the text go for a while. I want everything here to have _energy,_" Tiffany said. She looked around the barren screen, letters of peach against laven- der. "But anger," Travis replied slowly. His dark eyes shot lightning ac- ross the ASCII sky. "The world is damned, doomed." He turned slowly, gaz- ing at the approaching thunderheads. They seemed to have "punch" in them. -----------------------------------| Gravy turned over in his pad; it was too cool. Hey, he said turning to Kitty, I'm far out. You sure are, Kitty replied. -----------------------------------| You kids! Why my five year old is more comfortable on the computer than I am! This is the first generation that BLABLA! I will buy a DOZEN STOCKS for him! Timothy turned over in his MUD; it was too kewl. Yo, he said turning to Myron, it's awesome. It sure is, Myron replied. -----------------------------------| I'm gonna kill everybody. I'm gonna start with me. I'm gonna kill everybody. I'm gonna start with me. You're not going to get very far, Tiffany replied. -----------------------------------| Travis didn't get very far. Lively, had verve, lost zest, had punch, anger _and_ theory too! Seemed to MUDdy all that about the killing. Nothing with sex; Gravy thought about nothing else, but Timothy thought about nothing. Verve! That was it. His style stood stock still sucking sloppily since si- mple sentences scooted sideways, simmering-soup similes. It was time [Mon May 27 20:01:00 EDT 1996] for a change. ---------------------------------------------| Travis went out for a smoke. _He'd get Lively._ There were clues. ---------------------------------------------| It was almost over, Lively thought. She'd been running all her life. It was almost over, time [Mon May 27 20:03:48 EDT 1996] to move on... LIVELY: IF YOU READ THIS: _________________________________________________________________________ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\////////////////////////////////// \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\//////////////////////////////// \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/////////////////////////////// \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\////////////////////////////// \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\yes, I was going to complete this, as if there were an hourglass or double arrowhead, waiting for late-night mail to arrive; on second thought however it seems possible that the scheme would accomplish nothing, neither ascii-art nor textual guise; the original plan being that perhaps the change of direction above might not occur exactly in the middle of the configuration, and then what would be the consequence? I had better stop, I thought, in order precisely _not_ to complete the occurrence. life ends exactly in this manner, without participation. ___________________________________________________________________________ Depression (rhetoric of the surface) Does a text on depression belong here, in the midst of discussions on CMC? Depression characterizes a number of people I know on email, an unwelcome friend that makes itself welcome, replete with stasis and chemistry. It appears on the horizon before making itself at home in the body; it is an _it_ which can be held as a weapon or object, _my_ depression, for exam- ple. Today I have slept for hours, under stress; at night I don't sleep at all. Circadian rhythms are thrown off; my own work appears through night- mares, asides, peripheral sounds heard in what might be always muffled silence. (This is where memory comes in; the _symbolic_ circulates around a central core filled with memories and desires; things erupt from it. Nothing is ever completed there; like the chora, it's accessible only retroactively, uselessly. The circulation is a form of routing, the core a black hole where messages disappear...) I believe depression has its moments of articulation as speech, as well, moments in which the symbolic is embraced. These occur when the world appears, fissured, divided, dulled, but speech-permissive. These occur, and email begins its restless wandering from interior to exterior; in fact for numbers of people, email may be the intensive _speech of_ depression, a mode of communicating which, while not breaking its hold, opens up a discourse of healing which may resonate with real life as well. What are the _modes_ of this speech? Stripped down, intense, self-deprecating, using smileys because the words betray their origin, perhaps. Honest, as in honesty among strangers. Sed- uctive, as in calling towards the other, infiltrating the self, elusive, allusive. At times direct description of pain, but more often in circum- locution. (Stripped down, as in the _articulation_ of language. Intensity and self-deprecation, coupled as strategy; honest, as in the problematic of authenticity.) In other words, depression speaks around itself, not necessarily as avoid- ance, but as a _means towards_ speech, which characterizes certain email styles. The styles become indexical, but not symptomatic; the speech yearns for interpenetration. Some of this is the straightforward speaking of the lonely, but some of it is _imbued speech,_ for which one may be the grateful and privileged witness. For depression, paradoxically, in its _foreclosing,_ opens an interiority which may or may not reflect whatever one would take for "true" subjectivity. Email gains its power through this site and citation, and _we_ are empowered through our ability to speak, to be silent, to be heard. _________________________________________________________________________