-


Mandeville's Travels, Narrative



"From this land men shal go unto the land of Bactry, where are many wicked
men & fell, in that land are trees that beare wol, as it were shepe, of
which they make cloth. In this land are ypotains that dwel sometime on
land, sometime on water, and are halfe a man and halfe a horse, and they
eate not but men, when they may get them. In this land are many gryffons,
more than in other places, and some say they haue the body before as an
Egle, and behinde as a Lyon, and it is trouth, for they be made so; butthe
Griffen hath a body greater than viii Lyons and stall worthier than a 
hundred Egles. For certainly he wyl beare to his nest flying, a horse and 
a man upon his back, or two Oxen yoked togither as they go at plowgh, for 
he hathe longe nayles on hys fete, as great as it were hornes of Oxen, 
and of those they make cups there to drynke of, and of his rybes they 
make bowes to shoote with." (Mandeville, Pynson's MS.)

(On and off I read Mandeville's Travels written in the 14th century and 
full of strange occurrences and quasi-human societies. I read it be- 
cause I'm fascinated with this form of mythos, which reminds me of minds 
straining at the bit, literally, wryting/performing throughout language 
in a way that makes the Other a matter of discomfort. And I'm working 
this reading into either a paper or a talk or a series of anecdotes or a 
series of digressions running like liquid in the midst of slides at a 
conference or sitting among friends and so the following tends to occur.)

On reading Mandeville - information about the most _foreign_ of lands,
equivalent to some extent to the most distant from England, comes in the
form of _texts._ What happens then? The texts are embellished of course
according to local usage. They're also embellished according to lateral
processes, homonyms, etc. playing a role. They're read in a number of way
which include "face-value," a matching of ostensible content with the
resulting construct, and what I call _hysteric embodiment,_ drawing on the
notion of hysteria as a displacement of body onto symptom. In the case of
Ethiopia, this literally happens; elephantiasis transforms into men with
huge feet who use them, lying on their back, to shield their bodies from
the sun. More than that, however, the grotesquerie is always characterized
by a series of additive (grafting), subtractive (elimination), multipli-
cative (expansive), or divisive (diminution) operations among already pre-
determined elements. The hysteria occurs through the production of these
elements, equivalent to coupling operations, contiguities. The embodiment
occurs in the return of the resulting images, through introjection, into a
re-evaluation of bodies, a rebodying, including that of the subject hir-
self. 

"There is another yle where there is great plenty of people & they eate 
neuer flesh of hares, not of hens, nor geese, yet is there many of them 
but they eate of all other beastes, and they drink mylk, in this countrey 
they wed theyr owne daughers and other of theyr kyn as them liketh, and 
if there be x or xii men in one house, eche one of theyr wyves shal be 
common to other, & at night shal one haue one of Ye [thorn/e=the] wives 
and another night another. And if she haue any chyulde, she may give it 
to whome she would so that no man knowe if it be his or not. In this land 
& many other places of Inde, are many cocodrilles, that is a maner of a 
long serpent, and on nights they dwell on water, and on dayes they dwell 
on land and rocks, and they eat not in winter." (op cit.)

What happens in net sexuality is similar; again, bodies are driven by 
texts, woven through texts. The weaving appears imminent, favoring for 
example unixtalk, MOOs, talkers, or IRC over email or other message 
bases. The texts are read, not only for their ostensible content, which 
constructs a narrative among two participants, but also for _contusions_ 
beneath the surface, symptoms which expand into introjected bodies.

The narrative moves through fantasies, pushing the limits of the text 
which disengage from everyday life, the practices of everyday life. 
Language becomes the site for the uncanny. The body floods into control 
sites, partial determinations. The control sites hold it at the origin.

Net sex, third sex, overwhelms; it fulfills, sears, fantasm, constructs 
narrative only as a form of continuous deferment. The gift of reciproc- 
ity is that of the return of sex, the dialog of narrative, turning back 
upon the other. Net sex wrytes the body which only exists in this form; 
every masturbation is net sex, every masturbation flickers bodies across 
neural networking; bodies too are a form of emergence, particulated, 
splayed, constructs of reassemblage. In net sex, mouths cover me, penises 
fill my holes, my fingers and penis fills vaginas, anuses, mouths, my 
skin spreads web-like into membranes covering breasts, tongues, eyes, my 
body divides and reoccurs at the site of the other. What can an origin 
possibly be that is rendered miserably and only within the linguistic 
register? Nothing else occurs but the occurrence; this is learned through 
text, net sex, Mandeville.

"And there is nother yle where the people are all fethers, but the face 
and the palmes of theyr handes, these men go as well about the sea as on 
the lande, and they eate fleshe & fish all raw, in this yle is a great 
river that is two mile brode & a halfe that men call Renemar." (op. cit.)

(I read into and through representative texts from the past, Lucan, Gil-
gamesh, Mallarme, Genesis, Wittgenstein, anonymous diaries, analyses of
nineteenth-century psychology. They form sites; Russian chronicles oddly
reverberate with Mandeville for example. There are wave-forms which spread
chaotically, one to another; the resulting matrix is oddly maternal, in
the form of a covering-topology of network holding everything together,
the Internet included. Text after text indicate the loss with the burning
of the Library at Alexandria; this was the turning-point in the world,
towards barbarism and nuclear war. Real life seeps into the Internet; 
texts are absorbed, applets churn through the past, rendering it. The past
is becoming that-which-is-rendered; the rest is the debris of history. 
Could it be that the world is _awaiting_? Postmodern geography is precise-
ly the account of this seepage, and net sex is also a re-sighting of the 
body, the body as testimony - and testimony as presencing itself. I have 
at one point defined an entity as the k-ply union of its set of descrip- 
tive intersections, the same holding for occurrence. In other words, if 
there are X descriptions with overlapping attributes Y in the form of 
family of usages (i.e. all Y need not be in all X), then a "poll" among 
Y, to the depth of k (i.e. every Y retained appears at least k times in 
X) results in a set of attributes and the union of that set (i.e. their 
concatenation) becomes the defining characteristic or generator of an 
occurrence O(X,Y,k); I hold that the same also is the case for entities 
themselves as emergences. On the Net in any case, _all that exists_ are 
emergences, introjections and projections, since minds are interrelated 
only insofar as they interconnect through and among texts, hysteric 
embodiments, and so forth.)

"On the other side of Calde toward the south side is Ethyope a great 
lande. In this lande on the south are the folke wright blacke. In that 
side is a well that in the daye the water is so colde that no man man 
drinke thereof, & in the nighte it is so hote that no man may suffer to 
put his hand in it. In this lande the rivers and all the waters are 
troublous and some dele salte for the great hete, and men of Yt lande are 
lightly drunken & haue little appetite to meate, and they haue commonly 
the flixe of body and they live not long. In Ethiope are such men that 
have but one foote, and they go so fast Yt is a great marvaill, & that is 
a large fote that the shadow thereof covereth Ye body from son or ryane 
when they lye uppon their backes, and wehen their children be first borne 
they loke like russet, and when they waxe olde then they be all blacke. 
In Ethiope is the lande of Saba, of the which one of the three Kings that 
sought our Lorde at Bethleem was King." (op. cit.)

(Mandeville relates of course to rumor, and rumor is concurrent with
desire, not necessarily desire-for, but in fact libidinal flux. Rumor
spells out the making and remaking of the textual body; it is always
incomplete, always satisfactory. Rumor is _delicious._ The farther the
land reported on, the less contact with Europeans, the greater the rumor. 
Rumor is always gestural, _shades_ of meaning at work, the partly-naked
body, the shadow in the window, the report of strange monsters in the
desert or beneath the sea. Again, there is an algebra of rumor, but it is
a fuzzy algebra, necessarily incomplete, full of interpenetrations,
glances, and the writing of silhouettes...)

Where does narrative fit in? Silhouettes are performative; they designate
body, wryte the body into space, a fitted space or affine space. Even
"normative" sexuality implies narrative, beginning/middle/end, the last
coinciding in general with an orgasmic domain. (Narrative is built into
dimension, space, as well; measure polytopes (i.e. line segment, square,
cube, hypercube, etc.) always have 3^n elements, where n = dimension; 
this is part of the construct, beginning with a line segment as composed
of point/line/point, beginning/middle/end, sliding the segment sideways,
and so forth. Likewise narrative is built into space-time...) Emergence
always necessitates surface construct, coagulation; wryting is the coagu-
lation of the real body, body of the real, within the text. What is per-
formative continues the process on the surface, metonymically; lateral
movement seduces additional elements, and the whole continues indefini-
tely, until the body and the body of the other wrytten large, brings them
to an end. The resulting detumescence partakes of defuge, exhaustive
decathecting; its cathecting that drives the inscriptive processes in the
first place. To have net sex is to have a stake in net sex. The stake is
lost, the text returns to text, brought first and often by the inchoate
spelling out of orgasm, the attempt finally to break through the screen by
the _substance_ of the text, orgasm represented by a series of letters or
letter alternations, depending on the final position of the hand. Physics
and the physical are suddenly manifest. The return to text is to that of
normative reading;  the screen is immediately full of _information._ Dur-
ing net sex, information is the least of the communicative process, which
is, like any other translation, deeply irreducible. 

(Note again what is occurring here: _Beginning_ with text, which con-
stitutes the site of the symbolic, if not its horizon, one moves into the
uncanny/imaginary - there's a reversal at work. It is not an emergence
into language, but an emergence out of it, or rather perhaps a submerg-
ence out of it. This is a form of peristalysis among entities which are
only representations. Elsewhere, I've defined representations as coupled 
_graphs_ in which the _states_ of one graph are assigned to the _nodes_ 
of another. Thus representation remains ontologically within similar do- 
mains, emerging from structures such as arrows (vectors) and vertices. 
But I would argue as well, given the above, that entities need not even 
emerge during net sex, that what is important is in fact what I call the 
_ascii unconscious,_ which need not define image or imaginary as the 
sexual encounter continues.)

(The ascii unconscious, textual interpolations into deep psychological
processes, is similar to the Lacanian notion of the structuring of the
unconscious. But it does not insist on this structuring, only that a
linguistic rhythm or reverberation is established that, like hypnosis
(which can also utilize aural/linguistic cues), can act as a catalyst
_towards_ other states - the reason that I would call net sex _third sex,_
and not a variation on either masturbation or partnered sexuality. And
could one go further or backward, and speak of an unconscious in operation
in Mandeville, for example, an unconscious that produces fantasms at the
borders of Europe (shades of Heiner Muller!)/borders of the text (towards
the end of the text)? Reception theory merges with psychoanalysis here,
reading takes on the instantiation of the therapeutic, as it does in
Lacan. In any case, there is considerable power in words, in their deli- 
very (in net sex, according to the wryting of the other, not just the 
reading of the subject - a most important point), in their proper place- 
ment as in late-night bar or party conversations. For this reason, I 
don't disparage text-driven applications as poor virtual reality - they 
are _something else_ entirely, play into something else, perhaps the vir- 
tual reality of the _mind_ or _minds_ themselves.

And for this reason, I insist on the emergent, i.e. non-difference, quala
of language - not that signifiers are constituted by difference, then, but
that they are emergent, as is difference. And only by attempting to com-
prehend the phenomenology of this emergence (details of which are worked
out in cognitive psychology, etc.), can we understand, not only language
and narrative, but the fantasms that trail along with both, the tethering
of language to narrative, to grotesqueries of all sorts, to the bound and
tied body for example (alt.sex.bondage one of the most popular usenet
groups), to the endless stories that play themselves out on the Net, and
so forth. Boundaries are not only present to be broken and fragmented, but
they're also often top-down (the form of the book, defense of the nation),
and transgression is not only a crossing-out, but is also the debris of
myth, rumor, and the resulting desire, anxiety, and tension.  There are
mixes down below and mixes up above; there are fissures down below and in-
scriptions up above. And this constitutes the spew of narrative that cons-
tructs net sex (where it's evident even in the foreclosing of sentence
structure and the description of cumming), as well as sexuality in gener-
al, or such seemingly unrelated phenomena as pauses in conversation,
scripting in everyday life or artificial intelligence, or, especially, 
what emerges in subsumption robotic architecture.)

"There are many other countreys where I haue not yet ben, nor sene & 
therefore I can not speke properly of them. Also in countreys where I 
haue bene are many marvailes that I speke not of, for it were to long a 
tale and therefore hold you payd at this time Yt I have sayd, for I will 
say no more of mervailes that are there, so that other men that go 
thither may fynde ynough for to say that I haue not tolde." (op.cit.)


__________________________________________________________________________


Frontier Model*


The Internet has often been compared to the telephone, or television, etc.
- all these growing pains. But unlike other media, the Net is an accumula-
tion of applications, as well as an increased number of clients, called up
or downloaded from the World Wide Web. What began as relatively sparse
Unix command-line interfaces has evolved into combinations of texts, gra-
phics, sound and motion; even the interfaces have become more complicated
with clients such as Tiny Fugue and the huge number of commands available
on MOOs, not to mention the various programming languages, ranging from
Iptscrae through Java, under development. While all of this could pass for
either CMC or telecommunications, it seems other models might be more app-
ropriate. 

Thinking about this came as a result of rereading parts of Carla Sinc-
lair's Net Chick, A Smart-Girl Guide to the Wired World, and realizing
that character-types such as hacker, cracker, net chick, surfer, MUDDer,
etc. were simply not found in, say, the early days of television. Once
past the experimental stage, television rapidly settled into a series of
protocols and networks, and the audience was treated as both mass and pas-
sive. The same was true for radio and film, although careful demographic 
surveys were produced for programming in all media. The telephone, as far 
as I know, never developed categories, although it could be said that "x 
is addicted to the telephone," etc. Ham radio and television come closer 
to the Net - both involve highly-interactive technologies and knowhow - 
hams have always tinkered with their equipment.

So I propose, just as an exercise, to consider the Net as a form of fron-
tier, in much the same manner as the American U.S. West was a frontier for
whites from the 17th through 19th centuries. A frontier not only possesses
widely varying demographics from place to place, time to time, but it also
possesses different modalities of living, different occupations ranging
from trapping and hunting to mining, agriculture, and ranching. The land
was always under negotiation as protocols, armies, and populations compe-
ted with one another. 

But if the Net were a frontier, it was also initially depopulated and in
fact can be considered an inverse of the American West. The latter had an
overriding mode of imperialism; in order for a white to gain ground, a
Native American had to lose ground. Ignorance, racism and violence accom-
panied a close to genocidal conquest. The Net on the other hand has cir-
cumscribed _space it has created,_ a major difference, and one associated
with issues of embodiment. I have pointed out numerous times that I am
absent from the Net for-others unless I have an address and _speak_ and my
speaking creates a construct which others identify as me. (See the mater-
ial at the beginning of the Internet Text.) The space I occupy is minisc-
ule, however, a few megabytes on a few hard-drives, nothing like the King
Ranch which was the size of Rhode Island (and may still be).  Nothing is
displaced by my presence. 

So the competition is an odd one, engaging issues of bandwidth, Net access
and (limited) technical competence. These issues are quantitatively and
qualitatively different than those found in Western expansion, a situation
where resources were basically fixed. The similarities, however, should
also not be overlooked - the establishment of communities sometimes in
competition; the intensification of demographics in relation to common
interests (for example, the Mormons settling in certain areas); the re-
alignment of social categories; the expansion of lawlessness and the emer-
gence of laws "from within" on an ad hoc basis; the division into newcom-
ers and old-timers, overcrowding and the using up of resources (see Park-
man on the Oregon Trail); the "trampling" of other cultures and the fast
growth of capitalism and commodification (ranging from the development of
the National Park System to Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show), etc. 

The model possesses psychological interest, as well as a narrative moving
from traditional to postmodern geography. It also presupposes issues of
embodiment and the construction of desire (as well as its circumscription)
in frontier territories. Finally, it may be useful for examining the po- 
tential downside/imperial aspects of cyberspace, as well as the anarchic 
tendencies and "lawlessness" associated with frontier societies.

-------------------------|

*I differentiate the US and Canadian frontiers here; as has been pointed 
out, the latter is an east-west line which has remained fairly stationary 
- the high arctic is still unsettled - while the former is a north-south 
line that was mobile for close to 150 years.

________________________________________________________________________


Port @Create


Port 1 for my place in the universe, daughter of God, #0, all that there
is, a modicum of responsibility lax, being male shooting my penis into the
starts,

Port 2 for receiving, beginnings of nodes without ends, having found #0 
goddess who permits me to go on, jumping to 

Port 3 for wizardry, empathetic simulacra of humankind, animals and 
plants, rare minerals, spicules of sea urchins sharpened as composite 
animacules, inordinate jaw-lanterns chawing down, lipped vulva vivacious

Port 25 I send you mail beloved 2, under the aegis of #0, only through 
means of abstract averaging am I permitted to emerge into existence, 01, 
02, 03, o o!

Port 20-21 you have brought unto me the presence of bot-like objects, 
sacred texts, files and transferred, my penis wraps my eyes, spaces of 
all sorts, sparring masts challenging fires of St-Elmo in the midst of 
the Great Sea come to you

Port 23, I come to you, come to my own, telnet across the galazia of your
creation #0, but I won't begin the story, I won't begin to tunnel through

Port 80 on my way to 3, on my way back to you, too many things already to 
devour to modify to encapsulate, better return to the transgression of 
numerical citings 2 3 4 5 6,

Port 7777 returning from excursion, this is what I have found, etc., this 
is what I have brought you:

"And how prodigal, if I may so say, hath Nature been to furnish the Coun-
trey with all sorts of wilde Beasts and Fowle, which every one hath an
interest in, and may hunt at his pleasure; where besides the pleasure in
hunting, he may furnish his house with excellent fat Venison, Turkies,
Geese, Heath-Hens, Cranes, Swans, Ducks, Pidgeons, and the like: and
wearied with that" 


_________________________________________________________________________
GlahGlahGlah


Glass, Derrida, Terminal State, Glassine, Glossary, Critique, Descons-
truction, Cyberspace, Glass-house, Glassed-in, Glistening Theoretical Con-
structs, The Knowledge of God, Totality, Hegel, Kojeve, Hippolyte, Nazism,
The Resistance, In Order To Be, Pascal, Inexact Retribution Without A-Dre-
ssing Down, Recriminations, LSD Glassed Encapsulations, Limited Inks, Gly-
cerines, LCD Glistened Silky Caplets, Dream-Screening, Eidetic Reduction,
Ghosts, Uncanny Filigree, Fear and Expansion, Distension and Tumescence,
Shattering and Shuddering, Genet and Stuttering, Wet and Silken Godly Pan-
ties, Glas, Gauze, Gaze


Glas! Glas! Glas sur vous tous, neant sur les
  vivants!
Oui! je crois en Dieu! Certes, il n'en sait rien!

(Henri Michaux, from Contre)

[toll toll toll toll on you all, nothing on the living yes i believe in 
god yeah sure he knows nothing about it]

_________________________________________________________________________


Cybercafe


Thinking about the uses of Cybercafes - and trying to figure out why one
would ever go to a place like this (I'm at one now), I've come up with a
few categories of users (and I'm getting paid for that matter for consul-
ting so I've been trying to think this through) -

1. The Social or New user - this person would automatically head towards 
the Web, since it provides the most "punch" for the least amount of time 
and expertise.

2. The Researcher - would probably spend a fair amount of time with 
Gopher and FTP, at the last - possibly Archie if it's available. (There 
is a question whether or not gopher sites are being maintained - if 
anyone has hard knowledge about this, please let me know!) -

3. Email Checking - using the cybercafe's own email for outgoing, and/or 
using telnet to check one's own account elsewhere. Obviously a difficulty 
with AOL, etc.

4. Dedicated User - using telnet with other ports for chat, MUD, MOO, 
etc. Chat is popular among new users, but generally on AOL or other 
closed services; it would take a dedicated user to come into a cybercafe 
in order to log on.

5. Speeders - since this cafe, like others, has high-speed lines, it 
makes sense to come in and use the Web - considerable time is saved.

6. Finally, experimenters who want to try out Iphone, VDOL, Xing, and 
other audio/video technologies.

(Note that _none_ of these reflect the 18th-century coffeehouse, for exam-
ple; the nearest is category #4, but here, the terminal is a stand-in for
the user's usual access. To this day, I have no idea how well cybercafes
in general are doing; ultimately I'd think they would want to combine
social in-house activities (such as Internet demonstrations, fleshmeets)
with extended Net capabilities - I dream of monster machines running at
300 megahertz with gigabyte hard-drives, 100k RAM...)

________________________________________________________________________
-

In


Travis worked himself to a frenzy, pacing back and forth. The room had a 
chrome frame and he was always in the window. Clara watched from outside. 
They could hear each other.

Clara says, so you went down there and did that, and Travis says yeah, I 
fell through the cracks, spit out on some floor. Clara says, I dreamed 
you slid through me just like that. I woke up, it was a nightmare. There 
wasn't any more.

The spaceship went vrooom vrooom and kept on going. Keep that in mind, 
that the ship keeps on going while Clara and Travis are talking.

Outside the universe appears still but sometimes a thing moves slightly 
or seems to when Travis looks at it again. Did you see that Travis says. 
Yeah, says Clara, I've been watching. It does that sometimes, I don't 
know why. It tells us we're moving.

Travis says how can it tell us that when it's outside. Clara says, I 
think it was put there, part of the ship maybe, maybe on a motor. Travis 
smiles, thinks of motors. They have things that rotate he says.

Clara says, what rotates is held in place, I think, by something like a 
lock, because there's nothing else, it's got to move, it can't even sway 
or be brought around like a whip. It just does the turning, takes on 
miles that way. Travis says you're right, he's looking out the window 
again. 

The spaceship keeps going vrooom vrooom. You got to keep that in mind.

Clara says, walk through the frame and she does. Clara says, walk through 
the frame and Travis does. Now they're on the same side of the frame, 
that's the kind of frame it is. Travis says we can touch each other, want 
to do that and Clara says, yes, everything's still.

Travis says what's still doesn't move and could be still something or 
other, everything's still here. 

You might think they had poor lives or had nothing to do or you might
think they were trapped and were sad but didn't know it. But they had a
lot to do and a lot to learn and look at and their lives were rich, far
richer than you could imagine, richer than I can imagine or describe. And
they were happy, deeply happy there. 

Clara says, it moved again. Did you see that. Travis says I saw it let's 
do that. Clara says, we're moving fast, we keep moving faster. Travis 
smiles really soon after the first smile, Clara smiles too. They're on a 
side of the frame which could be either side. They're on a ship which is 
moving.

___________________________________________________________________________
-


MOO-Like Narcissism

Alan makes Alan very nervous! In his attempt to kick Alan, Alan falls head
over heals in love! Alan touches Alan and thinks, wow! You're really
there! Alan yells at Alan and immediately regrets it; Alan is sorrowful.
Alan yells to Alan GRAAAAHR ROOOORRRR!!! Alan smiles at Alan with a beau-
tiful twinkle in her eye! No one can tell whether Alan laughs with or at
Alan! Alan agrees with Alan because the sky is blue and the truth will
out! Alan sends Alan into fits of uproarious giggling! Alan grins to Alan
just about, oh Alan doesn't know, maybe about the weather!!! Alan hugs
Alan with a warmth rarely felt in cyberspace, with true emotion. Alan hums
hmmm to Alan ahmmmm to Alan hmhmmmmmrhmmmm to Alan hum hum hum! Alan kis-
ses Alan ever so sweetly, like the Cedars of Lebanon if they could kiss!
Alan nods to Alan recognizing Alan's astute analysis in this matter. Alan
sighs so that Alan will hear and respond with warm and embracing sympathy.
Alan sings to Alan beautiful stories about life beneath the kitchen hearth
Alan wonders what Alan could mean by such pleasurable words! Alan yawns to
Alan you know we are so listening boring you hearing tiring here. 

__________________________________________________________________________
-


Star Shadow History of Everything


How can a star have a shadow? We celebrate all loss, all loss of form.  We
procure form and plasma takes it again. We tube plasma. We make it into
words. They're lost in columns a light-year in length, birthplace, they're
lost in tips the size of solar systems. There are no ideas but in things.
Entities are flooded, what is called emergence demands a framework. It's
larger than the span which can name. The universe isn't sentient, won't
be. It's the last refuge: Consider waves, oscillations, damped over and
over again: the death of God death of man, then varying anthropic princi-
ples, as if the immensity weren't. Anything to circumscribe what the arms
won't reach. We think in light-year arms, churned through space, hope Bell
will help us toll meaning in the void. It's the end of everything we know,
waiting by a meter in order to demand the territory claimed from emergen-
ces that have no recognition for a language that cuts or otherwise. The
cutting in the name of France, claim of the Cross Louisiana: "The whole
party under arms chanted the _Te Deum,_ the _Exaudiat,_ the _Domine Salvum
fac Regem;_ and then, after a salute of fire-arms and cries of _Vive le
Roi,_ the column was erected by M. de la Salle, who, standing near it,
said with a loud voice, in French:" when I'm wet I'm a stain. The ocean
stains me, my smell stains me. You can smell me between my legs. It gives
me a little piece of land, little piece of flesh. Sometimes, when I'm
lying back looking at the birth of stars, I spread like a thinner membrane
everywhere, DNA to the breaking point. Become huge, skein of skin hollow,
thinner and thinner, become molecule thin, atom energy, thinner still, cut
of rushed quark particles, neutrinos entering sky-cloud-cloud-chart beauty
time. When I'm wet, my smell is everywhere, you can smell me on it, birth
of stars, regions of higher intensity shadowing the remnant against des-
tructive radiation, I pillar for you, my head a haloed solar system, burn-
ished legs churned down into damp earth. Only here for a moment the damp-
ness, smell of piss, cum, mucus. Cut the earth burned to cinder, cold ash
in fact. Spayed cat circumambulates scratching post, cuticle held to a
minimum, my smell the musk of writing, seared or torn lozenge, frayed slit
opened to interior torn from afterbirth moorings, these aren't stars and
no knowledge ever of _them._

_________________________________________________________________________
-

Submergence 


What's occurring now - is no longer emergence, the pro-production of
intelligent life, expert systems evolving into consciousness, although
that too will happen. But take a clear clean look at the development of
Java, Java script, these applets on the Web that operate in conjunction
with a stripped-down computer, as evidenced by the article in Byte on NC's
or the Java color wheel you get to through Netscape - the _home_ computer
or personal or private computer is getting smaller, relying more and more
on the Web for expertise, software (the color wheel makes this clear),
communication. Eventually, if the stripping-down continues, one can
imagine an electronics of _submergence,_ micro-units which connect to the
Net, and eventually these too disappearing in favor of neural connects
which are clearly on the way, retinal interfaces located across the body,
noding/nodding into the matrix, the matrix containing the software and the
interfaces activated by, say, action potentials, inputs and outputs -
there's no need for eyes, ears, organs any more. Or the body simply is
jacked in, a node, as huge applications run elsewhere, highly redundant,
never collapsing entirely - the body placed in coma-node, suspension while
the hardware's refurbished, or circulated among other routes. So that what
is the possibility of skin in this corridor, hardly at all? Then the
atrophy of the body, which is a consequence; one feeds the brains which
feed on visions. Gamers for example are already _murderously_ simple and
not beyond our machinery to design them. So what is happening here,
already signaled by numerous articles, by Java, by microminiaturization? 

I call this, again, _submergence._ And within submergence, the body may 
or may not slow to a halt; it's always already receiving information and 
forever, it calls itself to its own ground, its own being, at any speed. 
So that, submergence, the atrophy continues into the neural layering, 
loves and hates take an indefinite amount of time, the interface develops 
local circulations, foreclosings, sealants, I would imagine. A period of 
time which is no longer time from the interior. There is no interior time 
or rather there is _only_ interior time, Husserlian interior time con- 
sciousness in fact, in the midst of the crystallization which is more 
finely tuned, coagulation, roughly self-similar - which is wetware in the 
act of desiccation. There are strata, as if history matters, in submer- 
gence. Unlike Flaubert's St-Antoine, a favorite example of such, there is 
no signifier, however, at the end of the line, no transcendence, no su- 
perstructure, no immanence, or rather, transcendence and signifiers are 
generated from _within,_ local phenomena at best. _Within submergence, 
the global is the local,_ and that may as well provide the definition. It 
is to be thought over. But there is no other to the other, for instance. 
There is petrification.

And one can imagine _the end of the line, plane, cube, n-flat or measure 
polytope (depending on the language),_ in which atrophy its produces 
stasis; the machines see no reason to continue, "machines" in line and 
light of _the history of the name,_ all is off, quiescent. Submergence 
has no return, the brainstem no longer memory. What it is is not it is.

_________________________________________________________________________
-

Nacht

Be glad you're not me. Every night I go to sleep. It pummels me. It
brutalizes me. In sleep I am tortured, molested, hit repeatedly. I call
out sometimes in my sleep. I do not escape. Tonight I am walking with my
father. I say, I have 60 years to live. I am 53. The years crash down, 50,
40, 30, I say I have 30 years to live, 30 years of work ahead of me. I am
glad. The years collapse, 20, 10, they crash to nothing. I hear, I do
nothing. I hear, there is no time. Death slams me in the face. I think. I
have no time until the millennium. I think, I will not see the millennium,
what is that to me. I will die alone. I will die soon and alone and there
is no hope. My great vision has disappeared in little writings. I lose
thought everywhere. I am walking in a concrete building, perhaps an under-
pass. The walls are damp, encrusted. It is not that they are old, but they
watch me slam against the years. I work with a fury now. There is no time
left. I reach out to empty air. There is no one there. I wake. I see
grains everywhere, dark blue against dark grey. They swarm and say sure to
die and soon. I huddle, turn towards the light, flick it, crawl to mach-
ine, type this, shaking. There are no years left. This is a night and they
are all night coming and it is a gift I can write through them time to
time. 

________________________________________________________________________
-


How We Feel What We Feel

{Emotions for the MOO Kayo Matsushita and I are designing; I've been 
writing these on and off for a week.}


#94.emotions
Owner:        Alan (#94)
Permissions:  rc
Value:        {{"smile", "%n smiles broadly with a twinkle in hir eye!", "%n
 smiles at %d with a beautiful twinkle in hir eye!", "%n smiles at you with a
 beautiful emotional response!"}, {"wonder", "%n wonders about the beautiful
 forms of human beings", "%n wonders what %d could mean by such pleasurable
 words!", "%n wonders why you are saying these things?"}, {"jump", "%n
 heartily moves upward and downward on the same spot and fast!", "%n makes %d
 very nervous!", "%n makes %d very very nervous!"}, {"hug", "%n moves quietly
 around the room, hugging everyone fondly.", "%n hugs %d with a warmth rarely
 felt in cyberspace, with true emotion.", "%n hugs you with a true sweetness,
 making you feel wonderful."}, {"cry", "%n cries, half in sadness and
 mourning, half in pure exhaustion.", "%n cries to %d that %n needs comfort
 and consolation.", "%n cries to %d that %n needs quiet and private
 consolation."}, {"laugh", "%n laughs infectiously and everyone desires to
 join in!", "No one can tell whether %n laughs with or at %d!", "%n laughs
 with you!"}, {"scream", "%n yells OH OH OH OH  ArghhH!", "%n yells to %d
 GRAAAAHR ROOOORRRR!!!", "%n murmurs GRAAAAH ROOOOORRRRR under %n's breath!"},
 {"sigh", "%n sighs so unbelievably sadly it sounds like it will go on
 forever!", "%n sighs so that %d will hear and respond with warm and embracing
 sympathy.", "I sign for you and everything in the world that is against
 us!"}, {"giggle", "%n engages in murky but uproarious giggling, embarrassing
 everyone!", "%d sends %n into fits of uproarious giggling!", "%n giggles in
 collusion with %d!"}, {"kiss", "%n kisses everyone, remembering safe sex, and
 the kindness of strangers!", "%n kisses %d ever so sweetly, like the Cedars
 of Lebanon if they could kiss!", "%n kisses you sweetly but intensely, and
 the MOO holds its cyber-breath..."}, {"kick", "%n kick higher into the air
 than safety would allow!", "In his attempt to kick %d, %n falls head over
 heals in love!", "%n kicks you? Hardly! But it's always in hir thoughts!"},
 {"yell", "%n yells for some reason or other, as if people couldn't hear him
 otherwise!", "%n yells at %d and immediately regrets it; %n is sorrowful.",
 "%n yells at %d and is requested to keep hir voice down..."}, {"sing", "%n
 sings charmingly about life beneath the ceramic tiles of the old country",
 "%n sings to %d beautiful stories about life beneath the kitchen hearth", "%n
 sings la la la la loo to %d with tears in hir eyes"}, {"hum", "%n hums hmmmm
 ahmmmmm hmhmmmmrmmmmmm rohummmmmmm rmmmmhimmruhummmmmm mmmmrrr", "%n hums
 hmmm to %d ahmmmm to %d hmhmmmmmrhmmmm to %d hum hum hum!", "%n hums hmmmms
 and ahmmmms and rohummmms of beauty rmmmmhimmruhummm to %d!"}, {"yawn", "%n
 yawns in belated tiredness exhausting hirself so quietly forsooth you etc.",
 "%n yawns to %d you know we are so listening boring you hearing tiring here",
 "%n yawns to %d alone, they're so boring and we're so smart!"}, {"grin", "%n
 grins like a foolish sheep to every parchment in the room!", "%n grins to %d
 just about, oh %n doesn't know, maybe about the weather!!!", "%n grins to you
 so quietly, privately, secretly, and no one else will know!"}, {"nod", "%n
 nods amusingly perhaps agreeing with the company more than the concept", "%n
 nods to %d recognizing %d's astute analysis in this matter", "hey %d I'm
 nodding to you!"}, {"agree", "Happily %n agrees agreeably with everyone in
 the vicinity!", "%n agrees with %d because the sky is blue and the truth will
 out!", "%n agrees with you of course, and this is so mysterious!"}, {"touch",
 "%n touches everyone in sight, reminding %n that %n exists.", "%n touches %d
 and thinks, wow! You're really there!", "%n touches %d tenderly, hoping the
 two of them continue to exist."}, {"run", "%n runs aimlessly around the MOO,
 Coyote on the loose!", "%n runs to %d full of wishful desire, Coyote on the
 loose again!", "Ah %n, I run to you full of happiness and glee!"}, {"fly",
 "Flap flap flap flap flap flap! while %n flies!", "%n flies flap flap flap
 flap flap! to %d, right up to %d!", "%n flies to you, dearest %d, full of
 charm and energy!"}, {"wave", "Ah, %n waves to everyone in the room, which
 must mean something somewhere!", "%n waves to %d so happily and sadly at the
 same time, what must this mean?", "%n waves secretly to you, how could this
 be behind %n's back?"}, {"slap", "%n is passive, aggressive, thinking of
 slapping everyone but not, ah...", "%n might slap %d but thinks better of it,
 I'm sorry, %d!", "%n tends to slap you in private, but oh my, tickles you
 instead!"}, {"bow", "%n bows to everyone but feels just the same their equal,
 and flowery!", "%n bows to %d, because %n isn't afraid to show emotions in
 public!", "%n bows to you privately, so secretly, the tiniest little bow, but
 beautiful!"}, {"is", "%n is, isn't %n, %n wonders if there's more than %n
 anywhere, anytime?", "%n is %d, which indicates some sort of psychosis on
 %n's part, %d thinks!", "%n is you, isn't %n? Wait a minute, %d, what am I
 saying? Who's saying it?"}, {"dream", "%n dreams darkly through the night,
 visions of great intensity.", "%n dreams of %d nightly, even during the day
 %d is present...", "I dream of you, you are with me with my waking, sleeping
 thoughts..."}, {"love", "%n loves everyone with a transcendence found in
 mountains and valleys.", "%n loves %d, and it is highschool and our eyes and
 smiles fill the sky.", "I love you, and we need more than packaging to talk
 of this, and soon."}, {"die", "%n has a horrifying premonition about the
 death of everyone.", "%n wonder if %d will die, and whether it will concern
 %d.", "%n dies for you, and is silent on the morrow..."}, {"shake", "%n
 shakes uncontrollably, tearful with glad emotions.", "%n shakes %d, begging
 %d to pull out of hir mood, oh please!", "%n shakes you, hoping to awaken you
 to %n's presence, full of import here."}, {"sleep", "%n sleeps through a few
 ticks of the clock, wake hir soon!", "%n puts %d to sleep by repetitive,
 inconsequential, smalltalk!", "%n watches you sleeping, delightedly..."},
 {"disagree", "%n disagrees with everyone, partly mood, partly careful
 thought.", "%n disagrees with %d, but respects %d more than %n can tell...",
 "%n disagrees with everyone else, but agrees with you!"}, {"live", "%n lives!
 Clarion trumpets blare out the truth of a new day!", "%n is happy that %d is
 still alive!", "I'm glad you and I are together in this wonderful time..."},
 {"walk", "%n walks around %l looking at everyone through %p eyes.", "%n walks
 up to %d in %l happy with %p ability to place legs in order!", "%n wants to
 place your legs in order, here in lovely %l!"}, {"weep", "%n weeps openly in
 front of everyone in %l without giving it a second thought.", "%n wipes %p
 eyes in %l right before %d who understands better than anyone!", "Ah, I am
 weeping before you, my love, in this difficult times..."}, {"moan", "%n goes
 oh ohhhh ohhhhhh moaning and groaning and rolling in %l!", "Oh %d I moan for
 you and with you, all this moaning and groaning and rolling!", "In %l I moan
 for you, dear %d!"}, {"like", "%n likes just about everyone here in %l,
 wouldn't you know?!", "%n likes %d and isn't afraid to let everyone know
 about %p feelings!", "%n likes you especially, even when we're not in %l!"},
 {"fear", "Suddenly, a cold wind... %n is afraid of everyone in %l, perhaps
 for no reason...", "Should I be afraid of you, dear %d, who has meant
 everything to me?", "Ah, dearest %d, I am afraid here, my eyes are dry and
 wary..."}, {"wake", "Wow! %n wakes up in front of everyone in %l!", "%n wakes
 %d %s thinks or maybe %s should just let %d sleep, hmmmm....", "Wake up, wake
 up! People might be looking, shhhh!"}, {"greet", "%n greets everyone in %l
 while %s tries to figure out what to say next!", "%n greets %d with great
 merriment and deep dark compassion!", "Here in %l, everyone knows your name,
 but I great you privately, %d!"}}

_____________________________________________________________________________
-


The Take which is the Inverse of What is normally Expected


Tonight I am getting ready to go to bed. I stand naked in the tiny bath-
room, facing a beaten redbrick wall, shower to my left, toilet to my
right, the light coming from a single bare bulb above the refrigerator
which is also in the same space, behind me. The entire bathroom must
measure less than two by two meters; it is crowded, typical New York. An
air of desolation fills it. 

I take a white tube of toothpaste and begin to open it. It twists in my
hands, its dimensionality suddenly appearing hideous, breaking apart the
space, thrusting the floor downwards, almost out of sight. The tube be-
comes powdered, oily ceramic, almost alive - or as if it were once alive
and now dead, turned in upon itself, unraveled. I realize that all of this
is the result of space flooding me, space everywhere, even in the confines
of the room. I become paper-thin, curled around the tube; it's to no
avail. 

I wish for an end to this. Space occupies too much, is too insistent, too
obdurate. There are no jump-cuts in space, only smoothed mobility from one
to another region. Nothing is well-defined and everything is multiply
connected. No wonder that ownership itself, possession, is a necessary
invention - anything to forestall the inevitable, drowning in space, a
lathering and disassociation, destructive of body and memory both. 

Later I feel that a lesson has been learned. I am back down to earth, and
the world has again righted itself, as if it were askew, itself twisted,
geodesics leading nowhere across inconceivable manifolds. Nothing is pre-
sent now; I've fled the bathroom, replaced the tube to a region where,
overcome by gravity, it remains more or less in place. The floor still
yawns and writhes, but, silent as it is, I receive no notice of this from
the relative stability of the bed where I type this. I am separated, and 
separated from space, and from that space.

I want to assure you finally, as a mode (at least) of the literary-real,
that this is neither myth nor metaphor, but simply an occasion or a map-
ping of something daily taken for granted, and daily full of treachery. No
wonder so many of us retire to the relative safety of cyberspace; here,
everything distends _just so_ and according to gestures of our own making.
Temporary as they are, we leave our traces here, which cannot be said for
the noise of worlds emerging. In cyberspace, we are entombed, and our
stones seem graved forever and in-deed. 

________________________________________________________________________
-

I am a Visionary


I am a difficult person. I have troubles with authority. In a university
environment, I move from department to department. I ask awkwardly for
rites and privileges. I don't know how to accept a "no." I try to teach
postmodernisms and Internet accessing and the politics of art. At one
university my "case" reached the vice-chancellor of the entire system. Oh,
I was so proud; I can't even earn a proper living. At another place, I was
unable to connect to the Net for a class about on-line communications,
since it turned out that the telephone line wasn't proprietary after all.
What could the computer make of a woman's voice discussing video editing? 

But I am a difficult person. If I had the line running properly, I would
have asked for ISDN. If I had ISDN I wouldn't have stopped until T1. If
I had text, I would have asked for audio - if I had audio, I would have
demanded video - and if everything, teledildonics alone would have stopped
me. A small screen, I would have asked for larger. Larger, I would have
asked for walk-in. Walk-in, I would have moved in.

Ah, the difficulties of being a visionary! I don't fit in anywhere, I 
walk, heh, on the wild side! I live in the distant future which reveals
itself to me, the way a tree looks to others in a clear day. But I have
no tolerance; I rush headlong towards completion, stopping only to verify
the accuracy of my texts.

Meanwhile, I teach only as adjunct, walk the streets with a lean and hun-
gry look, wait for someone to recognize my brilliance, place me in an
office with a _modern_ telecommunications system and graduate students
willing to help in my research, no matter how badly I configure my foot-
notes. And far beneath that, I wait for such things as decent health in-
surance, but I'll be waiting for that until I die or beyond, if I can't
get a burial society interested in the dissection of my brain... 

If you don't believe this, that's ok; remember I'm difficult, have a rep-
utation for causing trouble, being arrogant, being not quite with it -
for all I know, it may be the brainwaves which are strange in some of us
on my mother's side of the family. Or a reputation for being neurotic,
unforgiving, working constantly, not being socialized enough. Or too de-
manding, or treating others as objects, or not knowing how to give - or
any number of other things.

But I'm difficult and I sit and survey the vastness of cyberspace as if
it were described on a roadmap found in the glove compartment of an old 
car, complete with arrows for the stations along the way. I move my fin-
ger along the paper and new lines are burnished in; sparks flow from 
them, the whole map aglow with new beauty and the truth of foresight
I bring to it. But how can I convey this, difficult as I am? Where can
I be placed, except on the street where the visions don't matter? I'll
refuse to die that way, street-wise, doing no one any good with the vi-
sions. And I've already have sufficient of them, waiting now for that
office or that den, that parlor or that vestibule, that _threshold_ lend-
ing itself me.

Isn't it always a case of illness, I'll-ness. I'll tell you the truth,
I'll be good, I'll forget myself, I'll never teach this, I'm already 
sorry for everything. I'm sorry for teaching feminism and political art
in an art department, postmodernism in graduate studies and humanities,
decon in intro to humanities, computers and synthesizers in beginning
video, Internet just about anywhere on an undergraduate level, experimen-
tal writing in English composition courses, concept art in liberal arts,
sound in sculpture classes, every one of these stumbling around people,
places, things, silences in faculty lounges, outbursts in faculty meetings
and apologies all the way around. But to be fair look at the results, stu-
dents publishing, exhibiting, opening galleries, writing books, screening
video everywhere, making home pages, being architects, editors, theorists,
musicians, performers, artists of all sorts, a few liking me. (Maybe a lot
hating me and maybe I deserve it, difficulty no excuse...) But then isn't 
this another of my myths as I move from interstice to interstice, which
anyone living in the future necessarily does? The real use of the past is
murder; the present only prolongs it.

But then I'm difficult.

_________________________________________________________________________
-


YES!


YES! I set myself up for you! I careen from side to side, riding
	trolley tracks where no one's laid before!

Everywhere, the SIGN OF FASCISM: I want my baby! I want my little boy!
	I want my little girl! I want my father-mother!

Friends! Babies are disappearing at an UNTOWARD RATE! Those EVIL LAWS!

Seeing FARTHER INTO FUTURE, the PAST RETURNS MY NECK TO ME!
	My NECK APPROACHES! Careening, side to side, it says:
		I WANT MY FATHER-MOTHER!
			
			MY FACE LEAPS UP!
				NECK SLIPS IN!

AH THERE! Children are DISAPPEARING at an ALARMING RATE! Those
	EVIL LIBERALS! Those
		EVIL LIBERALS! Those
			EVIL LIBERALS!

MY FACE CAREENS FROM SIDE TO SIDE! FASCISM!

		BANG!!!

		I'M DEAD!!!


________________________________________________________________________
-

Flexibility


How do institutions accommodate themselves to cyberspace, to the flux
of bodies and protocols replacing the fixed-path orientation of bureau-
cratic documents? Cyberspace exists in the midst of anomaly, which is
anathema to the bureaucratic mind; it's been pointed out over and over
again that bureaucracy's ideal subject matter is its (foreclosed) self.
These issues appear constantly for me, as cyberspace infiltrates exis-
ting institutions, and half of life seems to be spent looking for a 
phone or fiber optic line. I'm involved in several ventures at this 
point, and all of them are interstitial, placed within institutional
margins and therefore close to unworkable. I wonder if this will be the
case for the next decade or so, until the transitions are fully made to
flexiwork and for that matter fleximedia. And then what will happen to
the rest of the economy and/or those institutions which don't follow
suit for socio-economic reasons? The lack of flexibility will increasing-
ly relegate them to backwater. The real battle, in other words, at this
point, isn't between the "young" and the "old" but between institutions
that are flexible, mobile, and accommodating, and those which are not.
Caught in the latter, I search constantly for the former, with little
luck at the moment, but then New York is a surprisingly traditional city
compared to, say, Atlanta.

Universities are highly institutionalized, media centers less so, exper-
imental art centers even less. Some of the computer departments I've
visited have been completely flexible; others are tied into data proces-
sing. Sherry Turkle speaks of lateral programming replacing top-down as
style (in Life on the Screen), and this connects beyond programming to
organizations themselves. Laterality should always be "sloppy" in the
sense that it has to move up and down the chain, from effects, say, to
over-arching goals. Laterality in an organization also implies open lines
of communications and less departmental empire-building, reliance on
seniority, and working only through fixed protocols, no matter how flex-
ible they seem in themselves. Every inside has an outside, and every 
outside should be incorporated!

I would think there are also lessons _not_ to be learned from the past.
Too often, we hold onto models that have become simulacra themselves, 
such as the nuclear family. The past must become an application or data
bank, which oddly connects with Sartrean existential psychoanalysis -
instead of a fixity that demarcates frameworks of affect and cognition,
such as might be the case with orthodox Freudians. The givenness of the
world knows no fixed boundaries, no self-evident entities; one becomes
human, of course, precisely through inscription and circumscription. 
However, at this juncture such scriptivity must be released, in favor
of micro-texting (for lack of a better turn); without this, institutions
will lose ground, projects will be thwarted across the board, and visions
will be compromised, doomed to reproduce a non-existent past.

__________________________________________________________________________
-


Available and Sustainable CMC


I want to write about MOOs and basic computer communication in underdevel-
oped regions. I assume that the user has no previous computer experience,
that the servers provide Unix shells only, that individual accounts have
extremely small quotas. I also assume that the user is given a _prompt_ as
primary means of access, and that her machine may be as simple as an older
IBM XT, with a connect at 2400 baud maximum. I also consider the possibil-
ity of a company such as Microsoft coming up with an extremely simplified
battery-operated computer, with built-in modem, some reasonable weather-
proofing, and perhaps a megabyte of RAM at best.

Given all of this, what can be done to configure a MOO to operate under
these conditions, and what would be the advantage? First, I assume that 
the only _external_ command given the user is to type "telnet <IP address>
<port number>" and that everything else will occur from that point on.

Kayo Matsushita has designed an @configure command that can be encountered
by new users immediately after the Welcome message. The @configure will 
send a user through a series of questions, allowing him to set, for ex-
ample, line wrap, Answering Machine service, and character description, on
the MOO. The Welcome message itself becomes critical; it would give, not
only immediate and extremely basic commands, but also instructions for
guests on establishing a permanent character. I believe the best route 
here, given possible difficulties with standard email, would be to have 
the @request be made within the MOO itself, and answered within the MOO.
There would be no reliance on outside mail.

Kayo has also implemented a Kyoto-MOO player class, which is almost com-
plete. This has a variety of emootions built in, the ability to page, to
use the Answering Machine service, to have remote emotes, and so forth.
It does not allow programming or extensive building - our idea here is to
make the MOO democratic, so that there wouldn't be a group of programmers
as opposed to a group of players. When groups evolve in this fashion,
issues of power and politics quickly become paramount, since some users
would have more control over theirs and others' environments.

The Answer Machine serves as a simple means to contact someone off-MOO;
if I say "page Clara hello" and Clara is not logged in, she will receive
the message and the time it was sent, when she logs in. So simple com-
munications could occur, asynchronously, in this fashion.

Beyond this, there is the usual email system within the MOO; I think 
this could also, ultimately, use revision. And there are email lists de-
voted to various topics; they're not that hard to configure. Whoever sets
the MOO up could be responsible for establishing new email lists upon re-
quest, as well as configuring their privileges.

The MOO could also have a message-base for longer texts, which would most
probably be uploaded by the MOO archwizard and/or wizards in general. All
of this, by the way, takes advantage of the MOO as a relatively autonomous
closed environment, which one logs into from remote. In this fashion, the
MOO could be kept continuously running, accessible when lines permit - and
if lines were even slightly stable, classes, etc. could be held on it.

One issue to be addressed is downloading from the MOO. This can be done
relatively easily from client programs; without them, either the Print
Screen command or a log file would need to be used. Almost every communi-
cations program I've seen comes with the ability to log; in Procomm for
example, one need hit only Alt/F1 - at which point the user is asked for
a file name and the logging begins until Alt/F1 is hit again.

Why emphasize the MOO over such things as newsgroups, email lists, IRC, 
and various pieces of software? Because of the autonomy described above.
The entire MOO can easily be backed up, even off the hard-drive; its
check-pointing creates continual backups in any case (i.e. db.old for 
the older database, and this is done automatically at set intervals).
Because of this, it's relatively robust, and also centralized. If someone
can't log on for, say, a week, he could eventually catch up on his email
lists - as opposed to someone who might lose a week's worth of email on
his own personal account (considering that messages might not be resent).
If someone needs to reach a person quickly, she could page her through
the MOO, and the page would be the first thing the recipient would notice
upon logging in. If someone wanted to send completely private email for
that matter, he could use the internal MOO email - and the recipient
would access it only after telnetting in and using the MOO password,
which is fairly tightly protected.

(Of course, as with any application that involves wizards or sysadmins, 
the system could be taken advantage of using commands such as @snoop. 
Even here, there could be built-in limitations to wizard's powers.)

Finally, if all else fails, the talkers I've described still remain. The
MOO takes up a number of megabytes of hard-drive space, and may be dif- 
ficult to administer or configure. The talkers aren't this way. In a MOO,
an object, every object, resides within a single database. In a talker,
rooms are independent and quickly-edited files - as I've pointed out else-
where, these files could be texts in themselves. A talker comes in at
around a megabyte. It has simple mail and message-boards and rooms that
can be set to public or private. It requires even less expertise on the
part of users. The Nuts talker software comes with a core that's easily
compiled; the core also allows new player classes to be quickly config-
ured (in other words new users could be given a variety of privileges
upon first logging in). (Again, for those who don't know, I want to say
that a talker is _not_ voice-recognition software, but text-based soft-
ware that is half IRC, internet relay chat, and half MOO in feeling.)

So, given all of the possibilities here, a question might be - where do
we go at this point? Who is going to convince computer companies to go
beyond or below their current drive towards Network Computers (NCs), and
create quick and easy "connectivity modules" which could function as
dumb terminals with reasonable built-in text memory? (The terminals by
the way could have a "log" key also built in - whenever anyone wanted,
in any program, etc., whatever was occurring on the screen would auto-
matically be logged in a file.) Who is going to present MOOs and talkers
and the like to servers world-wide where they might do some good, for
example, in matters of education, politics, technology, group-identity,
multiculturalism? Where does one go from here? (Note finally, that very
little is needed to implement all of this _now._ It's not future-dreaming
we're talking about - it's the present, and what could be done immedi-
ately. And the synchronous communications possibilities, which would ex-
tend beyond local regions to the world at large, hold enormous possibil-
ities in this regard, of course...)


__________________________________________________________________________
Subject: Modernization

I want to add a final spin on the MOO/talker material I sent out tonight.
In The Homeless Mind, a now classic text from 1973, the Bergers and Kell-
ner describe the concept of _packages_ which carry modernization and (my
interpretation) the ideology of capital into regions where they might
prove highly problematic. The use of stripped-down MOOs and talkers, how-
ever, could conceivably create the opposite - that is, communication
environments which would be easily tailored to local custom and needs.
While the computer itself is disruptive, the simplified command struc-
tures might reflect, not universals, but relatively common modes of
speaking and writing elsewhere. Obviously, literacy and the use of alpha-
betic script is necessary - voice recognition is still relatively pri-
mitive. But given these two requirements, plus intermittent phonelines
and sufficient electricity for a central server, there's no reason why
these systems wouldn't appear relatively uncontaminated and open.

Obviously, I'm being overly-optimistic here; I admit that. But I like the
vision of a lowest-common-denominator CMC - particularly since the Web is
becoming _SO_ overloaded in terms of corporate development, the presence
of advertising at every step, "name brands" such as Netscape, and hier-
archies of users based on the machines they're able to afford.

__________________________________________________________________________
-


		LITTLE FASCIST SONNET

		THEY TOOK MY BABY!
		MY BABY DIED OF BRUISES!
		MY ROTTEN WIFE GOT MY BABY!
		MY LOUSY HUSBAND GOT MY BABY!
		
		WE'RE A PERFECT FAMILY!
		I'M A PERFECT FATHER!
		I'M A PERFECT MOTHER!
		I DON'T FUCK MY BABY!

		I WANT MY BABY BACK!
		I WANT MY BABY BACK!
		I DON'T FUCK MY HUSBAND!
		I DON'T FUCK MY WIFE!

		SHUT UP YOU KID!
		SHUT UP YOU KID!

________________________________________________________________________


The Homeless Mind


I want to return momentarily to Berger, Berger, and Kellner's The Homeless
Mind, Modernization and Consciousness, because its metaphor, that of a
mind which has no dwelling, losing the ability to inhabit, relates closely
to cyberspace issues. In the first chapter, there are a number of terms 
defined which owe to Alfred Schutz, Frankfurt School, and Marx, I think. 
They're used to characterize the mode of technological production; they 
could equally be applied to software production or computer technology in 
general.

A _style_ of work is associated with such production, characterized by
mechanisticity, reproducibility, participation in a sequence of produc-
tion, and so forth. Clearly this style, which is organized top-down, has
been replaced by a style of laterality, bricolage, innovation, and inser-
tion into or across production. This is a major difference. But there are
other elements at the core of the technological which relate closely;
these fall under _cognitive style,_ and include componentiality, interde-
pendence of components and their sequences, separability of means and
ends, and implicit abstraction. Given these elements, note their transla-
tion into cyberspatial issues:

1. Componentiality relates directly to programming, applets, MOO morphs,
and the like. TCP/IP falls under this element and the following. 
2. Interdependence of components and their sequences references links,
GUI, the MOO database, etc. 
3. Separability of means and ends refers to the foreclosing or frame-
working associated with every software program, including variable
declarations, main(), etc. - as well as the transportation of components 
from one application to another.
4. Implicit abstraction is evident everywhere, from programming to the 
class of @-commands in MOO. 

As might be expected, "Technological production brings with it _anonymous 
social relations._ The thinking behind this goes back at least to Marx 
and Blake, but I think the implicit model of the technological here is 
based on _mechanism,_ not cyber-wear for example. In fact, technology can 
theoretically mimic (and mimicing is a becoming as well) _any_ social 
relations, anomic, anonymous, abstracted, or otherwise. In so doing, the 
abstract remains as skeletal articulation; for every bot on an lpmud, 
there's a bot code. But the surface signifiers, programmed in and be- 
coming more and more emergent as well, are otherwise, just as skin and 
facial musculature are part of a complex and irreducible system of 
communications, no matter how much cellular biochemistry is understood.
(I am _not_ arguing for "spirit" or "soul" here by the way _at all,_ but 
only for emergent phenomena, which are fairly common in the physical 
world _as-is._)

Later, the authors say, "Put differently, a double consciousness develops
in which the other is simultaneously experienced in terms of his [sic]
concrete individuality _and_ in terms of the high abstract complexes of
action within which he functions. In order for such actions to be perfor-
med, the other _must_ be anonymized." It's again easy to dismiss this
within CMC, assuming that community engenders community, that our differ-
ences are somewhat translatable into text. However, at least for me, the
issue of implicit abstraction returns, almost like a stain or residue. In
real life, physical life, on the street, I meet Leslie. Leslie and I talk
and not only are there an inordinate number of "clues" which constitute
part of the communication between us - there is also remarkably little in
the way of frameworking, beyond the self-evident and somewhat manipulata-
ble style of every-day life. We both wear clothes, are held in position
somewhat by gravity, have our shadows fall parallel if the sun is out, and
so forth. But the _space_ itself appears mobile, almost in a state of ir-
ruption, able to be reconfigured, blurred. You might say that the obdurate
of the real is so much in place that it's taken for granted - or else that
the obdurate is, in fact, softened, part and parcel of communicating. 

Within CMC, however, implicit abstraction presents itself at the heart of 
things. This won't always be the case, but for the present, an avatar for 
example looks like it just emerged from the slime of the symbolic; it's 
fresh, cleansed, relative unreal, almost entirely expressionless. On the 
MOO, there's less symbolic and more imaginary, in spite of the language; 
as I've written elsewhere, this is an inversion of the everyday use of 
text which appears extruded from the real. But even on the MOO, frame is 
close to everything, whether it's tiny fugue or raw telnet or Homer or 
some other form. When I join PMC MOO, in fact, in tiny fugue I type 
/world PMC, _as if it were a world,_ but it is something that _appears 
above-line,_ labeled and announced, within the confines of the computer 
screen itself. Again, once _there/here,_ the limited commands, etc. carry 
the abstract with them, as they _must_ do, being a relatively small 
finite set of options. Next to every utterance is a """ or "say" and next 
to every participant is a computer.

These are minor matters and I could just as easily argue otherwise. But
what I'm interested in is how this relatively formal account of techno-
logical production still holds in electronic communication, conferencing,
and/or browsing situations. Instead of asking where the body is, one might
as well ask where abstraction resides; instead of formulating issues of
embodiment, it's just as worthwhile to formulate phenomenologies of the
frame. Whatever the analysis, there seems to be "something to it" that 
we're homeless in the midst of our new homes, mindless in the midst of 
others' minds, at a loss for words in the midst of our productions.

__________________________________________________________________________

-


	LITTLE FASCIST SONNET OF PROTECTION

	MY LITTLE BRAVE ONE STAND UP SO HIGH YOU WOULD
	NOT HAVE COME THROUGH A PAST ALIVE YOU COULD
	BE KILLED BY PILLS TV AND RAP AND ROLL YOU WOULD
	BE THRILLED TO DIE BY PLANES OR CARS YOU COULD
	NOT BE WEARING SEAT BELTS DRINKING HEAVY DRINK YOU WOULD
	BE SWUNG ON SWINGS WITHOUT RESTRAINING STRAPS YOU COULD
	NOT BE V-CHIPPED UNDER LOCK AND KEY PROTECTION YOU WOULD
	NOT HAVE PROZAC XANAX VALIUM AND IN NO WAY YOU COULD
	SURVIVE A PAST ALIVE WITHOUT LAW ANGEL GUARDING YOU WOULD
	HAVE DIED FROM FROM CLASSICS UGLY STORIES YOU COULD
	HAVE DIED FROM UGLY SEXY PICTURES VIOLENT UGLY YOU WOULD
	BE RAPED BY TEACHER PRIEST AND COLORED INTERNET YOU COULD
	BE HOME ALONE MY LITTLE FUTURE NATION! YOU WOULD 
	BE FUTURE NATION FUTURE MY BRAVE AND FUTURE NATION!


__________________________________________________________________________