God Gets Confused by the Internet This is a difficult argument to follow, because there is no following of it, she said, and that is the argument. Confusion had to invade the argu- ment or it would make sense, and God would trap it. God had relinquished the trap a long time ago, although time was all the same to God, she con- tinued, but the Internet, now, this is a different thing to which we must pay close attention. She paused and everyone in the room paid her the attention she had reques- ted. She had been awake _the entire night,_ she said, not knowing where it began or ended, or if it had these barriers producing a segment of night, instead of the real thing. I felt I was awake through the real thing, she said. I was sure of it. There was no dawn. She said she had been reading Isaac Bashevis Singer's Shosha and had come across this passage: "It may be proof to me, but not to my dybbuk. He tells me that God suffers from a kind of divine amnesia that made Him lose the purpose of His creation. My dybbuk suspects that God tried to do too much in too short an eternity. He has lost both criterion and control and he is badly in need of help." [...] "I see Him as a very sick God, so bewildered by His galaxies and the multitude of laws he established that He doesn't know what He aimed for to start with." She said that there was such confusion in God, that God (who certainly was not male) deliberately developed amnesia so that S/he could no longer pro- duce the end of things. she said that God had become lost in entropy, which owed to no one, God included, and that God had, from the very begin- ning permitted this loss. God exhaled in the tiniest of things, she said, which were simple and full of beauty, but God would not and could not even follow the Brownian movements of swarms of motes running up and down, in and out, left and right, in a glass of drinking water. It was not beyond God; it was that very relinquishment of Hir creation that, she said, had kept her awake for an endless night of consultation with soul and thing. This is wondrous, she said, this relinquishment, and now there are so many radiations, and slurries, and parts of things that even to God are not whole, and may never have been, tiny worlds crushed and crumbled, histor- ies lost in the general clutter, Cantor dusts scattered into infinities you could hold in an eyelash - there are so many powders and sinters, that they are traceless, lost before creation, unfound and unfounded after- wards. She said there was no before and after, however, and the dusts were a wearing away of something that had never been, a wearing away of ghosts. The Internet is a vast trackless planet, with traces lost before their time as well, timeless and flooding, and confusing to God. She said that God had relinquished the Net before it began its brittle seething across the planet turning more and more to desert and copper and glass; that God always knew the end was near, but endless, like the night. The end is not in time, she said. She said that a big mistake is to think that the end is in one or another, that it is here or there, a troubling of the soul. The end is _there_ she said, pointing everywhere at once, but not towards herself; it is out there, and it is real, composed of dusts which murmur over invisible faces which have fal- len or have lost their names. God does not remember their names, she said. That is the hardest thing of all. God does not remember. _________________________________________________________________________ Gender Production Machine: Trace Output: The second name is that of applicant; the number is a randomization factor; sey or on tests desire; the first and last name is assigned to gender. The output is followed by the program. Each run creates a new gender. --------------------------------------------------------------------- lagul:annani:4:sey:lagul lagul:annani:4:sey:lagul UL:ANNANI:3:sey:UL UL:ANNANI:3:sey:UL udikne:ANNANIul:0:sey:udikne udikne:ANNANIul:0:sey:udikne LAG:UDIKNE:0:sey:LAG LAG:UDIKNE:0:sey:LAG annani:UDIKNE:1:sey:annani annani:UDIKNE:1:sey:annani ulul:ul:1:sey:ulul ulul:ul:1:sey:ulul lagulDIKNI:lagul:1:sey:lagulDIKNI lagulDIKNI:lagul:1:sey:lagulDIKNI luu:ul:3:sey:luu luu:ul:3:sey:luu aulag:lagul:0:sey:aulag aulag:lagul:0:sey:aulag ---------------------------------------------------------------------- #!/usr/local/bin/perl $| = 1; $time = int(time/3600); srand time; $generator = int(4*rand); print "\nHi? What's your name?\n"; chop($that=); print "\nWell, $that, let's get started! Let's make a gender!!\n"; sleep(1); print "That ok with you?\n"; chop($str=); if ($str eq "no") {print "\nOh well, nothing happened.\n"; goto FINAL;} else {print "\nOh well, let's get going!\n\n";} print "It's impossible to decide on behavior!", "\n" if 1==$generator; sleep(1); print "\nWhat do you want to call this thing you're making?\n"; $name=; chop $name; print "$name is a new terrific gender!", "\n" if 4==$generator; sleep(1); open(APPEND, ">> enfolding"); print APPEND join(":",$name,$str,$generator,$that,$name), "\n"; open(STDOUT); if ($pid = fork) { print < trace"); exit(0); } sleep(1); print "$name is simple, not compound, I think.", "\n\n" if 3==$generator; sleep(1); print "What pronoun has existed for $time hours?", "\n" if 2==$generator; sleep(1); print "$name - and you knew that all along!", "\n\n" if 2==$generator; sleep(1); print "Wait! $name and $pid are gone forever!", "\n\n"; FINAL: { $ding = int((gmtime)[6]); print "For $ding days, I have already been in mourning...\n\n"; } exit(0); ___________________________________________________________________________ The deadness of beauty's slope-gender, and the death of slope-pronoun process (program output sample): Hi? What's your name? beauty Well, beauty, let's get started! Let's make a gender!! That ok with you? yes Oh well, let's get going! What do you want to call this thing you're making? slope Well, slope already constructs trouble for us, subverting the categories we take for granted. Beneath the surface, slope is 27982, neutral, yes? But what is neutrality here, its constitution? What pronoun has existed for 235688 hours? slope - and you knew that all along! Wait! slope and 27982 are gone forever! For 3 days, I have already been in mourning... epols:ytuaeB:0:sey:epols epols:ytuaeB:0:sey:epols epols:ytuaeb:1:sey:epols epols:ytuaeb:1:sey:epols epols:ytuaeb:2:sey:epols epols:ytuaeb:3:sey:epols epols:ytuaeb:2:sey:epols ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Bathtub and the Phone Call Blue (Little-Lure-Object-Ah and the So-Sorry-Masquerade) She was called bathtub and I was blue; the phone splintered on the subway. On one hand, immersion in the oceanic, drowned souls and seaweed - on the other, red nails' furrows splitting spattered glass. On one hand, the city and concept of Providence - on the other, the quincunx-line thrusting its gloved hand into the depths of city tunnels. On one hand, no messages but an afterthought; on the other, nothing but message, coded like gender. On one hand, bbb1.jpg, she was called bathtub and I was blue; on the oth- er, phone1.jpg, the phone ad on the number #4 or #5. The body loses lan- guage when the body sinks; the body gains it when dismembered, part-ob- jects pointing to the whole sememe shebang. On the one hand, I lived with her, never closing beyond the seas deep within her unfathomable littoral; on the other, she'd never go out with me, schlemiel and crazy to boot. On the one hand, she was never literal; on the other, she wore boots I could ill afford. On the one hand, she was always ill; on the other, I was only litter. It's the schlemiel and crazy to boot, the wearing of expensive boots, the litter, that makes language; it's the deep seas and littoral, never liter- al and always ill, that loses language in the sinking bathtub, sinking body, sinking water; water always sink. Does water touch bottom? It's like something that can't inscribe. Do red nails garner rapture? Every movement is another moment. _________________________________________________________________________ Your name, Emily It was just yesterday that I returned in the guise of a woman, she said, and you were taping me, dressed as a Vietnamese guerilla. I remember holding the gun, saluting, the flag held high before me, and you still have the photograph I think. Of the tape, of something else. Of me. This is a memory. It's a collocation of atoms there on the paper. Your name, Emily, will disappear. Someday the paper will shatter, unsigned, un- signified. She said this with tears in her voice. She didn't want memory, not so much by a hair's breadth, not so you could smell its scent just now. The book of the world crumbled into heaps that just didn't exist any longer. No one remembered Vietnam, not country but word, placement else- where in exile, summation producing divergent expansions. I don't want memory, she said, praying for Alzheimer's. I want the world to continue without me. All these stories flood, already. Too many things have happened; they'll always happen. As the world slows down, you won't live to see it, the happenings slow down too, but they'll never come to an end. I just don't want the dreams. I don't want the photographs, the whispers in the dark, the videotapes, the movies, the audio sounding from every speaker all at once, my daughter's voice, my mother's, my father's. A rock must have a disappearance slower. She made war on the world. She made war on all living things, the oceans and the seas as well. There were no borders, no coastlines, but that told a story. She boiled the waters. She crumbled the mountains. Nothing was ever enough. She remembered and remembered and remembered. It was her curse. Any simple story, any sign of a day gone by. Hell is knowing that one was alive. She said that; I remember. _________________________________________________________________________ Lineaments of Desire The construct/gender program has become increasingly complex. Each line or line-pair below represents a test-case. Because I concentrate on the code, the actual entries become a matter of preconscious or autonomic writing. The result is an odd self-portrait or production, more accurate than any- thing I could deliberately produce. So indeed a different gender is con- structed, one _across_ the entries, a matter of interpenetration or trans- gression. The output is from the last three days and has a beauty all its own. girl:ok:235701:2:lover:girl lover:yes:235701:1:boy:lover groybirl:suppose so:235705:2:lulu:groybirl honey:yes:235708:0:tiffany:honey honey:yes:235710:3:tiffany:honey:loving louvre:yes:235710:0:clara:louvre:dark sumerian:hysteric:wet:lugal:yes:235710:3:ululata:lugal:wet one:two:three:four:gender:yes:235710:0:name:gender:one etuc:yppols:sselhtraerb:ynnafit:sey:235710:2:yenoh:ynnafit:sselhtraerb lunar:cool:lung:moon:yes:235710:0:sunshine:moon:cool white:black:grey:sucky:red:sure:235710:2:yellow:red:grey salt:suppurate:slave:sal:yes:235710:2:lugal:sal:slave: froth:lag:yes:235710:1:gal:lag:froth:date lovely:brilliant:hot:female:girl:235711:2:woman:female:brilliant Thu Nov 21 02:09:24 EST 1996 tough:hard:dumb!:man:ohboy!:235711:3:male:man:tough Thu Nov 21 02:10:26 EST 1996 young:old:dad:sure:235711:0:mom:dad:young Thu Nov 21 02:11:54 EST 1996 yoma:malamu:luma:ulamu:mulu:235711:2:wummy:ulamu:yoma Thu Nov 21 02:12:43 EST 1996 sure:lively:maybe true:greyghost:yes:235711:2:la:greyghost:sure Thu Nov 21 02:13:16 EST 1996 misery:death:anxiety:illness:sadness:oh yes:235713:0:sorrow:sadness:misery Thu Nov 21 04:33:32 EST 1996 sleazy:self-lit:hungry:lurid:yes:29923:3:uh, Alan:lurid:self-lit Thu Nov 21 15:02:08 EST 1996 a:b:c:thing:sure:408:3:yummy:thing:b Thu Nov 21 15:04:33 EST 1996 being:one :now:sure:yes:865:0:lulu:sure:being 235724Thu Nov 21 15:07:53 EST 1996 bad:horrible:dank:evil:yes:1861:3:love:evil:horrible 235724:Thu Nov 21 15:16:45 EST 1996 ___________________________________________________________________________ Subject: Short Text, Absolute Truth, All Cows Are Black 00/00 Origin Where I come from and where I am going: What keeps me alive: What controls and mesmerizes me: What constructs my political economy: root:##root:0:1:Operator:/:/usr/bin/sh roots:##roots:13246:99:Conscious:/net/u/17/r/roots:/usr/local/bin/zsh ______________________________________________________________________ More on the Community Access '96 Conference in Cape Breton - I participated today in two workshops on IRC; I found by listening to both in English, and one in French simultaneous, I was able to keep myself oc- cupied; otherwise things went too slowly. And the French/English comple- mented each other - expanding on the subject. A lot of the discussion concerned Web page development, as usual; I kept trying to turn things back to the user-side (_not_ the client side) of things - emphasizing the need for user _lateral relationships_ (such as develop in IRC or email lists) - and user empowerment. For example, con- sider health care; the Net can provide top-down information, and bottom- up patient requests - but it can also provide lateral patient empowerment through Net communities. Even for preventive medicine, lateral and free- form information exchange can be critical. And most Net discussion con- tinues to emphasize the Web, everywhere - along with the advanced Micro- soft Explorer and Netscape browsers - but only a passing glance, if that, at text-based browsers such as Lynx. (MOOs, MUDs, etc. etc. aren't even mentioned - not even graphic MUDs such as ThePalace, WorldsAway, etc.) Again, my main emphasis (which I bring up whenever I can) is the need to develop consistent bases for Internet uses that are community-oriented, so it's not all _presentation_ or spectacle. Everything conspires against this; the media consistently emphasize server-side Web pages, video and audio streams, Java or Javascript, etc. Home-pages are seen as a self- presentation, complete with links to other selves and corporate sites - in fact, the self within the homepage becomes embodied and imminent _within_ the corporate. While this seems like freedom of choice - it's _your_ home- page, _your home_ page - it's an embedding that parallels Network tele- vision's entrance into self, sex, community, and family - it's insidious and rarely critiqued. I keep thinking: The Net is not television: repeat! (Just like an adver- tisement.) On IRC, participants were silenced for long periods of time, during the presentations, which were sometimes slow reading. I'd like to see, as a future conference possibility, _double_ channels per panel - one for lis- ten-only transcription, and one for parallel chat among the on-line par- ticipants. The on-line users are given the option of simultaneous chat and listening, or just listening. This wouldn't be necessary in, say, Real Audio, where information comes across quickly, but typed transcription is slower and sparser. The moderator and technical staff were extremely valuable - not only for on-line help, but also for providing details of the panel that were other- wise not available. Finally, the summary transcriptions of the panels, from this end of things, have been excellent - one, this morning, on Web page marketing and community economic development - was really terrific. After two days of on-line participation (and leading an on-line session last night), I'm coming away with a feeling of positive energy and real hope for Internet participation in an on-going experiment in democracy and community. I was told that there were around 300 participating in Nova Scotia, and one of the panelists remarked how many young people were there. In fact, the discussion ranged across all demographics for a change... Alan, somewhat cautiously optimistic, totally worn out (I was one of the organizers of a national film festival that ran this evening here in NY), hoping that he's making at least a bit of sense -- ________________________________________________________________________ Gender program interaction, current version: ----------------------------------------- Hold on right there! One second! Hi? What's your name? Ooze Well, Ooze, let's get started! Let's make a gender!! That ok with you? yuus Oh well, let's get going! What do you want to call this Being you're making? gooey Ooze, gooey disgusts me; forget it! But anyway... Well, we're breathless; give us some adjectives! Place each one a separate line; and type Control-d on a separate line when done: flood flow spew smear Let smear be our primary descriptor! gooey makes me wet 30 times! Well, gooey already constructs florid trouble for us, subverting the categories we take for granted. Staining the surface, gooey is 30, hungered, yuus? But what is spew here, its construct? Do you feel your gender is close to gooey? yes Ah, a true and neutral fantasy! In any case, you must contact me about this... For 6 florid days, I have already been in loose mourning! And it has taken you just 0.717 minutes to make a gender! dank:smelly:hot:wet:smear:gooey:8068:2:sticky:smear:hot flood:flow:spew:smear:gooey:yuus:8650:7:Ooze:gooey:smear _______________________________________________________________________ Broken Program of Reversals in Love (See Below) #!/usr/local/bin/perl $|=1; print "\nEnter lines, using carriage return.\n"; print "Use control-d to end.\n\n"; @one=; $size=@one; $num=0; open(DEPEND, ">> three"); open(APPEND, ">> two"); while ($num < $size) { print APPEND "@one[$num]"; $num++; } if ($sign=fork) {print "";} else { system("/usr/bin/tr '[a-m]' '[n-z]' < two > three"); system("/usr/bin/rev three >> two"); } close(APPEND); close(DEPEND); wait; exit(0); .rzvt tnoy n ros oq ot qrtnnw rv'I tnvutrzos sv svuT .pvupnrtotpyrp rut so rsvut rut utnrnro uoy ot rrttry rvoy n qnrs oT .qvnsnu ro qvns ro ot sqrrn ytvynrr nv tnvuton nruW .qnrq rut stprysrr yyynrr tnvuton nruW This is something I've wanted to do for a long time. To send a love letter to you beneath the guise of the cryptographic. When nothing in reality needs to be said or unsaid. When nothing really reflects the dead. Further, what would be done with these unravelings That could not have occurred with economy Of politics or other bartering of flesh vacated From spaces within me, broken and traveling? Tuvs vs sozrtuvnt I'vr wnntrq to qo sor n yont tvzr. To srnq n yovr yrttrr to you ornrntu tur tuvsr os tur pryptotrnpuvp. Wurn notuvnt vn rrnyvty nrrqs to or snvq or unsnvq. Wurn notuvnt rrnyyy rrsyrpts tur qrnq. .rzvt tnoy n ros oq ot qrtnnw rv'I tnvutrzos sv svuT .pvupnrtotpyrp rut so rsvut rut utnrnro uoy ot rrttry rvoy n qnrs oT .qvnsnu ro qvns ro ot sqrrn ytvynrr nv tnvuton nruW .qnrq rut stprysrr yyynrr tnvuton nruW stnvyrvnrnu rsrut utvw rnoq ro qyuow tnuw ,rrutruF yzonopr utvw qrrruppo rvnu ton qyuop tnuT qrtnpnv usrys so tnvrrtrno rruto ro spvtvyop sO ?tnvyrvnrt qnn nrxoro ,rz nvutvw srpnps zorF Further, what would be done with these unravelings That could not have occurred with economy Of politics or other bartering of flesh vacated From spaces within me, broken and traveling? _________________________________________________________________________ Skew (by Jennifer) The sky swells up, ruptures in even striations, waves among incipient atmospheric fluxes, slight bulge where the belly produces an absence of signs. new :old:maybe:thinkingbeing:Sure:19819:3:Tonya:thinkingbeing:old bang:cunt:blood:Chora:Yes:19975:5:Margaret:Chora:blood pronoun:entity:thusness:thinking:ok:20021:4:honey:thinking:pronoun junk:lousy:crap:failure:sure:1482:7:tired:failure:lousy erect:hot:moist:hard:yes:11739:0:Swelling:hard:moist Uncomfortable kyber-body bangs among itselves. Sky leverages, suffocates; anyone will say there's nothing there. Skin's tight enough to be a window. "Truly do we know that a mirror was hung up, that jewels were spat out, and that then an Hundred Kings succeeded each other; that a blade was bitten, and a serpent cut in pieces, so that a Myriad Deities did flour- ish." (Yasumaro, The Kojiki, Records of Ancient Matters, trans. Chamber- lain.) through:migraine:gone-world:out:used-up:guess-so:25192:3:worn:used-up:- gone-world Sky's a mirror of beautiful cosmos, which is a bleak cylinder at the pro- jective limit in each and every direction, skewered-the-body. All those signals up there down here. But it is the wind or alter-wind that makes the alter-body, great swollen belly where you might see nothing in the sky. _________________________________________________________________________ Your Message I'm giving you a place to put your words . Your words will permanently form the rest of this text. There are vast machines just be- neath the surface. Already I can here the quick snap of your mouse as the cursor hovers above . Your choice has been registered in cyb- erspace; there are enormous cgi-bin programs waiting for your input. You can see your reading slowing down. The programs are in full motion, as a result of your . As usual, power-points proliferate. You've reached into me, drawn these words out of me. I can't even give these words away. They're yours; they always have been. If you don't believe me . _________________________________________________________________________ Address Outline - (This is an extended outline of what I hope to cover in the keynote ad- dress at the conference - some of the material may have to be passed over, since a fair amount of time will be taken with explaining term- inology; I'm going to assume an audience unfamiliar with the Net or at least _thinking_ the Net.) Thank you and welcome - 1. Probably first conference organized around an email list - which says a great deal about the possibility of _depth_ or _aura_ of such lists. 2. What is an email list? - quick distinction between "Webnet" and "dark- net." Media emphasis on the lateral/corporate aspects of the former - personal emphasis on the depth/libidinal economic/community/discursive aspects of the latter. 3. What is list aura? - _Lateral_ discussions / relationships among list members on one hand; Web pages, archives, MOOs, books, etc. on the other. (Mention Being on Line at this point.) 4. What the list has "meant to me": a. Started by Michael Current and myself; b. "Cybermind" or "Cyberpsych"; c. Notions of "cyberspace" - we both saw _virtuality_ (electronic or virtual subject) as a critical turning-point for the species; d. Early on - the discussion of _style_ began to create a feeling of community as a critical moment of the list; e. For better or worse, the _persistence_ of community; f. The role my own texts may have played here - raw, personal, liter- ary-philosophical (creation of Fop-l exploring these interpenetra- tions); g. Sexualization/desire of texts, texts as writing, WRYTING. h. My role - need for constant _tending_ of the list on a formal basis; occasional withdrawal; the burning of production of my writing vis-a-vis the lists; the community of co-moderators: i. Co-moderating in relation to living alone - the extension of the dialog of tending; j. Finally, my own and others' research reflected both in the osten- sible content of the lists, as well as their interior formations. 5. Re: 4c: Research into the virtual: Humanity extending its leap "some- where else" that involves, implicitly, the digital domain. The tradi- tional analog world of philosophy is turned inside-out. How can one theorize the digital? a. Brief historical excursus: Bacon's cipher, for example. Worlds of ghosts, demons, uncanny events, Bardo Thodol, Rig Veda X/129, etc. b. The traditional phenomenological approach - _peering at the world_ and seeing a red patch, desk, tree, Jean or Pierre approaching the cafe, etc., is no longer sufficient - since _all_ of this can be absorbed by digital construct. Instead, the philosophy here will also be a partici- pation anthropology _simultaneously on all hardware/software levels_ so that what is WRYTTEN can be understood in terms of _writing_ as well. (Intervention, participating, bracketing, scripting, upgrading, down- grading processes.) c. Thus the intervention etc. processes are both _foreground_ (osten- sible content) and _background_ (configuration fabric) - understanding, describing, and acknowledging software options, languages, connection bandwidths, filtering options, hardware requirements, protocols, and the range of commands available to user and administrator. (For example, understanding site-bans, maverick spam-groups, EOF signals, etc.) d. As _foreground_ personal experience and some understanding of phen- omenological description are necessary (too often, the former is missing from academic work). A. I attempt to extend myself as far as possible into the virtual realm within/across applications (IRC, email lists, email, CuSeeMe, MOOs, talkers, newsgroups, etc.). B. Semi-ethnomethodological interventions - the margins / deconstruction of the application - simple hacks, etc. e. Examples - Traceroute or ping -s for Net "health" and mapping (other mappings available on the Web); understanding netsplits and bans on IRC; fork-bombs on MOOs; Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. Understanding the semiotics of fluid signifiers (within the ostensible content) and ikon- ic/indexical (netsplit, "*" within traceroute). f. The presence of _wild-theory,_ three-halves of literary/philosophical/ psychoanalytic, entrances of other halves - the [X-theory] of virtuality as suddenly present and real as construct in the midst of everyday life. 6. Other issues: a. The linguistic dispersion model of the Internet - fluxes of languages, empires, communities, protocols, scriptings, across the Net. Wherever a momentary stasis appears with the potential for communication, both com- munity and Net-sexuality develop. b. Issues of ontology and epistemology in relation to the virtual: What constitutes a virtual entity? What is embodiment/disembodiment (this was a major concern during the first year or so of Cybermind)? Etc. 7. The Limits of the Realm - of primary importance (issues that will be repeatedly discussed at here at the conference): a. Bandwidth low/high - applicability for what demographics? (For example how to organize a conference that is accessible to _everyone_ on-line? The Webpage gateway / talker-IRC / email list model.) b. Community and economic development vis-a-vis the Internet. c. Internet haves and have-nots: the plague of continuous upgrading and technological surplus (available used equipment). d. Advantages and disadvantages of wiring _everyone._ ___________________________________________________________________________ This might be too late, but - I was walking back on Dean Street, from Tom and Leslie; I had gone to pick up pages from the Canyon Cinema film catalog; the coop carries my work. All of a sudden, everything disappeared in a blinding flash - not one that would kill me (I can still breathe) - not one that made thunderous noise (it was absolutely silent) - and not one that has harmed me in any way (she can still move). The universe is over 99.999% cold matter or plasma, I thought to myself, and now it has come to this. The barriers had suddenly dropped, and the earth immediately vaporized. I have no explanation whatsoever for my ability to type. I can do no more than to type this message to you, who may or may not re- ceive it. As for me, I can't see anything. If someone is responsible for this circumstance, I urge them to contact me privately, since, last I remember, I had set Cybermind and Fop-l, two of the lists I co-moderate, to no-mail. On the other hand, since there is nothing whatsoever, I can't imagine what form your acknowledgement would take. Any help in this matter would be greatly appreciated. But, I remain yours, and so forth, etc., Jennifer __________________________________________________________________________ Subject: Idiotic-feel-good-memopad When you run this program, it repeats the two lines you enter to make sure you remember what you're supposed to do. Check the file "tiptop." It will make you feel good. It is a feel-good-memopad program. It has heart and is truly wonderful. Just like feeling wonderful, it goes nowhere. ------------------------------------------------------------- #!/usr/local/bin/perl print "\t\nThis is the program which goes nowhere.\n"; print "\tAnd every time you begin this, the message repeats.\n"; print "\tIt adds itself to file _tiptop_ - just so you know\n"; print "\twhere to find it, along with other things...\n"; open(THIS, ">> tiptop"); print THIS "\tjust so you know where to find it, along with\n"; print THIS "\tother things. And you understand this?\n"; print "\tAnd you understand this?\n"; $that=; $num=0; srand time; print "\tAnything else you want to say?\n"; chop($those=); print THIS "You'll remember this, and you'll remember\n"; while ($num < rand(4)) {print THIS join(":", $those, $that, $those, $that); $num++}; exit; _____________________________________________________________________ trams:nalA:refinneJ:6:09711:esruoc fo:nalA:trams:ylgu:esnetni:nwod Jennifer writes this; she adds nothing to my security. She is thinking about space and about tragedy. She decides that length has no absolute meaning in kyberspace. That leaves topology. She decides there are bendings and gatherings and loosenings and disappearances but pretty much multiply-connected graphs. She says people don't realize how _exact_ everything is here, because their emotions are in turmoil. She says the _exactness_ is critical, turning everyday life inside-out or upside-down. Tragedy is always a flaw that floods and flows, and there's usually a deed, she reassured herself. She'd read Aristotle and beyond. She was writing this in an editor, knowing the system clock was just a keystroke or two away. That the time would always be there for her. Then there were the programs, email, voices coming in out of the dark. She felt like a spy who came in from the cold, because the cold was exact. She looked at her hand for a long time. She looked again and again. tnaillirb:refinneJ:nalA:1:54921:esruoc fo:refinneJ:krad:esnetni:tnaillirb _________________________________________________________________________ Net Sex Yesterday in the evening I was interviewed by an Australian radio show about net sex or net.sex or Net.sex or Net sex, and I wasn't sure of the topic beforehand. In the questions and conversation, Net sex appeared as an _it,_ which I turned into a process, or a melding of processes within and without other forms of communication (phone, mail, "real-life") and relationships (love, partnership, pen-pal); I've noticed that Net sex is often objectified, as if sex itself were a question of fucking or isola- ted physical activity. Net sex, like anything else Internet, has to be fully contexted, within and without the realm of the virtual; it's not - even on the level of a casual MOO encounter - an "incident" or "event" devoid of consequence, emotion, before and after, personal history, real-life and CMC environ- ments, etc. To treat it as such, i.e. as a "one-hand typing" phenomenon, is to reify it, place it within the domain of capital as an (inauthentic) object which becomes mediating and hegemonic. This is fine for the statisticians or purveyors of conservative ideology, but it does damage elsewhere; even here, the need of a multiculturalism is evident. This need - this multiculturalism - should be extended throughout the In- ternet and Net phenomena, since communication here is so complex, stradd- ling various fuzzy epistemic / ontological regimes. Beyond that, thinking of Net sex as _fuck_ reduces the Hite reports, say, to the level of the singles bar - the bar plays a role, but for most of us, it's not determinative. _________________________________________________________________________ Lacanian Lack of the Robot "I can also grasp," the brassy monotone rolled through the studio, "that this ... music is not for robots. It is for man. To me it is is easy, yes ... It was not meant to be easy." -- from Herbert Goldstone, Virtuoso, in Thinking Machines, ed. Geoff Conklin, 1954. It is _precisely_ the labor of the subject that constructs the artwork as _embedding,_ process - it's structure that creates the beginning and end of _this_ piece in opposition to an other, absorbing the other nonethe- less. Foreclose is always an incident, nothing more. But it is the labor which opens the work, on the other's hand, to the position of labor - from Adrian Piper's viewpoint, that of the art/isan, but from that of the work, that of debris, chaos, surplus. A robot can be programmed to perform surplus, embedding; the case however is that of the aesthetics of difficulty - _not,_ here, _virtuosity,_ but that which requires craftedness throughout. Clearly, there are bearings in cyberspace, retentions here, just as the story itself is written in one or another form of ASCII. What is born, bears repeating, bares a dirtiness not to be swept under the rug of the subject, but subjecting, instead, the subject to hir unfolding / enfolding. Where is the aesthetics of _difficulty,_ the hand-craftedness of painting, sculptural musculature and adhesion, long hours beneath the lights, dark- room's day-long fixations? She might say, there was a lot of work put into this; she might say, if you're not obsessive, forget it. The room was in the object or the sound. ---------------------------- [_She_ might say a lot; the _she_ transformed the in-humane, beyond Lyo- tard or proper name. She might contribute her two bits; she might take over the station. She might start a revolution; she might go to bed. She might make a painting, or might not - she might not have decided. She might get it into her head to type this; she might decide nothing was worth it, after all, and it's time to end the masquerade. She might be the masquerade, or might not. Or the woman, or might not have been the woman - she might never have decided. And she might not thought that a decision worth making, or a decision she, or anyone else, for that matter, could make, for her, for someone else, for no one in particular.] __________________________________________________________________________ Lacan, Star of Masquerade, A! "The showing of the film followed with the unfortunate occurrence of equip- ment problems so that the sound track was inaudible. The spectacle of Lacan on the silver screen mouthing words while all we could hear was growling static and electric rumbling was a glory of surrealism. Eventually the speakers were shut off so that there was utter silence while we watched the image of Lacan over subtitles. Thus, the thinker who chose to speak and not to write appeared in silence over a text in translation. As inconvenient as it was - the film was shown the next day with the sound intact - you had to be entirely void of a sense of humor not to appreciate it. "Schneiderman seemed nearly that when he was asked by a young girl in the audience, later in the proceedings, whether Lacan spoked in silence because he was dead! Here in what was a rare moment of truth, the analyst hesitated, seemed a bit uncomfortable and answered by explaining to the child about the workings of the projectors." (From a review of "Television," a conference based on Lacan's work, NYC, 1987, by David Lichtenstein, in Hystoria, Lacan Study Notes 6-9, 1988.) Is this the metaphoric or metonomic of cyberspace? Lacan continues to mouth off, his mouth off. Everything is reiteration of the 128 Symbolics of ASCII, world turned into raster. The projectors' have been off for a long time; text flows on and on. Because he is dead! __________________________________________________________________________ She, Rider, Haggard It began when I realized I was waiting late night for the Australians to come on line - the globe swelled like Columbus' pear. I disappeared along the meridians. This was concrete, a Riemannian manifold curling itself around body and soul. It was perfectly poised. It was perfectly normal. Later, the Philippines, Kuwait, Antarctica, and Labrador. Everywhere, an incredible _thinning,_ turning the globe into paste and dissolution. Delay was always a confusion of phenomenologies. Time-consciousness re- vealed itself in everyday events. I might mention breakfast or late-night evening CuSeeMe. Time smeared, jetlag without the physiology or condition- al. It was retreat into multiple neighborhooding, or voices from the dark, into the dark. It was voices at all times and all hours and the globe col- lapsed. "There was space in its absence," she said, "but oh God, what kind?" Like a bad science fiction novel, the only answer was silence. "The cloud of unknowing where I am. There was nothing gone on about it." She thought this to be the case. She packed up and left. They were waiting for her, a chorus of voices, needs, desires, hatreds, loves. They whispered be- yond whispers. She felt the sintering of disparate flesh. She felt nothing. Like a bad novel, felt and was nothing: The Void! She'd be up in... fifteen minutes; they were back on line! She was starving for attention, words, affection, cool touch of keys on fingers. She never had enough time, nations, voices, sexes, genders, spaces, bodies, names. This was it or never! She pushed the red button! Nothing happened! She thought: The thing is _there_ in the push and push alone. She thought for a second, then turned back to the screen. She began; there was so little time. The Philippines needed attention, there was that nice boy from Antarctica. Station Red Code Zero! Something had happened after all. She didn't live to find out what. -------------------------------------- [Interspersed footnote: The Americans have come on. I am away from the com- puter. So far, access has proved impossible. Jon and I used a y-connect with the phone to dial zero, getting out on a local call; the computer took over at that point. But there was a double log-in and a firewall at the access; I couldn't get past that, telnet anywhere but to other machines which refused to recognize the password. I write this _to itself,_ desperate for Americans or Europeans, around, responsive, innuendo or ytalk. I am adrift on the con- tinent. This body-I, adrift. ____________________________________________________________________________ Jet Lag, Lag of Jet, Lagged, Endless Love "What is the point of sitting here several miles up and philosophizing about jetlag, as if it were a steady-state instead of a momentary lapse between nodes. Why do I return to Levinas, to accounts of extremity, insomnia, chronic pain, hilarity, hiccups making it into world-record books? Surely there is a limit when the a body adjusts to furious headaches, when everything becomes simultaneously questionable and not worth questioning, not to men- tion weight-loss. "At the moment then, I feel both stale and timeless and dimly understand why God would sit back and watch later and unforeseen developments. "These extend throughout all of space and time, of course, and the bodies- by-the-hearth model of human existence and familiality is found only in the travel magazines nestled in the seat pocket in front of me. "I do sit here and type, wayward on the plane, contrary on the ground, hud- dled by the _power source_ by the airport terminal window. Who would have thought that I'd find myself thinking and typing in the midst of final boarding-calls, passenger pages, and telly droning in the background. I watch a cloud scud the tarmac. I am blessed." Thoughts like this bound her to the ground during _Good Morning Australia._ The perfect poise of the perfect lag reached its summary conclusion, thrust through non-existent suspense. Who would have dreamed, who would have thought? Who is capable of dreaming, of thinking. "We are the tossed generation," she said. __________________________________________________________________________ Of All Life There is this great vision I am having, of all life, of radiations and dusts, sinterings throughout - prions and viruses, bacteria and protozoa, each and every interpenetrated, parasitic, symbiotic - larger forms as temporary carries - a plethora of the biomolecular - not the Gaia hypo- thesis but a _seething_ continuing everywhere within the increasingly enlarged bandwidths of the possible - and it's this image that parasiti- cally attaches itself to that of the electromagnetic spectrum, waves encompassing the universe, particles thrusting in and out of atmosphere - the planet in fact is in _turmoil,_ life-forms such as ourselves only a temporary stasis, eddy, or vortex within the whole - just as Flaubert's St-Antoine was on the verge of discovering this before retreating viol- ently to the signifier - It as if the signifier inscribes itself against the noise, vortex - as if inscription momentarily erects itself like a snake against the fissuring of the world. But it's no more than that - already frayed, leaking at the edges, it can't go on. It goes on; it can't go on. It goes on; it can't go on. Machines rust, fall apart. There's no tomorrow, today, yesterday. There are successions of days and nights, grey blurs, scuttlings beneath the surface of things. Things are soft like burnished metal leaving a sheen on the skin, of all life, the metallic carapace. Inscription erects itself; everything inscribes. Interior and exterior dis- solve. The world is close to toppling, given the existence _e_ of any parti- cular _specimen of any specific species._ Hissing, voices, as I've said, re- peatedly, are an afterthought. The world is transparent; the swarm thins out as the edge of atmosphere or sustainable temperature is reached. Life and death are in the mind of the beholder, an afterthought. What is afterthought, is thought after, thinking no-one, of or through no- one. Fictions compound fictions. The life of matter is the matter of life. We are not alone, she said; we are not _we_ as the instance dissolves. __________________________________________________________________________ None Flying i Here, there is, to an unprecedented extent, the art of flying _blind,_ with- out guideposts in a world drawn with the blunt antipodean illuminations from the first or second into the purity of unbounded space. This is the remain- der of our problem, think I, working through the conference, caressing the MOO as if I and you, they'd think, were important, or at least of import. Time and time again, I stress this _lack_ of import against transparency or a sense of making-do, but this is or isn't relative, is it? Whatever comes about or is brought to a foreground, this foregrounding, not closing, of a virtual community in the real guarantees a history-in-the-making as cyber produces itself elsewhere, the thud of bodies where sand is. If your hair that has fallen from your blond head is of import, everything is; if a dust mote proves meaningless amidst the judgement of all things, a world war or world warned is frame or colloidal slip. Thus a warning becomes the locale of a sign; think of myriads of particles without address. Internal coagulations fund names within a political economy of the habitus; all culture is repetitive, neurotic, born to the edge of dissolution, and all flight is blind. ii All right, ii is an aside. It is not the truth I am afraid of, since truth is chimera, destructured; it is the veering. All right, sure, that it would be easier to relinquish in the guise of sim- ple madness, lost in the name-of-the-Father - or definitely, yeah, easier to promote a form of adoption. iii The conference here got off to a heady start, she said, promo or no promo. Stelarc's event raised a lot of questions; for me, it was Wagnerian, ele- ments determined and undetermined by computer control; he raises the corpse of the future in the guise of the electro-mechanical, and the ping/Net or Net/work he constructs runs the gamut of electrical impulse, minus the sur- face content. I think of Alvin Lucier's work in the 70s, a piece using in particular branwaves, or his music on/from a long thin wire. There hasn't been a dull paper or presentation here, she continued, what am I falling off my seat. The MOO on the first session and part of the second ran perfectly, and at least from the Perth perspective, was integrated into the conference This takes a certain skill on everyone's part; I typed as intermediary, but that necessarily involves interpretation and, in my case, occasional inter- jection of content. The MOO participant has to make do with considerable ex- trapolation. The real life audience has to learn to move between screen pro- jection and live audio from the mouths of speakers, not to mention other elements of the live environment, etc. The speaker has to acknowledge the projection from time to time, since audience reactions may be out of sync at any particular moment, with the live presentation. Increasingly, we are born through the mouths of others. The panel on aboriginal content on the Internet stressed the potential use of CMC for connection widely-dispersed families, even reuniting them through electronic means. Another function is the bringing-together, suturing, of narratives. I participate on occasion in an argument about the _newness_ of cyberspace, which I see as an epistemological/ontological break with the past, no matter how many roots are found. And while the phenomenology of space has been de- scribed by Lefebvre and others, I feel that Net topography is qualitatively different than anything we have previously experienced. The coupling of nodes and sites, the immediate splicing of international content, the phen- omena of lag and hacking, are new to everyday life, which returns practice to the surface based on any heuristics that can be thrown into an economy of desire and sublimation. iv personal I wake up at five in the morning, ready to work. My face has slightly broken out. I wash my hair with soap. I'm too nervous and worried that I won't do well here, that I'll get in people's way, that I don't belong, that I'm too crazy in relation to straight-forward academia. I try to put my future out of my mind, since there really isn't any. I try to continue working; it's clear that the self-created/narcissistic diegesis of these texts performs a therapeutic function beyond their ostensible content. This is where the veering comes through - to remain within the vicinity of the ostensible, if not a total embracing. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- More of It / Them Last night, the conference formally ended; there are still on-line papers to be read and discussed, but the formal real-life panels are over. For me it was an incredibly intense three and a half days, beginning with Stelarc's performance, and ending with Karen's concluding remarks and comments/criti- cisms, the MOO going all the while. There were a variety of hookups, ranging from CuSeeMe to RealAudio to the MOO, not to mention personal and list email, the newsgroup, and the Webpage itself. There was also an openness about including these CMC applications within the panel sessions. Jerry Everard stressed the workshop nature of the conference; I find myself unable to assess it at this stage. I did a good deal of the MOO transcrip- tion, and participated at a variety of levels, often simultaneously; I kept going. On one hand, I felt that I was too much a center of attention; on the other, I was glad (and am always in need of) any legitimation my work can get. So I was conflicted, more or less, throughout, which only added to my neurotic- ism. The writing I do always appears as a burden; if there is another forth- coming event (and there almost certainly will be), I would try and get eith- er my video or film (and that of others) shown - these are media that almost have to take the virtual, however defined, for granted. The average docu- drama is already inhabiting doubled worlds, the re-make/re-marking of the Simpson trial is another case in point. I've never seen a conference which had a politics of total inclusion, nor have I seen one which wasn't a display/jockeying for power. The Cybermind conference attempted the former, and had nothing at stake for the latter. To some extent we failed at inclusion - the fact that the Web articles have to be assessed elsewhen is indicative of that. There was criticism by partici- pants who were non-members of Cyb or Fop that they felt left out of the pro- ceedings, that there were clearly inside/outside groups. (Not all felt like that, but at least two that spoke publicly and two that spoke to me private- ly). I'm not sure there is a way around that; it was a group of email-list memb- ers who put the event together, coupled with a number of people from Perth itself (there were about 40 participants in all). Many of us had never seen each other before; many of us wanted to discuss various issues at a rate faster than that of typing; and many of us simply wanted to gossip or share informal history. On one hand, this created bonding (coupled with relatively deep disagreement or agreement over issues); on the other, it was an exclu- sionary practice. Conferences, for me, are mobile quasi-structures, coagulations (much like the self), tending towards both syntactical foreclosure and dissolution. They aren't remembered; asides are. The complexity of argued issues works itself through print. Performances take the lecture hall for granted, much as television relies on non-rectilinearity of the screen frame. The range of papers from universal to specific often parallels reputations struggling from top-down to bottom-up investigations. Physical appearance is as impor- tant as it is at the highschool dance. Exchange becomes critical; the papers/slides I take back with me become foci for further work and thinking. They're extruded, operating within a much quieter space. They're part of the murmur of the everyday world that seems, just for a few days, suspended. Several issues for me were forefronted here - but this is a personal bias of course. The first is that of the "reality" and "newness" of cyberspace and CMC newness; some participants felt that CMC was a new medium, but we have the same baggage and institutions within it, the same issues. The second is that of governance - how much, where, and by whom. The third, which overlaps the second, is that of access - again how much, where, and by whom. How do different cultures utilize or potentially utilize the Net? Is universal wir- ing and the potential for universal (completely open) knowledge desireable? The fourth is based on the modalities, sensory or otherwise, of CMC commun- ication: What are the best applications for what purposes? How can a phys- ical conference become more inclusionary of cyberspace? The fifth is based on the body - what sorts of ghosts or virtualities inhabit these territories (if that is what they are)? The sixth, related to the fifth, is the future of the physical body - intact/disrupted/"feeling the wires"/disembodied/em- bodied, etc. And the sixth is the broader (and problematized) future itself - of CMC communication, of the planet, even of further conferences. Each of these areas is embedded, implicitly or explicitly, within the oth- ers. Each bears on the political and information economy of the planet; we're clearly reaching beyond the toy stage of cyberspace - and it's more than a collection of research/messaging systems. I walked out at the end wondering if there would be a future. While I don't agree with McKenna, it seems as if implosion is just around the corner, sweeping everything up with it, ranging from the structures of academic dis- course, to freeform wild theory, and (by the way, as an aside), bodies and worlds _themselves._ ___________________________________________________________________________ To the Postgirl: To the Postboy: _Rochester._ Son of a whore, God dman you! can you tell A peerless peer the readiest way to Hell? I've outswilled Bacchus, sworn of my own make Oaths that would fright Furies, and make Pluto quake; I've swived more whores more ways than Sodom's walls E'er knew, or the College of Rome's Cardinals. Witness heroic scars - Look here, ne'er go! - Cerecloths and ulcers from the top to toe! Frighted at my own mischiefs, I have fled And bravely left my life's defender dead; Broke houses to break chastity, and dyed That floor with murder which my lust denied. Pox on't, why do I speak of these poor things? I have blasphemed my God, and libeled Kings! The readiest way to Hell - Come quick! _Boy._ Ne'er stir: The readiest way, my Lord, 's by Rochester. (Earl of Rochester, 1676.) The body breaks upon experience; It's lost everything except sentience; It doesn't escape, refuses penitence Allowing room for last rites, recompense Which is denied, as boasting takes the field, The body, ulcered, fatal, will not yield, But coasts the wires, manifold, unreeled; There is no fate, not even death is sealed. _____________________________________________________________________ defuge because of this conference i was to have been at and all that it implied which i can't remember it having been in the future and the grainy time that it occurs within and he will say that it should have been over and sufficient so that a parallel beauty to the detriment of air and thirst pure liquid saturation falling so that what i mean to say this suspension is more than or not substance/substantive or inordinately massively flooded body as if there were a substance thickened against circadian release bonding the one to the other so that an emergence of the same so that so that the same in fact underlined is that which is self-similar oh oh suspension has no vector field period or stochastic seethes for example cancellations for example so because of the time field and the place space field and because of the on-line field and the weight of the panel and paneling the ruin is the mass of words and i think to myself say to myself: I'm.nowhere.and.I'm.written.out. *** New, this displacement, this journey which falters, encapsulates, the escapement of feet ticked off, sprung, the winding of it. _____________________________________________________________________________ Hordes of Cthulhu CM MOO - This is a total player record for the CM MOO both through the conference and before/after - of course the names are avatars, but this at least gives you an idea of the activity of ghosts, demons, and other forms of sub/urban virtual life... Players who have connected within the last day: Martin last connected Tue Dec 3 17:26:23 1996 WST. Rakosha last connected Tue Dec 3 18:26:36 1996 WST. Alan last connected Tue Dec 3 19:31:57 1996 WST. k* last connected Tue Dec 3 10:46:34 1996 WST. WriTinG last connected Tue Dec 3 16:18:01 1996 WST. Dria last connected Tue Dec 3 12:36:57 1996 WST. Raxcip last connected Tue Dec 3 15:07:48 1996 WST. zone last connected Tue Dec 3 17:07:05 1996 WST. fanny last connected Tue Dec 3 18:40:37 1996 WST. nana last connected Tue Dec 3 14:22:48 1996 WST. Goatium_Guest last connected Tue Dec 3 11:52:50 1996 WST. Jesse last connected Tue Dec 3 14:52:30 1996 WST. Schizandra last connected Tue Dec 3 11:05:37 1996 WST. bree last connected Tue Dec 3 14:09:11 1996 WST. Ivan last connected Tue Dec 3 02:11:44 1996 WST. Phumeza last connected Mon Dec 2 22:07:05 1996 WST. Antares last connected Mon Dec 2 23:38:41 1996 WST. finger last connected Tue Dec 3 14:25:55 1996 WST. Owl last connected Mon Dec 2 21:19:54 1996 WST. wbill last connected Tue Dec 3 04:27:07 1996 WST. phlox last connected Tue Dec 3 13:32:15 1996 WST. Players who have connected within the last week: Wizard last connected Thu Nov 28 15:18:00 1996 WST. simbiont last connected Sun Dec 1 23:03:06 1996 WST. Mitch last connected Thu Nov 28 08:31:02 1996 WST. laurie last connected Sun Dec 1 11:58:43 1996 WST. razey last connected Mon Dec 2 18:18:12 1996 WST. LostJohnny last connected Thu Nov 28 13:06:39 1996 WST. Icarus last connected Sat Nov 30 03:09:51 1996 WST. Imago last connected Sun Dec 1 23:24:22 1996 WST. Lister last connected Sat Nov 30 10:31:34 1996 WST. Kiwi_sunflower last connected Fri Nov 29 14:55:04 1996 WST. Sn00dle_Guest last connected Sun Dec 1 13:23:31 1996 WST. FOP_Guest last connected Sat Nov 30 13:54:46 1996 WST. j last connected Mon Dec 2 00:32:27 1996 WST. Mucky_Duck_Bush_Band_Guest last connected Fri Nov 29 14:36:20 1996 WST. Prawns_With_Horns_Guest last connected Fri Nov 29 14:36:22 1996 WST. Cinema_Prague_Guest last connected Sat Nov 30 13:59:21 1996 WST. Wormfarm_Guest last connected Fri Nov 29 08:51:40 1996 WST. Circus_Murders_Guest last connected Sun Dec 1 13:45:02 1996 WST. Electric_Ass_Band_Guest last connected Sat Nov 30 09:46:54 1996 WST. Spooky_Guest last connected Thu Nov 28 12:01:44 1996 WST. Monakee last connected Mon Dec 2 14:08:22 1996 WST. FrootLoop last connected Thu Nov 28 13:35:01 1996 WST. Ghost last connected Mon Dec 2 02:42:57 1996 WST. Canis_Lupus last connected Sat Nov 30 09:28:22 1996 WST. Jonah last connected Sat Nov 30 09:00:26 1996 WST. marky last connected Fri Nov 29 14:56:38 1996 WST. tinker last connected Sun Dec 1 02:08:23 1996 WST. Gillian last connected Fri Nov 29 08:57:06 1996 WST. Susan last connected Sun Dec 1 14:36:18 1996 WST. Barefoot last connected Fri Nov 29 14:38:18 1996 WST. Logger last connected Sat Nov 30 09:25:34 1996 WST. Debito last connected Fri Nov 29 14:53:46 1996 WST. iIi last connected Sun Dec 1 10:06:57 1996 WST. chris last connected Sun Dec 1 10:57:27 1996 WST. condor last connected Sat Nov 30 16:10:35 1996 WST. Apocryphal last connected Sun Dec 1 15:30:47 1996 WST. Argie last connected Sat Nov 30 23:08:58 1996 WST. ule last connected Sun Dec 1 15:59:29 1996 WST. Fluffy last connected Mon Dec 2 14:31:55 1996 WST. Lee last connected Sun Dec 1 13:51:53 1996 WST. Players who have connected within the last 30 days: Dreamchaser last connected Thu Nov 7 08:17:36 1996 WST. L.Detweiler last connected Mon Nov 25 05:45:48 1996 WST. pilgrim last connected Fri Nov 8 19:32:01 1996 WST. kalu last connected Thu Nov 21 12:48:11 1996 WST. Granular_Guest last connected Thu Nov 21 00:09:19 1996 WST. Vibes last connected Tue Nov 12 01:06:38 1996 WST. aliya last connected Fri Nov 15 14:22:50 1996 WST. Book_Of_Funk_Guest last connected Tue Nov 5 11:00:54 1996 WST. Sic_Guest last connected Tue Nov 26 03:06:40 1996 WST. Fondula_Guest last connected Thu Nov 21 00:16:26 1996 WST. Freaky last connected Thu Nov 7 09:50:36 1996 WST. Paul last connected Fri Nov 8 10:25:42 1996 WST. noh last connected Sun Nov 10 06:15:40 1996 WST. hmmmm last connected Thu Nov 14 15:25:37 1996 WST. mata_hari last connected Fri Nov 22 08:25:46 1996 WST. Chapman last connected Fri Nov 22 01:53:34 1996 WST. Players who have connected within recorded history: housekeeper last connected Tue Nov 16 08:01:49 1993 WST. Porting_Player last connected Sat Jun 17 12:25:14 1995 WST. Surfer_Guest last connected Mon Oct 7 04:52:24 1996 WST. Unauthed_Guest last connected Thu Sep 12 22:50:30 1996 WST. Nuit last connected Sat Oct 5 01:15:45 1996 WST. Spartan last connected Mon Aug 19 10:04:33 1996 WST. username last connected Tue Aug 6 15:05:18 1996 WST. PhilM last connected Wed Aug 7 18:39:12 1996 WST. fred last connected Wed Aug 7 13:36:10 1996 WST. joc last connected Wed Aug 7 14:12:32 1996 WST. Rodd last connected Wed Aug 7 17:04:32 1996 WST. Smoo last connected Thu Sep 26 16:24:30 1996 WST. DrWho last connected Sun Aug 18 12:39:50 1996 WST. Hadit last connected Sat Aug 17 01:20:24 1996 WST. Periculo last connected Mon Aug 12 21:39:48 1996 WST. Metaphora last connected Sun Oct 20 15:53:50 1996 WST. Nickster last connected Fri Aug 9 22:41:52 1996 WST. Hokusai last connected Fri Aug 16 13:29:58 1996 WST. BatMasterson last connected Mon Aug 12 10:32:37 1996 WST. JohnMac last connected Mon Aug 12 10:01:32 1996 WST. Moonbeam last connected Mon Aug 12 03:13:53 1996 WST. Ben last connected Mon Aug 12 10:00:34 1996 WST. cabalero last connected Mon Aug 12 23:29:32 1996 WST. Caille_Bot last connected Fri Sep 20 08:17:59 1996 WST. Sheridan last connected Tue Aug 13 21:05:15 1996 WST. Suzy_Bandwidth last connected Wed Aug 28 17:30:22 1996 WST. Badpenny last connected Thu Sep 5 14:05:30 1996 WST. Inverarity last connected Wed Aug 14 10:41:43 1996 WST. Smee last connected Wed Aug 14 13:14:36 1996 WST. laius last connected Wed Aug 14 13:18:49 1996 WST. John last connected Fri Aug 16 13:06:59 1996 WST. Fulton last connected Mon Sep 30 15:32:45 1996 WST. lauri last connected Thu Aug 15 09:58:22 1996 WST. Ngauruhoe last connected Sun Sep 8 17:28:44 1996 WST. Centaur last connected Sun Aug 18 19:19:38 1996 WST. Ryanne last connected Mon Aug 19 23:36:36 1996 WST. pamela last connected Sun Aug 25 19:11:59 1996 WST. Gibson_Guest last connected Fri Sep 13 18:59:32 1996 WST. Perth_Guest last connected Mon Oct 7 04:49:06 1996 WST. Tithonos last connected Sun Sep 29 13:33:06 1996 WST. Guru last connected Thu Oct 31 15:06:47 1996 WST. Trax last connected Sun Sep 15 20:50:25 1996 WST. SilverMage last connected Thu Sep 19 08:49:04 1996 WST. Zapper last connected Sun Oct 6 20:35:34 1996 WST. Matthew last connected Wed Oct 9 14:52:37 1996 WST. Spank_Guest last connected Mon Oct 7 04:18:09 1996 WST. Beaverloop_Guest last connected Mon Oct 7 04:39:54 1996 WST. Devils_On_Horseback_Guest last connected Mon Oct 7 04:45:59 1996 WST. Felis_and_Tause_Guest last connected Mon Oct 7 04:33:47 1996 WST. Players who have never connected: Hacker, Everyman, Generics_holder, aluminum, Oskar, Rude_Guest, visvamitra, spectre, Ventus, ddd, Wal, autre-moi, testing, Michael, moot, and day __________________________________________________________________________ Error Message I don't feel I belong here, but I don't know the here here. I don't feel I belong anywhere. I'm talking about Perth, Australila, New York, New York, anywhere on the planet. I can't sit still, want to move the next town over where I make the same problems for everyone. I leave bits and pieces of text in my wake. I want to be in bed with someone I love permanently glued skin to skin until we starve or die together. I want to be hungered with someone. Words slip out and crash to the bottom of the screen here. Here in Perth, they crash, there in antipodean New York they crash. The meri- deans were invented to strangle me. The skein pushes in upon the planet, cuts it into slices. My mind operates the same, vertical cliffs gathering rubble at the bottom. There's no way out because there's no up. Belonging is a relaxing, not calculating, looking over one's shoulder, but knowing the lay of the land. It's habitus forever, the autonomic taking over breathing, walking, thinking for just a moment. It's oral and masco- chistic sex, reception-model of the big world out. It's plateaus and levels of resource. My resources are limited; I don't even have a global position indicator to set me right. I might walk into the sea. I might say the wrong thing or the other thing, and I might be the other thing. When I look at myself (and I can't stand mirrors) I think: the _other thing._ I've let it go, and I've let it go _at that._ ___________________________________________________________________________ The Saying of _Just a Few Words_ 1. Writing crawls towards speech. Writing crawls towards speech. Exuded from the stones, the natural fissures of the rocks and cliffs, perceived by our brothers and sisters of yesteryear. Such is the origin of writing. Soon to be taken up by tradespeople every- where in their (his or her) tallying of animals and plants (other things such as grain). This is the wonderful beginning of writing. Writing becomes talismanic, occupying the ledges of a page or piece of paper or parchment or bark. It is already of thinking of leaving the world behind, especially that of things that have weight. Writing becomes printed, and suddenly enters into exchange, the economics of exchange. Who knows what would happen if a word were suddenly dropped; I surely don't. It can be left behind as simple as dropping a scrap of paper, but writing is still not (yet) finished with us. Because it has not left the world yet. So it becomes virtual, text on a screen, like in the movies' subti- tles. Later, it finds it can change all across the screen in new and dif- ferent ways. It's thinking of leaving more and more and becoming even more virtual, and even more like speech. This is when writing excels, when it begins talking once again and has left the world. This is the great cycle of culture, she said, beginning with the noise and murmuring of the world, the scampering of words in the underbrush. Then writing becomes the great detour, and then there is a return to the scam- pering. This time there are miniature machines, memories everywhere, in the middle of the trees, beneath the ground, floating in the air. This wonderful recording of memories. 2. A Funny Joke What is the sound of one hand typing? aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Now assume the keyboard is not electronic, that no one is on the other end of the line, that there is no line, that there is mechanism and its futil- ity. What of the jouissance of this writing? What of the pleasure of this text? 3. Give me a Big Break Think of these phenomenologies, of the hiatus, gap, break, rupture, space or broken hinge, radically different as being moves on one or the other side of inscription. Such is cyberspatiality - this double wall, which must be brought forward through every consideration. No wonder language breaks, fragments, collapses, here and elsewhere. I search for impossible gestures; nothing remains. This is _precisely_ the content of the texts I write, their detumescence. They're gone before the letters reach the screen, neurons connect, life concludes life. 4. I'd give up my mind for any age! In Perth we're old; no wonder there's no ground when stromatolites are present. These layered rocks are formed from photosynthetic cyanobacteria; their fossils are the oldest recorded life on earth, dating back 3.5 bil- lion years. For most of the earth's existence, stromatolites were probably dominant; they survive in very few places, including the western coast of Australia. My interest in Sumerian leads here; just as Sumer contains some of the world's oldest writing, I'm now in the midst of some of the oldest living communities. The Net brackets everything. I can sense this; I've already disappeared before I arrived. This seems to be the case with a number of phenomena @quit. _________________________________________________________________________ Song of the Stromatolite It's early in the morning and I hum my darling sun It's been how many years now, other than that I don't Have much of anything to say, there's nothing new Under you, a fine day and the rock's giving way To quiet heat, after three and a half billion years, It's not worth wondering who these people are, and After two billion or so there's a glow in the sky, I don't have to go, bye the bye, a fish swam in And out, must be oh, ten of them, I'll talk more Maybe tomorrow, couple of kids down the beach, Other things coming I haven't got a name for just Yet, this life of perfect surplus and surmising, Call me naive, but I'm just about as old as you, Maybe a younger sibling or something. _____________________________________________________________________ Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes I got up one morning and got hit by a van. My friend Jacques Lacan would have been my friend if I had read this in Alan's text. But he married the wife of Bataille who all the males says is totally dismissable. What a wreck; I was the only man in France who didn't sleep with Anais Nin, but Guattari was always waiting for me. He was so jealous of Deleuze, you wouldn't believe it. You ask about Sartre? Who the fuck thinks about Sartre? We're all jealous, he was so famous. Leduc followed his beaver everywhere. Who the hell gave her that nickname, well, it must have been Merleau-Ponty, no one else would have dared. Last time I lit a pipe, it rained. All these chicks; if I were straight, I'd head for Kristeva personally, a good-looker if there ever was one. That stuff about the body turns me on. Irigaray too - just think of her in slacks! Amazing! Can't get enough of it, heh! Talk about the SAME or the DIFFERENCE or whatever - it's whatever works, you know. That's the punctum! Now, you really do have to know how to dress. Sartre was too much like Sondheim, beatle-eyed, there wasn't a bone to him that wasn't soft, if you know what I mean. The beaver wrecked him, that's for sure. He was world-boggling, I used to say, Sartre, you're a world-boggler. We spent some time kicking Sollers down the stairs, but then he got his hot little hands on Kristeva and Sartre walked around half-cocked and jealous, what the hell. I got to tell you about "differance." Derrida got a hell of a lot of mileage out of that. You change a letter and bang, you're in! I couldn't believe it. We used to laugh and laugh until that Lyotard (get the name, just like underclothes!) came along and turned it into the "differend" or whatever. That's what's happened to theory - change a letter, write a book! Or like Foucault, just say the author's dead or doesn't exist or some- thing. Take the obvious and fuck it up a bit. Works every time. You think there's a "self" of some sort? Heh, there isn't! Big contract for you! Thom got a lot of stuff out of catastrophe theory. What the hell's a catastrophe? Big mistake, lots of francs! You can even write about it like, Debray or Baudrillard. Attack them all! Describe the whole soup and noodle of it! More francs. They buy it up big! I'm going to have my word even if I have to get run over by a van for it. It's going to be _diferents._ It's got that air about it, like deferred rents, something about owing capital, the political economy of cultural debtedness, say when someone designs a web page for you, using pre-coded CGI-bin stuff! Your culture comes from packages, similar/different, de- ferred - like any debt, someone's got to collect! So think about the Web as a debtors' culture, carved out from a confluence of capitals. See what I mean? If you don't, I'm going to get run over by a van for it. That's what hap- pened I think to Althusser - God, did his mind go, along with his wife! So much for Stalin - it amazes me theorists are just as much believers as anyone else. You'd think they'd know better, but then why should they? Change a vowel, make a million! Heh, I had my fill; you should have seen me and Raymond Queneau together - he had style, styles, actually, thou- sands of them! If you'd read his works, you'd know what I mean! I tell you, if it wasn't for Alan Sondheim, theory wouldn't exist! He sure keeps us on our toes! We can't get away with a thing when we're around him! It's amazing; I never saw anything like it. He's so brilliant, I'm just lost in admiration! The other day I was saying to Mike de Certeau, Cert, have you read that guy? What guy, he said, he was thinking how cute Braudel was with all those great books of his remaindered at the Strand! Sondheim, I said, and he replied, oh, the musical?! No, I said, the phil- osopher!!! I've got to read him, said Cert, God, I hardly have time for my own work, since I was run over by a van. It's really sad - I just got back from Levinas - he's hardly awake any more, all that stuff about insomnia. It's the melatonin, I said, Sondheim gave it to him, and it changed his outlook completely! __________________________________________________________________________ The Diferents, by Roland Barthes Think of the Web as a series of obligations, rearrangements of text, the _diferents._ Spaces are procured, pimped, rented; surfing transforms into defuge, an exhaustion of affect and abnegation - _recombustion_ is nec- essary. Borrowing, plagiarisms, plug-ins, protocols, skitter across the shallows of the Net, lock themselves into place; the currency is one of owing, the debt, the rental-space. Everything comes cheaply with the problematization of ownership. The debt is an obligation; chains of surfing sites, bookmarks, favorites, transform themselves into circulations of capital. There is never enough; there is always the necessary present, gift left surreptitiously on the desk or through the Website cookie. One owes the sysadmin, webmaster or mistress, software designers, maintenance crews - everyone to the extent that the content is _never_ extracted from the social (unlike snailmail for example where the letter forecloses within the habitus). Obligation entails resource of labor or other capital; reciprocity or Mauss' configurations are less and less the case. Neither kula nor gift, the Web becomes a debtor's prison, addiction, based on continuous invest- ment and linked debts that diffuse into a model of subjectivity based on consumerism, lateral movement, and _hook._ The drug of choice is ecstasy- amphetamine; the darker body heroin of text-based applications gives way to the light of Web-death, white spaces self-spanning, reflective, whose primary content is the lure itself. A phenomenology of lure/allure is a phenomenology of obligation and debt, the rental of the self, purchase of the body and the body's traits. In- vert the pleasure of the fetish, and you have the truth of the Web. In- vert the Web, and you have the truth of the fetish. _________________________________________________________________________ Foucault on Barthes' Concept of the "diferents": There is more added to it everyday; there's no reciprocity, but a spilling of organs, texts, protocols, variables, parameters, constants, scripts, software, files, images, sounds, upgrades. Nothing is expected; capital seeps through the masquerade of purity. It loses itself; there's no ex- traction, no carving out, no diferents. Space isn't rented; it floods. Like nanotechnology, the body is inundated by capital. The corporate is the proper name of capital - that's all and All. It's the maw that's flooded, that circulates through the body, postponed, hoisted/hosted on the imaginary carrying the symbolic. One good turn deserves another. Ad hoc, bricolage, admixture. Barthes' model is incorrect on all of these points, looking towards the traditional system of banking when the vista has opened up through World Bank hysteria and foreclosure. Hit by a van years ago, he's lost track of gains and losses, and their melding into one and the same, another form of -jectivity, uncanny interpenetrations among bodies, part-objects, transitional-objects, species, that constitute the descent of the virtual into the real. If Barthes were alive today, he'd withdraw the essay and the essay-form itself; aphoristic was his main con- tribution to contentious thinking through the subject. __________________________________________________________________________