Jennifer <--> Jennifer Jennifer was very unhappy and sat down, spreading her new pink frock. Jennifer took the two white pills her very best friend had sent her, and Jennifer placed them in her mouth. She thought they tasted odd, and Jennifer began to see and hear everything in a big wide fuzzy blur. Jennifer slumped in the center of her nice red frock, and died, said Jennifer, standing up, and straightening herself out, what fun. _________________________________________________________________________ 1-2 First they shot some pellets into space like a big gun, that was the first I think before much of anything else, maybe after sputnik. Scattershot, broadcast. They shot a rocket at the moon which hit the moon and had video in the nose; I saw the film. The moon gets bigger and bigger and just when you think it's the biggest of all, video noise. There's a moral here: Don't get too close to the real or you'll either get killed or overloaded. On the other hand, you can always withdraw to motherstructures (Bourbaki), arrows and objects (category theory), fractals everywhere. The wobbling pivot of the world is irreducible. I wait for the great storms to begin. 2 The great storms will come as information renders itself more and more useless, as the manageriality of knowledge (which I've yelled about for twenty years) replaces informed introspection, as the world blasts itself through desert and ozone, contained and uncontained wars, and collapse of nation-states coupled with post-industrial national enclaves. But the storms, I predict, will be ontologically unexpected - great waves of plasma sweeping the cosmos, heat before, and ice in retreat. A litany of frozen gestures will be left behind, with no interpretant, no signi- fied. Earth develops serrated edges out of organism; Pierre is just about to fire a gun; Jocelyne is holding a camcorder. Hi-8 images of the moon. _________________________________________________________________________ The News from Aix to Ghent I was carrying a SECRET from ELEANOR to DEBORAH; DEBORAH would reward me bountifully with ALCOHOL. I was addicted from the young age of FIVE; MAGIC BREW kept me alive. It was pouring as I passed through the BLACK FOREST on the way to the CASTLE. Suddenly, I feel into a HUGE PIT of LP-MUD and MARSH-SWAMP. SIR ETHELRED rode up to me; he and his STALWART MEN were hiding behind the DARK OAK. Laughing, he does say: A SNITCH IN SLIME CRAVES WINE! Thus was born the MURDEROUS PROVERB OF CYBERSPACE, and ALL THAT FOLLOWED, FOLLOWED THEREAFTER. ___________________________________________________________________________ Subject: needle in my arm Working through Obsession What more is there to say? To meditate continuously on cyberspace or any other domain - is meditation always continuous? What is brought back beyond the edge - or is it always a matter of recuperation, transversals, representations (procured / _percolated_) from states of rumination? If I meditate three years on the _virtual,_ am I any nearer a solution, truth - instead of continuous sputtering? I _require_ in the fashion of preparation for a scanning electron microscope specimen, the free emission of a shell - ikonic, just as the virtual is necessarily ikonic (the diff- iculty is that one, from without, looks in vain for the symbol). (The) Meditation becomes a _practice,_ which, in order to operate, must continually break with itself, in the manner of fissuring, or the fracture which implies the inertness of the material in the first place. It must no longer be _a way of thinking,_ or _of the thought_ - I might say that the very nature of the ikonic preserves it from the symbolic - only fissuring accumulates. (What can one make of _piles of stuff_ in the virtual realm?) Further, that the ikonic is the site of _disconnect_ or rather one element of disconnection, to the extent that it is spoken-for. If I meditate, I have already _lost._ __________________________________________________________________________ Subject: the needle in my arm looks in vein for the symbol __________________________________________________________________________ Delivered, Negotiated, Open I want to consider a distinction between _delivered_ and _negotiated_ content on the Internet - not only in regard to email lists, etc., but also conferences and on-line education. Delivered content is top-down; the Red Rock Eater (RRE) email list is a good example - only the moderator posts. The presentation of a conference paper is another example. Negotiated content refers to lateral processes - a chat on a particular topic, or the Fop-l email list. Issues of governance arise with negotia- tion that are taken for granted with delivery - for example, dealing with spam or destructive behavior. Delivery is monolithic; negotiation is het- erological. These terms of course form a grid in relation to the asynchronous/synch- ronous division. An ftp site is asynchronous and usually delivery; there are publicly negotiated sites, however, which take the _put_ command. Most chatspaces are negotiated, but a chatspace can be used for conference de- livery as well. Finally, there is a third term, _open_ content, which refers to completely unmoderated participation, without "rites of passage" (such as occur by signing up to an email list) - newsgroups and IRC in general are good ex- amples. What is the point of this taxonomy? It might provide a tool for thinking through the uses of various Net spaces vis-a-vis participant and/or audi- ence. Here in Nova Scotia, I am working on the phenomenology of electronic conferencing - what works, what doesn't work, and why. The same phenomeno- logy operates in relation to communication in general; in the Hebrew Uni- versity classroom of 1962, content was delivered - in the smaller, infor- mal meetings, it was negotiated, and outside both (in the plaza area of the campus) it was open. All three domains interacted with one another, from the student's viewpoint, although delivery has a tendency in such si- tuations to ossify because: 1. It's easier for a professor to repeat the same materials year after year; and 2. The very distinctions between lec- ture and discussion served to firewall student-professor dialogic. Please comment - thanks. __________________________________________________________________________ Cyberwarfare "Preceding the main fleet would be an advance guard of guerilla bombers. Some will come moving in on a low level track, like unholy wraiths which are seen and gone in the same instant. Others will come hurtling in at great altitude. These would be small and fast and capable of moving with such speed that defending fighters with the most rapid rate of climb, would find the damage done and the quarry gone before they could get at him. Such craft would be built of plywood, or some light, tough alloy, with the rear turret and armor sacrificed for speed. Only the bulkhead and a 30-degree cone covering the front and rear axis aft would carry protective plate. These craft would be regarded as expendable ammunition if necessary, and would spread out in widely separated areas in a gigantic feinting operations, scattering incendiaries broadcast and lighting great fires to serve as a guide for the big bombers which followed. Everything which could burn would be subject to military arson, including the ex- tensive German forests, forcing a condition of indescribable confusion and anxiety on the beleaguered enemy. "At the core of each formation would be the fast, heavy, possibly unarmed bomb carriers delivering lethal loads of fifty tones or more. In strange contrast with the familiar multi-gunned juggernauts full of gadgets and with big crews to work them, this type would be simply a shell built around the biggest projectiles attainable and made as fast as possible, without an ounce of instrumentation not directly required by its mission." ... (From The Coming Battle of Germany, William B. Ziff, 1942.) Noise goes everywhere; parasitic planes crashland doom-bound; the enemy is the enemy. What's going on with the guys up there? Cellophane airliners hurtle violently to the ground; everything is violation fabric; everyone is screaming all the time. Right now I close my eyes and everyone is screaming inside my head. All these cybersuicidal voices. I can't keep up. I can't keep up and I get list after list of cybernauts, destined for the trash-heap. My name isn't anywhere to be found. I cyberscribble it in the best I can. I return the lists surreptitiously. Now I will be sure to die. __________________________________________________________________________ 6 ls 7 date 8 lynx http://www.amhc.com/selfhelp 9 lynx http://www.cmhcsys.com/self-help/welcome.html 10 h 11 lynx http://www.cmhcsys.com/self-help/welcome.htm 12 h 13 lynx http://www.cmhcsys.com/selfhelp/welcome.htm 14 b 15 m 16 b 17 b 18 biff y 19 pico z 20 cat jl z > ding 21 new z 22 B0100000027fed4 23  24 h 25 h 26 h 27 h 28 h 29 rm jl z 30 y 31 y 32 y 33 y 34 y 35 y 36 y 37 y 38 y 39 ls 40 mvding jl 41 mv ding jl 42 wc jl 43 sz jl 44 h 45 h 1 > fuck sure sign of depression command-center no? __________________________________________________________________________ Notes on Electronic Conferencing General: I am going to talk about low-bandwidth applications for the most part. Low-bandwidth gives the greatest possible demographics. If mid-range applications such as RealAudio are used, they should be duplicated by other client technology that does not require, say, a sound card, 32-bit computer operations, high-speed machines, and so forth. In fact, duplication, multiple-channel processing for conferencing, has a variety of uses. With CuSeeMe, certain reflector sites may be more acces- sible than others. With IRC, it's possible that netsplit is occurring with one server, and not another. Beyond this, there is the issue of _delivered_ versus _negotiated_ con- tent. The former refers to the reproduction (by text, voice, etc.) of content coming from the conference speakers or organizing body - in other words, server-generated content; the latter refers to participant or client-generated content. Ordinarily, the two operate in conjunction (for example in a chatroom); in a conference environment, however, issues of governance, authority, and control surface. In addition, _all_ on-line conference materials are filtered through "rites of passage" - signing up, logging on, entering login names and/or passwords, and so forth. (These categories are augmented by a third, _open_ content, which usually plays no role in a conference environment. Open content is completely free - the situation on newsgroups or open IRC channels (without banning). As Jerry Everard has pointed out, all email is delivered content, since the frame- work of the post is secured by the sender; it's also open, since the con- tent is completely user-determined as well.) Rites of passage have a positive use; they create an active sense of in- vestment on the part of the participant, helping keep noise and spam down to a minimum. (This is clear if one compares newsgroups to email lists, and, say, Worldschat to ThePalace; the difference in online behavior and "substance" can be striking. The same is true between guest and non-guest logins on MOOs; at times, a MOO participant will deliberately login as guest in order to spam. It may be true that the flatter the playing field, the greater the noise - but at the same time, of course, _possibly_ the greater the freedom of the participants. It's necessary and difficult to maintain a creative balance here.) If we take a measure of bandwidth for various applications, we find that the least is that of email and email lists - any number of mail readers are available. The least _synchronous_ application is probably talker, which can run without a client program, as raw text through telnet. On a slightly more advanced level, IRC, MOO, etc. come into play - as do FTP, etc. with asynchronous. Pine and other similar mail readers seem to require greater bandwidth - but even an IBM XT can handle them well. There is the question of client-side technology, MIRC for IRC in Windows or Phoenix in the shell; tf for MOOs, MUDs, and talkers in the shell; and so forth. These can take up bandwidth but simplify interactivity; the three major advantages are the presence of macros of all sorts, the ability to multi-task/multi-channel, and the separation of user input from the application window itself. IRC spikes the feeling of distance, over talkers; there is little or no sense of physical, architectural, space across the channels. For me, channels appear as so many interactive discursive formations, and the use of : preceding statements formalizes the _slotted_ phenomenology of the whole. On talkers, as on IRC, input is direct (i.e. without the use of "say" or " " " preceding the statement), but the rendering is different, more on the order of fictional conversation: "Alan exclaims, "Wow!"" Talkers, MOOs, and MUDs all have well-developed senses of place; in talk- ers, space is a _given,_ immobile, and there to be navigated. On MUDs, space is similar, but combined with magic apparatus, and a sense of (wounded, tired, thirsty, healthy, satiated, drunk, etc.) body not found elsewhere. Finally, on MOOs, space is transformable, and body is control- led (in terms of appearance and inventory) totally by the participant; it's assumed healthy. Given all these modalities, the _talker_ most closely approaches the feel- ing of the _conference room._ Speech is natural; spatial navigation is relatively simple; it's easy to receive a map of the total environment. Talkers also assume a model of _spoken communication_ - and, unlike MUDs, for example, there is no economy attached. The body is assumed healthy. These attributions are also true for conferences; once inside, a model (almost never true) of Enlightenment equivalence is presupposed, and speech becomes the literal order of the day. In terms of virtual conference setup, both IRC and talkers are useful. IRC is common everywhere, but users in Windows might have to download and configure MIRC or equivalent, for example. Talkers require only the ability to telnet. Both can handle multiple-user situations. Talkers have built-in email and bulletin boards, and there's no need of (or use for) bots. For the server, talker software is remarkably small and easy to set up; each room, etc. is an individual file, which makes configuring simple. On the other hand, the channelmaster in IRC possesses a great degree of power and the ability to immediately reconfigure the channel - for exam- ple through individual or site bans; speak or non-speak flags; public or secret; and so forth. The IRC channels for the Nova Scotia conference somewhat attempted to imi- tate talker morphology, with the presence of "workshop" spaces, as well as a "hallway" and "lobby." All of these were individual channels. There was no overall architectural configuration; because of my previous real-life participation with the WINS group, etc., I was able to project the outline of a virtual space into the meetings. This is, however, not a typical sit- uation. The IRC channels also of course involved a rite of passage - the signin to the conference proper. Almost all of these applications have a way of filtering out intruders; on a public IRC server, this can be difficult - particularly if people are intent on breaking in or causing trouble. On an _asynchronous_ level there are several applications that are of use. The simplest is the email list itself, which can be used for presenting papers as well as discussion; these lists are also archived, so the paper can be readily accessed. It's also possible to set up a simple website that is also lynx-accessible, for ftp-ing materials; the ftp directory can also be directly accessible. Newsgroups are another possibility; these permit threading and commentary, but would require software and news capabilities for each participant. I find that the learning curve for newsgroups is somewhat steep - as it was for the old Caucus system. Conference demographics and types: The above discussion is in terms of an open-demographics conference, with no necessary institutional framework - in other words, the broadest pos- sible approach. Institutionalized conferencing systems - say at a univer- sity or corporation - can use specific software for the purpose; every- thing is either in- or across- house, not designed for a general public. The open-demographics on-line conference must assume a wide range of ac- cess levels, from lynx through multi-media. In many countries, for exam- ple, there may be no dependable phonelines and modem speeds of, say, 9600 baud maximum. A second assumption is that the user may not know how to download particular software, even lean or low-bandwidth software, to her or his computer. For these reasons, the best approach is to make use of _common applica- tions_ that are already found on most shell accounts - augmented on PPP and SLIP accounts to be sure. These include most of the above; talkers, for example, can be accessed through raw telnet (even though MOO GUIs are beautiful), and email lists ride on ordinary email protocols. IRC can be a problem with extremely wide demo, because of netsplit; there are some shell accounts that don't carry it, or carry only a clumsy version. It may also be difficult for someone to lock into a local server thousands of miles away. Newsgroups are the most problematic here; while tin and other readers per- mit extremely simple and tailored access, Netscape doesn't. I tend to stay away from these. For IRC and Windows formats, there is Globalchat which can be quite use- ful. And if bandwidth or machinery isn't an issue, RealAudio broadcast is excellent. My experience: I have conferenced both on-line and off-line with on-line access, through a number of applications. At a New School panel, we had set up both IRC and MOO; the former wouldn't connect, and the latter - using the PMC2 MOO - was extremely noisy, since non-participants kept interfering with the proceedings. I suggest strongly that if MOOs are used, that they be crea- ted or dedicated specifically to the conference situation. MOOs also have somewhat of a learning curve, even for basic commands; they're the most developed application around, but tend to filter out people who aren't familiar with them. At a New York City censorship conference, I participated through Global- chat and RealAudio 3.0; because I was near the broadcast source, there was little or no discernible lag and participation was full, immediate, and easy. But many people don't have RA capabilities, and Globalchat needs a download (it's a form of simple IRC). For the Nova Scotia conference, I was on with IRC, finding myself trying to listen to three channels simultaneously, since transcription was the order of the day. I wanted a second chat channel to accompany each for- mal presentation (within which the other participants were unable to speak or comment), in order to fill out time and commentary. Beyond that, there was a sense of inhabiting several spheres simultaneously - two of the channels duplicated each other, in French and English, and the third was from an entirely different workshop, in English. For transcribed conferencing (i.e. text- not audio-based), the easiest papers to absorb were those that presented themselves in outline form: "I am going to make the following points" etc. More complexly-argued or self-reflexive papers (such as some of the ones at the Cybermind96 con- ference, which I attempted to transcribe) tended to be almost impossible. It is always helpful to have an abstract available ahead of time - even one that can be sent out on the transcription channel (before the session begins); dccing on IRC is a useful possibility. CuSeeMe is useful, even now, for conveying the "flavor" of the speakers, but little more; it still runs extremely slow, with broken audio; is dependent on proper transmit/receive settings; and needs very heavy band- width requirements - minimum 28.8 modem for example. It added "color" to the Cybermind96 conference, but little more. A MOO or talker can be very useful, by the way, for developing a "confer- ence counterpont" in virtual space; this happened with the Cybermind96 events. It does take some skill on the part of the participants as well as the transcriber, to keep things in bound; without good-will, as I've said, the system could easily break down. (I _have_ participated in decent on- line conferences on the old PMC, but then some of the participants were wizards, etc. who could @gag or kick merrymakers (!) off.) My own predilection for simple on-line conferencing has involved three components: email lists for in-depth discussion; IRC or talkers for live discussion and (with the latter) limited internal email; and a gateway web page (lean and readable in lynx as well of course) which gives the sched- ule, papers, abstracts, and other conference information. Cybermind96 had one for example, which is still up and running, and excellent. Finally, I do believe that in the distant future, all of these local and already installed applications will be unnecessary; all computers will come with PPP or equivalent already installed, and everything will be, like the radio, based on a GUI. But this is at least a decade away, if we are really considering world-wide demographics. __________________________________________________________________________ Warning from the Cape Breton Post! "As for warning signs that your child may be spending too much time on the net, police suggest to watch for the following - withdrawal from family and friends; use of vocabulary heavy with computer terms; lack of interest in appearance or indications or (sic) lack of sleep suggesting an all night on-line session and computer files stored on disk ending in GIF, JPG, MPG, AVI, MOV, BMP, TIF, PCX, or GL, as they represent graphic image files." Whole worlds appear from everywhere and enter into everywhere; what was once the specific provenance of _capital_ now applies to ontology itself. _________________________________________________________________________ Ontological Creation of Lackluster Worlds (LW) which would replace the enormous, insurmountable abyss of spaces and times, these maternal atmospherics, differentiated - lacking the _specific luster,_ _specific gravity_ of the real, molecular spectra, striations from dying stars, one after the other, for a penny a pound a disme a shekel, falling into ordered cornucopia, blue and red billiard ball models lending themselves to logarithmic spirals, each a fully developed atmospherics, lifeforms, warm and cool for next to nothing, for nothing, lived there, ontologies bursting at the seams, many-ontology model of universal spaces (I live within you live within me) (give you mine give you yours) whole universes fall on the Grund, foundations topple on foundations, panoply of the surfeit of worlds do they all have the stickiness of gravitational pull, numerical thrusts of unary additions, subtractions of sad goodbyes lackluster worlds for lack of goodbyes some without a world spoken o'them unnamed sad worlds and creatures wide eyed open to every radiations _________________________________________________________________________ creation LW it fell to the floor. the floor opened up and it kept going. it passed boards and foundation. it fell to the earth. the earth opened up and it kept going. it passed magma and metals and magma. it fell to the earth. it fell to the sand and it kept going. it passed air. it passed out. unconscious, it passed out. something seethed. it was fully unconscious. something fissured. something boiled. it fell out. ________________________________________________________________________ Hating You The screen doesn't do it any longer; it's too thin, too formatted, too much control; I can't smell you here; I can't smell you anywhere. I can't fall in love with a wall of text; I can hate text, hate the feel of let- ters, limited punctuation on the horizon of the body's breath. Comma coma and your chest swells in and out; period, and you've reached the end of thought. I don't know who I hate, but the spiked letters _do_ for a start. _________________________________________________________________________ (LW4) lackluster worlds, I'm tired of them, said jennifer. the words rippled smoothly from mouth, smiling cheek, tongue. the aural input hummed like an open funnel filled with bleak striations. the beautiful words fluttered in the air. they almost said, like butterflies fluttered, and iron gates closed. censorial moments were set into motion like incandescent cartography. not another twenty-cent piece, said jennifer. not another twenty-cent piece, said jennifer. worlds simmered and spooled. conservation always depends on what someone calls beautiful. worlds were never saved from pure extinction. worlds shimmered and spoiled. then, a novel equivalent to a distance of ninety-three million miles. jennifer's frock was under her. _________________________________________________________________________ (LW5), by Jennifer I must explain that I go to the arcade and I put my twent-cent piece in and I enter a world. It's made just for me and is very large and I can roam as much time as I want. Then I leave the arcade with new dreams and things to think about and sometimes there's gravity. I know the world is real and that it continues without me because I am very poor. I do not have so very many twenty-cent pieces and there are other things I must use them for. Sometimes I suffer defuge and then it goes lackluster and the worlds are tarnished a great deal. I think they must always be that way because I do not think I am special and they would lackluster just for me. These little worlds seem very sad, but I do not know they are little and how can a world be sad? A world just is, and I know it is very real. Now I will play in my pinafore. _________________________________________________________________________ "from a work-in-progress" "to-be-continued" "Totalitarianism is, in essence, metaphysical; and this, in turn, implies that every absolute metaphysical position is totalitarian. Yet, is this not so only because every absolute position posits 'being in totality' within a representation or 'image of the world'? Consequently, Being is posited as a simple position, which was precisely Kant's position. And for this reason (in view of the rise to power of the totalitarian principle that is unshakable insofar as it is founded upon itself), there is only one tenable 'position,' which, as it were, may very well be untenable as a position." (Marc Froment-Meurice, Solitudes, From Rimbaud to Heidegger.) (to be continued) (being continued) "And thereby accept - once and for all - to be _unarmed_ and, therefore, soldiers of nothing?" (ibid.) (see page 1) "Soldiers who have no arms with which to hold nothingness and who might only behold the emptiness as that which renders us free? Between the fissures and cracks of the (un)armed concrete, the Sea spreads out beyond our sight." (ibid., immediately following "And thereby accept - once and for all - to be _unarmed_ and, therefore, soldiers of nothing?" (trans. Peter Walsh.) (from a work in progress) (EOF) _________________________________________________________________________ From sondheim@panix.com Sun Jan 12 06:24:24 1997 Subject: telecom in rural or non-metropolitan areas -- [I've been extremely impressed by the work that is going on here in Cape Breton, using or developing the Internet for a variety of purposes. I was also impressed by other CMC projects at various institutions in Australia and the United States, vis-a-vis Native Peoples or isolated populations. Since I am relatively naive in this area, I drew up the following, which is more a request for comments - i.e. other examples and directions - than anything else. Please send in any relative comments or additional infor- mation.) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Telecommunications in Rural or Non-Metropolitan Areas: What sorts of uses can CMC be put to in rural areas? In terms of _consum- ption,_ the answer is easy: family email lists; agricultural lists; local business Web pages; regional tourist advertising; K12 education; and so forth. I've been thinking about the various _productions_ that can be car- ried out, however - ways in which CMC can be tied into local economic de- velopment. This is partly the result of my association with Mike Gurstein and the C\CEN (The Centre for Community and Enterprise Networking) here in Sydney, Cape Breton, where many of these productions are in full force already. It is also the result of work I have done in New York and else- where, reports from other regions that have come through the Net, and the panel dealing with Aboriginal access at the Cybermind96 conference.) First, some obvious factors: 1. All CMC transmissions are in the form of digital packets; almost all are files. Depending on the software and hardware, transmissions can result in a variety of displays or instructions, etc. 2. Files are information, and not _things_ although they may be repre- sented as things on a hard-drive, etc. 3. Ignoring the philosophical crudity here - the distinction is critical. Economic development with CMC can only be in the form of information and transmission; nothing material (lumber, food, medicine) is moved from one location to another. So we are considering an outline of various "infomatic formations" that can be pursued in various non-metropolitan regions. These include: 1. DATABASES: Medical (including active health-care and preventive medicine information) - these can include everything from patient-organized newsgroups to expert systems, alternative medicine, government information, etc. Cultural (artists/artworks/literary/music/etc.) - these can also include artist-organized on-line exhibitions, gallery pages, regional artists consortia, etc. Regional - a broad range of topics including economy, local businesses, demographics, etc. Environmental - these can be advocacy or non-advocacy. Geographic - these can include surveyor's tabulations, geologic data and maps, etc. - in short, geomatic information. Almost any delineated domain can be placed within a database (historic sites, for example); the base itself can include a variety of files. Depending on the subject matter and complexity, database information can be organized by a relatively medium-level skilled community. 2. EDUCATION: on-line information on various topics - extension of multi- media approaches - either autonomous sites or sites which operate as up- datable extensions of distributed CD-ROMs. Some work towards educational CMC can be carried out by relatively un- skilled participants with a project director. 3. WEB PAGE MAINTENANCE: updating webpages for various institutions, etc. can be done with on-line research and email, anywhere. This can be carried out on a relatively unskilled level, if the updating involves data lookup and not redesign. 4. TELEBROKERING: already, investment brokers are moving into rural areas in some states; financial consulting can be carried out anywhere, with access to economic databases. Telebrokering is highly skilled, but establishing an environment amenable to telebrokers could conceivably bring new money into an area. 5. SECRETARIAL WORK: preparation of reports, business letters, etc., is already common for telecommuters. This requires a medium level of secretarial skill and retraining. 6. DIGITIZATION: translation of documents to digital format - this can be carried out anywhere and requires relatively low-level skills. 7. SOFTWARE PROGRAMMING: like #4, this requires a great deal of skill, but no specific location, and like #4, is a top-down community business deci- sion. 8. AGRICULTURAL: establishing and maintaining agricultural databases, re- quiring skills on a variety of levels. 10. LISTSERV, ETC. MODERATION: listserv, newsgroup, and other moderated applications can be used as the basis for employment; a central listserv site and employees (medium to high skill) could serve all the schools in a region, for example, interconnecting them as well with other non-local institutions. 11. DISTANCE AUTHORING / TRANSCRIBING: preparing technical manuals, arti- cles, etc., as well as transcribing and organizing of conference and meet- ing logs, out of house for various institutions. This requires a medium to high level of skill. 12. DISTANCE EDUCATION: distance education sites can be established at any number of local community colleges or even K12. This requires a high level of skill. 13. NATIVE PEOPLES SITES: these can included anything from dreamtime myth to local agricultural/industrial databases, gathered in central locations, and, at least in part, password-accessible only. 14. VARIOUS: there are numerous other opportunities, some of which are being explored by C\CEN, which are "one-off" - in other words, proffering services that are unique, and can't be duplicated in other situations. To the extent that any service operates on a national level, it occupies a particular information niche; other regional services can then be devel- oped as satellites. For example, a national or international weather site (gathering all weather resources across the Internet) would be unique; regional sites could then develop, emphasizing local conditions and con- cerns. ---------------------------------- I'm somewhat pessimistic concerning the efficacy of even partial retooling of any number of local economies for infomatics functions. This amounts to a movement from agricultural/industrial trajectories to information soc- iety, which may make the region vulnerable and its proffered services out- dated or redundant. At this point in time, there are reasons to be optim- istic for a limited number of regions, however; many of the service areas above need to be addressed, and local regions can outbid more centralized metropolitan areas. In the long run, I think one of the main uses of CMC in non-metropolitan areas will be for the intensification and presentation of local culture (hopefully with only a limited degree of packaging and reification); a means for dispersed families and communities to remain closely in touch; and a means for the intensive distribution of local (and even national/ professional) information to those who need it most. ________________________________________________________________________ My Life, A True Story, Will We Live, The Neighbors, Flogging Cyberspace So I'm staying in this house now. And next door the electricity is off and the tenants have been asked to move, but they're still present; you can hear them through the walls. A few days ago this house, this side of it, was robbed; the computers and other equipment and wine and beer were all taken and then what. Nothing, someone came home and then computers were found down at the beach and they don't work any more. So the neighbors said they found the computers but the wine in the fridge? So the neighbors and computers? So there's threatening because what parts were found next door and to what avail and for what purpose. But the door has been rebuilt on this side of the house and the police of course haven't done much of anything. But cybermaterials don't work well waterlogged, you should know that immediately because that's part of the story. So now there is incom- ing and outgoing and the police might know that there are things there. At the neighbors. The neighbors. Now maybe the hard drive can be reassembled or isn't corroded in spite of what could be the seaweed on the laptop case that was found without the laptop; there were three units stolen altoge- ther and one can only imagine someone with a trident down there or Athena rising with a mouse or keyboard, but meanwhile I am sitting worried work- ing with the fear that a second breakin will ensue; after all the distance is about the thickness of six inches between one part of the house and the next, and then I will need a pickax which I do not have, nor do I neces- sarily understand how to use it. So where are the components? Did I men- tion a carboy of wine, 60 bottles as well, were also taken, and this over the happy holidays, gifts for all, including fish, of motherboards and RAM chips? Now there are burbling sounds next door and who knows... I may or may not be back later, dears... _________________________________________________________________________ Typology of Telecommunications in Non-Metropolitan Areas (North America): Electromagnetic Spectrum, atmospheric transmission: 1 Radio, AM - usually local origination, often agricultural information, religious 2 Radio, FM - often centralized feeds interspersed with limited local content 3 Television, VHF - network and independents 4 Television, UHF - religious, often local origination 5 Radio, Shortwave - limited use in terms of international transmissions 6 Radio, Amateur - community building, emergency uses 7 Radio, Packet - experimental, community building, Internet 8 Television, Amateur - experimental 9 Telephone, Cellular - limited usage in non-metropolitan areas 10 Telephone, Cellular/International - very limited usage 11 Walkie-Talkie - agricultural or construction site 12 CB Radio - highway information, limited community building 13 Beeper Technology - limited usage 14 Global Positioning Satellite Technology - surveying, site-work 15 Fire, Police, Utilities Frequencies - extremely common 16 Television, Satellite - becoming extremely common 17 Microwave, Satellite Linkages - connection into local networks 18 Satellite Weather Imaging Systems - standardized Fiber-Optic Cable Systems: 19 Cable Television - extremely common in some areas 20 Computers/Cablemodems - will become common within a decade (Internet) 21 Decodable Information-on-Demand - will become common Twisted Wire Systems: 22 Telephone - ubiquitous in many rural areas 23 Computers/Telephonemodems - becoming common (Internet) 24 Fax Systems - common for commercial enterprises, agribusiness Optic: 25 Laser Surveying - standardized 26 Weather Radar Systems - standardized Acoustic: 27 Voice 28 Sirens and Whistles - fire, noon, etc. Almost all of these appear as synchronic (satellite imagery, for example, is an exception); body language, mail, and transportation are not consid- ered. _________________________________________________________________________ Here I AM, A True Story Continued Here I Am alone in this apartment by the shore, there are cold waves and wind out there and I Am Alone with two laptops and one personal digital assistant, the other three computers have blown it down by the shore As I Have Said, and the other folk in this house are Out and I Am Alone to wait for the arrival of Thievery as I have said and the Neighbors are Suspic- iously Quiet I do say. I will fight to the Death to have These Laptops Preserved in their present condition, that is In My Vicinity and me in Good Health to boot, so that Neighbor Be Forewarned, I have my Pickax at hand and the Fiery Urge to Use It!!! ________________________________________________________________________ Night. Nothing happened. The screams died down next door. Dawn rose like Stephen Crane. Sea-wounds healed. No hard drive could survive out there. The beach flopped into the ocean. White rock. ___________________________________________________________________________ I can say now that this is the worst it has ever been; the screen is blank with 'I can say now" alone visible now now" alone appears buecase the lag is terrrible from here, no one can work from here, the "terrrible" three are's appearing in due course, hardly catching up with the real I'd say because there is nothing to say or do; this is not the way thought works or constructs itself in any means of constructive production so to speak, stuck on "wo_ on and off and now repeating onto ""wo_ on and off and so forth; there's no end to the road we're on, nothing in site/sight - how can one ever think that anything would go on when the pile of wordsat thetop continues to foall to the bottom, lose themselvge, so to speak, and against all odds, as if the packets were losing one afgter another or one might at anot_ relally for example or r_ or r_ again or " r__" again as the cursor continues with "r_" over and r_ over again or "relally" or r"_ over and r" or r"a_ or _ or ___ or _ or_ _____________________________________________________________________ because there is nothing to say or do; this is not the way thought works or constructs itself in any means of constructive production so to speak, stuck on "wo_ on and off and now repeating onto ""wo_ on and off and so forth; there's no end to the road we're on, nothing in site/sight - how can one ever think that anything would go on when the pile of wordsat thetop continues to foall to the bottom, lose themselvge, so to speak, and against all odds, as if the packets were losing one afgter another or one might at anot_ relally for example or r_ or r_ again or " r__" again as the cursor continues with "r_" over and r_ over again or "relally" or r"_ over and r" or r"a_ or _ or ___ or _ or_ _____________________________________________________________________ telnet: ^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^] ^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^] ^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^] ^]^]^]^]^] ^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^] [ Cancelled ] ?Invalid commandWriteOut ^R Read File ^Y Prev Pg ^K Cut Text ^C Cur Pos telnet: ^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^] ^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^] ^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^] ^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^] ^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^] ?Invalid command telnet: ^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^] ^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^]^] ___________________________________________________________________________ Celestial (LW6) This is a boring lackluster world, said Jennifer. There is nothing in the sky, one creamy sun, that's all, some sort of moon. I can see fuzz on a really dark night. But where are the quasars; for that matter, I could use a really good x-ray emission source, say, over there. Jennifer pointed over there. She said, but then there would be too much radiation, and it takes boredom to make a go of LW. Things take time to simmer and percolate, bubbles from froth, froth from bubbles. Then little things move about, in and out, up and down. Plankton heaved according to circadian rhythms established in primordial oceans. Jennifer said, it's boring, but it's boring to make a world. You've got to keep an empty neighborhood. Two suns wouldn't help, five moons might slow things down, crash land on someone's home. The soup stirred. Stromatolites grew double meter high, mud moved. I'm bored too, said Jennifer. Jennifer was born, said Jennifer. ___________________________________________________________________________ Future Antlerian Tensed What can any of us do in the face of the economic disaster that is looming on the immediate horizon? For at the same time that automation replaces the working class, the upper class atrophies and increases its wealth; further, their goods are increasingly produced by automation, lowering the costs relevant to their expanded spending power. Buried under mountains of consumer debris, the fetishization of microtechnology, the upper class bifurcates into those of the truly wealthy who abjure the electronic, returning to horses and haciendas, and the rest of them, living in virtual realities, albeit without helmet - all wealth produces virtual realities, the absence of manual labor, printed materials, revolutions and glares on the level of the street. Capital _is_ thereby the acquisition of the virtual, just as quantifica- tion within capital is the signifier of the virtual. Good or bad Marx, let us not forget this. What can any of us do? I would say nothing, the cultivation of nothing, of emptiness, participation in the sports and hermeneutics of the void. Our goal is starvation - our means, these keyboards which portend already the replacement of speech. No longer remembering our origins, we memorize our destination, the diminution or denouement whose reign is so totalizing that no _of_ is necessary. Diminution/denouement, no longer bound to the signifier, wreak havoc as machinery of the zero degree proceeds apace: which is not to say that it will not _rewrite its own degree,_ just as _rewrite_ itself has become our provenance, as we continue to assert our existence. -----------------------| (no, capital isn't virtual, it's a production machine, numerics, quantifi- cations; capital is national process, language (dialect with an army) - capital is the process of partial or complete virtualization - brokeraged by legitimation processes - no, it's not virtual at all, neither virtual nor real - of the order of information - ) _________________________________________________________________________ 1/2jen1/2, diary, internet consultancy, sydney, cape breton, nova scotia halfway through the consultancy. my mind goes up and down like a wheel on a prairie wagon. my mind goes round and round like a tire on a 767 landing at kennedy airport with a screech and a groan. my mind goes in and out like a drive train on an old 4-6-4 locomotive riding down the rails to little rock. my mind goes left and right like a whitewall brushing the curve at seventy-five miles an hour singing about the wolfman of del rio in the terry allen song. my head spins like a top running on the gyroscopic circuit in an early satellite and my head turns like a needle breaking rotational speed at a million turns a second. my heart gapes like the caverns of yore, caves of bygone days. i've never eaten food like the pipes of the cactus or the organs of brother andre of montreal. my carapace is thinner than the sea ice forming outside kristin's and jason's mutual window and my wings are more gossamer than the marmoreal slabs hidden beneath sydney's tenuous snow. i do more good than saint theresa on an off day with mother theresa and a woman who worked for our family when i was a small ambivalent child and i do less good than the maverick guide who beat up my friend outside the crackling nazareth restaurant. i think less than the book of psalms, more than the avesta. my denouement is my comeuppance and my sex is lost oper- atic. halfway through my consultancy i look for what i have found, drop what i haven't picked up, leave before i arrive, arrive after i leave; breathe beneath the sea, swim in the middle of air, run on my hands, jump on the water, drown in the clouds. my head faces my back, my back is in my front, you speak before my back, my front's against the wall. i'm the pavement on the streets of sydney mines, asphalt of glace bay cliffside, progonish, antigonish, cheticamp and half a camp, and wherever i've been i haven't seen, and whatever i've seen i've never been. you've walked a mile in my shoes because i am a man of no mean feat and not a leg to stand on, not an arm to lean on, not a hand to shake on, not a neck to head on, not a shoulder to cry on, not a lap to sit on. but i'm halfway through the consultancy and i haven't a waist to lean on. ________________________________________________________________________ Splayed Wide When the cosmic noise descends and shunts my language into the realm of the pure: When purity descends and breath stops: When my mouth fills with your fluids: When world _suffuses_: 1Lm^S;1H Attc hm: -.cu63;1H;Tm- CageGT3HoPpe 3l 1H]PnH t MPP ----- Fsolge Text Sunt.[m ss[;1H^G Get Help ^ ] Send ^R3;1H;Reaet File ] CuSn c;2cPrN NO CARRIER 1;1H11ifM[210;12SEKe3EPL;1Ht212;1H1m Rp[7m[ ;Gifm H7mm HG2 1H[23;1H;t 1H 2ess[;h27mGmPt 1 Fe7m^2-Re:m W7m N. P[7m Pr. ss[K--- lg;1H ;1HBO[22;1H (.] ___________________________________________________________________________ (Mike Gurstein asked me to reiterate some of the comments I've been making about Web Pages - for the work I'm doing here. They follow below - again, please comment - Alan) Some notes on Web Pages -- 1 All web pages should be lynx-accessible in their entirety; .gif and .jpg images should be downloadable if they're content-relevant. 2 All web pages should be accessible by Netscape 1.0, 1.1, etc. - not only 3.0+ etc. 3 Frames and tables should be kept to a minimum, or there should be alt tags for avoiding them. If they're absolutely necessary, it would be helpful to have a .gif or .jpg version that can be downloaded. 4 The largest binary image files should be around 30k; most should be on the order of 6-7k. 5 It's easier to use non-image bullets. 6 Animations aren't necessary; again, you can have all the bells and whistles you want on a home page, but you need to have leaner clickable versions. 7 It might be advisable to have several versions of a pages, so that, even with graphics, slower machines could access them with thumbnail graphics. 8 Bitmapping should be used at a minimum, only when necessary (i.e. map of Canada - click for weather - but also, here's a list of provinces/cities). 9 Mailto's are almost always useful for feedback; they give the appearance of interactivity, even if minimal. 10 Cookies should be used extremely sparingly - applets, etc. the same. 11 It may be advisable to either avoid Java or have both 16- and 32-bit versions of the home page, since Java only runs in the latter. 12 Titles and the first, say, 10 lines of the home page are critical, be- cause of search engines and their strategies. 13 The number of .gifs and .jpgs should be kept to a reasonable minimum, since the whole page should download within, say, 15 seconds on a 28.8 modem. 14 It's useful to have a number of different browsers available in the studio when designing a web page - it's also useful to have them connected by phonelines, not by lan, to realistically watch the download in prog- ress. 15 Know your audience/demographics; I personally hate words like "cool" and "radical/rad" since they're overused and subvert their original edgy meaning, but they would function well in some contexts. 16 If you _are_ going to use cookies and/or ask for client-side informa- tion, advise your readers. 17 Try for realistic counts of web page hits; counters tend to inflate rapidly, responding to spiders, bots, and repeated hits at a single session. 18 Make sure your page is listed with major search engines; if it is for public service, you might also send the URL to the Net-Happenings list. 19 Keep advertising and listing of browser buttons etc. to a minimum (you don't need to say "click here to download Netscape 3.0 etc.). 20 Be wary of marginal tags for .html that might not be readable by other applications. 21 Have your page organized somewhat in outline form, so that the main points can be quickly grasped. 22 Rather use links then lengthy scrolling, if at all possible. The exception might be for searchable documents. All of these point to a reasonably lean web page which can also expand (or, conversely, a fat web page that can collapse), depending on the browser, user's computer, etc. It also makes for good Netiquette, if that still exists; you don't receive more than you need... _________________________________________________________________________ Logins: I can't Write Much to You Today: These Words Still Appear Black On Screen You See What You Do to Me: All These Logins As System Crashcrash For Me So Local Funnel Getting Out of Here: Lord Won't You Buy Me an ISP: Hell is Stapled Lips: sondheim ttyp2 hp950.uccb.ns.ca Wed Jan 15 21:58 still logged in sondheim ttyp7 hp950.uccb.ns.ca Wed Jan 15 21:54 - 21:57 (00:02) sondheim ttyp7 hp950.uccb.ns.ca Wed Jan 15 21:52 - 21:53 (00:01) sondheim ttyp8 hp950.uccb.ns.ca Wed Jan 15 21:49 - 21:52 (00:02) sondheim ttyt1 hp950.uccb.ns.ca Wed Jan 15 21:41 - 21:49 (00:07) sondheim ttype hp950.uccb.ns.ca Wed Jan 15 21:39 - 21:41 (00:01) sondheim ttyp2 hp950.uccb.ns.ca Wed Jan 15 19:01 - 19:08 (00:07) sondheim ttyqd hp950.uccb.ns.ca Wed Jan 15 18:53 - 19:00 (00:07) sondheim ttyp2 142.177.20.32 Wed Jan 15 17:56 - 18:00 (00:03) sondheim ttypa 142.177.20.32 Wed Jan 15 17:47 - 17:48 (00:01) sondheim ttyq2 142.177.20.32 Wed Jan 15 17:37 - 17:39 (00:02) sondheim ttype 142.177.20.32 Wed Jan 15 17:25 - 17:31 (00:06) sondheim ttype 142.177.20.32 Wed Jan 15 17:17 - 17:23 (00:06) sondheim ttyp5 142.177.20.32 Wed Jan 15 17:11 - 17:16 (00:04) sondheim ttys3 142.177.20.32 Wed Jan 15 16:51 - 17:03 (00:11) sondheim ttys3 142.177.20.32 Wed Jan 15 16:03 - 16:51 (00:47) sondheim ttysb 142.177.20.41 Wed Jan 15 14:47 - 14:47 (00:00) sondheim ttypf 142.177.20.41 Wed Jan 15 14:23 - 14:30 (00:06) sondheim ttyrd 142.177.20.41 Wed Jan 15 13:31 - 14:18 (00:47) sondheim ttyte 142.177.20.41 Wed Jan 15 12:30 - 12:43 (00:13) sondheim ttype 142.177.20.41 Wed Jan 15 11:38 - 12:00 (00:21) sondheim ttyq0 142.177.20.41 Wed Jan 15 11:37 - 11:38 (00:01) sondheim ttyq0 142.177.20.41 Wed Jan 15 11:35 - 11:36 (00:00) sondheim ttyra 142.177.20.41 Wed Jan 15 11:34 - 11:35 (00:00) sondheim ttyra 142.177.20.41 Wed Jan 15 11:33 - 11:34 (00:01) sondheim ttyra 142.177.20.41 Wed Jan 15 11:26 - 11:32 (00:05) sondheim ttyt3 142.177.20.41 Wed Jan 15 10:18 - 10:21 (00:03) sondheim ttyt3 142.177.20.41 Wed Jan 15 10:14 - 10:15 (00:00) sondheim ttyq4 142.177.20.41 Wed Jan 15 09:29 - 09:31 (00:01) sondheim ttys4 142.177.20.11 Wed Jan 15 08:55 - 09:17 (00:22) sondheim ttyp5 142.177.20.11 Wed Jan 15 07:47 - 08:31 (00:44) sondheim ttyp0 hp950.uccb.ns.ca Wed Jan 15 06:53 - 07:01 (00:08) sondheim ttyp0 hp950.uccb.ns.ca Wed Jan 15 06:33 - 06:43 (00:10) sondheim ttyp0 hp950.uccb.ns.ca Wed Jan 15 06:30 - 06:32 (00:02) sondheim ttyp0 hp950.uccb.ns.ca Wed Jan 15 06:28 - 06:29 (00:00) sondheim ttyp2 hp950.uccb.ns.ca Wed Jan 15 06:21 - 06:27 (00:06) sondheim ttyp0 hp950.uccb.ns.ca Tue Jan 14 23:10 - 00:02 (00:52) _______________________________________________________________________ Read Carefully, Sing do the mathematical relationships among the various parameters in music imitate the structure of the real, aligning us with untoward bliss as raga/rasa theory might portend? is it the aurality of the mathematiza- tion of the world that takes us over, the Cape Breton fiddler grace notes indicative of both leeway and recuperation? what if the revolution as note falls to the ground, God notes in fact, as She is carved away, out of silence, into the sound of the world. to hear is always to hear rupture, to dance to it. to dance is to pound the cosmos: Do you know the reason for the lilt of the waltz, said Jennifer? Because it is an attempt at four four that gracefully falls to one side or another, that gives itself into the slide completed only by the denouement after death, thus never wit- nessed. Music is eternal bifurcation; the binary splits from itself, and it is the grace notes of God, God noted, that is the _substance_ of life. Not a secretive force, nor a secretion, she noted. Jennifer said it was that the universal time is always two two too. And it's the third that inaugurates the Other. ___________________________________________________________________________ Expulsion/Prediction I have come to the conclusion: I am completely unemployable. Born with air in my lungs and water in my chest, I am in the process o;zlsoifj;olea C4lj5m OF LONG EXHALATION. WHY WOULD ANYONE COLLAPSE LIKE THIS WERE IT }p-\qk NOT for the effect of the internet drawing this ONE forward with increasing speed, a victim of its own success?:Lkjfd;soire;l Always a question of surveillance. I am to speak on postmodernity this coming Tuesday. To what end? I will wear a dress a cloak a scabbard lksjdfll;sie ru;lskj. I will be of _ready portend._ BUT THEN DISAPPEAR LIKE DREADS LOCKED INTO LKJS;OE9584;SOI6T; T444;O9JH I'm not suitable to teach just come in there like a curiosity piece OUTLKDSJOF DEPTH. I should be paid to be looked at. Seriously, I can predict the future with pefect accuracy. I don't doubt this for a minute and I'll be dead ;49o58;lkjdfjdskl within the year.lkjf ___________________________________________________________________________ I am reading Jennifer in Nature's Imagination (edited by Jennifer), and I am reading Jennifer's A User's Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Deviations from Jennier and Jennifer, and I'm trying to forget my name, said Jennifer, by way of introduction or title. Althogh I am not (titled), she added. I am reading Gerald M. Edelman in Nature's Imagination, The Frontiers of Scientific Vision (edited by John Cornwell), and I am reading Brian Massumi's A User's Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Deviations from Deleuze and Guattari, and I am trying to reconcile one vocabulary with another, the specificity of the former with the extended metaphoricity of the latter, relying on a certain retentivity of language. For the former develops into Darwin III and Darwin IV robotics, while the latter tends towards discipleship and the moment of a differentiating language, itself territorializing precisely in the moment of deconstruction. All of this is the line beside the point, covering the plane; what sur- plus is there beyond Edelman, for example, that concurs with Deleuze and Guattari or any vision beyond that which is produced by a science of flows following Irigaray's adhesions to the limit? Because the question can be the site of modification, and language can tether in any number of con- ceivable directions; it's this looseness which sweeps it all away - closing my eyes, in fact, watching the arts scale themselves down any convenient flow or trajectory. The point is lost in resulting turmoil; what's loose leads to nothing sus- tainable, entertainment, self-growth down wrong pathways of the uncon- scious; every/one/thing is incorrect. What is necessary, what sort of theorization can be built through the translation of science? None, to my imagination, and here is the crux of what could then be called, along with sustainable economies, sustainable art, as if such were possible. The point is also that Deleuze/Guattari/Massumi assume an interpetive language or vision, transcendent metaphoricity that might be better off bare-boned, but where does one stop with ideological construct and disseminates with the deconstruction of truth? I'd look for discursive phenomena, substitutions, linguistic disruption, said Jennifer, with the realization that nothing has been accomplished at all. And I'd be wary of the proper name, outside of my own, ownership, these figures of DGEM for example. Or that it were inconclusive, because vision and ideology penetrate. Further, said Jennifer, there's foreshortening. Which leaves us hanging, she said. : ________________________________________________________________________ THE BANDAGE, BY JENNIFER said Jennifer, by way of introduction or title. Althogh I am not (titled), she added. telnet: cofsdkljfdsfjhs'egdpoig ?Invalid commandald M. Edelman in Nature's Imagination, The Frontiers of telnet: m Vision (edited by John Cornwell), and I am reading Brian Format is: ' user's guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Deviations from Deleuze and Guattari, and I am trying to reconcile one vocabulary with another, the specificity of the former with the extended metaphoricity of the latter, relying on a certain retentivity of language. For the former develops into Darwin II and Darwin IV roboticsrentiating language, itself telnet: closeing precisely in the moment of deconstruction. Connection closed.cho input locally annex: telnet panix3.panix.comcho input55 lines ] Trying...lp ^O WriteOut ^R Read File ^Y Prev Pg ^K Cut Text ^C Cur Pos Connected to panix3.panix.com.here is ^V Next Pg ^U UnCut Text^T To Spell Escape character is '^]'. Public Access Networks Corporation (panix3.panix.com) (ttyrf) login: sondheim Password: BANDAGED __________________________________________________________________________ Subject: my illuminated document -- here on the shore the wind is howling like i never heard it howl here on the shore there are waves and a freighter black freighter riding high in the sea and the wind void here there is rain cutting through like black knives of black steel here there is black wind cutting through black stars in black skies lights by the quayside nothing visible cranes down in violation fabric and void slag heaping ore here on the shore the winds are screaming now the neighbors quiet nothing stolen in this house lashed by wind and rain here by the shore the wind and black rain lash the black shore and void freighter black howling knives here by the shore warm sheets of black wind and black rain scream against the headlights of the black car on the black road guiding towards the void shore illuminated by headlights and void illuminated ice here on the shore where i can't write can't think here on the shore where i can't see can't speak too much sound lag black void blank void screen electricity flicking in black shore void house void black ice shore silent on this black netted shore and void internet stolen by neighbors in this black iced shore house and void black wind black rain i leave before electric howling knives void internet eerie silent and black __________________________________________________________________________ Sonnet Jennifer sat down on her frock. She had just read Alexander Graham Pope, Rape of the Lock. She had written a poem And had to take stock. It was not nice, about ice, and black winds howling Outside where she died. She knew it was true but a bad poem because, she Said, it didn't capture the rapture of the spray in the air there. She Wrote sitting on her frock by the freighter by the dock. I'm sorry, she Said, but the freighter was dead. I will be on the Net yet, she said, To her quarry the storm. She cried and she cried. The ice was nice, the Rain a pain, the wind was blind, the waves her slaves. She lied most of The time but in rhyme. She knew it was a very very bad poem. She got up And went home. I'm home, she said, I'm dead. I know it's so, said Jennifer Me. 1 2 3. __________________________________________________________________________ Database Interfacing Questions What is the most convenient way to represent databases (db)? Do db con- stitute the most efficient way to organize knowledge in general? Are tree-structures, with their implied parent/child phenomenology, the most useful metaphor (these are employed in Win95, Unix, DOS, etc.). Tree-structures, unlike, say, the rhizomatic model described by Deleuze- Guattari, are based on implied relationships and the necessity of a root; it's also possible to conceive of bush-structures with multiple roots, but the computer itself tends towards singularities. There is current research in using VRML and other modeling languages to create three-dimensional data-structures with virtual reality interfaces. How easy will it be to navigate these? Further n-dimensional structures are also possible, mapped into three-dimensional space. Are there difficulties with text itself? Approaching a form with letters and other data constantly refreshed at any conceivable angle (necessary for three-space representation) results, at least as far as I can tell, in poor reproduction at the moment. But it is only a matter of time before this is corrected. Three-dimensional space is the smallest dimensional space which permits interconnectivity among any number of units, without interference. In two- dimensional space, only four regions can be maximally connected to one another (a square with one interior diagonal and an external connection between the other two vertices). So three-dimensional space can be used for indicated complex maximal and other connectivities. Knowledge-representation in the brain is distributed, not root- or tree- oriented; classification is always already a posteriori. The tree-metaphor is highly reductive, less and less useful for postmodern society. This is not to say that n-dimensional representations are not tree-oriented as well, but there are other immediate possibilities, many of which involve fractal or even cloud-oriented approaches. Linkages for example could be weighted areas, not on/off nodal points. On the other hand, there are issues such as gravitational meshes and other body cues; should these be wired in? Does the space as a whole have a geo- desic structure? How is the space navigated? It is easy at this stage to become caught up with the novelty of navigation, rather than the hard-core facilitation of data-access. In n-dimensional spaces, I call such data-access (as well as the CMC uses of such spaces) a form of _shape-riding,_ since shape is constructed (think of it as a mani- fold) and developed as one moves about, focusing on regions. Are there other models that can be implemented at this stage? Do all models require some form of objects and arrows? Are all relationships, in other words, necessarily reproducible within graph-theoretical forms? (Could this in fact be another definition of graph theory?) Is there a basic ontology of objects and (weighted, named, etc.) arrows that must be taken into con- sideration (as in category theory)? Are there db that have_no_ models at all, db in which each object is an independent instantiation (as in Borges' story)? Suppose everything had its own proper name, unrelated to any other? Are all db capable of indexing? Are all indexes (not indices) mappable onto the rationals? What would a fractal or a continuum-based index look like? What is the db of the future, in other words - and how does it relate to neural processing itself? Are there ways to facilitate knowledge acquisi- tion that are independent of classical taxonomic structures? ___________________________________________________________________________ URGENT NOTE: The black freighter is called THE DESERT FALCON. END OF NOTE: ______________________________________________________________________ Solution to CMC Postmodernism: Jennifer said, listen, here is the solution. Within CMC, computer-medi- ated-communication, there are no arrows and objects; everything is both. All is process and mobile because all is construct; tcp/ip; is construct, the avatar or recipient is construct - it all exists within a closed uni- verse. What is alive or mobile, is permanently external (ontologically and epistemologically); whole worlds are irreducible. So that everything is object-oriented but nothing is an object. So that everything comes apart, part-object, part and parcel, but nothing is entity. So that entity is always already the result of definition or the proper name or address/recognition/protocol, as I've said from the begin- ning (net1.txt). Manifolds in flux. Streams and strata. Postmodernity. In which: Existence is construct; Microelectronics are the order of the day; Embodiment is always hysteric, prosthetic; Time is fractal within broad circadian rhythms; The only master narrative is that of tcp/ip itself, and that, like particle physics phenomenology, is by and large behind the scenes; Master narratives are in fact replaced by packets and datastreams; Work is flexiwork and telecommuting; Sites are ephemeral and porous; Sites and knowledge databases are growing exponentially; Knowledge is equivalent to search engines and knowledge-management; What is, is digital; Information is flux; Sexuality occurs within the ascii unconscious; Bricolage and local territorializations/TAZs increase; The nation-state is weakened; Property (intellectual property) is problematized; Seamless virtual realities are on the horizon; There is no difference between ikon, index, and symbol; Semiotic emissions occur with increasing frequency (sourceless, undirected); Split, netsplit; Institutionalized transgressions; And me!, said Jennifer. Now what? she asked. Don't these implicate all sorts of bridges, routers, servers, LAN/ds? One sex or nation sucks another; everything gropes across territories, no one pays attention. CMC is _out there_ she said, no matter what you call it; it might as well be postmodern. ________________________________________________________________________ Carl I was born in 1782, and at the age of 15, set sail on the high seas. My father desired that I would learn a craft, and sailor was the life for me, although to be honest, I were better fit to be a poet. Nonetheless, I acquiesced, and we set sail on the HMS Paragon in the winter of '97, and a poor winter it was at that. I was lonely, and spent many an hour walking the deck, even during the stormy weather we encountered off the coast of Africa. Melancholy, I could not engage in even the simplest conversation with the other sailors, al- though the captain himself had taken a liking to me. One day, the sky was particularly grey, sodden with those clouds that presage a dreary and continuing storm. We were off the Canaries near dusk, and I went below to return to my bunk for a bit, napping; my watch was through the longest hours of the forthcoming night. As I went by the bulwark starboard-side, I passed the bunk of a fellow sailor I had not hitherto addressed, one Carl by name. I heard a doleful sound, and stopped just outside the curtained opening, remaining there for many a moment. Carl was singing a long slow sea shanty, a long dirge full of the sorrow of the waves and the pain of moonlight and lost lands. There was no accom- paniment, and indeed, no need of one. Carl's voice was beautiful, unearth- ly, and I never head such song before. I went in quietly and sat down, listening through an interval in which time spent itself, flowing through the cracks in the softwood floor, los- ing itself in the timber of the hull itself. He sang, and the world changed for me; there were shadows in the shadows, and small mouths in the midst of the creaking of the mighty beams holding mast and deck in place. Other sailors, I began to notice, also listened to Carl, one by one, or in groups of two or three or many. As we sailed onward, the ship became in- fused with his voice and his song, and it became a ship of magic and wraiths, a haunted thing of beauty and many other worlds, full of sad music from the very beginning of earth and sky. From that day forward, we sailed within these worlds, and our lonesome sea and storm was filled with the dark spirit of other voyages, other voyagers accompanying our small and silent crew. Even now, the earth is different, although I have not been abroad for many a year, and my days as sailor are long past. My wife Mary and I share this secret, the secret of Carl's songs, on that voyage long ago. Our lives are the richer, by far, for it, and we can only wonder at those who have never heard such dark and magic sound. ____________________________________________________________________________ Subject: another freighter... this time i speak without capitals, quietly, so as not to startle it, the freighter known as aurora, and there are no quotation marks, themselves capable of generating considerable noise; it resides, no periods, out in the harbor exactly -underlined- just where the desert falcon had been; they may be watching us now, in the middle of this extraordinary hard freeze, nothing moving but, i tell you, the upstairs neighbors who may or may not have been the beneficiaries of... certain things... absenting themselves from this house, as i have written you before, they're nice people really, one never knows who is behind what, but i ask you if two freighters can be a coincidence, me online desperately with the rest of the living world from this topstory small room, i can see it all, don't say i didn't warn you, the ice is flowing back into the sea, hardening itself against what i cannot say, but i have this premonition, it will be vast as, see the black freighter, yes, black, too, see how innocent it seems from the depths of nova scotia, notice not even a separate paragraph to whisper goodbye, nothing out of the ordinary, i tell you, please, nothing whatsoever is going on ________________________________________________________________________ The Great Escape and the Ground Jennifer escapes into narrative. When she cannot think the way she wants to think, when things are so complicated, she tells a story. She will sit down on the ground, spread her frock, her panties against the rug or hardwood floor. She feels grounded because she knows the ground goes all the way to the center. If there is ground, real ground, she has been told, there will be a center beneath it, and there is nothing between the two, not a pipe, not a tunnel, not a wire. When she feels ground, when she feels grounded, she feels she doesn't have to tell a story because there is no story, just the thing, the inert thing that sends current up her spine, from her panties to her brain, and she can rest. Jennifer feels when she is not resting that rest is all there should be, that her destination is rest and sweet sleep, repose, nap. When Jennifer tells stories, she has her reasons. Her reasons surround the stories, but they are not infectious, agents of dis/ease. The stories are a return to ease, Jennifer's ease, between sleeping and napping, between sleeping and sleeping, between napping and napping. There are so many things to know, and what is knowledge. There are so many things to think about, and what is thought. When she is not grounded, the stories she weaves are always about the ground. They begin and end with a nap and many things happen in them that are exciting, as knowledge takes a detour or long path around the bedroom and the cemetery. She takes delight in her stories, because in them, there are always other places where things happen, and other people. She de- lights in the third person because she does not have to know the people, who act until she is tired, or no longer thinking, or has figured things out for the moment. This is Jennifer's life, said Jennifer, and it is an excuse. When I am sitting with my frock around me, I need not excuse and have no stories to tell. But when I am confused, I tell stories, and walk around, and enter into a world that is much higher than when I am sitting, and I can see great distances across the surfaces of things. And if I detour and detour, I will forget why I am telling this story, and this story will be wonder- ful and I will think, it has a life of its own, Jennifer said, although if I were to think, while sitting, I would know it's not true, Jennifer said. __________________________________________________________________________ The Other Side of the Freighter We went to Sydney Mines today, North Sydney as well. The Other Side of the Freighter Aurora was Clearly Visible. Of course, The Freighter May have Turned Around to Thwart our Geometric Purveyance, but Then I Assume - and From What Cause - that It would Face the Other Way as well. Or not.... I will Be Back, there is a Drawing Board Here for My Purveyance. Jennifer __________________________________________________________________________ Jennifer Thinks Through Identity How can a freighter have _the other side_? What large twirls in the water? Just so, what is displacement? How is one searching directed? Just so, these are the questions Jennifer asks, leading to query of iden- tity, "the major problem," which is Jennifer's freighter, neighbor's Jen- nifer, freighter's neighbor. Identity is not equivalence, nor representation; it is the thing or chao- tic domain itself, therefore inexhaustible or rather unthinking. I define this as the _ring of identity_ which is a diacritical of thought attached to a domain, nothing more; it is insufficient to structure something "id- entical with itself." The ring is broken by the presence or procedure of the object; the ring is neither halo nor aura. Thus, "with" or in consideration of, identity, _nothing is being said._ The thing closes in upon itself, leaving us speechless. Identity is silence, silenced; only its negation can be spoken (an elec- tron may not be identical with itself). The "its" of "its negation" is problematic. Let me continue, she said. The freighter was out there beyond the shoreline, out of bounds/binding. Identity as silence, speechlessness, absorbs discourse, discursive forma- tion, and the communicative environment or domain. There is a way of say- ing that it stands against speech. It is the gardens of an absent building containing the files of everything in the world, the worlding of the world. Identity is the effacement, _in other words,_ of writing, or non-writing, the impossibility of being-said here, which _does_ relate to Godel by circuitous route, as well as the collapse of a scaffold. _________________________________________________________________________ What I was Saying All Along, Jennifer "Rather than obscure the basic melody, conventional symbols have been used for most ornaments. This allows the user to ignore the embellishments dur- ing the first reading. Once the basic melody is solidly committed to memo- ry, then, as Johnny Wilmot would say, 'you put in the dirt' (by substitut- ing embellishments and adding melodic variation.)" (From Paul Stewart Cranford's introduction to Jerry Holland's Collection of Fiddle Tunes.) It's not as if the freighter presented one side or another; now, with the wind and rain,it turns slowly in the middle of the harbor, one doesn't have to travel anywhere... As dirt lends itself to the analog, the body, smeared and stained, escapes the digital domain. ___________________________________________________________________________ Coming Together, Again, or Who is Speaking Here that Jennifer with her frock and her ground began thinking about the freighter and identity that freighters were narratives that she wondered about narrative as well, that the freighter turned in the water, that she thought: Pirate Jenny, that she thought about the black freighter and the revo- lution, Pirate Jenny and Playwright Brecht that she created Brecht just as she created me that freighters were uncomfortable docked by land, that they loved the water and the turning of the sea that the weather sent them home in the middle of the harbor, Desert Falcon first, now the Aurora still out there with winds howling, snow skirting the frames of things that they sought land only in order to move, that they were vectors or avatars of movement so that here in this house, Jennifer and Kristen and Jason would wonder: where is Macau; what countries border on Italy; where is Mandalay; what is south of Singapore; what surrounds Saudi Arabia; where is Cox's Bazar; who lives in Sikkim; tell Jennifer about the South China Sea; what is New- foundland style fiddle; what is the history of Slovenia; what surrounds Ethiopia and what is its capital; where is the Pole of Inaccessibility; what are Borneo and Sumatra; describe the Thai peninsula; what are the borders of the Russian Federation; where is Timbuktu and what is its cur- rent spelling; what countries share a border with Honduras; what is Bur- undi; describe a strathspey; tell me about the South China Sea. just look at the leeward islands and their histories, colonialism all over the place, chaotic regimes transgressing transparent topographies. the boats carried northamerican dolomite to southamerican ports. history hammered itself across the skein of freighters' wakes, silent and dead and black and trailing and all movment, and Jennifer, philosophy. Braudel would have gathered the lines of a text, balked at identity; per- haps he did. Jennifer would have wondered. Take her seriously. ________________________________________________________________________ Jennifer's notes When I return from Nova Scotia, the Aurora will be a memory; already, I am beginning to forget the Desert Fox, which may or may not be docked now at the piers. These boats will ply without horizon and on thick days with magnetic storms, I can imagine them haunting my dreams, present because there is no reason not to be, the hulls up close, black and blank screens drowning out, like seamen, every other thought. ... We were going to swim naked out to the Desert Fox, like Navy frogmen; we had to attach something to the hull, leave our mark. Scouring the house, I found only refrigerator magnets. Still, these are sufficient for a signa- ture, submerged, invisible, too small to affect the world. ... In New York, freighters will again be texts, words, shifters, tokens. City noise drown identity, turns it into ideological strategy, manageriality. What is thought through, thoroughly, are the words, speaking and writing as forms of expulsion. ... In New York, the words are father and mother; their function is the work of play. Think of roles while a foghorn sounds, _now,_ in the distance. What is a sound that it is substance and not signal or index. - Jennifer (panties wet from the ground and the snow and the mud and the rain and the sleet and the hail and the sea and the puddles and the shore and Jennifer) ____________________________________________________________________________ Interlaced mail announcements, arriving for the first time, Jennifer's Ground, Alan's Jennifer, Jennifer's Alan... {k:15} biff y {k:16} New mail for sondheim@panix3.panix.com has arrived: ---- New mail for sondheim@panix3.panix.com has arrived: ---- Date: Mon, 20 Jan 1997 08:28:09 -0500 Date: Mon, 20 Jan 1997 08:28:09 -0500 (EST) From: Alan Jen Sondheim From: Alan Jen Sondheim Subject: Jennifer's notes To: Cyb , Fop To: Multiple recipients of list FOP-L Subject: Jennifer's notes January 20, 1997 January 20, 1997 ...more... ...more... _____________________________________________________________________ Gone The freighter's gone, the Aurora, before I've had the time to leave; it's left no wake in the black black water, I want to rhyme with daughter, be- cause that's how I think you through. She played the fiddle like a substance. The water is me. Jennifer. __________________________________________________________________________ The Freighter The freighter is the signifier. The freighter, gone from the waters, Aurora, is becoming the signifier. Jennifer. _______________________________________________________________________ Last Talk In the talk I gave in Carol Corbin's class I described postmodernism in relation to modernism, using the example of category theory - that one has arrows and objects on one hand, which are classically defined (even though objects can, for example, be broken down into roles or psychoanalytical entities depending on the domain) - and on the other, one has what appear to be entities but turn out to be information themselves (avatars, etc.), continually undergoing transformation and redefinition; if they don't speak, they're not present... The modernist object/arrow model lends itself to hierarchical structuring up and down the scale, moving across at the last physical domains; the other model (related to the internet for example) moves throughout regimes of information - superstructural communities above for example and bits and bytes below. And it's the internet model that is recuperating/sub- suming the other, as the ontology of the physical world dissolves into information-based models - and as ironically neural models leave the do- main of classical computation, replaced by neural networking and Edelman's concepts of active integration at a distance. Further, in the internet model, there is no distinction between entity and process, between (perhaps) time-variant and time-invariant regimes. And I would write more and will but I'm leaving for NYC tomorrow first wandering the streets of Halifax with no sleep, just nervous and depressed about returning... Alan __________________________________________________________________________ Subject: WYSIWYG 00oo00 WSSIWSG What She Sees is What She Gets which is what she wants which is what she asks for which is what she didn't ask for. Like computers, take it from there, give it from there, give it to her, take it to her, take it from her, give it to me. "That says it all." ________________________________________________________________________