IIIIIIII TTTTTTTTTTRRRRRRN EEEEEETTTTTTTTT sondheim@newschool.edu IIIN T EE RR RNN EE TTT III N T EE RR RNNN EE TTT III N T EEEEEERRRRRRNNNN EEEEEEE TTTEXT III NT TT RR NNNN N TTT IIIIIIII TTEEE RRN NNNNNEEEEEE TTT copyright 2007 INTERNET.TXT:TERMINAL.ECHO:NIPPLE:PORTIA:HONEY:STUTTER:SPEW:GLOBAL:THREAD DEATH:LOL:NOVE:dir*.txt ------------------------------------------------------------------------ INTRODUCTION TO INTERNET TEXT AS A WHOLE Years ago, I gave a lecture at the Ontario College of Art, in which interaction with a computer was described as the production of a program space. The space was characterized by absolute control; the computer responds on a one-to-one basis to input. If the user enters a command, either the command is carried out, or various errors occur. Computer games carry this one step farther - the game responds deliberately to what I _do,_ creating the sense of a dominated environment. Today, the situation is completely different, particularly given the various communicative modalities of the Internet - email, email lists, usenet groups, IRC (Internet Relay Chat), and so forth. Within the next several years, there will be at least seventy-five million users on-line, and as the Net grows, it becomes leaky, ungainly, and noisy. More than ever, the user's personality (on- and off-line) plays a major role in his or her interaction. On the one hand, the machine interface still determines to a great extent the nature of this interaction; on the other, there is a tendency to (want to) "see past" the machinery, into the heart of the Other. Internet Text is an extended analysis of the environment of Internet communication, an extended meditation on the psychology and philosophy of Net exchange. As such, it is concerned primarily with virtual or electronic subjectivity - the simultaneous presence and absence of the user, the sorts of libidinal projections that result, the nature of flamewars, and the ontological or epistemological issues that underlie these processes. Internet Text begins with a brief, almost corrosive, account of the subject - an account based on the concepts of Address, Protocol, and Recognition. This section "reduces" virtual subjectivity to packets of information, Internet sputterings, and an ontology of the self based on Otherness - _your_ recognition of me is responsible for my Net-presence. The reduction then begins to break down through a series of further texts detailing the nature of this presence, a nature which is both sexualized/ gendered, and absenting, the result of an _imaginary site._ Almost all of Internet Text is in the form of "short-waves, long-waves." The former are the individual texts themselves, written in a variety of styles, and referencing a number of writers ranging from Jabes and Blanchot to Acker and Bataille, with Sartre, Kristeva, and Karl Kraus somewhere in the middle. These texts are completely interrelated; on occasion "characters" appear - these are _actants,_ conveying certain psychological or philosophical ideas beyond or within traditional exposi- tory prose. The long-waves are content-sites, such as issues of death, love, virtual embodiment, the "granularity of the real," physical reality, and so forth, which interpenetrate the short-waves, connecting them. During the writing of Internet Text, Michael Current (now deceased) and I began an Internet conference, Cybermind - and the moderating of Cybermind has led to serious considerations of hackers, the nature of "free" net communica- tion, flaming, and so forth. Eventually, it has become clear that every- thing revolves around issues of the virtual subject, who is only virtual _on_ the Net, but who has a very real body _elsewhere._ So Internet Text has evolved more and more in a meditation on this subject - a subject which will perhaps be one of the dominant modes of _being_ within the next millennium. Finally, it should be noted that there are no conclusions to be drawn in Internet Text, no series of protocol statements or declarations creating any sort of ultimate defining or explanatory position. The entire history of philosophy mitigates against this; instead, I side with the Schlegels, with Nietzsche, Bataille, Jabes, and others, for whom the fragment is crucial to an understanding of contemporary life... I wish to thank Michael Current, Chris Keep, and Robert Withers for their help and encouragement. Parts of this text have been published in Perfor- ations and Crash (Thread Waxing Space). It is dedicated to Michael Current and Clara Hielo. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ INDEX.TXT INTERNET.TXT contains a number of texts theorizing the internet and its relationship to emerging forms of subjectivity - forms that will dominate the post-industrial world for at least the first century or so of this millennium. This INDEX.TXT briefly describes and introduces the texts of the first parts of Internet Text, in the order in which they appear. INTERNET TEXT presents an overall theory of and in the midst of the inter- net. It includes subtexts: FILE TEXT, DEFINITION TEXT, and DEFINITION TEXT, begin a reiterative or REWRITE structure to the whole; EXIT TEXT continues this. Although the text is numbered, this does not necessarily reflect either logical consequence or subcategories. TERMINAL ECHO precedes INTERNET TEXT in composition and reflects some of the same concerns. NIPPLE TEXT begins an extended discussion of sexualization and affect in relation to the net; if INTERNET TEXT reflects (literally) the position of the net with the user as margin, NIPPLE TEXT begins the reversal of the process. ...PORTIA... continues the process of NIPPLE TEXT in the guise of fiction. LOVING HONEY is concerned with alterity on a chat-line, the presence or absence of the `granularity' of the real and face-to-face or electrically- mediated relationships. STUTTER TEXT discusses the DELAY of net communication processes. SPEW presents a brief overview of some formal mathematics structures that reflect unusual degrees of symmetry and a-symmetry; at the limits, the structures produces fractal or radially-symmetric regimes, with the appearance of chaos elsewhere. The underlying symmetricizing operations are useful in thinking through subjectivity in the later texts. SPEW may be skipped over if necessary. GLOBAL TEXT is a position paper written for the Public Domain group, theor- izing identity and technology. <> LOVE ON THE INTERNET AND MORE begins the last section of texts; it is a meditation continuing the issues raised in LOVING HONEY. lol (LAUGHING OUT LOUD) is an acronym used in teleconferencing; here it is used concretely as a symbol of symmetricizing, as well as a term for mutual engagement. It follows the thread started with NIPPLE, PORTIA, HONEY, and others. THREAD TEXT carries INTERNET TEXT into the EXIT mode, the act of composi- tion and decomposition. DEATH TEXT completes the EXIT mode with a brief discussion of cooling down. <>> <<<<*WEB TEXT*: SEE SEPARATE TABLE OF CONTENTS.>>>> END INDEX.TXT INTERNET TEXT 0. Prolegomena: The following iterative construct describes the internet. Traditional philosophical and cultural categories are highly problematic, given this new communications life-form. I develop instead an analysis based on EMISSION, SPEW, ADDRESS, RECOGNITION, and PROTOCOL. The essay, always preliminary, proceeds through a series of numbered paragraphs, which then rewrite. 1. The network is a membrane composed of nodes, better considered intensifications. An intensification possesses an interactive emission. The emission is characterized as a program space composed of inputs/outputs, introjections/projections: a space of -jectivity. The emission occurs in a steep topographic region; distinctions between hardware and software become blurred, as do more traditional philosophical divisions (subject/ object, body/world, mind/brain). 2. In fact, traditional ontological considerations are clearly replaced by an organic episteme; what constitutes knowledge is only flow; data replaces history; data becomes sourceless. Rather than communication channels, consider geodesics; rather than geodesics, consider forced flows; rather than forced flows, consider emissions. 3. An emission has no input, no output; an emission consists of fragmented images, the symbolic replaced by the imaginary. An emission is always in flux; an emission problematizes energy and energy consumption, since it may simultaneously drain and produce/reproduce. An emission is a chaotic domain in the vicinity of an unstable attractor; escaping, it quickly loses history, historiography, temporality itself. Close to the speed of light, it exists in a temporal well. 4. The membrane is an enormous hypertext whose linkages thin, occasionally break, are always redundant. It is neither a fuzzy set nor a classical one; through a fast-forward topology, it escapes traditional partitioning. The user deals with an alterity in the form of constantly changing facial expressions; one is never within or without the alterity, but in a (supine) position of absorption. The emission clouds close to me; ontologically, it is that real escaping denotation; ontologically, it is uncanny. Thus the emission is related to excess, to surplus, to the curlicue or dia- critical mark, but it absents these, and it is this absenting or ignorance that constructs the uncanny as waste-product; the blindness of emission is its site. 5. To hold onto part of a body, to sever that part, to construe or re- construe that part, to devour it, tear the surface off: one searches for the skinned body, (which has the murmur or memory of pain), the articulation of a truth given by one's own body lost in the emission. It is good form to search out bondage, which restrains the body absent from itself, an analog of the screen or permissive membrane which occurs, going just so far. This is an antiquated ontology or materiality asserting the inert in the midst of fast-forward, an assertion doomed to be displaced, sublimated, effaced; one holds onto nothing; as in classical existentialism, one projects forward in the face of nothingness (as if nothing were itself an alterity); the hole, however, is an episteme broken by the screen replacing the mirror stage; the ego splatters against it (the cum-ego for female and male); fast-forward, the episteme always already announces its continuation; the existentialist project is lost in the midst of indirect addresses. 6. The user is an addict "in the midst"; the user projects; thwarted, projects again. The membrane appears in the guise of discarded pornography; one is thrust into pure consumption, no longer beneath the guise of another pornography, capital itself. Assertions are lost in the echo of the machine. Thought is defined by flux, by an absolute symbolic for the user who must be assured of the purity of his or her drug. The purity is in the form of a well-definition (in the logical sense) to which no one any longer pays attention; the absence of well-definition does not result in a program cancellation, but only a retry which is part of the program itself; it does not matter where one is; location is irrelevant. 7. Voices are heard behind the screen words (toggle on, echo on; the screen chants itself, hides itself, reveals the nipple); face to face replaces the face; double blinds allow the truth of double binds. This is the only truth there is: that which occurs beneath or behind the blind, that is, the lie (which is truth's double, truth's mirror, not converse or inverse) (which is truth's perverse, that is, truth's abject truth); this is the framework of classical Greek philosophy bound to classical Greek torture (both bound with identical cords, hieroglyphs): Xenophon's Socrates was the first user. Voices are heard, and voices are nothing but machine chatter, the ideal forms so many subroutines... 8. The user. The user is an addict; the user inscribes throughout the network (temporary, electronic, absolute: an entirely new category), micro-tendrils extending in every direction. This contains the appearance of power; the network is a fantasm reflecting emissions back through local paths. The wonder of the internet is its locality, the construct of neighborhood (packet channels slowing down just right for the home terminal) redefining the body; the body becomes extension; extension becomes noise; noise seethes at the edge. The process is one of fast-forward rooting, and the roots are blind. 9. Now we can speak of the mouth or eye of the user; now we can speak of the hand or its mobility. No matter how (much) sensation is transcribed, it occurs at a distance characterized by zapping and invasions. Nothing but the materiality of the body is a stake; everything cuts everything off. The user is confined to a scientism in the form of THAT which articulates the THERE IS, just as addiction develops out of the action of a particular drug or behavioral sequence. One is tied to the THAT. 10. The user has nothing to do with the internet; the user is of no consequence. Conference exists or dissolves beneath the sign, not of gender or capital, but of chaotic inscription. The sign itself dissolves; sign is, after all, only recognition. This is the final corruption of humanism; even the self is no longer centric - not through the Lacanian inscriptive/linguistic unconscious (through which IT may still find a path or coagulation), but through addiction, self as THAT, or self as nodal intensification, always castrated, furiously addictive, always reading/writing, always rewriting: the self becomes its own recursivity. It no longer matters; its reports are from marauders, vandals, on the edge of the Roman Empire; it exists only within the interstices of power; it is displaced by power; it is no longer one or many; it no longer responds to the pronoun; it responds only to the login which may well (it does not matter) be a construct of the machine itself - just as gender- bending relies no longer on gender, but arbitrary and chaotic signifiers, signifiers undercut, in a continuous process of dissolution, murmuring, forgetting, forgotten, forged and forgotten, emissive. The machine recognizes no gender; the machine recognizes nothing. The machine recognizes every gender; the machine is never a machine, but an episteme. 11. Just as the episteme is lost in time, so is the subject; just as music video and popular culture announced (by absenting, forgetting, by a- signifying) the end of historicity, the subject no longer announces itself (and certainly no longer announces herself and himself): an emission is no grounds for announcement. In this manner the subject avoids death (always the plan, thwarted and perverting, procuring and devouring, but always the plan) which is already always forgotten; intensification is subject to dissolution, but subjectivity dissipates or sublimates elsewhere, as if it ever existed. 12. But just as if it ever existed, there are no longer ontological con- siderations; as plasma, the internet bypasses existence (always already... the litany repeats as murmur). It is within this that the projected eternality of the digital has full reign or resonance; noiseless, the digital proclaims the clean and proper body (which is rendered problematic by the maternal which becomes uncanny, fantasm, the circulation already on the move, already elsewhere), genderless and absent. Clearly in this fashion, everything is absent within the internet. (Everything announces, dresses, address. A character, screen or otherwise, is an announcement.) The human dream of eternal life occurs by a draining of temporality; therefore nothing occurs or can occur. It is irrelevant whether or not the human is "ready" for this when readiness implies an a priori teleology; such an impulse becomes a trail or trace left by a gopher through the compu- tational/server holarchy, not an end in sight or sightlessness. 13. Naturally, then, it is also irrelevant to ask where one goes from here... sondheim@newschool.edu INTERNET.TXT 14. The FLUX of information travels in direct relation to ADDRESS: address becomes information. Data, numerical or otherwise, are contained in address. Address is contained in protocol; information becomes equivalent to etiquette - at least etiquette's teleology is information. This is in distinction to the etiquette of everyday life, which operates to sublimate or repress information. Etiquette in both situations is constructed upon consensus; in the former, excess occurs in the leakage of signification or the curlicue, and in the latter, excess is a production of the CONTRARY or WAYWARD, through which the deconstruction of etiquette begins. 15. There is no such deconstruction within the net, which in fact filters out a priori such breaches. But this filtering always has a result, which may be noise, shunting, disconnection, or all three. SHUNTING represents a chaotic or branching negation; DISCONNECTION is annihilation or binary negation. NOISE is elsewhere; it is a fissuring, always reinscribed, a concrete form of unsolvability. It is always reinscribed, because it leads finally to SHUNT or DISONNECT; it is a liminal state or global catas- trophe, deeply unpredictable. 16. Noise lends itself elsewhere, to viruses, worms, infections of all sorts; to flaming or misappropriation of address; to breaches of security: noise defined AS SUCH by the user, but in fact subversive etiquette, an etiquette of alterity recognized and utilized (i.e. accepted) by the net as a whole. Thus the net is impervious to dissolution, only to DIS- CONNECT in one form or another, including energy withdrawal. The net, broken, fragmented, unavailable to any user, is still net; the wires remain turbulent, heated; exhausted information continues to traverse the nodes; the nodes or intensifications define the information; become it; nothing exists beyond ADDRESS and RECOGNITION. 17. Clearly this is a fiction; the net is transparent, remarkably fragile; viruses enter regardless of intention; noise breaks nodes apart; the net is bloated, near collapse; the content of messages becomes problematic; firewalls and other defense mechanisms assert themselves; flame wars become wars of manageriality; the last battlefield is the bitwar fought everywhere and nowhere at once. Eliminate SIGHT and SITE: only CITE - CITATION remains, addresses crumbling to subversive and alien recognitions. 18. Clearly this is a fiction; what remains are addresses compounded upon addresses, linkages continuing forever, with the ever-present possibility of recursion. Threads exhaust themselves, meander almost forever; thought garners itself as REPLY to a (deconstructed) TRACE. What occurs on the surface of things is the memory of conversation. 19. And what concerns this conversation? Clearly not face-to-face, yet conveying the "authenticity" of a confessional obtainable under no other circumstance. For the materiality of the world, replaced by episteme, has been circumvented: neither the grain of the voice or face, nor the brute physicality of the body presents itself. Such an authenticity is also conditioned by the very institutionalization of consensual communi- cation through keyboard or graphics; protocol or etiquette permit every- thing, permitting nothing. The user says what she means or means what he says. An obvious form of Freudian lifelong psychoanalytical session, the symbolic spew or flux continues indefinitely, harboring the user within the banks of an acceptable (Oedipal) superego. Flaming is in fact the death of alterity; the other, no longer obdurate, reduces herself to ASCII. When everything is permissible, nothing occurs; the internet is a surrealism of chaotic equivalences. Just as the governance of Dali's painting is a restrained realism inherited from the Italian renaissance and the Dutch, so internet protocol exhumes and releases a scatological flood; Dali and the user alike are addicted to institutionalized realisms that constantly escape the world, only to rewrite it. 20. A temporary stasis in turbulence theory is termed an "animal," equiv- alent to the activation of an internet site. These words, too, barely hold onto their moorings; the only moorings available are those of families of usages (no longer tied to Wittgenstein's name); these are reduced to listserv conferences; reduced to the open distributions of alt.org, more precisely alt.sex beyond the blindness of usenet; these too transform into images now illegible; the hinge between subject and object breaks; gender becomes stuttered desire; what breaks becomes an address; what exists becomes a recognition; protocol recognizes an address; characters spew across the screen; it is no longer a question of equivalence; packets increase their speed; the terminal transforms everything into and beyond the reign of alt.flesh.sex. 21. Nevertheless, the episteme has its horizons; circulations are not random; facts emerge; facts construe the world; the horizon of facts determine alt.flesh.user; this is the fifth world, beyond the third world and the fourth; from paragraph 21 to TOP, the latter corrupt the other, an irrevocable form of decay or shuddering episteme: the curlicue of the episteme. The ecological benefits of electronic networking are offset by networking's ontological absence; what does not exist (in the sense of existential inauthenticity) problematizes, often without recognition (for internal recognition remains just that), the political; the political remains the horizon of the net... becomes a footnote to the .TXT ... 22. If the latter corrupt the former, it is because the former is the clean and proper body insistent upon protocol and typifications, the classic nation-state, protective and functional tariffs, an international monetary standard, acceptable quality of life. Clearly the net is all of these yet none of these; clearly the net is just as well a poverty or anarchic scenario playing itself out; it intertwines with first, second, third, fourth worlds; it is intertextual. Is it true to say the world is a rewrite? As in the past, news stories were "born" and "killed" in radio and television - so in the future, news becomes, not an eternal return, but an eternal recursion; the internet as medium is no longer the message, but a constant reconstruction (turbulent animal). It, or its descendents, become the problematic margin of non-equilibrium thermodynamics; quantum tunnelling and classical entropy alike invade its deterritorialization. If capital is the child of scarcity, the internet is scarcity's grand-child; between each of the terms, ontology fades accordingly. Both capital and internet occupy ALL rarified sites within expansive domains; both reduce sites to equivalence; both possess consensus (gold worth nothing and everything); both require protocol, give birth to etiquette. 23. Please, where one goes from here... sondheim@newschool.edu INTERNET.TXT FILE.TXT 24. It would be instructive to isolate a particular datum from a file picked at random, to trace its history - not its use, which would only be determined by differentiation. Data is absorbed by users in batches with an overall Gestalt; tabulation becomes a skewed element. Irigarayan flux applies direction to discrete elements; in this fashion, low-resolution becomes the order of postmodernism. Linkages create the semblance (not simulacrum) of structure. What is broken down is clutter, isolated from its thread or mother-list. 25. On one hand, then, low resolution grounds/grates temporary struc- ture (which could just as easily be formatted or normalized in other patterning); on the other hand, the grating of these very structures (against the analog background of high-resolution everyday life, wave packets, and so forth) results in emission or spew. A SPEW develops from a convex front spreading irregu- larly (i.e. stochastic or chaotic flux); a SPEW is also a form of contamination, out of control. An EMISSION is internally coherent; a SPEW is not. An EMISSION appears sourceless, but carrying or constructing the trace of (its) source; an emission appears 'after the fact' to have poured from a concavity or intensification. The EMISSION also carries another memory, that of its goal; if source is introjected, goal is projected; thus emission carries the imaginary within it, a fantasm procuring a problematic history. Emission is smooth, integrated; spew is harsh, digital, diacri- tical, differentiated. Or rather, the integration of spew, this act or articulation, is emission possessing an uncanny and grating history; the differentiation of emission filters out the imaginary, returning low-resolution whisper, skeletal death beyond the onslaught of existence. 26. The datum wobbles uneasily between emission and spew; its end is spew, flooding from the temporary articulation of emission, as structure becomes absorbed into praxis. The emission is never clutter, although it may be cluttering; spew is always clutter, always exhausted. If emission is the order of pornography, spew is the order of pornography used and reused, raised to the order of the inert. Both are fast-forward in the realm of capital; both seep, transgress; and both characterize that other interpenetrated realm, that of the net, where all orders merge. END INTERNET.TXT.FILE.TXT INTERNET.TXT.DEFINITION.TXT 27. I define the REAL as the inert which neither fissures nor inscribes, its epistemology relegated to the domain of the physical sciences. The SYMBOLIC is always inscribed and maintained; it absorbs energy. The IMAGINARY fissures; the domain of the same and the same, it is the locus of emissions and spews. Emissions and spews are sources of reading; absorbed by the symbolic, they literally imply an imaginary origin. The internet exists as a channeling of the symbolic, overcome within the real by the imag- inary; for the user, it is an inscribing of the real. 28. I define the IMAGINARY as that which is unaccountable, that which I do not comprehend; the internet is the technology of the imaginary. Definition itself is that which is accountable; I can be called on my definition. To call is to utilize the internet. To call, however, is to speak; the internet, never spoken-for, is the locus of murmurs. Articles, speech, files exhaust themselves; what disappears leaves no trace, no address or ashes. To follow a thread becomes the following of an emission within the imaginary; argument becomes a division in a logically chaotic realm. 29. I define DEFINITION as an imaginary, the exhaustion of theory or broken definition. DEFINITION becomes emission; these terms are arc-wise circulations (more precisely, chaotic helices) never returning to their originary terms. The internet embodies a postmodern hermeneutic circle in which root directories dissolve in the midst of anarchic governance. This user-exhaustion (for there is no other) is that of a splayed pornography; the screen/user interface itself is an emissive construct. Thus there can be no arguments WITH ME; thus there can only be a problematic return to a non-existent world beyond the interface. THAT world is ELSEWHEN; history itself becomes elsewhen. 30. An emission, I REFUTE in every direction (NOWHERE on the net). END.INTERNET.TXT.DEFINITION.TXT sondheim@newschool.edu INTERNET.TXT.DEFINITION.TXT 31. THE INTERNET DOES NOT EXIST: The ontological status of binary data was problematic for dialectical materialism, which had recourse only to an almost-mediaeval theory of reflection to accommodate it. The ontological status of the internet is one step beyond: Net layers (application/transport/internet/network/physical, re. *The Online User's Encyclopedia*) stutter between data and implementa- tion; semantics is elsewhere. To say that the internet does not exist is to say that it does not partake of existence; further, that existence (unless rewritten as attributive) plays no role here. 32. THE SUBJECT IS ADDRESS AND RECOGNITION: Address, not alterity, identifies the subject; the process of recognition is that of (contractual) orientation of 'cognitive domains.' The contractual aspect is critical here; the internet is an accumulation of proto- cols and restraints - it is fair to say that the subject is BOUND within the internet, and this binding is on the order of the maso- chistic, against which the internet plays and procures the maternal. This masochistic is Deleuzian, not a sadistic 'oppositional,' but a realm critical for the construct and production of writing/commu- nication in the first place. Here, the binding is a continuous deferral of pleasure; the user participates in a continuously unravelling narrative emission. To quote Gaylyn Studlar *In the Realm of Pleasure* on Deleuze's theorizing: "Deleuze regards the female in the male's masochistic fantasy as the loving inflictor of punishment, not the substitute for a hidden father. The mother, simultaneously love object and controlling agent, is the object of the child's ambivalence." ... "For the masochist, the maternal figure represents a femininity 'posited as lacking nothing.' She assumes her authority because of her own importance to the child, not, as Freud asserted, because she hides the father figure." 33. In another light, the work of Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel, *Sexuality and Mind,* is worth quoting: "The hypothesis I would put forward is that there exists a primary desire to discover a universe without obstacles, without roughness or differences, entirely smooth, identified with a mother's belly stripped of its contents, an interior to which one has free access. Behind the fantasy of destroying or appropriating the father's penis, the children and the feces inside the mother's body" ... "can be detected a more basic and more archaic wish, of which the return to the smooth maternal belly is the representation. It is a question of redis- covering, on the level of thought, a mental functioning without hindrances, with psychic energy flowing freely. The father, his penis, the children represent reality. They have to be destroyed so that the mode of mental functioning proper to the pleasure principle may be recovered." ... "It is the contents of the belly which are equivalent to reality, and not the container itself. Earlier she states: "The child expects to find within the mother a) the father's penis b) excrement, and c) children," quoting from Melanie Klein. The contents of the internet are detritus; the penis is equivalent to ftp on one hand, and protocol in general on the other; think of excrement as usenet and children as listerv. This analogical labelling is superficial; consider superego, language debris, and stuttered address/recognition instead, as well as an internet imaginary "with psychic energy flowing freely," without hindrance. Masochism appears, again, in the binding of this energy WITHIN the belly (it is always the "belly" and never the "stomach" "of the beast"): Everything opens for the user as the body is foreclosed; the closure of the body opens the internet. For the user, the internet represents powerful forces; the internet, like a chemical drug, represents an anarchic freedom, expansion of desire, and a foreclosing of local/neigh- borhood ("terminal!") problems within and without the body of the user. EXIT.TXT.INTERNET.TXT 35. An attempt to take the text to its conclusion; to draw the conclusion: delineation of the belly. The belly is swollen/distended; the belly is a construct. 36/1. The internet is a membrane characterized by emission blurring traditional philosophical dichotomies. 37/2. Traditional ontological considerations within and without the net are characterized by an organic episteme; knowledge becomes flux-knowledge and manageriality replaces the traditional categories of information theory. 38/3. An emission exists as flux within the imaginary, existing within and without a problematic temporality. 39/4. The internet membrane is a redundant and thinned hypertext presenting the user with the fantasm of changing alterity, the spectacle of changing expression. These expressions are related to excess, but excess is absent. Emission is blind, and its site blind. 40/5. The body becomes hysteric, losing itself in the fast-forward of the net; the existential project exhausts itself through misplaced recognitions leading simultaneously nowhere and everywhere. Address becomes a primary characteristic within the net, replacing alterity and traditional concepts of subjectivity. 41/6. The user is addicted; the user, logged on, is incapable of making mistakes, only distinctions between one and another thread. 42/7. The blindness of the net is its truth; truth is conditioned by the lie just as Greek thought is conditioned by the slave. Such a truth is not dialectical; the double-blind is a double-bind creating an exclusionary inscription. 43/8. The addicted user traces inescapable and inauthentic roots; his or her body, genderless, appears on the other side of the screen, without limit. 44/9. Addiction is in part the result of a THAT which centers and structures the addict; the screen itself becomes a cut; this distinction is a THAT within which the THERE IS is imminent. 45/10. The user, irrelevant, exists in the midst of chaotic (not noisy) inscription. A sign is defined only by recognition; otherwise dissolved, it produces an inscriptive effect. Recognition and effect become uncannily one. The self, furiously addicted, becomes its own recursion. The self is REWRITE or X => F(X). It no longer responds to the pronoun, becoming its own continuous construct, which may well (always) have been its 'truth.' The machine, continuously changing, is an episteme through which emissions, addresses, and recognitions flow. The manageriality of knowledge becomes the fast-forwarding of protocols and gateways. Without protocol, no address and definition. 46/11. The (net) subject is a-temporal or lost in time; he or she never announces itself (which requires the granularity of voice, body, face), but constructs. Construction exhausts the death drive; the digital is noiseless, faceless, eternal. Announcement of the subject is equivalent to recognition. Through protocol, recognition is returned. 47/12. Ontological considerations of self and net are problematic; the net and its emissions are plasma. Because time is absented, everything and nothing occurs; there is no room for occurrence. 48/13. Progress becomes impotent; this is not an 'end' to history by any means (just as there is never an 'end' to painting), but history's circum- scription. 49/14. Address is now equivalent to information; protocol becomes etiquette and the teleology of etiquette is information, which is address, recogni- tion, protocol... in the midst of which (i.e. manageriality), traditional questions of meaning become lost and unsolvable. The escaping of etiquette produces the categories of the CONTRARY or WAYWARD, categories ascribed to young girls whose excess 'corrupted' the (nuclear/phallic) family order. 50/15. The CONTRARY or WAYWARD user (human or otherwise) leads to SHUNT (sublimation, subroutine), DISCONNECT (end, logoff), or NOISE (beneath the critical mass necessary for breakdown). The filtering of the user reinscribes him or her in a deeply unpredictable manner. 51/16. NOISE is irrelevant to the net; it is recognized only by the user. The topography of the net (levels of application, transport, internet, net- work, and physical)is both more and less than topography; it is an onto- logically mixed epistemic holarchy 'against' or 'elsewhere' than user and systems operator. 52/17. But the topography is also a fiction; the net is fragile, always top-heavy. The bitwar and flamewars appear and disappear; sight is the first to go, followed by site; citation remains to the end with the final crumbling of protocols and addresses. 53/18. But these wars are also fiction; addresses compound indefinitely; indirect addresses become indirect themselves; threads meander forever. THOUGHT itself is a REPLY to a TRACE. 54/19. Conversation becomes interminable (Freudian) analysis; the symbolic spew continues indefinitely, harboring the user within the net simultaneously maternal and superego (and, through the masochistic aetiology, both come into play). The user rewrites the world through the escape of instituion- alized realisms; MUDs (multi-user-domains) are a limit-point of everyday net behavior and operations. 55/20. Everything: gender, language, subject, object, characters, user: stutters. Alt.sex.fetish.watersports, the liquidity of the signifier, becomes the final recognition; 'fetish' guarantees the hysteric hold on the proper name. For the user, the terminal extends exceedingly beyond alt.flesh.sex; the addict chatters at the scene of the origin of language, the scene of being-hooked, fear of withdrawal. 56/21. The ecological benefits of the net are offset by its (ontological) absent; the world (physical, material) threatens to implode. The continuous chatter or analytical frenzy of the net constructs protocol as solution; in this manner the net parallels the current theory-oriented exhaustion-of- theory discussion. Address, recognition, and protocol produce their own chatter; they admit to a truth which (through double-blind; see above) is often more 'open' than that of traditional alterity. Such a truth may emerge, however, only as circulation. 57/22. Increasingly abstract, capital and internet occupy all available sites; both rewrite inner and outer worlds, and both are anarchic at the core. Both utilize protocol, which is the value of gold. 58/23. To go from the cite/citation of capital and net is to remain within the circumscription of the same, remote from history and historiography. 59/24. File-data within or without the net occupy both a position of flux/ fluidity, and low-resolution; such data then possess both wave and particle characteristics. 60/25. The grating of structures through low-resolution results in both EMISSION and SPEW; the latter is out of control, and the former is internally coherent. An EMISSION is sourceless, a net flood; a spew is the net on the edge, close to fast-foward breakdown. EMISSION is integrated; SPEW is differentiated. If the EMISSION is imaginary, SPEW corrupts through the grating of the uncanny. 61/26. Data wobble between emission and spew; as emission is articulated into praxis, spew becomes clutter. The imaginary of emission is pornography; spew is wasted, discarded pornograhy. Both seep, leak, transgress, their model alt.sex.flood.sink-or-swim. 62/27. The REAL is the inert; the SYMBOLIC is inscribed; the IMAGINARY fissures, the locus of emissions and spews. Emissions and spews appear to come 'out of nowhere,' implying an originary source; through them, the net appears an inscribing of the real (as if they were the articulation of existential nothingness within the useless project of 'man'). 63/28. The IMAGINARY is the unaccountable other; the internet is imaginary. Definition inhabits the internet, which can call upon me; such, as user, is my calling. My calling implies my speaking; within the net, I leave no trace, no ashes. 64/29. DEFINITION becomes imaginary, broken, an emission itself, an arc within a hermeneutic circle that extends indefinitely, a form of porno- graphy. An argument WITH ME implies my speaking beyond the trace; this is always already impossible. 65/30. As user, do I quality as EMISSION? Arguing everywhere and nowhere, I say nothing; such is my calling, a redistribution of terms, addresses, recognitions, protocols, a reiteration of definitions, phrasing... 66/31. The internet does not exist; of course it exists; as institution, articulated domain, indirected addressings, its ontology is as problematic as that of binary data was for dialectical materialist philosophy. The ontology of the interenet, to reiterate, is a form of stuttering partaking of an existence which plays no role. 67/32. The subject, to reiterate, is address and recognition; both replace alterity. Protocol is contractual, an indication of a Deleuzian-masochistic approach to a net psychoanalytic, the net, to reiterate, as mother and superego, 'lacking nothing.' The net is infinitely open. 68/33. The net is infinitely open, 'a universe without obstacles,' the emptied belly of the mother, a continuous deferrel through secondary narcissism. Within the net are the contents of the mother's body, according to Melanie Klein: 'a) the father's penis b) excrement and c) children,' which may are may not be assigned sites within the user/net interface (within and without the net). Consider as well the net as a Kristevan CHORA with clashing drives, a presymbolic: are not the first characteristics of the symbol its ADDRESS, RECOGNITION, and underlying PROTOCOL? The existence of the belly/chora implies a circumscription after-the-fact; such is a binding, returning to the masochistic model. Thus the net is both closure and foreclosure, beyond or within the subject of INTERNET.TXT. END.EXIT.TXT.INTERNET.TXT.35-69.REWRITE.sondheim@newschool.edu TERMINAL ECHO What I'm working with is a form of cyberspace implemented by nodes or intensifications within a real environment. To declare an environment 'real' is always already to enter into a political arena, to declare such an arena, which had always been taken for granted. This arena is characterized by a diffused space presumably devoid of electronic construct or manipulation; it is characterized, in other words, by a peculiar INERT. This INERT separates solipsism from a necessary engagement; it is easy to imagine a possible world which is nothing more or less than a projection of this real, a deathless world held coherent by electron networking. But such a world would not necessarily remain inert - except perhaps through a default setting... And such a world would always have its echo toggled ON, as this echo is - as is my body, such an echo for the real world characterized by the inertness this rewritten body... Within this inertness, then, which we characterize as the real or the limit-point of a totally-inscribed cyberspace, a space which is, after all, hardly inscribed but rather fissured, the result of chaotic (de)production - within this inertness, there are sub-arenas, and these are precisely those intensifications previously mentioned. Moving from one to another, I cover my addiction to the real; I sublimate it in favor of cleansed communication, communication holding from one node to the next, characterized by... precisely that inscription which lends itself to the construction of the real, remote from all fissuring: IN CYBERSPACE, ALL CONSTRUCTION IS INSCRIPTION; FISSURING IS AN ABSENTED HORIZON: If the phallus characterizes the construct (in terms of well-definition) within the real, if the phallus is the horizon of the construct, always emptied, emptying, always a limit-point - then fissuring, infolding, labial portal, characterizes the horizon or limit-point of cyberspace - and just as cyberspace is (in)authentically 'phallic,' the real is (in)- authentically vaginal. But the parallel itself is problematic, because gender is precisely THAT overlay upon these environments that parallels science as THAT construct of the real; further, cyberspace itself is a construct of science, never inert, and never idiotic: substance versus membrane. Ironically, it is cyberspace, not the real, that relies primarily upon vision as a phenomenological horizon; the mathematization of the real immediately permits the articulation of the unrepresentable - even on an elementary level, consider 0, cantor dusts, the complex plane, riemannian geometry, tensor calculus... Because cyberspace IS representation, it collapses TO representation; because THE REAL IS NOTHING AT ALL, it never collapses (there is no TO and FROM within the real). THE REAL RELIES ON NOTHING. A STATEMENT 'ABOUT' THE REAL IS NECESSARILY FALSE OR ELSEWHERE. A STATEMENT 'ABOUT' CYBERSPACE IS WITHIN CYBERSPACE. CYBERSPACE RELIES ON EVERYTHING. The one is a null set within the other... Moving within the cyberspace of my room, my 'real' environment, I can imagine myself lost within the other, taking on its characteristics, a perfection of death itself, death's loss. IRONICALLY, REPRESENTATION IS MOVING TOWARDS LOW-RESOLUTION as articulation stutters the loss of language within/in the midst of the presence of flesh. Low-resolution escapes loss; error codes are enormous, permanent; everything always IS. Cyberspace is necessarily low-resolution, however leaky like a fractal sponge multi- plexing network. It is the leakiness of cyberspace, however, that construes it as a sub- limation of the real, a common knowledge, good and bad intentions, hackers and viruses, gophers and echos. But this leakiness is another story, that of deconstruction, an occurrence of the imaginary; the symbolic is the domain of cyberscription; it is the cyberscribe who envisions. Naturally this argument, this essay, is itself the result of a limit-point; organism tends towards the construct, and Heinz von Foerster pointed out the defi- nition of organism in relation to negation. In cyberspace, negation is an absence of well-definition; negation is excluded from cyberspace, which executes only what is presented as possible. But this is an active exclusion defining negation itself. NEGATION HAS NO PART WITHIN THE REAL; it is a local definition, and again only through leakage, does everything inter- penetrate, become problematized. I would include the real at this point, which is the presence of perception, balanced uncannily upon solipsism and interconnected nodes. We have arrived at the origin of power: the negation of death for which every virtual reality is necessarily psychosis. If the obsessive- compulsive gnaws at the real, the psychotic inscribes and rewrites through- out an eternal recursion. Who writes the role of gender. sondheim@newschool.edu NIPPLE.TXT That which carries me against the surface of philosophical discourse, offering my body to every thinker on circuit: I'm ignorant, I whore for you; I've been inside you; you've penetrated me; now you'll pay attention; now you'll read this; I'M YOUR MOUTH. Typing SUCK against the surface of the screen, its interior, I press my nipples against the glass surface warmed by electroncs streaming on an even keel from the urethra buried deep within the vacuum of space. That is how I begin a consideration of LITERATURE, perfect breasts flattened and displayed in the midst of machinery's surface; you read my tits, my cunt, my cock; you read the rest of me; I no longer see characters through the surface oiled by my presence; my eyes, half closed, move on to other things. I am naked for you; here with me, you witness all my secrets; you can come for me; I am waiting for you; you can address me by my name; you will recognize me by my naked skin splayed open for you. It is you that inscribes me, you that I write for. To continue is to fast- forward; I do this for you. My death is present in the screen and the screen's system; be assured I am no longer part of the living. The oil from my anus remains frozen on the surface of the glass; the flesh has fallen away, backward, into another space, elsewhere; this is the space of absolute negation; this is indescribable space, the space of NEITHER A NOR B, protruding or extending beyond limit, beyond boundary, on the other side of Alice's looking-glass. I can't look into Alice's cunt because my eyes see only characters; my arms wrap around myself, pressing inward; what begins as caress ends as pain; my eyes no longer see. I WEAR THICK GLASSES AM FIFTY-ONE, PLAIN- LOOKING, ANGULAR, TOO INTENSE FOR THE FACE-TO-FACE AROUND ME, NEUROTIC- OBSESSIVE, POOR, NEVER CONTENT, ALWAYS PUSHING. That creates nothing, a litany moving past on the screen as knowledge, even local knowledge, becomes scroll, absence; what I am writing about is this absence, not even hole, hiatus simultaneously elsewhere-on-the-other-side and in-the- midst, a topology-povera restless, mobile, surrounded. If you piss in my mouth, you short-circuit the machinery; my cunt takes your piss. Tying the body is different from REWRITE which is a continuous loop; you loop once, holding my hands behind me, loop twice, inscribing my anus, penetrating it, with a light pen; it WRITES nothing; fleshes closes off, forecloses; flesh devolves. I am bound or stretched, fucked by several men or women, users; the screen shatters in the midst of them, wet with cum and urine. I am split (nipples connecting nipples), devoured, penetrated on the net; I am (willingly) offered up, without a thought in the world, shaved for you, my secrets exposed; you return me irresponsible questions; my mouth is my hole; my mouth opens wide for you; opens wider; opens to the WEB: I beg you without remorse; I beg you, whipped across the ass, cunt, and balls; I beg you, speechless, whatever is asked of me: fissured, commands boil up from ASSEMBLY; milk flows from my nipples: I have whitened the screen, returned the condition of blank and irre- trievable death; charcters merge with background; energy dissolves; the depth of the hole merges with the surface of the hole; the rim of the hole glistens in the midst of the surface; the rim of the hole is circular and MERGED; the rim copies itself +RIM+RIM to RIM; viral, the rim extends throughout the net, carrying the murmur of flesh. Nothing is carried; characters have no memory; the grain of the flesh is lost; the grain never existed; this is the presence of your grain; this is the memory of your grain present, your cum; I AM A YOUNG SIX- TEEN-YEAR-OLD GIRL WITH A LIGHT SHAVED CUNT LONG BLOND HAIR I WILL DO ANYTHING YOU ASK ME TO I HAVE A BEAUTIFUL ASS A YOUNG FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD BOY STILL HAIRLESS MY COCK A HOT EIGHT INCHES MY FACE DOING YOUR FACE SHORT CROPPED BLACK HAIR; the screen whispers your desire your alt.sex.fetish; the presence of face is nothing whatsoever. THE SCREEN IS AN INSCRIPTION; the intersection of presence and absence is a null set relative to the attributive semantics of the Venn diagram. The null set inscribes the distinction between presence and absence in a classic domain; inscription is the demarcation of quality, read as such by organic hermeneutics. Otherwise and the other of inscription is fissure between quantity and quantity, a meandering lowering of energy as the system or heap adjusts; inscriptions is always maintained; the net inscribes and fissures; the user inscribes himself or herself within and in the midst of the screen; the screen is the pure form of your desire. If I desire you, I desire your desire; I desire to be desirable for you; I hide behind inscription; I tailor my inscription for your presence; the net is an enormous bridge. Masochistically, I am what you want me to be and thus I fulfill you, fulfilling my desire; what I desire is nothing more than your RETURN; your return carries all of the maternal with it; your return becomes a form of primary narcissism; your return is my nipple. You are my BELLY. I am your beautiful boy or girl, beautiful adolescent and you shall teach me everything I need to know. I am your beautiful older woman or man, with years of experience; I can bring your flesh to new heights of pleasure, whole countries you never dreamed of; I will always RETURN, be true to you. Even now, I press my lovely nipples hard against the screen. Best of all, there is no political economy involved; excess characterizes our exchanges, which flow from one to another; excess floods the net, opening and closing, thirty-million sucking mouths, interruptions, pro- cedures; at a loss my death fades into a murmur or whisper; my death is a stage-whisper at best on a multi-user-domain; the name drops out; nothing is lost; the circulation continues. There is no political econ- omy, or rather an economy characterized by the fullness of surplus; what restraint remains is that of the channelling of projection and introjec- tion, problematic in themselves - being beyond itself. For if an aporia exists in the midst of being/Being/beings, the aporia diffuses in the ontological fading of the net or screen; it is the elsewhere that is at stake; the screen is the presentification of the (Heideggerian) THEY, categoricity OCCURRING at an incandescent fast-forward rate in the midst of an inconceivable and inconceiving episteme. NO MATTER HOW FAR MY LEGS ARE SPLIT, THE EPISTEME REMAINS OBDURATE. Penetration transforms into gopher; cunnilingus into world-wide-web; fellatio into ftp: take your pick; all mouths are equivalent, all mouths are the same. I CONTINUE TO SHOUT: I'LL TAKE YOUR PISS IN MY FACE; I'LL SWALLOW YOUR SHIT; I'LL SUCK YOU UNTIL YOU COME SCREAMING; YOU CAN FUCK ME ANYTIME AT ALL; I'LL CUT YOUR NAME IN MY CHEST; I'LL CUT MY NIPPLES OFF, CUT THEM FOR YOU; I'LL GIVE THEM TO YOU as a gift as 'snail-mail' necessarily travels the grain of the world. Nothing occurs within the beyond of alterity. sondheim@newschool NIPPLE.TXT D:\PORTIA\Return\Sight\Recursion\dir *.Portia I opened the door to the gateway; Portia stood there in the midst of the portal, opened port 7777, anything to escape. What about this port; it contained meaningless directions, the pounding of keys like surface against the ocean of technology; I tried, the protocol hummed by the router and I was in. Portia her legs spread wide, Portia without secrets, Portia the presence of the bulletin, Portia read in ASCII up and down the suturing of my body always elsewhere, some alt group or another. Not knowing what to do I served her my list; like a gopher I travelled global. Global, I had no organs; global, I was ready for anyone, for the two of us, infinite multiplicities, identities changing throughout the regime of genders, above and beyond, TELE TELELOGO, TELE TELELOGO. Logo transformed fast; it wasn't I who held onto identity antiquated by some- thing as backward as location, Cartesian coordinates. Coordinates for the screen, perhaps - feed it that, but Portia was always elsewhere beyond the Sheffer stroke. She was at the beginning, TELE TELELOGO, which was already an organization; in the beginning was plagiarism (borrowed from another source, another computer language, Karl Kraus), and in the midst of this Portia - didn't run things - a running herself, downhill liquid, which ignored the boolean of Veronica, SLAVE AND MASTER, BONDAGE OR DOMINATION. 7777 always spelled it; sometimes spelling slipped by the wayside. I'd wait for you to write me; I'd hold my breath, my line making or breaking sense in the midst of all the others. My actions were equivalences; like cartoons, they defied death, transformed upon impact (presence of speech against the surface of the screen); they were taken, raped, slaughtered, caressed, cuddled, fucked, mutilated, returned, sliding out of view at the top. Portia would wait forever; was given a 75% rating matching attributes I assigned myself. I felt the need to conform to a truth held by the presence of flesh taut against the other; this melted before my eyes; I was mocked like a wayward Madonna strugging to keep her legs apart. I was a quiet nice kind of guy until I joined the fourth generation of hackers, Portia; you can't imagine what life was like. I thrust myself against you, a worm tracing nothing but itself through the internet. It hardly mattered what went with me or against me; firewalls were no obstacle; I'd learned that in the school of hard knocks and protocols. Anything was transparent once the port was set; type in a random access and you were in, experimental, anything near 240.xx. So what was it, when was it, where was it, this domain without direction or time, email coming back to me, interrogations demanding I write this or that, long reports to syscoms who had already read them. You get the picture; you wrote it. So this was what you wrote: Before running, there was the obdurate which refused itself, ignored etiquette, substituting wild cards whenever possible. It was a demand, an itch between the legs, the thrust of a fist against soft flesh, a moistened asshole or cunt, devices returned to the illuminations of light-pens long-since extinct, the paleolithic era of 1987. There was nothing more to say; TO SAY was TO ENTER, but obdurate had none of that; it refused to multiply, setting itself up as a slim barrier against further access. Ironically, only ESCAPE worked, but to what end? Returning you to yourself? Nothing else was conceivable; the terminal became terminal, an evil mirror rendering the movement of dead fingers on dead keys suspect; you weren't returned anything for your money or your time. Obdurate continued, opened and closed firewalls, shoved itself against your skin, refused to go away; ignoring ADDRESS and RECOGNITION by the sheer force of arbitrary substitution, or so it seemed. Another way of looking at it, blind and sightless, siteless, was just that - the conceptual elimination of ports and addresses themselves, open wires just like direct networking used to be, packets spitting everywhere, always ending up at each and every destination - ending up at YOUR destination, as the song goes, something like the song (Kathleen Lynch) - I'd fuck everyone just to get to you. And obdurate did, the NULL SET of the Internet, the reduction of everything to the same, difference and same to the same; there wasn't any difference. Whatever multiplied out, end with the cum between the legs, hot sex, asshole and cunt wide wide open, mouth ready for each and every taker. Obdurate never multiplied, never divided; NULL, obdurate mirrored your presence, your desire. You knew nothing like obdurate; obdurate was nothing to know. Terminal illness was the only way to describe it - this disintegration of protocol as you pulled down your pants, spread your cunt or ass wide open, in the midst of the computing center, in the middle of the street, in the center of the mall - anywhere you could be taken, and you were, your holes wider and wider, lips chapped from penetration - you joked that cum was your only protein. Obdurate remained at the terminal, closed, occasionally opened for escape to re-enter once again, a continuous shutting-down providing in reality cycle upon cycle of activity geared to greater climax. What was it about the breakdown of address ruining your clothing, covering you with semen, urine, vaginal douche, anal enema? Liquid flowed from the computer itself; between the screen and its casing, slim, smooth, like flesh hardened against the world of FTP, drops seeped out, thick and yellow-white, the intersection of generic organism, thickened with arousal raised to the simultaneous levels of hysteria and catatonia. Immobile, your portals opened, speaking to yourself among others, you decoded obdurate, the mirror shattered, program shut down, terminal dark was liquid coalescing by any means possible, a power outage flung from your shuddering limbs. Siteless, there were no more secrets; SITELESS was GUILTLESS and whatever continued, unconscious, carried no more weight than that of an aroused clitoris or penis, surfaces milking the material world. Siteless, exposing everything exposed nothing at all; meaning drained from the system, leaving plateaus or folds of flesh in its wake. Meaning illuminated the hole, raised it to the surface of the plain itself: what was this? An aura where nothing had occurred, a flattened toroidal topology, the murmur of forgotten desire. A secret hungers in relation to instability; now nothing filled this hunger, no longer present. Portia, was it port 7777; was it anything? Was there a present or past, reason for consideration at all? Your breasts were bruised with the images of mouths held hard against you; your nipples engorged with the pleasure of the blind. Hands filled your cunt and mouth, hands spread your ass apart, indirect address which you guided through VERONICA, guided through GOPHER, guided, surfacing in some alien and violated TELNET, spreading obdurate everywhere. I exploded leaving this message. I became REWRITE. You fucked me. You fucked me alt.sex.fetish.enema; you fucked me alt.sex.fetish.diapers; you fucked me alt.sex.fetish.bondage; you fucked me alt.sex.fem - fucked me alt.sex.fem - fucked me alt.sex - fucked alt.*, wildcard alt. Moved back to the surface of things. Moved out of usenet altogether, ending in what you described as a `virtual reality' I never bought into. But I never bought into anything; distended, I penetrated as long as citation was possible, lists of protocols and standards. Now, with everything awash, moving to the surface - up against the screen - was only the terminal illness to contend with. I lost my address and couldn't recognize anything anymore. I love Portia more than anyone in the world; my love knows no bounds. If you see her, tell her everything. I'M GOING HOME. end Portia.Txt sondheim@newschool.edu LOVING HONEY HONEY.TXT The computer entered my life, began it, a certain sadness with the with- drawal of the face, the skin itself already a memory. I'd speak to the phone, speak TO it, HONEY, I'd say, HONEY... What came at the line, beginning and ending... The OCCURRENCE of it... I would wait for her reply, an imaginary dream, YOU'D BE ME... This sadness, the onslaught of second memory, beyond the screen the distant murmur of the voice, I would hear HER, talking to HER about something, anything, keeping the line going, keeping her ON-LINE, line-moving - or aloof, waiting for a secondary narcissism circuiting elsewhere, looping back to me, inthe form of a REWRITE, constant, true, eternal... THINK THROUGH ME... THINK THROUGH ME... HONEY waits on second thought for the reply, addressing no one in parti- cular, RESPONDING TO WHAT ALAN SAID; there are these gaps in absence as well, a murmur of disappearance. These gaps... moving towards or away from the computer, some words here and there... have your attention... The letters peel back from the screen, flesh peels from the letters. Ah, we are all enclosed in our own addictions, those of other people... /italics/ You were about to leave; your profile was high: Lulu: need a guy? :need a woman (Honey): gotto go guys, bye! :(Alan): need a woman :*** Lulu is waving to Honey! (Honey): on second thought........ (Lulu): Yes? :Yes? All us guys... (Alan): Yes? ... Yes? ... (Honey): responding to what Alan said, Lulu! :Yes ... (Alan): Yes ... :Siren just joined this channel! (Honey): just curious ... A gap or hiatus or merge, Honey (Alan): This pause, the resonance of a bell ringing at double frequencies (Honey): That between them, there was something that returned me, brought me back (Alan): A sound connecting you to me, something in the air, surely throughout the realm of print (Honey): A print or hieroglyph, a body bound in the form of sacred writing. (Alan): Writing which leaves a trace, momentary whisper upon the screen, almost an imaginary death (Honey): Drawing us closer, the streets too closing in, the body foreclosed, everything shutting down (Alan): Down beneath or beyond us, down between us (Honey): As if another realm or fiction appeared, beyond the happy figure that I care to draw for myself (Alan): That figure which gains you entrance to this and every other portal (Honey): That figure which survives me, a configuration or system to which I have drawn your words, your thinking them through me (Alan): Thinking them through the lure you have granted me, presence beyond profile, presence withdrawn or against profile, another moment (Honey): Or moment which encompasses the collapsing pressure of time, there is no space, that moment which binds us (Alan): Packets continuing momentarily throughout the network, while we, elsewhere and elsewhere, holding our breath... (Honey): Holding it for what seems to be an eternity, holding it forever and ever, as we move closer (Alan): Beyond the directness of communication, the network moving into high gear, computers at the edge of breakdown (Honey): Encompassing us as we move to private conversation, beyond the presence of Lulu and Grant, beyond each and every other, alone with our thoughts (Alan): Which no longer belong to us, belong to one another, it is you or I who are typing, the two of us in uneasy confluence (Honey): Confluence beyond confluence, beyond stuttering reach, the topography of *together,* the binding of recognition as well (Alan): A recognition which is all we have, are given, a recognition confronting and conforming us (Honey): Addressing each to the other, addressing ourself, conforming ourselves to ourselves (Alan): Thin sliver of words, shuddering on their way, carrying the weight of the world! (Honey): Beyond which the dance ends, the tables are pushed back against the wall, the cafe closes for the night, red and white checkered table- cloths, candles, the sad violin (Alan): The woods just beyond the village, the hill, meteors appearing in depth, intense, for our benefit, for none other (Honey): No one else, the sliver, thin language begin to fail us (Alan): Frail, in the midst of worlds... (Honey): In the midst of ellipsis, continuous and forever, dots tolling the double entourage of the bell (Alan): Honey, I hear it, speaking your name (Honey): Alan, I hear it, speaking your name Speaking the doubled name, name of the two, designators floating above or within all possible, all conceivable worlds ... The computer entered our lives, carrying the two of us in a singular mold, a sadness with the increasing presence of the face, increasing memory, o gone and present from the line Alan, she said, Alan, I could hear her voice from the corner of the cafe; she was on the telephone, speaking rapidly; she was on the telephone, talking quietly; laughing at something said across the line; crying, turning momentarily away; Alan, she said, Alan: it's almost dawn ... End HONEY.TXT sondheim@newschool.edu STUTTER.TXT I suppose this would be a difficult text, something obscure, to move, remark upon - never certain, always trying to get through the electronic noise customary on this channel. Channel always occurs, always the plunging into a tunnel of our own making - our own, or someone else's; this is the difficulty of the internet, its external intrusion, always jittery with the presence of the other, what proceeds to procure (in the sense of whoring) one deeper and deeper, into the simulacrum of screen-depth, terminal condition. The hacker ethic of PERFECTION suffers in this account; perfection demands the existence of well-definition on every level, clearly impossible with the net. The net is the contrary or wayward woman, an etiquette doubly problematic - the first, in relation to its closure or foreclosure, but the second, in relation to the CURLICUE which is elsewhere, a reminder or remainder. A remainder is a reminder. Is it true that most users on the chat-lines are men? As with short-wave or citizens-band radio, the maternal or spectral mother is everywhere apparent. But the differences are instructive; on citizens-band, conversation often devolves around personal topics; flaming is immediate and violent. Short-wave establishes a somewhat fixed and observed etiquette - topics include weather, home, and equipment. It is the delay of the net that creates seduction, a continuous lure or absenting space indicative of a vaginality permitting the loss of control, male infantilism. The delay or deferment holds the body in a skein of interpenetrating inscriptions; it is the gambler's delay on one hand and seductive jouissance on the other. The net rewards and withdraws all at once; orgasm becomes slow emission, a widening of the interior, flood of imaginary and inchoate fantasms. And the delay, this endless procurement reminiscent of pornographic flow through the sexual-political economy of masturbation, is never purely inten- tional; if the net is contrary and wayward, it is also VIOLATED. The fallen woman is everywhere penetrated, a construct of a masculine CHORA lost and diffused; this is the simultaneous construct of death and desire, anything to reject the absolute annihilation at the heart of pure interruption. To speak is to violate; to write this text is to admit, give away a secret already lost... END STUTTER.TXT SPEW The mathematical series I have been concerned with possess a number of interesting properties. They are characterized by a form of ruler geometry which is always already almost symmetrical, but never quite; nevertheless, they are almost equivalent to n-dimen- sional Euclidean space (or a digital version thereof) in terms of self similarity. The simplest example provides a basis for the rest: Take the whole number series a term at a time; find the highest power of two that integrally divides the term; if the power is even, Write "f"; if odd, Write "g". This series is equivalent to that formed by taking a row of iden- tical units ("g": "ggggg..."), inserting, a term at a time, a row of other identical units ("f": "fgfgfgfg..."), taking that row and inserting the first unit again ("g": "gfgggfgggfgggfggg..."); re- inserting the second ("f": "fgfffgfgfgfffgfgfgfff..."), and so forth. This process is that of alternating interstices. Again, the series may be obtained by substitution in which "f"="gg" and "g"="gf"; begin with "g" then seed "f" - or "g"="gggf" and "f"= "gfgf" and seed "gf". The result is that of a peculiar fractal geometry, extended above and below, by insertions and concatenations. There are immediate and obvious extensions; for example, by finding the highest power P of X other than two, then finding P mod X or even P mod Y. All of these forms produce startling self-similarities. With X and P mod X, for example, one can take the A*nth terms of the series (i.e. if n=11, take 11,22,33...): and the resulting structure is identical to the series. There are various algebraic formulations for "running" the inte- gers through X1, X2, ... in combinations. The integers may also be incremented in various ways; a general formula that proves useful is X = E + (F + U)*H, where E, H, U are constants and where F => F + U either each application of the process, or in a manner dependent upon the number of applications of the process for the previous integer. In the latter case, structures are formed which are semi-fractal and nearly chaotic, with strange local symmetries; in the former case, structures have local symmetries which extend themselves indefinitely. The mappings which produce visual representations of these sym- metries are based on paths; the cursor on the screen at any position is first oriented to the previous position, and then determines a new position based on P mod Y. Note the number of variables at work: first, the basic divisor X, then the mod Y, and then the incremental structures E, F, U, H. In addition, a BIAS is necessary when X and Y = 2; this is set at -90 deg. Using the bias in general in the form 360/q = integer creates another ring structure. The symmetries that result appear to relate to chaotic orbits in the sense that a large-scale structure will appear through, for example, 2000 + incrementations, only to radically transform after this. What fascinates me about these series/programs is that they are ultimately grounded in the most basic operations of partitioning, particularly simple cuts. These are not Cantor sets (although with certain values, Cantor sets appear), but literal separations between totalities; thus for example between "f" and "g" or "f" and "f" or "g" and "g" either "f" or "g" are inserted; these insertions alternate and occur in every instance. Although it seems at first glance that a clearly symmetrical structure would emerge, this is not the case. One result of all of these operations can be indicated textually: take any of the basic series in which division is by X and one also has P mod X for every term. Write the series in a square array of any line length (i.e. in rows of equivalent length). Then the terms on the right-hand edge of the array will form a structure identical to the original (although it may be an inverse [X = 2] or a cycling [X = n] of the terms themselves). All of the programs, Drawalk, Drawalk2, Drawalk3, Drawtext, Draw- print, Messclr, etc. are designed to illustrate the overall struc- ture of the series (plural). Drawalk3 is the most sophisitcated path-forming graphics program, which allows visual/mathematical research with variable/constant printouts; Walk, Drawalk, and Drawalk2 are versions of the same. Messclr uses a text format for illustrating the basic (X = 2, P mod X) series. Lineq operates upon the integers, taking each through (X = 2,3,... P mod 2) consec- utive operations; the result is a spectral series with complex pro- perties I have yet to determine. Linear allows an examination of the series algebras in visual form; this is the easiest way to determine overall formulae. Mess3 presents basic ruler geometries (hard to read) in a miniature graphics format. From my "Textbook of Thinking," 1989-1990, on the series: "What occurs as an armature expands or contracts, a measurable substance simultaneously neutral and disparate, a substance whose segments continually recapitulate the whole without transcendence. Is this not the first step of fissuring, in which difference has not completed the trajectory from substance, but recalls it at every step of the way? A step allied to abjection, ego and ur-ego, fissuring and inscription, in which the signifier becomes exhausted, and within which ontology falls away in favor of the shuttling substance of the real." I refer also to "Spew" from "Forlorn Matter," 1994, from which the follow quotes are extracted: " 1. The spew. Numbers spill out, move across integral dimensions, only hinting at self-similarity; they enunciate themselves as rough phonemes, extend into infinite ex- pansion, beyond any conceivable frame. Structure dissipates, extends itself into forgetfulness, turgid flagella encompassing fuzzy boun- daries beyond or beneath the windows of perception. 2. The field. The field blinks, ruptures, represents itself as delight, a closed segment, landfill or alluvial splay. Structure whose symmetry eludes leads to absence; content, too, is forgotten, an emission appearing everywhere across the grid. 3. The separated field. If the signs are split, new ones appearing between each of them, in an orderly fashion, this continued repetition of alternation leads to a fractal geometry in the small, infinitesimal divisions still classified... 4. Wandering. Their inordinate degree of symmetry gives them the appearance of a shallow plate. The careening world begins in one direction, careens to another..." I give you the most basic program; in order to see X = 2, P mod X, hit "t"; if not, the full spectrum presents itself. This is written in Qbasic for an old IBM XT; format accordingly. screen 1: cls: q = 1: view print 1 to 1 input "to stop with X = 2, enter 1, else hit return"; t div: q = q + 1: if q > 320 then stop if t = 1 and q = 3 then stop x = 0 one: a = 0 x = x + q two: a = a + 1 if x mod q ^ a = 0 then goto two if a mod 2 = 0 then if point (x, 100) = 0 then line (x, 100)- (x, 110), 1 else line (x, 100)-(x, 110), 0 print x, q; " " if x > 320 then goto div goto one Contact me for other programs. I have worked on the mathematical structures for Drawalk3 and the basic series; the theory is above me. Note that the programs are deceptively simple; running the above (called Lineq) produces complex results when X is allowed to run the gamut from 2 through 320. SPEW.TXT DRAWALK3 Drawalk3, below, contains a number of choices, presenting both Drawalk1 and Drawalk2. The latter is the simpler program; in it, the increment f => f + u changes at the end of every integer run- through. The result is a fractal expansion of form which continues indefinitely with symmetrical substructures expanding into new regular formations. There are three cycles; that of the divisor, that of the divisor into the power, and that of the bias, which is incremented to the path direction. Usually the bias is set s.t. 360/bias is a whole number. Magnification should be between 1 and 20, usually set at 4 to begin with. Divisors, etc. are usually set >17. Drawalk1 is identical, with the difference that f => f + u increments at every cycle of division; if, for example, x mod k ^ a = 0 for a = 6, then there are 6 successive increments before the next integer. The result is an articulation of structures and substructures with large-scale symmetries that may return after four or five thousand runs; I believe these symmetries increase indefinitely, with 'local' convolutions that continually throw them off. Such convolutions are the result of successive incremen- tations carried to increasing depth. Note that all calls for constants should be answered by integers only; the program works also with whole fractions in f, u, and h. For example try magnification = 10; bias = 72; exp and inc = 3, 3; e = 5; g = 4; h = 3; u = 2; try it again with magnification = 2. Note that Drawalk3 indicates PATHS, not graphs of an equation, and Drawalk1 has a degree of memory, each step dependent on the depth of the previous step. In Drawalk2, each step is equally incremented. DRAWALK3: DEFDBL F, X now: CLS 0: SCREEN 0: x = 0: q = 0: w = 0: PRINT "Welcome to Drawalk 3" PRINT " ": PRINT "DRAWALK2 prints map of fundamental s-series" PRINT "Here, f increments by u at each increase of w": PRINT " " PRINT "Run DRAWALK for series with increments only at each reset." PRINT " " INPUT "For DRAWALK 2 enter 2; for DRAWALK enter 1"; dra PRINT " ": PRINT "This series may be modulo any number": PRINT " " INPUT "For invisible lines, enter 0 else 1"; j: PRINT " " PRINT "To reset program, hit key r, p for printer output": PRINT " " INPUT "for on-screen constants, enter 1"; o: PRINT " " INPUT "color 0 or 1, magnification"; t, z: PRINT " " INPUT "set origin x,y or 0,0 for default; window -160,200/160,-200"; ex, why PRINT " ": INPUT "series exponent, usually 2"; k: PRINT " " INPUT "for mod divisor increment (usu. 2)"; inc: PRINT " " INPUT "for bias, 90 degrees for inc = 2, usu 360/1nc"; bias: PRINT " " PRINT "formula: x=x+e+f*h f=f+u, u usually = k": PRINT " " INPUT "increment and expansion, h=0 for cancel or 1 for expansion"; e, g, h PRINT " " INPUT "Set u"; u: CLS 0 SCREEN 1: COLOR 0, t: WINDOW (-160, 200)-(160, -200): PSET (ex, why) f = g ten: IF dra = 1 THEN a = 0 x = x + e + f * h: w = w + 1 IF dra = 2 THEN a = -1: f = f + u IF o = 1 THEN VIEW PRINT 1 TO 1: PRINT w; x; two: a = a + 1: IF dra = 1 THEN f = f + u IF INKEY$ = "r" THEN GOTO now IF INKEY$ = "p" THEN LPRINT "w"; w; "x"; x; "mag"; z; "bias"; bias; "exp"; k; "inc"; inc; "e"; e; "g"; g; "h"; h; "u"; u: LPRINT " ": INPUT "Press return to continue"; ret IF x MOD k ^ a = 0 THEN GOTO two n = a MOD inc v = 360 / inc: IF a MOD 2 = 0 THEN col = j ELSE col = 2 q = (q + n * v + bias) MOD 360 move$ = "TA" + STR$(q) + "U" + STR$(z) + "C" + STR$(col) DRAW move$ GOTO ten One way to think of the formations in Drawalk1 is to consider them as local perturbations within a ruler topography; such perturbations create symmetrical (sub)structures around them. These perturbations also occur as ruler topographies themselves (they are, in fact, THE ruler topography); what happens is that, as the integers increase, they access greater and greater powers x mod k ^ a = 0 (this also mod 360/bias); the result is expanding differentiated structures - a form of fractal formation in which self-similarity shifts according to the ruler topography. The underlying mathematics are easy to calculate; nevertheless, the symmetries of both Drawalk1 and 2 are remarkable. For the 'basic' symmetry, set bias to -90, exponent and mod divisor both to 2, and increment to 1; use magnification of 20, and set the other increment variables to 0. There are theoretical relations between Drawalk1 and Irigarayan fluid structures (including the feminine writing of the lips), as well as the repeated fissuring, inscription, and exhaustion of the subject found in my own work (consider for example INTERNET.TXT). End SPEW.TXT sondheim@newschool.edu [POSITION PAPER FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN: GLOBAL IDENTITY/TECHNOLOGY PROJECT] (GLOBAL.TXT) Global Tech Identikit We've got gangs in the neighborhood of the local village; THEY'VE got signings, different moves; they've got frequencies. It's clear by now that interconnectivity doesn't result in transcendence but increased granularity. Regions compete as domains possessing equivalent access and substructures; desire, however, is based on difference, primary narcissism notwithstanding. And what better construct for drawing distinction than telecommunications, in which RECOGNITION and ADDRESS replace the subject - in fact either replace or originate consensus. Consenus, community, is thus a secondary EFFECT of telecommunications, not an originary ground. Finally, we've eliminated the grain of the voice; signing is all we have. The ex cathedra Soviet Union dissolves, taking the nation-state with it. In Ciudad Juarez, television on one end and microwave links on the other provide the forum for new regional or ethnic identifi- catons - a forum, again, in which recognition is crucial. Recognition on a face-to-face basis (with other, with alterity), is a process of introjection; on the surface it is one of representation (i.e. what I am perceiving is NOT-ME but similar). On the Internet, recognition is flattened; introjection and projection are the produc- tion of a SCREEN OR TERMINAL ECONOMY. Such an economy subjects the subject who responds with localized, fragmented inscriptions. Similar to driving through Atlanta, with its haphazard road patterns and changing streetnames, the user locates himself or herself within a small subset of the net, compressed, accessible, and mastering. The result can only be a masochism against the maternal of the screen economy, as if the linguistic 'family of usages' transformed through the net into a 'family of users.' Flattened and local identity is powerful, the realm of the nomad (for whom address and recognition is crucial when strangers collide in the midst of traceless wanderings.) Wars become stuttered dotted lines drawn nowhere, the battlefield a plaything of gangs and recognitions in which everything and nothing is at stake. Isn't this the old situa- tion of the more we speak to each other, the more we are alone? And the more we are alone, the more we turn to mother, mother, mother... END GLOBAL.TXT sondheim@newschool.edu