138 lines
6.8 KiB
Plaintext
138 lines
6.8 KiB
Plaintext
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AN INTERVIEW WITH TIMOTHY LEARY
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by Denise Caruso
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reporter, InfoWorld
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Timothy Leary, one of the founders of humanistic psychology in the 1950s,
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gained both fame and infamy in the 1960s when he began experiments with
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psychedelic drugs such as LSD. During the past several years Leary has been
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focusing on the use of personal computers -- and more specifically, what he
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calls very highly interactive software -- as a harbinger of "the next wave" of
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evolution for human society. Toward this end Leary has designed a programming
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language called SKIPI (Super Knowledge Information Processing Intelligence)
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that enhances self-knowledge by issuing underlying psychological tests to
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evaluate each person's responses.
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Q:) HOW WILL YOU BE USING SKIPI?
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A:) Right now I'm using SKIPI in a "book" based on Mark Twain's "Huckleberry
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Finn." When you start you can pick who you want to be, Becky Thatcher or Tom
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Sawyer. It asks you questions about yourself, like "Are you adventurous or
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timid?" And you have choices. When Huck goes out the window to meet Tom in
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the
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bushes, who's there, Tom or Becky? Now if you're a girl and you say Becky, it
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becomes a Nancy Drew thing of the two girls going down the river with Huck.
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But every choice in any of these books is coded with something we call "me
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mes". They're the elements of human behavior that are passed on, just like
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genes pass on genetic traits. As you determine the narrative, it's a
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projective psychological test that gets fed back to you with these profiles
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and
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characteristics. And there's a master data file for SKIPI, which you can
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access your whole library. It knows what scores you got, your frustration
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tolerance, whether you prefer math to spatial problem solving...
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Q:) ALL ON FLOPPIES?
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A:) Its the easiest thing in the world. It takes up less memory than Donkey
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Kong.
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Q:) WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF CREATING THIS VERY HIGHLY INTERACTIVE SOFTWARE?
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A:) It's the next wave. Everything that's happening today is the function
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of
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changing from an industrial, smokestack, material civilization to an
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information, communication, intelligence civilization. In the industrial age
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we're categorized by our professions. So this one's a carpenter, and
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(there's)
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a lawyer and a writer and an artist. But if you're an artist, then what am I?
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An artee? an art victim? With highly interactive software, everyone in the
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new age will be an author. Robots will do all the work that professions used
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to do. And everyone will be freed.
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Q:) IT SEEMS THAT YOU COULD ALSO BE ROBBED OF PURPOSE.
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A:) Anyone who has committed himself to an industrial age profession and
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isn't willing to change -- too bad. Nothing comes easy in evolution. When
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you
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crawl out of the water, you got to deal with gravity and muggers and things.
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Q:) BUT THERE HAS TO BE SOMETHING TO REPLACE THAT SELF-WORTH.
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A:) Exactly. The function of human life in the industrial age was to be a
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worker. Unemployment was dread. You lost your hope and pride if you didn't
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have a job. Well, the motto in the new age is, "Only robots and serfs and
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people in worker states work." The function of human life is to grow and
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evolve. We're here to simulate each other. The whole function of human life
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is now to be an author of your own experiences.
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Q:) IS SKIPI A GAME OR AN EDUCATIONAL TOOL?
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A:) It's an interactive adventure game, an educational adventure,
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personality
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processing, tests and feedback, an autobiography. But you end up with all
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these little disk "books" as your library.
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Q:) SO IF SKIPI, OR SKIPI-LIKE PROGRAMS, ARE WIDELY ADOPTED, TH% mHOLE
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SYSTEM
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OF BOOKS AND EDUCATION AND LEARNING WOULD BE...
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A:) Finished. What the Reagan adminstration says is, "We have to have more
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class hours, more homework, more of this and, less vacations." But there's
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still one teacher standing in front of 30 kids, each of whom is entirely
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different. George Leonard, a humanist psychologist in San Francisco, has got
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this plan. In the morning a kid would go to school and punch in and work on
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personal computer stuff, all tailored to the individual's personality,
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achievements, and so forth. Then in the afternoon, there'd be lectures, but
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it
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would be more like theater. You would read about Hamlet and Shakespeare, but
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in the afternoon you would act it out.
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Q:) WHY ALL OF A SUDDEN ARE BOOKS OBSOLETE? WHY DO WE NEED TO INTERACT WITH
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OUR LEARNING MATERIAL?
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A:) A book is now the way an oil painting was before Gutenberg invented the
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printing press. But an oil painting is not the way to communicate kno wledge
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information. You wouldn't carry one around to show what happened in Beirut or
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at the DeLorean trial.
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Q:) ARE WE GOING TO START A REVOULTION WITH PERSONAL COMPUTERS?
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A:) It's already happened. I see the '60s and '70s and '80s as a generation
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growing up. The '60s were kind of the teen-age part of it, and the '70s were
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kind of getting settled, and the '80s is the flowering of it. Bureaucracies
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are totally addicted and enslaved to mainframes. United Airlines and the
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Internal Revenue Service -- these things couldn't funct ion without
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mainframes.
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When you put control in the hands of individuals, however, we don't need
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security guards. The personal computer you keep at home. It's hooked up only
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to your brain or a collective brain. It's the ultimate egalitarian democracy.
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<20><><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD>
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ݰ The PIRATES' HOLLOW <20><>
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ݰ Gfile Distribution Center / MASS Megs <20><>
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ݰ 415/236/2371 RoR - Alucard 415/236/2371 <20><>
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ݰ Sysops: Doctor Murdock ~ Sir Death ~ Dark Nite ~ Ratsnatcher <20><>
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ݰShawn-Da-Lay Boy Production Inc. The Electric Pub : 415/236/4380<38><30>
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ݰ<><DDB0><EFBFBD><EFBFBD> The Gates of Hell are open Night and Day; <20><><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD>
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ݱ<><DDB1> <20> Smooth is the Descent and Easy is the Way <20> <20><><EFBFBD><EFBFBD>
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<20><><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD>
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X-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-X
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Another file downloaded from: The NIRVANAnet(tm) Seven
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& the Temple of the Screaming Electron Taipan Enigma 510/935-5845
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Burn This Flag Zardoz 408/363-9766
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realitycheck Poindexter Fortran 510/527-1662
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Lies Unlimited Mick Freen 801/278-2699
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The New Dork Sublime Biffnix 415/864-DORK
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The Shrine Rif Raf 206/794-6674
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Planet Mirth Simon Jester 510/786-6560
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"Raw Data for Raw Nerves"
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X-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-X
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