476 lines
21 KiB
Plaintext
476 lines
21 KiB
Plaintext
BEGIN LINE_NOIZ.9
|
|
|
|
I S S U E - ( J A N U A R Y 2 4 , 1 9 9 4
|
|
|
|
>LiNE NOiZ< >LiNE NOiZ<
|
|
|
|
)(#*(&^)!@
|
|
L I N E ~)!*@}#"(& L I N E N O I Z
|
|
)3%(@&(#$*
|
|
|
|
|
|
CYbERPUNk I N f O R M A t i O N E - Z i N E
|
|
|
|
|
|
__,,,,,...................... L i N E N O i Z .....................,,,,,__
|
|
I S S U E - ( J A N U A R Y 2 4 , 1 9 9 4
|
|
|
|
: File !
|
|
: Intro to Issue 9
|
|
: Billy Biggs <ae687@freenet.carleton.ca>
|
|
|
|
: File @
|
|
: SF TV or that was the year that sucked
|
|
: The Eyeball Kid <eyeballk@orion.login.qc.ca>
|
|
|
|
: File #
|
|
: Cyberspace
|
|
: The Electric Phantom <phantom@cyberspace.com>
|
|
|
|
: File $
|
|
: Virtual Light review
|
|
: The Eyeball Kid <eyeballk@orion.login.qc.ca>
|
|
|
|
: File %
|
|
: Subject: ThirdFloorGardenOfEden03
|
|
: Pythagoras <maysa@knuth.mtsu.edu>
|
|
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
File - !
|
|
|
|
Guess what, I think I forgot to say something last issue. I'm really
|
|
ashamed at the quality of the stuff I've been putting out. I havent exactly
|
|
been great with spelling and proof-reading.
|
|
With LN10, things will really change. I'm editing the format [seriously
|
|
this time. I havent actually gone through with a lot of promises I've made].
|
|
Also, I will be adding a few other little things to the 'zine.
|
|
This issue wasn't exactly supposed to come out so soon. I just wanted to
|
|
get rid of a few things. The next issue will feature the promised Information
|
|
Superhighway stuff. If you have any interesting info on that, please send it.
|
|
|
|
-Billy Biggs, editor.
|
|
|
|
|
|
--NOTICE:
|
|
|
|
IF you subscribed and HAVEN't recieved any issues, mail me and I'll fix the
|
|
problem.
|
|
|
|
|
|
-*- Subscription Info -*-
|
|
|
|
Subscriptions can be obtained by sending mail to:
|
|
|
|
dodger@fubar.bk.psu.edu
|
|
|
|
With the words:
|
|
|
|
Subscription LineNoiz <your address>
|
|
|
|
In the body of the letter.
|
|
|
|
Back Issues can be recieved by sending mail to the same address with the
|
|
words BACK ISSUES in the subject.
|
|
|
|
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
File - @
|
|
>From: eyeballk@orion.login.qc.ca (The Eyeball Kid)
|
|
|
|
|
|
SF TV
|
|
|
|
OR
|
|
|
|
THAT WAS THE YEAR THAT SUCKED
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
OK YOU PRIMITIVE SCREW HEADS LISTEN UP: THIS IS MY "BOOM-STICK".
|
|
|
|
A paraphrasing of ARMY OF DARKNESS? Perhaps, but it could well serve as
|
|
the opening lines for any TV series that started in the two last years.
|
|
Particularly if it was Science Fiction.
|
|
|
|
TV is a game of numbers based on a horrendessly flawed system called "the
|
|
Neilsen ratings". A group of "average American TV viewers" are given two
|
|
way TV controls (we know what you're watching) and punch in the numbers
|
|
when they watch a TV program. Everyone in the family has a number, from
|
|
Mom and Dad, right down to the kids. When the TV is on, the number(s)
|
|
are recorded in the Neilsen computer and tabulated in a form of viewer
|
|
response known as THE RATINGS.
|
|
|
|
Advertisers look at these rating and decide which shows they will
|
|
sponsor. Obviously they want the show with the most viewers (a slot
|
|
which also costs the most money per second). Obviously a show with lower
|
|
ratings generates fewer viewers and therefore less advertising revenue.
|
|
|
|
You all knew that, right? Quality isn't a factor, it's just a numbers
|
|
game.
|
|
|
|
OK, these numbers are broken down further into DEMOGRAPHICS. When mom
|
|
watches the TV she punches in her number and "they know" that a
|
|
particular show is reaching a demographic group labeled "MOM". She might
|
|
be between the ages of 30-50, have a small car, and buy cereal and
|
|
margarine. This gives advertisers a number to work with so they can
|
|
advertise their competing brand of margarine in the top-rated show for
|
|
margarine buying Moms. So, DEMOGRAPHICS represent the type of customer a
|
|
TV show can expect (or MUST) draw to stay on the air.
|
|
|
|
In other words: a TV shows existence is subject to the following: COST
|
|
PER EPISODE, NEILSEN RATINGS, AND DEMOGRAPHICS.
|
|
|
|
How it works in real life: Bob Smith Producer delivers a series that is
|
|
dramatic, politically appropriate, and costs half of what a regular show
|
|
costs. The only problem is, it's major demographic group are the
|
|
homeless, who all cluster around TV store windows to watch it. It runs at
|
|
2 PM in a country with ten million homeless people. Well, with an
|
|
audience of ten million it's one of the most highly watched shows in the
|
|
world (for it's time slot).
|
|
|
|
Now the problems starts: These homeless people don't appear on the
|
|
Neilsen ratings. Even if they did their demographics would suck. But
|
|
worse, they don't buy margarine, they buy turpentine and soup. And THEY
|
|
HAVE NO PRODUCT LOYALTY! So ADVERTISERS CAN'T INFLUENCE THEM! THEY JUST
|
|
BUY WHAT EVER IS CHEAPEST!
|
|
|
|
Fortunately for the failing Network, they have a soap-opera in the wings
|
|
which costs more, is badly written, but appeals to 2 million versions of
|
|
MOM (see above). And it sells margarine.
|
|
|
|
Granted, the HOMELESS wouldn't appear on the ratings anyway, because they
|
|
aren't programmed into the Neilsen system, but substitute the Science
|
|
Fiction fan for the homeless, and you get the picture.
|
|
|
|
That's right SF fans: YOU DON'T COUNT. You don't even exist, according
|
|
to the numbers, except on Saturday and Sunday night (because YOU HAVE NO
|
|
LIVES).
|
|
|
|
It gets worse: YOU'RE NOT VERY CLEVER, IN FACT YOU WILL BELIEVE ANYTHING
|
|
IF IT HAS A SPACESHIP OR A PHASER OR SOME SPECIAL EFFECTS. YOU ARE
|
|
SOCIALLY INEPT, but (fortunately) subject to merchandising -- toys,
|
|
games, and collectibles. SOUND LIKE ANYONE YOU KNOW?
|
|
|
|
For you the Network makes a special exception: STAR TREK THE NEXT
|
|
GENERATION (hey, compared to Law And Order it's mindless crap) and better
|
|
yet, on Sundays, SEAQUEST (mindless crap compared to STTNG)! And you eat
|
|
it up! YUM-YUM! You're so loyal you get sequels and movies until you
|
|
choke.
|
|
|
|
Why? Because you just happen to be watching a show Mr. and Mrs. Neilsen
|
|
and the 2.5 Neilsen children like to watch.
|
|
|
|
That's right SF fans, that is their BOOM-STICK. It ain't right, but
|
|
that's the way it works.
|
|
|
|
NOW THE GOOD NEWS:
|
|
|
|
YOU CAN KICK THE CRAP OUT OF NEILSEN AND THE TV EXECS FROM THE PRIVACY OF
|
|
YOUR OWN HOME! YOU DON'T EVEN NEED A TV!
|
|
|
|
If you're reading this tirade you're obviously on-line or connected to
|
|
someone on-line. And you probably have a fax-modem, a word-processor, or
|
|
a piece of paper and a pen. The fax-modem makes it easy, but the pen and
|
|
paper will do the job just as well.
|
|
|
|
YOU FAX THE BASTARDS WHERE IT HURTS: IN THEIR MAIN OFFICES! You don't go
|
|
after the affiliates, or program creators, YOU GO AFTER THE NETWORK AND
|
|
KICK THEM IN THEIR DEMOGRAPHIC BALLS!
|
|
|
|
Write yourself a letter, something along the lines of the following:
|
|
|
|
"Dear [Programing Exec.], I'm tired of watching [name a crappy program].
|
|
Stop inflicting your stupidity on me right now or I won't watch any
|
|
more."
|
|
|
|
or alternately,
|
|
|
|
"Dear [Programming Exec.], I am a loyal fan of [name great show]. I hear
|
|
you with the target coordinates. All you have to do is assign you
|
|
weapons and start firing.
|
|
|
|
Because if you don't, you're just as responsible as THEY are.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Eyeball Kid
|
|
|
|
EyballK@Orion.login.qu.ca
|
|
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
File - #
|
|
>From: phantom@cyberspace.com (The Electric Phantom)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
[[[ C y B E R S p A C E
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Well I found a pretty kewl article I think you all will like.
|
|
It answers the very common questions
|
|
What is Cyberspace?
|
|
Is Cyberspace real?
|
|
|
|
Omni Magazine department- First Word
|
|
by David Porush
|
|
typed to file by The Electric Phantom
|
|
|
|
FIRST WORD
|
|
Cyberspace:
|
|
Portal to transcendence?
|
|
|
|
By David Porush
|
|
|
|
There's a new frontier beckoning us we're growing it in our own
|
|
backyards. Today many writers are liiking toward cyberspace as eagerly
|
|
as previous generations aticipated moving westward across the prairie or
|
|
out into space. The prairies, however, held hardship and war. And the
|
|
high frintier of space primises vast stretches of cold indifference
|
|
punctuated by alien landscapes. But cyberspace lets us dram that we can
|
|
build and an inner frontier, a virtual reality, to our specs. So our
|
|
culture is telling itself sexy, glitzy, wishful stories about descovering
|
|
alien territories right here on Earth. About releasing ourselves from
|
|
the burden of body and liberating ouselves from sex and race and class.
|
|
About acting out our fantisies in an electronic nether world and tripping
|
|
through that trapdoor in the the mind that will let us like Alice, fall
|
|
into a dream.
|
|
This is a fascination utopian mythology based on a tehnology
|
|
still in its infancy. So I have been trolling for new cyberpunk fiction
|
|
(like Neal Stephenson's _Snow Crash_), going native on electronic
|
|
bulletin boards, and listening closely to the technical researchers,
|
|
sociologists, philosophers, hackers, and writers who speculate anout
|
|
cyberspace. This is what I am hearing:
|
|
In the short run, cyberspace will require an elaborate cyborg
|
|
armor - data gloves, goggles, bodysuits, helmets. Many believe, however,
|
|
that some time in the next century, genetic engineering, biochip design,
|
|
and nanotechnology will collaborate to produce functional wetware - computer
|
|
interfaces that will enable us to jack our brains directly into a vast,
|
|
worldwide, interactive network with it's own geography and sensory realism.
|
|
[Like the Matrix in Neuromancer, for anyone that didn't notice-Phantom]
|
|
Evntually, we might achieve the Holy Grail of VR research: the delusion that
|
|
our bodies are actually there, when, as William Gibson quipped in his 1984
|
|
novel Neuromancer, "There is no there there." The result will be a cross
|
|
between the ultimate interactive computer game and telepathy.
|
|
While there may be no there there, many would-be cybernauts
|
|
imagine there's something else there, waiting for us on the other side of
|
|
the interface. A recurring theme I hear is the confidence that cyberspace
|
|
will be a technology not just of the brain and of the mind, but of the
|
|
soul. There's something quite primitive at work in cyberspace's allure.
|
|
This yearning for mystical encounters seems unusually superstitious coming
|
|
from otherwise rational engineers, academics, and writers. But good
|
|
anthropologists learn not to dismiss al native beliefs as mere
|
|
superstitions. So let's take them seriously, if only for a moment. How
|
|
might cyberspace be a portal to transcendence?
|
|
Neurophysiologists suspect that lurking somewhere in the brain -
|
|
most likely in a formation at the base of the brain stem called the dorsal
|
|
raphe nucleus - lies a facility that makes us feel, under the right
|
|
conditions, like we're in communication with gods or that we have voyaged
|
|
out to meet some Higher Presence. Certain configurations of data
|
|
delivered to the brain by electronic stimulation could flood this region
|
|
of the brain with serotonin, a neurotransmitter involved in many
|
|
functions, including hallucination. In this way, the right software might
|
|
evoke that oceanic, world-embracing feeling known so well to mystics and
|
|
psycho-tropical beachcombers.
|
|
But let's not stop here with this portrait of cyberspace as some
|
|
kind of electronic designer drug. It's hard not to wonder why the brain
|
|
has this weird facility to make us feel like we're talking to God. Is
|
|
something so irrelevant to survival and yet so distinctively human just a
|
|
neurochemical accident, and evolutionary byproduct of the sheer complexity
|
|
of the nervous system? Or is it, as Immanuel Kant suggested two centuries
|
|
ago, that the laws of the "in here" are the same as the laws "out there":
|
|
Our minds are tuned to universal harmonies. Perhaps the brain is prepped
|
|
to receive divine telegrams because there is, after all, an Intelligence
|
|
informing the cosmos toward which univeral evolution gropes - a Cosmic
|
|
Anthropic Principle. Perhaps VR technology will be one of the ways to
|
|
open the hailing frequency.
|
|
Surely we are no less likey to find transcendence in cyberspace
|
|
that we are in any other space, whether a Gothic cathdral or a Himalayn
|
|
monastery or the pages of the Talmud. Cyberspace could be our brungin bush.
|
|
------**---------
|
|
David Porush is author of The Soft Machine: Cybernetic Fiction, and
|
|
professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institue where he codirects an AI
|
|
research group.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Well that's it! How'd you like it?
|
|
|
|
I think I'll also give my personal deffintion of cyberspace too.
|
|
I think cyberspace is any "world" that is explored through the use
|
|
of technology. I think different technology puts different parts of your
|
|
body in cyberspace. For example I think one of the earliest venture in
|
|
cyberspace was when voices first traveled into cyberspace; the telephone
|
|
was invented. I also include video games. Game characters like Mario and
|
|
stuff exist in cyberspace. Unlike most I have a much broader definition
|
|
ulike most who only think that VR and Neurojacking are the only things
|
|
related to cyberspace. With the addition of modems and networks
|
|
cyberspace began to seem more real. Exploring real worlds where you have
|
|
a real life living amognst real people. MUDs for example are just like VR
|
|
but non graphical. Being in a MUD is having your brain in cyberspace.
|
|
Graphical games put your eyes in cyberspace. VR puts actual nerves and
|
|
muscles in cyberspace by reacting to real movements. The Internet is as
|
|
much of a world on cyberspace as an arena in a VR game.
|
|
Well that's my totally different and unique definition of
|
|
cyberspace. Does anyone agree? Is their anyone who thinks I'm a maniac
|
|
and that isn't remotely what cyberspace is about?
|
|
|
|
The Electric Phantom *** phantom@cyberspace.com
|
|
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
File - $
|
|
>From: eyeballk@orion.login.qc.ca (The Eyeball Kid)
|
|
Subject: VIRTUAL LIGHT
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
VIRTUAL LIGHT
|
|
|
|
|
|
When I got my copy of VIRTUAL LIGHT -- autographed by Gibson at a signing
|
|
I couldn't attend -- I decided to wait until I had a week of couch time
|
|
to read it. Just as well: if Neuromancer started a trend in "reader
|
|
osmosis", VIRTUAL LIGHT might well finish it. It's like one of those
|
|
French classes where you speak the language without really knowing what
|
|
the words mean -- after a while you get the hang of it, but you always
|
|
wonder if you're not missing something.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Which is how VIRTUAL LIGHT works -- at least for me.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Like the Cyberspace Trilogy, the story revolves around a cast of
|
|
outsiders: Berry Rydell, a stumbling renta-cop, and Chevette Washington,
|
|
a bicycle courier, make a convoluted journey through the California of
|
|
2005 (NoCal and SoCal ), encountering Gibson's usual cast of eccentrics,
|
|
misfits, and truly evil authoritarian figures. It's very much a Chandler
|
|
novel for the nineties, just as The Trilogy was a Hammet series for the
|
|
eighties, and in my opinion that is it's biggest problem.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Gibson is probably the most over-rated SF writer in history. This is not
|
|
because he lacks talent -- indeed his talent is formidable, all the more
|
|
so because it is "intuitive", rather than "educated". And it's not
|
|
because he WANTS to be the demi-god of contemporary SF -- he's done
|
|
enough interviews complaining about the way his fans have misinterpreted
|
|
his material, or just by-passed the subtext entirely. Rather he is
|
|
over-rated because, in the eyes of his fans, he's become an icon who can
|
|
do no wrong. The media has picked up on this, and now he gets cameos in
|
|
Wild Palms, and a layout in GQ.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Yet when he tries to push the envelope a little (The Difference Engine,
|
|
for example), his fans desert him. Those same fans won't be disappointed
|
|
by VIRTUAL LIGHT. Apart from it's Spartan narrative style (you better
|
|
read the others before you take on this), it's just retracing old
|
|
literary ground. While Gibson is "devolving" his expositionary technique
|
|
and letting it take us places on it's own, he still hasn't learned to
|
|
release the characters. He likes them too much.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
It wasn't until Neuromancer that we found out what happened to Johnny
|
|
Mnemonic, and then only as an aside. It wasn't until Mona Lisa Overdrive
|
|
that we found out what happened to Case. Gibson can't kill them in front
|
|
of us, he has to wait until he's hooked us into someone else before he
|
|
does the deed behind our backs. He writes sophisticated characters and
|
|
ideas, but then he falls in love with the characters and can't let them
|
|
go. It's as much a problem with the fans as it is Gibson: they too fall
|
|
in love, and they get mean when you shoot the object of their affection.
|
|
This is smart business sense -- they keep buying your books -- but one
|
|
day Gibson will be placed in perspective, the fans will have moved on (or
|
|
died) and his literary short-comings will drag him down the ladder. "All
|
|
style and no substance," they'll say, or "Kinda like a Sci-Fi version of
|
|
Stephen King." It won't be his FAULT, but it will happen.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
And VIRTUAL LIGHT will fuel the flames. Is it a good read? YES. Is it a
|
|
page turner? DEFINITELY. Is it any different to Neuromancer, Count
|
|
Zero, or Mona Lisa Overdrive? Well... it's set in a different era...
|
|
yeah, I guess...
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Owen Coughlan
|
|
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
File - %
|
|
>From: maysa@knuth.mtsu.edu (Pythagoras)
|
|
Subject: ThirdFloorGardenOfEden03
|
|
|
|
****start
|
|
|
|
Third Floor Garden Of Eden: Chapter 03 "Blake" @2045
|
|
|
|
"I was hired as a SysOp with NetProtect in 1998, only two months
|
|
before the Neural Assassination of President Medjiama. That was 47
|
|
freaking years ago. I was young, careless...some things got by me then
|
|
that I would never allow now. Here I am today, a 61 year old spirit with
|
|
a family in another world.
|
|
"My wife, Paige, She tells me gets lonely without me there to hold
|
|
her...to satisfy her. I've told her that I watch her from in here, and I
|
|
do - But that is not enough to satisfy her needs. She's cheating on me
|
|
now, as I watch her through the security feed. A man I know everything
|
|
about and yet not at all lays above her and fills her with his presence.
|
|
"Presence. My presence has been absent for so long; and yet I am
|
|
here. I am watching. I am hurting as she lays there in her increasing
|
|
age and enjoys those pleasures I can no longer give to her.
|
|
"We have engaged in neurally stimulated sex here in the network;
|
|
Paige and I. Yet it was only a fantasy for us, and so the experience
|
|
only left us with want. For I have no manhood except for what makes me
|
|
think and act like a man; and it is this manhood that Paige so
|
|
desperately misses.
|
|
"I am but a spirit who dedicates his time to acquiring knowledge
|
|
for storage in the University Library. I am but a slave to this
|
|
electricity of life, a am nothing but a kind thought and an old
|
|
photographic to my family now. And at the same time my little one needs
|
|
me the most I am helpless and can offer only computer simulated
|
|
sentimentalities.
|
|
"My daughter, Alexia, she has created something which I fear will
|
|
cause more harm then good. As her father, I of course heard of her
|
|
project, and yet I had no idea what the ramifications would be.
|
|
"I remember when she woke that morning; screaming, crying,
|
|
clutching for sheets she'd kicked off during the night. The dream was
|
|
intense, worse then most she had had. She was writhing in torment there
|
|
in her sweating, cotton clad body; then with a start she bolted upright
|
|
and furiously began scribbling away at her notebook. A tear, perhaps of
|
|
joy, dripped down her face and she quietly whispered, 'This will be the
|
|
beginning of a new Eve in Bioengineering.'
|
|
"She worked in privacy for months. She used to go to work
|
|
incredibly early and she returned home entirely late. Sometimes she
|
|
seemed out of place, as if her mind was off exploring other worlds.
|
|
She'd sit, a blank look upon her face and stare at a wall; moaning and
|
|
sighing in obvious ecstasy.
|
|
"I didn't understand what she had done at that point; and still
|
|
today I'm not sure exactly what her project is. I know for sure that
|
|
she's done a deal with a local pharmaceutical company, they have been
|
|
shipping in load after load of big unlabelled boxes.
|
|
"Rumors I've heard say that the boxes contain NeuroTropics. Smart
|
|
Drugs. Mind enhancing chemicals that give you energy, allow for faster
|
|
and healthier cell growth. I don't know, I'm no scientist; I just know
|
|
that my little Alexia is in a lot of trouble.
|
|
"Yet how can I explain to Alexia that her passion for
|
|
Bioengineering has burned her soul black; and that her creation of that
|
|
spliced and bioengineered fruit tree may cause her to loose her job, her
|
|
respect or her life?"
|
|
|
|
***************fin
|
|
|
|
Coming next time: Chapter 4. "Medjiama" @2046
|
|
|
|
One Foot in the Future,
|
|
Pythagoras
|
|
maysa@knuth.mtsu.edu
|
|
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
>> Still looking for Information Superhighway stuff <<
|
|
>> <<
|
|
>> as well as anything else <<
|
|
|
|
END LINE_NOIZ.9
|
|
|
|
--
|
|
Billy Biggs Ottawa, Canada "When all else fails,
|
|
ae687@Freenet.carleton.ca read the instructions"
|