_________ _______ ______ /___ ___\ / __ \ / ____\ / / / /__\ / / / / / / __ / / __\ / / / / \ / / / /__/ /__/ /__/ /__/ THE ANNIHILATION FOUNTAIN A JOURNAL OF CULTURE ON THE EDGE... TEXT ONLY - ISSUE #4 The Annihilation Fountain & TAF Copyright c 1997-99 Neil MacKay ISSN 1480-9206 http://www.capnasty.org/taf/ the_annihilation_fountain@iname.com CONTENTS: --------- *THE DEAD MEDIA PROJECT *EXURPTS FROM THE CIA TOURTURE MANUAL *INTERVIEW WITH TERENCE MCKENNA *AN EMAIL DEBATE BETWEEN NICOLAS PATEE & PAUL lAURENDEAU *CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS ISSUE ************************************************************************ THE DEAD MEDIA PROJECT: I) A MODEST PROPOSAL AND A PUBLIC APPEAL II) PUBLIC ADDRESS ON DEAD MEDIA PROJECT III) THE MASTER-LIST OF DEAD MEDIA by Bruce Sterling & Richard Kadrey ************************************************************************ I) A Modest Proposal and a Public Appeal by Bruce Sterling bruces@well.com Ever notice how many books there are about the Internet these days? About 13,493 so far, right? And how about "multimedia?" There are 8,784 books on this topic, even though no one has ever successfully defined the term. CD-ROM -- is there a single marketable topic left that hasn't been shovelwared into the vast digital mire that is CD-ROM? And how about the "Information Superhighway" and "Virtual Reality"? Every magazine on the planet has done awestruck vaporware cover stories on these two consensus-hallucinations. Our culture is experiencing a profound radiation of new species of media. The centralized, dinosaurian one-to-many media that roared and trampled through the 20th century are poorly adapted to the postmodern technological environment. The new media environment is aswarm with lumbering toothy digital mammals. It's all lynxes here, and gophers there, plus big fat venomous webcrawlers, appearing in Pleistocene profusion. This is all well and good, and it's lovely that so many people are paying attention to this. Nothing gives me greater pleasure as a professional garage futurist than to ponder some weird new mutant medium and wonder how this squawking little monster is going to wriggle its way into the interstices between human beings. Still, there's a difference between this pleasurable contemplation of the technological sublime and an actual coherent understanding of the life and death of media. We have no idea in hell what we are doing to ourselves with these new media technologies, and no consistent way even to discuss the subject. Something constructive ought to be done about this situation. I can't do much about it, personally, because I'm booked up to the eyeballs until the end of the millennium. So is my good friend Richard Kadrey, author of the COVERT CULTURE SOURCEBOOK. Both Kadrey and myself, however, recently came to a joint understanding that what we'd really like to see at this cultural conjunction is an entirely new kind of book on media. A media book of the dead. Plenty of wild wired promises are already being made for all the infant media. What we need is a somber, thoughtful, thorough, hype-free, even lugubrious book that honors the dead and resuscitates the spiritual ancestors of today's mediated frenzy. A book to give its readership a deeper, paleontological perspective right in the dizzy midst of the digital revolution. We need a book about the failures of media, the collapses of media, the supercessions of media, the strangulations of media, a book detailing all the freakish and hideous media mistakes that we should know enough now not to repeat, a book about media that have died on the barbed wire of technological advance, media that didn't make it, martyred media, dead media. THE HANDBOOK OF DEAD MEDIA. A naturalist's field guide for the communications paleontologist. Neither Richard Kadrey nor myself are currently in any position to write this proposed handbook. However, we both feel that our culture truly requires this book: this rich, witty, insightful, profusely illustrated, perfectbound, acid-free-paper coffee-table book, which is to be brought out, theoretically, eventually, by some really with-it, cutting- edge early-21st century publisher. The kind of book that will appear in seventeen different sections of your local chainstore: Political Affairs, Postmodern Theory, Computer Science, Popular Mechanics, Design Studies, the coffeetable artbook section, the remainder table -- you know, whatever. It's a rather rare phenomenon for an established medium to die. If media make it past their Golden Vaporware stage, they usually expand wildly in their early days and then shrink back to some protective niche as they are challenged by later and more highly evolved competitors. Radio didn't kill newspapers, TV didn't kill radio or movies, video and cable didn't kill broadcast network TV; they just all jostled around seeking a more perfect app. But some media do, in fact, perish. Such as: the phenakistoscope. The teleharmonium. The Edison wax cylinder. The stereopticon. The Panorama. Early 20th century electric searchlight spectacles. Morton Heilig's early virtual reality. Telefon Hirmondo. The various species of magic lantern. The pneumatic transfer tubes that once riddled the underground of Chicago. Was the Antikythera Device a medium? How about the Big Character Poster Democracy Wall in Peking in the early 80s? Never heard of any of these? Well, that's the problem. Both Kadrey and I happen to be vague aficionados of this field of study, and yet we both suspect that there must be hundreds of dead media, known to few if any. It would take the combined and formidable scholarly talents of, say, Carolyn "When Old Technologies Were New" Marvin and Ricky "Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women" Jay to do this ambitious project genuine justice. Though we haven't asked, we kinda suspect that these two distinguished scholars are even busier than me and Kadrey, who, after all, are just science fiction writers who spend most of our time watching Chinese videos, reading fanzines and making up weird crap. However. We do have one, possibly crucial, advantage. We have Internet access. If we can somehow convince the current digital media community-at-large that DEAD MEDIA is a worthwhile project, we believe that we may be able to compile a useful public-access net archive on this subject. We plan to begin with the DEAD MEDIA World Wide Web Page, on a site to-be-announced. Move on, perhaps, to alt.dead.media. Compile the Dead Media FAQ. We hope to exploit the considerable strengths of today's cutting-edge media to create a general public-domain homage to the media pioneers of the past. Here's the deal. Kadrey and I are going to start pooling our notes. We're gonna make those notes freely available to anybody on the Net. If we can get enough net.parties to express interest and pitch in reports, stories, and documentation about dead media, we're willing to take on the hideous burdens of editing and system administration -- no small deal when it comes to this supposedly "free" information. We both know that authors are supposed to jealously guard really swell ideas like this, but we strongly feel that that just ain't the way to do a project of this sort. A project of this sort is a spiritual quest and an act in the general community interest. Our net heritage belongs to all netkind. If you yourself want to exploit these notes to write the DEAD MEDIA HANDBOOK -- sure, it's our "idea," our "intellectual property," but hey, we're cyberpunks, we write for magazines like BOING BOING, we can't be bothered with that crap in this situation. Write the book. Use our notes and everybody's else's. We won't sue you, we promise. Do it. Knock yourself out. I'll go farther, ladies and gentlemen. To prove the profound commercial potential of this tilt at the windmill, I'll personally offer a CRISP FIFTY-DOLLAR BILL for the first guy, gal, or combination thereof to write and publish THE DEAD MEDIA HANDBOOK. You can even have the title if you want it. Just keep in mind that me and Kadrey (or any combination thereof) reserve the right to do a book of our own on the same topic if you fail to sufficiently scratch our itch. The prospect of "competition" frightens us not at all. It never has, frankly. If there's room for 19,785 "Guide to the Internet" books, there has got to be room for a few useful tomes on dead media. Think of it this way. How long will it be before the much-touted World Wide Web interface is itself a dead medium? And what will become of all those billions of thoughts, words, images and expressions poured onto the Internet? Won't they vanish just like the vile lacquered smoke from a burning pile of junked Victrolas? As a net.person, doesn't this stark realization fill you with a certain deep misgiving, a peculiarly postmodern remorse, an almost Heian Japanese sense of the pathos of lost things? If it doesn't, why doesn't it? It ought to. Speaking of dead media and mono no aware -- what about those little poems that Lady Murasaki used to write and stick inside cleft sticks? To be carried by foot-messager to the bamboo-shrouded estate of some lucky admirer after a night's erotic tryst? That was a medium. That medium was very alive once, a mainstay of one of the most artistically advanced cultures on earth. And isn't it dead? What are we doing today that is the functional equivalent of the cleft sticks of Murasaki Shikibu, the world's first novelist? If we ignore her historical experience, how will we learn from our own? Listen to the following, all you digital hipsters. This is Jaqueline Goddard speaking in January 1995. Jacqueline was born in 1911, and she was one of the 20th century's great icons of bohemian femininity. Man Ray photographed her in Paris in 1930, and if we can manage it without being sued by the Juliet Man Ray Trust, we're gonna put brother Man Ray's knock- you-down-and-stomp-you-gorgeous image of Jacqueline up on our vaporware Website someday. She may be the patron saint of this effort. Jacqueline testifies: "After a day of work, the artists wanted to get away from their studios, and get away from what they were creating. They all met in the cafes to argue about this and that, to discuss their work, politics and philosophy.... We went to the bar of La Coupole. Bob, the barman, was a terrible nice chap... As there was no telephone in those days everybody used him to leave messages. At the Dome we also had a little place behind the door for messages. The telephone was the death of Montparnasse." "*The telephone was the death of Montparnasse.*" Mull that Surrealist testimony over a little while, all you cafe-society modemites. Jacqueline may not grok TCP/IP, but she has been there and done that. I haven't stopped thinking about that remark since I first read it. For whom does the telephone bell toll? It tolls for me and thee -- sooner or later. Can you help us? We wish you would, and think you ought to. Bruce Sterling -- bruces@well.com Richard Kadrey -- kadrey@well.sf.ca.us ~~~~~ II)Public Address on Dead Media Project by Bruce Sterling bruces@well.com Literary Freeware: Not for Commercial Use "The Life and Death of Media" Speech at Sixth International Symposium on Electronic Art ISEA '95 Montreal Sept 19 1995 Hello, my name's Bruce Sterling, I'm a science fiction writer from Austin, Texas. It's very pleasant to be here in Montreal at an event like ISEA. It's professionally pleasant. As a science fiction writer, I have a deep and abiding interest in electronic arts. In multimedia. In computer networks. In CD-ROM. In virtual reality. In the Internet. In the Information Superhighway. In cyberspace. Basically, the less likely it sounds, the better I like it. These are topics that I dare not ignore. It would mean ignoring the nervous system of the information society. The laboratory of information science. The battlefield of information warfare. The marketplace of the information economy. As well as one of the strangest areas of the art world. When Jules Verne invented science fiction, Jules Verne was a stockbroker. Almost by accident, Jules Verne discovered that nineteenth century France had a large market for techno-thrillers. Jules Verne discovered and fed the tremendous 19th-century cultural appetite for romantic, futuristic technologies like the hot-air- balloon, the electric submarine, the airborne battleship, the moon cannon. Today, at the close of the twentieth century, I feel a great sense of solidarity with my spiritual ancestor Jules Verne when it comes to topics such as virtual reality, and telepresence, and direct links between brain and computer. Even as I stand here before you, I can scarcely restrain my natural urge to inflate some of these big shiny high- tech balloons with the hot air of the imagination. But ladies and gentlemen, I have seen this done for so long now, and for *so many times,* and to so many different technologies, that I can no longer do it myself with any sense of existential authenticity. I must confess to you quite openly and frankly that I am having a crisis of conscience. In the year 1995, do information technologies really *need* any more hot-breathing promotion from science fiction writers? I would suggest otherwise. Take AT&T's famous "You Will" campaign. AT&T's public relations campaign has reached millions of people -- even though AT&T have just announced plans to fire ten thousand of their own computer people. Have you ever wondered if AT&T has any real idea what they're doing? Do you think that AT&T has any real idea what they'll do to us, once they arrive in that future that they are selling to us? Did you ever wonder what AT&T really wants? You Will! But at least AT&T makes nice looking science fiction commercials with great set design. Let's consider Canada Bell. Canada Bell is making an incredibly arrogant attempt to trademark the term "The Net" -- a term which has been common parlance worldwide since at least 1988. Canada Bell should be sued for that kind of hubris, and in fact they *are* being sued, or at least opposed in court. Symptoms like this make it clear that the good old techno-booster role of science fiction writers has been taken over by a new professional class of public relations hucksters and intellectual property attorneys. Science fiction writers are no longer needed to serve as handmaidens for these blundering colossi. Nowadays, science fiction writers should fulfill another role. Science fiction writers should be examining aspects of media that cannot be promoted and sold. Aspects of media that corporate public relations people are *afraid to look at* and deeply afraid to tell us about. We should be attempting to achieve a coherent understanding of media. I'm not saying, mind you, that we're actually going to do this fine and noble thing. I'm merely saying that's what's needed. Given that tremendous challenge, science fiction writing is a rather meager response at best. At our best, maybe we science fiction writers can act as harbingers or catalysts, but what is really needed at this historical juncture is a serious general global assessment of our technosocial condition. Before we install the latest hot-off-the-disk-drive version of Windows For Civilization 2.0, we ought to look around ourselves very seriously. Probably, before leaping in postmodern ecstasy into the black hole of virtuality, we ought to make and store some back-ups of the system first. Our society would do this if we had a momentary attack of common sense. But never mind, that's just a passing suggestion. Rather than dwelling on that, let me tell you how I reached this artistic crisis of mine. Two months ago, I finished a new science fiction novel. It's a novel about virtual reality artists in Europe in the late twenty-first century. I think people in today's digital art community will recognize this novel as my little valentine for them. This is a novel set a hundred years from today, in which I pretend that digital arts people like the people from ISEA have become the planet's art establishment. I know this is a very far-fetched notion, but you can get away with that sort of thing in science fiction novels. The novel was a lot of fun to write. I thought it was very inventive and clever and it left me absurdly pleased with myself. Unfortunately, I got to thinking seriously about digital art while I was writing this book, and this forced me confront some of my own limits. I'm not thinking hard enough about media. The approaches I have been using are too shallow, too glittery, too facile. I have to get a better grip. Media is a commodity. Media is something that is sold to us. Media can be something that we are sold to, even. Media is an everyday thing. You can buy bandwidth in job lots. You can watch television, buy books, videos, records, CDs, but that's not it. That's not what's interesting. * Media is an extension of the senses. * Media is a mode of consciousness. * Media is extra-somatic memory. It's a crystallization of human thought that survives the death of the individual. * Media generates simulacra. The mechanical reproduction of images is media. * Media is a means of social interaction. * Media is a means of command and control. * Media is statistics, knowledge that is gathered and generated by the state. Media is economics, transactions, records, contracts, money and the records of money. * Media is the means of civil society and public opinion. Media is a means of debate and decision and agitpropaganda. None of these are a full working definition of the term "media," but they are a list of the qualities of this phenomenon that I find really relevant and compelling. To treat this matter seriously, I need a far better understanding than I have. We're getting in really deep now, ladies and gentlemen; we can't trifle with this thing any more. As a society, we have bet the farm on the digital imperative. I need to speculate from new principles and new assumptions. I want a new synthesis, I want to really know and understand how media live and die. Maybe I'll get my heartfelt little wish, and maybe I won't. But now I want to tell you how I plan to go about attempting this. First, I want to destroy the Whig version of technological history. In the Whig version of history, all events in the past have benevolently conspired to produce the crown of creation, ourselves. In the Whig version of media history, all technological developments have marched in progressive lockstep, from height to height, to produce the current exalted media landscape. This is a very simple story. It's convenient and it flatters our self-esteem. It's very cheering to supporters of the media status quo (if there are any supporters left, or even any status quo left), but it can be proven untrue. It can be proven untrue by disinterring and dissecting dead media. One understands evolution by studying the fossil record. The arcane, the offbeat, the forgotten. The failures, the lost and the buried, the media-maudit. The dead precursors of later successes. Some forms of media are rendered obsolescent, but others are murdered. Some innovations are pushed very hard by clever and powerful people with lots of money, and yet they still fail. I find that aspect particularly interesting. I'm not alone in my interest in this topic. My friend and colleague Richard Kadrey is also a science fiction writer, and together we have launched an effort called the Dead Media Project. We're using the Internet to bring people together to catalog and study extinct forms of human communication. We're in the media autopsy business. We're into media forensics. At the moment our scholarly efforts are very modest. We are currently engaged in a simple roll-call of the dead -- disinterring and listing dead media. My interest in dead media doesn't mean I've lost interest in forms of media that are struggling to be born. I spend a lot of time on the Internet these days. For instance, I made an entire book of mine available on the Internet -- a book called THE HACKER CRACKDOWN. In the past, I've used the Internet as a vanity press -- to publish and spread articles and speeches and critique. The Dead Media Project is my attempt to involve the Internet community in a new and different aspect of book production -- the beginning of a book, the raw research, the conceptual stages. This time I want the public in on the book *before I've written it.* In fact, I don't even *want* to write this book -- The Dead Media Handbook, a field guide for the communications paleontologist. Someone else should write this book, quite possibly someone in this audience. I don't particularly want to create it -- I just want to read it, absorb its useful lessons, and then go on to my normal business, which is writing science fiction novels. I believe that the DEAD MEDIA HANDBOOK will in fact be written, even if I have to break down and actually write it myself. But there will be a price to be paid for the production of this book, and that price will be the necessity of abandoning intellectual property. I think this is a fine idea for a book, but rather than hiding it, I plan to publicize it widely. It's not a trade secret; I don't care how many people know I'm working on it. I have nothing to gain by poring over this in secrecy. All the notes and research in the Dead Media Project will be available to anyone who joins the research effort. It will be a public-domain source of knowledge contributed by independent scholars working pro bono. This information will be free. If this scheme works, it will work in the way the Internet works: through prestige, netiquette and acts of intellectual generosity. I think that books can and even should be constructed in the same way that the Internet is constructed. I'm going to give it a try. I know that many people are working in media studies from a variety of different scholarly approaches, and I respect those efforts. I plan to spend a lot of time reading a lot more of them. But they're not yet scratching my visionary itch. I don't think that overarching syntheses or ideological summations are in order yet -- I think what is needed now is *fieldwork.* Commentaries, coming in from all corners of the compass, from all over the world, via modem. Maybe the central mystery of media can be paste-bombed into submission -- nibbled to death bit by bit. I strongly suspect that people of your backgrounds and accomplishments can help me in this project, so I'm frankly begging you to help me. The Dead Media Project has only been public for about a month and a half, but I want to share with you some of my preliminary discoveries. I rather suspect that they may have some modest relevance for people in ISEA. Let's consider cinema. Cinema is not a dead medium -- cinema is a hundred years old, and obviously alive, and more or less well. At least, it's still generating plenty of revenue in those squinchy little multiplex theaters. But cinema killed quite a few other media. The magic lantern, the phenakistiscope, the phantasmagoria, the praxinoscope, the zoetrope, the mutoscope, the fantascope. If you look closely at the evolution of cinema you can see that cinema is not a monolith, it's a radiation of species. E J Marey's "chambre chronophotographique." The Edison kinetoscope. Anschutz's tachyscope. The vitagraph, the cinematographe, the theatrograph, the animatograph, the Urbanora. Cinema as a medium did not make a sudden triumphant leap from silent movies to sound. People were attempting to jam sound into cinema from almost the beginning. We remember the much-publicized triumphs like THE JAZZ SINGER, but we have been taught to disregard the numerous experiments that died on the barbed wire of technological advance. The Edison kinetophone. Gaumont's Chronophone. The synchronoscope. The movietone. Phonofilm. The graphophonoscope. The vitaphone. These mutant forms of talking and singing cinema weren't ignored because they failed to work. In a lot of cases they worked just fine. Nobody who invented these devices ever set out to build a failure. The truly failed experiments never even made it out of the lab. These dead species of cinema were always imagined and proclaimed to be the cutting edge, the state of the art, and they were generally unveiled in a state of wild enthusiasm and a furious drumbeat from the press. They died because of contingency, not destiny. Take Gaumont's Chronophone, for instance. The name sounds rather arcane and silly, but that is not a technical judgement. Cinevision, Cinerama, Odorama -- do these names really sound any less silly? How about Apple QuickTime, or CU-SeeMe, or Yahoo? But hey, those can't be silly -- those are modern! "I hope you're not trying to suggest that someday people will laugh at *us.* Hey man, we're cyberculture -- we'll never be obsolete." Some media shed a few dead species, but the genus goes on living. Other media are murdered. Have you ever heard of the quipu of preColumbian Peru? If you have, it's a minor miracle. The archives of Incan quipu were burned by the Spanish conquerors, after the Council of Lima in the year 1583. There are about 400 authentic quipus left in the entire world. Every last one of the quipus we possess nowadays was dug out of a human grave. Well, not quite every last one. I happen to have a brand-new quipu here in my pocket. I was doing quite a bit of reading about quipu, so I decided I'd make one. The word quipu means 'account' in the Quechua language, so the quipu was basically a kind of accounting device and calculator. This is a fabric network to carry data. This was the only recording medium that the Incas had. It served all the recording functions of their society. No one today seems to have any real idea how these quipu worked. They all looked more or less like this one -- they had a thick fabric backbone, with a series of dependent fringes. But the fringes could also have fringes. Sometimes there were as many as six subdirectories coming off the backbone of the network. They had a variety of different knots. They had quite a wide variety of colors. People have only the vaguest ideas what the colors may have signified. This is a very small quipu. The largest remaining quipu weighs about forty pounds and has well over two thousand dependent cords. No one has any idea what this device signifies or what message it carries. It was buried with a Peruvian gentleman who was modestly well to do, but he doesn't appear to have been particularly prominent. The Incas had no idea that the planet harbored any civilization other than their own. As far as they were concerned, these quipu were the absolute apex of human intellectual accomplishment. And one must admit they have a lot to offer. They're very light -- wool and cotton -- they're portable and durable. Crush-proof. No problem with power surges or headcrashes. A good thing they were portable too, because one of their primary functions was the census. It appears that everyone without exception in the Inca realm existed as a knot in a quipu somewhere. The Incas were great masters of ethnic cleansing. They thought nothing of ordering thousands of people out of their homes to distant realms as pioneers and settlers. Everyone simply loaded all their possessions onto their backs and left immediately. Thanks to the quipu, there was simply no way they would ever be missed by the authorities. The Inca economic system was a centralized command economy. A third of the nation's economic output was stored in vast ranks of stone cells. Everything down to the last sandal was recorded on quipu. I don't think there was ever an alphabet in quipu. I don't think that the Inca were literate in that fashion, because their empire was only a hundred years old. There was nothing to pronounce that you could find on a piece of string. But there may have been geneologies in string -- hierarchies, maybe family trees. Maps, even -- three days' journey, they forded a blue river, they fought a red battle -- you can imagine how usefully suggestive this might have been. Maybe you could attack language even more directly with a quipu: meter, stress, quantity, pitch, length of the poem -- why should this be hard to believe? In English we sometimes call telling a story "spinning a yarn." These Incas were fine textile makers. They had a lot of wool and cotton. The government made them grow it, and their women spun yarn every day of their lives. When a quipucamayoc read one of these recording devices, I don't think his lips moved. There was nothing crude or halting or primitive or painful about the experience -- a quipu is certainly a more tactile and sensual and three- dimensional experience than a book. The quipu was a medium. It was a way to cast the world into an entire new form of order. It was a medium invented by and for a very careful and methodical people, people who liked to fit huge boulders together so snugly that you couldn't slip a knife-blade between them. For the Incas, this was the Net -- a net that caught their population in a sieve that dominated the whole material world, a sieve that no one could escape. You know, in today's ultramediated world, I think it's quite a good idea to go into a quiet room with a quipu. Go to a room and shut off the electricity. Don't look at the quipu with scorn or condescension. Just hold it in your hands and try to pretend that this the only possible abstract relationship, besides speech, that you have with the world. Really try to imagine what you are *missing* by not comprehending all economics, all governmental business, all nonverbal communication, as a network of colored yarn. Think of this as a discipline, as an act of imaginative concentration, as a human engagement with a profoundly alien media alternative. It's truly pitiful how little is known or remembered about the quipu, a dead medium which was once the nervous system of a major civilization. And yet that is by no means the only form of knot record. There's the Tlascaltec nepohualtzitzin, the Okinawan warazan, the Bolivian chimpu. Samoan, Egyptian, Hawaiian, Tibetan, Bengali, Formosan knot records. So far, I know almost nothing about these beyond their names. I'd like to learn more. If I learn more and you're on my list, I'll tell you about it. Before I began the Dead Media Project I had no idea that native North American wampum could be historical records. I always thought that wampum were a kind of currency. Maybe, like the quipu, wampum were both currency and record at the same time. Imagine if *our* currency were a medium. Maybe our currency *should* be a medium. If you're an experimental media artist, why don't you start writing poetry on twenty-dollar bills and see what happens? Maybe you should just write the address of your favorite web site on money, and see what happens then as the bill travels from hand to hand. Peculiar notion, isn't it -- communicating *with* money? Maybe we've just been *trained* to find that notion peculiar. I'm eager to learn more about wampum. I hope someone can tell me about them, and share that information with likeminded people. My email address is bruces@well.com. That's bruces, with an s at the end. Go ahead and write me, don't be shy. We're all in this together -- our net heritage belongs to all netkind! We can distribute all the data we like nowadays, there's nothing stopping us except for the RCMP, the FBI, the SPA and the Church of Scientology. Maybe these DISKS will help you! (((begins flinging Dead Media Project floppy disks into the audience))). These are just harmless text files, ladies and gentlemen. Probably Virus Free! I use electronic text these days, because the typewriter is dying now. In the early days of typewriters, what wonderful names they had: Xavier Progin's "Machine Kryptographique" (1833), Guiseppe Ravizza's "Cembalo-Scrivano" (1837), Charles Thurber's "Chirographer" (1843), J B. Fairbanks' "Phonetic Writer and Calico Printer," and so forth. A minor horde of typing machines, many of them scarcely recognizable as such to the modern eye. Soon they'll all be gone. Swept away by the computer. The computer. Its tide is so inexorable. Its power is so immense. Its triumph is so complete. What do we mean exactly when we say: "I've modernized. I own a computer"? Are we really in possession of a machine less mortal than Guiseppe Ravizza's Cembalo-Scrivano? This computer is a Macintosh Powerbook 180. An impressive machine, isn't it? I dote on it, personally. I admire that name -- PowerBook. It says a lot about the kind of rhetoric our culture cherishes in the 1990s. The name "PowerBook" somehow suggests that this device can *last* as long as a book, though even the cheapest paperback will outlive this machine quite easily. PowerBook is a good name, but not a really pretty name. Personal computers have had much prettier names. Like the Intertek Superbrain II. It must have been extremely difficult not to buy an Intertek Superbrain II, even though that machine is absolutely as dead as mutton. Forgive me while I indulge in a brief sentimental roll-call of vanished glories. The vast and every- growing legion of dead personal computers. The Altair 8800. The Amstrad. The Apple Lisa. The Apricot. The Canon Cat. The CompuPro "Big 16." The Exidy Sorcerer. How can a sorcerer end up dead on the junkheap? That's not supposed to happen, we're not even supposed to *think* about that. A computer is a sorcerer with a superbrain, it's not supposed to be lying in a landfill with great-grandma's victrola. The Hyperion, the Mattel Aquarius. The NorthStar Horizon and the Osborne Executive. The Xerox Alto and the Yamaha CX5M. But wait! There's more! Dead mainframes! Dozens and dozens of fantastically complex and expensive dead mainframes. Dead supercomputers. Dead operating systems. We all know that yesterday's operating systems are far inferior to today's Windows 95. Windows 95 is an operating system which is refreshingly honest, because it has an expiration date written right on it. We know that operating systems are of absolutely critical importance in computing, but how often do we honestly recognize that? Suppose you compose an electronic artwork for an operating system that subsequently dies. It doesn't matter how much creative effort you invested it that program. It does not matter how cleverly you wrote the code. The number of manhours invested is of no relevance. Your artistic theories and your sense of conviction are profoundly beside the point. If you chose to include a political message, that message will never again reach a human ear. Your chance to influence the artists who come after you is reduced drastically, almost to nil. You are inside a dead operating system. Unless someone deliberately translates you into a new one -- with heaven only knows what liberties of translation -- you are nailed and sealed inside a glamorous sarcophagus. You have become dead media. Almost as dead as the quipu. This is, of course, the dirty little secret of the electronics industry, and therefore it is the mark of Cain for electronic art. When we are surfing the web in 1995, we are surfing on a vast dark sea of dead computers. We have to surf, you see -- because we are just a white scrim of foam up on the surface. The waves of machines rolling in beneath us are moving in with the hideous relentlessness of Moore's Law, doubling in power every eighteen months, one order of magnitude a decade. If you are working on a cutting-edge computer today you are working on one percent of the cutting-edge computer you will have twenty years from now. And beyond that -- the awe-inspiring prospect of teraflops, gigaflops, petaflops. Here's the latest issue of SCIENCE magazine (((Vol 269, 8 Sept 1995, p 1363))), with a truly hair-raising article called "Computer Scientists Re-Think Their Discipline's Foundations." I recommend this article highly. This isn't something I made up, mind you -- this is stuff that people at Princeton and Argonne National Laboratory are making up. Quantum Dot computers, ten thousand times faster that today's fastest microchips. Optical computers, one hundred thousand times faster. Holographic data storage, one hundred thousand times faster. Sometimes you think that computation has to slow down -- that it has to bureaucratize -- become more like a normal industry. But then you're confronted with yet another awesome vista of absolute possibility! You see ladies and gentleman, we live in the Golden Age of Dead Media. What we brightly call "multimedia" provides an a whole galaxy of mutant recombinant media, most of them with the working lifespan of a pack of Twinkies. Mastering a typical CD-ROM is like mastering an entire new medium by using a frozen watch-cursor. And then the machine dies. And then the operating system dies. And then the computer language supporting that operating system because as dead as the Hittite language. And in the meantime, our entire culture has been sucked into the black hole of computation, an utterly frenetic process of virtual planned obsolescence. But you know -- that process needn't be unexamined or frenetic. We can examine that process whenever we like, and the frantic pace is entirely our own fault. What's our big hurry anyway? When you look at it from another angle, there's an unexpected delicious thrill in the thought that individual human beings can now survive whole generations of media. It's like outliving the Soviet Union once every week! That was never possible before, but for us, that is media reality. It puts machines into a category where machines probably properly belong -- colorful, buzzing, cuddly things with the lifespan of hamsters. This PowerBook has the lifespan of a hamster. Exactly how attached can I become to this machine? Just how much of an emotional investment can I make in my beloved three thousand dollar hamster? I suspect that the proper attitude -- one that more and more people will share in the coming millennium -- is a kind of Olympian pity. We are as gods to our mere mortal media -- we kill them for our sport. Ladies and gentlemen, let me implore your pity and understanding for dead media. If you're really electronic frontier people, then in all justice, you ought to eat what you are killing. Let's try to see the greater sense of tragedy and majesty in this whirlwind we're creating. Perhaps this realization will free us from the hypnotism of our own PR. I dare not suggest that it will make us better artists -- but at least it may help establish where we are and what is coming. Somehow, it might help us survive. It might even help us prevail. You've been very kind to hear me out for so long. Thanks very much for listening. ~~~~~ III)THE MASTER-LIST OF DEAD MEDIA Dead medium: All of them now known From: Bruce Sterling circa 1/18/1997 DEAD PRELITERATE MEDIA Prehistoric etched-bone mnemonic devices and lunar calendars. Preliterate clay tokens of Fertile Crescent area. The Luba Lukasa mnemonic bead-tablet. The Inuit Inuksuit. Inuit carved maps. String and yarn-based mnemonic knot systems: Incan quipu, Tlascaltec nepohualtzitzin, Okinawan warazan, Bolivian chimpu, Samoan, Egyptian, Hawaiian, Tibetan, Bengali, Formosan; American wampum, Zulu beadwork. DEAD SOUND-TRANSFER NETWORKS Drumming, stentor shouting networks, alpenhorns, whistling networks, town criers. SMOKE DISPLAYS AND NETWORKS Signal fires, smoke signals (still in use by Vatican), fire beacons. Skywriting. DEAD PHYSICAL TRANSFER NETWORKS Egyptian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Persian, Mongol, Roman and Chinese imperial horse posts. Extinct mail and postal systems: Thurn and Taxis (1550 AD), Renaissance Italian banking networks, early espionage networks, German butcher's-post, Chinese hongs, Incan runners, US Pony Express, etc etc. Balloon post (France 1870-1871) American guided missile mail (1959), Styrian, Tongan, German, Dutch, American, Indian, Australian, Cuban and Mexican rocket mail. Russian rocket mail (1992). Pneumatic transfer tubes: Josiah Latimer Clark stock exchange pneumatic system London (1853); R.S. Culler/R. Sabine radial pneumatic telegraph/mail system London (1859); Paris pneumatic mail system (1868) Norwegian mountainside transport wires. Pigeon post: Egyptian Caliphate 1100s, Mameluke Empire 1250's, military sieges of: Acre (11--?), Candia 1204, Haarlem 1572, Leyden 1575, Antwerp 1832, Paris 1870-1871; Reuter's pigeon stock-price network 1849, military pigeoneers of World War 1. Chinese kite messages, 1232 AD DEAD OPTICAL NETWORKS Roman light telegraph; Polybius's torch telegraph ca 150 BC Moundbuilder Indian signal mounds Babylonian fire beacons Fire signals on the Great Wall of China Amontons' windmill signals (1690) OPTICAL TELEGRAPHY: Johannes Trithemius's Steganographia (ca 1500?) Dupuis-Fortin optical telegraph (France 1788) Chappe's "Synchronized System" and "Panel Telegraph" (France 1793) Claude Chappe's French Optical Telegraph (France 1793) The Vigigraph (France 1794) Edelcrantz's Swedish Optical Telegraph (1795) British Admiralty Optical Telegraph (1795) Bergstrasser's German Optical Telegraph (1786) Chudy's Czech Optical Telegraph (the Fernschreibmaschine) (1796) Van Woensel's Dutch system (1798) Fisker's Danish Optical Telegraph (1801) Grout's American Optical Telegraph (1801) Olsen's Norwegian Optical Telegraph (1808) Abraham Chappe's Mobile Optical Telegraph (1812) Parker's American Optical Telegraph (ca 1820) Curacao Optical Telegraph (1825-1917) Watson's British Optical Telegraph (1827) Australian Optical Telegraph (Watson system) (1827) Lipken's Dutch system (1831) O'Etzel's German Optical Telegraph (1835) Schmidt's German Optical Telegraph (1837) Ferrier's optical telegraph (1831) Russian Optical Telegraph (1839, Chappe system) Spanish Optical Telegraph (ca 1846) San Francisco Optical Telegraph (1849) Ramstedt's Finnish Optical Telegraph (1854) Heliography: The Mance Heliograph (Britain 1860s) The heliostat, the heliotrope, the helioscope. The Babbage Occulting Telegraph (never built) Semaphore and flag signals: Byzantine naval code (Byzantium AD 900), Admiralty Black Book code (England 1337), de la Bourdonnais code (France 1738), de Bigot code (France 1763), Howe code (Britain 1790), Popham code aka Trafalgar Code (Britain 1803, 1813) US Army Myer Code semaphore (USA 1860). Military balloon semaphore (France 1790s). Early 20th Century electric searchlight spectacles. DEAD ELECTRICAL TRANSFER NETWORKS ELECTRICAL CURRENT TRANSFER George Louis Lesage / Charles Morrison electric telegraph (1774) Francisco Salva's Madrid-Aranjuez electric telegraph (1796) Soemmering's electrolytic bubble-letter telegraph (1812) Henry's electromagnetic telegraph (1831) Baron Schilling's Russian magnetized needle telegraph (1832) Gauss/Weber mirror galvanometer telegraph (1833) CODED ELECTRICAL TRANSFER Samuel Morse telegraph (patented 1837) Karl August Steinhill paper ribbon telegraph (1837) Charles Wheatstone / William Fothergill Cooke Five-Needle Telegraph (1837) The Alphabetical Telegraph Foy-Breguet Chappe-code Electrical Telegraph The Bain Chemical Telegraph (1848) Alexander Bain automatic perforated-tape transmitters (1864). Telex. CODED ELECTRICAL TRANSFER OF IMAGES Elisha Gray's telautograph (1886); the telescriber. The Vail telegraphic printer (1837), the House telegraphic printer (1846) Frederick Bakewell's shellac conducting roller (1848) Giovanni Caselli's fascimile pantelegraph (Paris-Lyon 1865-1870); Arthur Korn's telephotography (1907), Edouard Belin's Belinograph (1913), Alexander Muirhead's 1947 fax. ELECTRICAL TRANSFER OF SOUND Unorthodox telephony networks and devices: The Bliss toy telephone (1886), Telefon Hirmondo, Cahill's Telharmonium (1895), Bell's photophone, the Telephone Herald of Newark, Electrophone Ltd. wire broadcast Telephonic Jukeboxes: The Shyvers Multiphone, the Phonette Melody Lane, the AMI Automatic Hostess, the Rock-Ola Mystic Music System ELECTRICAL TRANSFER OF SOUND AND IMAGE (Dead Telephony) The AT&T Nipkow disk picturephone (1927), Gunter Krawinkel's video telephone booth (Germany 1929), Reichspost picturephone (Germany 1936), AT&T Picturephone, AT&T Videophone 2500, etc (Dead Mechanical Television) Baird Television; Baird Noctovision; Baird Telelogoscopy; The General Electric Octagon; the Daven Tri-Standard Scanning Disc; the Jenkins W1IM Radiovisor Kit, the Jenkins Model 202 Radiovisor, Jenkins Radio Movies; the Baird Televisor Plessey Model, the Baird Televisor Kit; the Western Television Corporation Visionette (Dead Color Television Formats): Baird Telechrome, HDTV, PALplus letterbox format, etc (Dead Interactive Television) Zenith Phonevision, the first pay-per-view TV service (1951). AT&T wirephoto (1925) DEAD DIGITAL NETWORKS Teletext, Viewtron, Viewdata, Prestel, The Source, Qube, Alex (Quebec), Telidon (Canada), Viatel and Discovery 40 (Australia), the ICL One-Per-Desk, etc. TRANSFERS BY ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION (Dead Television) Nipkow disk (1884), Zworykin iconoscope (1923), Farnsworth Dissector. Hugo Gernsback's Nipkow television broadcasts (1928) (Microwaves) Microwave relay drone aircraft (Canada 1990s) (Radio) RCA radiophoto (1926) DEAD INK-BASED MEDIA (dead text production devices and systems) Typewriters: Henry Mill's device (1714) Pingeron's machine for the blind (1780), Burt's Family Letter Press (1829), Xavier Progin's "Machine Kryptographique" (1833), Guiseppe Ravizza's "Cembalo-Scrivano" (1837), Charles Thurber's "Chirographer" (1843), Sir Charles Wheatstone's telegraphic printers (1850s), J B. Fairbanks' "Phonetic Writer and Calico Printer," Giuseppe Devincenzi's electric writing machine (1855) Edison electric typewriter (1872), Bartholomew's Stenograph (1879) Schulz Auto-typist punch-paper copier typewriter (1927) Weir's pneumatic typewriter (1891), Juan Gualberto Holguin's 'Burbra' pneumatic typewriter (1914), The IBM Selectric, etc. Dead copying devices: James Watt's ink copier (1780) The aniline dye copy press The hektograph Edison's Electric Pen stencil (1876), the Edison pneumatic pen stencil, the Edison foot-powered pen stencil, the Music Ruling pen stencil, the Reed pen stencil Zuccato's Trypograph (1877) Gestetner's Cyclostyle (1881) The Edison Mimeograph (1887) The Gammeter, aka Multigraph (circa 1900) The Vari-Typer Chinese imperial court printed newspaper (circa 618 AD); Beijing city printed newspaper (748 AD) Bi Sheng's clay movable type (1041 AD) DEAD SOUND-CAPTURE TECHNOLOGIES Extinct forms of dictation machine. Poulsen's telegraphon wire recorder (1893) The Wilcox-Gay Coin Recordio (1950?) DEAD SOUND ARCHIVAL TECHNIQUES Extinct phonographic formats: Leon Scott de Martinville phono-autograph, Edison tinfoil cylinder, Edison wax cylinder, the Bettini Micro-Phonograph, the telegraphone, Bell's graphophone, The Columbia Graphophone Grand, the Edison Concert Grand Phonograph, the Pathe' Salon cylinder, the Edison Blue Amberol cylinder, the Edison vertical-groove disc phonograph, the Michaelis Neophone, wire recorders, 78s, 8-track tape, 2-track Playtape, the Elcaset, Soviet "bone music," aluminum transcription disks, etc. DEAD SOUND REPRODUCTION TECHNOLOGIES: The AT&T Voder (1939) The Bell Labs Vocoder Talking dolls and cassette dolls (von Kempelen's "talking" doll (1778), Robertson's talking waxwork (1815), Faber's talking automaton (1853), Teddy Ruxpin, dolls linked to television programs, realistic sound-producing squeeze toys, etc). DEAD STILL-IMAGE CAPTURE TECHNOLOGIES Extinct photographic techniques: Niepce's asphalt photograph (1826), daguerrotype, talbotype, calotype, collodion, fluorotype, cyanotype, Pellet process, ferro- gallic and ferro-tannic papers, albumen process, argenotype, kalliotype, palladiotype, platinotype, uranium printing, powder processes, pigment printing, Artigue proces, oil printing, chromotype, Herschel's breath printing, diazotype, pinatype, wothlytype, etc. DEAD STILL-IMAGE TO TACTILE IMAGE TECHNOLOGY Naumburg's printing visagraph and automatic visagraph. DEAD STILL-IMAGE DISPLAY TECHNOLOGIES The stereopticon, the Protean View, the Zogroscope, the Polyorama Panoptique, Frith's Cosmoscope, Knight's Cosmorama, Ponti's Megalethoscope (1862), Rousell's Graphoscope (1864), Wheatstone's stereoscope (1832), dead Viewmaster knockoffs. Medieval and renaissance magic-glass conjuring. Alhazen's camera obscura (1000 AD), Wollaston's camera lucida (1807). Magic lantern, dissolving views Phantasmagoria: Robertson's Fantasmagorie, Seraphin's Ombres Chinoises, Guyot's smoke apparitions, Philipstal's phantasmagoria, Lonsdale's Spectrographia, Meeson's phantasmagoria, the optical eidothaumata, the Capnophoric Phantoms, Moritz's phantasmagoria, Jack Bologna's Phantoscopia, Schirmer and Scholl's Ergascopia, De Berar's Optikali Illusio, Brewster's catadioptrical phantasmagoria, Pepper's Ghost, Messter's Kinoplastikon. Biddall's Phantospectraghostodrama and similar "fairground bogeys." Riviere's Theatre d'Ombres. DEAD STILL-IMAGE "3-D" WITH SOUND The Talking View-Master. DEAD MULTIPLE-IMAGE PERSISTENCE-OF-VISION TECHNOLOGIES Joseph Plateau's phenakistiscope (1832), Emile Reynaud's praxinoscope, Ayrton's thaumatrope or "magic disks" (1825), Stampfer's stroboscope, William George Horner's zoetrope or "wheel-of-life" (1834), L. S. Beale's choreutoscope (1866), the viviscope, Short's Filoscope, Herman Casler's mutoscope and the "picture parlor" (1895), the Lumiere Kinora viewer and Kinora camera, the fantascope, etc. Dead cinematic devices, including but not limited to: Muybridge's zoogyroscope, E J Marey's chronophotographe and fusil photographique, George Demeny's Phonoscope, Edison kinetoscope, Anschutz's Electro-Tachyscope, Armat's vitascope, Rudge's biophantascope, Skladanowsky's Bioscope, Acre's kineopticon, the counterfivoscope, the klondikoscope, Paul's theatrograph, Reynaud's Theatre Optique, Reynaud's Musee Grevin Cabinet Fantastique, Lumiere cinematographe, Kobelkoff's Giant Cinematographe, Lumiere Cinematographe Geant (1900), the vitagraph, Paul's animatograph, the vitamotograph, the Kinesetograph, Proszynski's Oko, the Urbanora, the Prague Laterna Magika. DEAD MULTIPLE-IMAGE, PERSISTENCE-OF-VISION, SOUND TECHNOLOGIES the Photo-Cinema-Theatre sound film system (1900), Gaumont's Chronophone (1910), Messter's Biophon (1904), The Mendel-Walturdaw cinematophone (1911), The Jeapes- Barker Cinephone (1908), Hepworth's Vivaphone (1911), Edison kinetophone (1913), Ruhmer's Photographon optical sound recorder (1901), the synchronoscope, the cameraphone, phonofilm, the graphophonoscope, the chronophotographoscope, the biophonograph, DeForest Phonofilm (1923), Warner Bros/ Western Electric Vitaphone (1926), Fox Movietone (1927), Vocafilm, Firnatone, Bristolphone, Titanifrone, Disney's Cinephone, Hoxie / RCA Photophone (1928), General Electric Kinegraphone (1925), Cinerama (1951), CinemaScope (1952), Natural Vision (1952), etc. The Scopitone. DEAD MULTIPLE-IMAGE, PERSISTENCE-OF-VISION, IMMERSIVE Raoul Grimoin-Sanson's Ballon-Cineorama ten-projector circular screen (1900) DEAD MULTIPLE-IMAGE, PERSISTENCE-OF-VISION, SOUND, SMELL Odorama, Smell-O-Vision (1960), Aromarama (1959) etc. DEAD MULTIPLE-IMAGE, PERSISTENCE-OF-VISION, SOUND, SMELL, IMMERSIVE Morton Heilig's early virtual reality. DEAD MULTIPLE-IMAGE, PERSISTENCE-OF-VISION, "3-D" Devignes's stereoscopic zoetrope (1860) Stereoscopic phenakistoscopes: Seller's Kinematoscope (1861), Shaw's stereoscopic phenakistiscope (1860) Bonelli and Cook's microphotograph stereo-phenakistiscope (1863), Wheatstone's stereoscopic viewer (c. 1870) 3-D projection systems: d'Almeida's projected 3-D magic lantern slides (1856), Heyl's Phasmatrope (1870), Grivolas's stereoscopic moving pictures (1897), the Fairall anaglyph process (1922), Kelly's Plasticon (1922), Ives and Leventhall's Plastigram, aka Pathe Stereoscopiks, aka Audioscopiks, aka Metroscopix (1923,1925, 1935, 1953), Teleview (New York 1922), polarized light stereoscopic movies (1936), Ivanov's parallax stereogram projector (Moscow 1941), Savoy's Cyclostereoscope (Paris 1949), the Telekinema (London 1951), Space Vision (Chicago 1966). DEAD MULTIPLE-IMAGE, PERSISTENCE-OF-VISION, SOUND, ARCHIVAL Dead video: Baird Phonovisor wax videodisk (1927), Ives/Bell Labs Half-Tone Television (1930s) Eidophor video projector (1945), PixelVision, Polavision, Philips Laservision videodisk, Panasonic HDTV (1974), McDonnell Douglas Laserfilm Videodisc (1984), analog HDTV (1989), RCA SelectaVision CED videodisk, Telefunken Teldec Decca TeD videodisk, TEAC system videodisk, Philips JVC VHD/AHD videodisk Dead videotapes: Ampex Signature I (1963), Sony CV B/W (1965), Akai 1/4 inch B/W & Colour (1969), Cartivision/Sears (1972) Sony U-Matic (197?), Sony-Matic 1/2" B/W (197?) EIAJ-1 1/2" (197?), RCA Selectavision Magtape (1973) Akai VT-100 1/4 inch portable (1974), Panasonic Omnivision I (1975), Philips "VCR" (197?), Sanyo V-Cord, V-Cord II (197?) Akai VT-120 (1976), Matsushita/Quasar VX (1976) Philips & Grundig Video 2000 (1979), Funai/Technicolor CVC (1984) Sony Betamax DEAD VIRTUALITIES Physical display environments (non-immersive): Dioramas (no sound), de Loutherbourg's Eidophusikon (sound and lighting) (1781), the Stereorama, the Cosmoramic Stereoscope, Mechanical drama: Japanese karakuri puppet theatre Heron's Nauplius. Dead thrill rides. Immersive physical display environments Panoramas, Poole's Myriorama, the Octorama, the Diaphorama, Cycloramas, the Paris Mareorama (1900). Defunct digital VR systems. DEAD DATA-RETRIEVAL DEVICES AND SYSTEMS accountant tally sticks Card catalogs: The Indecks Information Retrieval System, Diebold Cardineer rotary files, etc. Vannevar Bush's Comparator and Rapid Selector Scott's Electronium music composition system DEAD COMPUTATIONAL TECHNOLOGY (ANALOG) Extinct computational platforms: abacus (circa 500BC Egypt, still in wide use) saun-pan computing tray (200 AD China) soroban computing tray (200 AD Japan) Napier's bones (1617 Scotland), William Oughtred's slide rule (1622 England) and other slide rules, Wilhelm Schickard's calculator (1623 ?) Blaise Pascal's calculating machine (1642 France) Schott's Organum Mathematicum (1666) Gottfried Liebniz's calculating machine (1673) Charles Babbage's Difference Engine (built 1990s) (1822 England) Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine (never built) (1833 England) Scheutz mechanical calculator (1855 Sweden) The Thomas Arithmometer Hollerith tabulating machine (1890) Vannevar Bush differential analyzer (1925 USA) DEAD COMPUTATIONAL TECHNOLOGY (DIGITAL) The Cauzin Strip Reader (archival) Extinct game platforms: Actionmax Video System, Adam Computer System, Aquarius Computer System, Atari: 2600/5200/7800, Colecovision, GCE Vectrex Arcade System, Intellivision I/II/III, Odyssey, Commodore, APF, Bally Astrocade, Emerson Arcadia, Fairchild "Channel F," Microvision, RCA Studio II, Spectravision, Tomy Tutor, etc. DEAD BINARY DIGITAL COMPUTERS Konrad Zuse's Z1 computer (1931 Germany) Atanasoff-Berry Computer (1939 USA) Turing's Colossus Mark 1 (1941 England) Zuse's Z3 computer (1941 Germany) Colossus Mark II (1944 England) IBM ASCC Mark I (1944 USA) BINAC (Binary Automatic Computer) (1946-1949 USA) ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) (1946 USA) Dead mainframes. Dead personal computers: Altair 8800, Amiga 500, Amiga 1000, Amstrad Apple I, II, II+, IIc, IIe, IIGS, III Apple Lisa, Apple Lisa MacXL, Apricot Atari 400 and 800 XL, XE, ST, Atari 800XL, Atari 1200XL, Atari XE Basis 190, BBC Micro, Bondwell 2, Cambridge Z-88 Canon Cat, Columbia Portable Commodore C64, Commodore Vic-20, Commodore Plus 4 Commodore Pet, Commodore 128 CompuPro "Big 16," Cromemco Z-2D, Cromemco Dazzler, Cromemco System 3, DOT Portable, Eagle II Epson QX-10, Epson HX-20, Epson PX-8 Geneva Exidy Sorcerer, Franklin Ace 500, Franklin Ace 1200 Gavilan, Grid Compass, Heath/Zenith, Hitachi Peach Hyperion, IBM PC 640K, IBM XT, IBM Portable IBM PCjr, IMSAI 8080, Intertek Superbrain II Ithaca Intersystems DPS-1, Kaypro 2x Linus WriteTop, Mac 128, 512, 512KE Mattel Aquarius, Micro-Professor MPF-II Morrow MicroDecision 3, Morrow Portable NEC PC-8081, NEC Starlet 8401-LS, NEC 8201A Portable, NEC 8401A, NorthStar Advantage, NorthStar Horizon Ohio Scientific, Oric, Osborne 1, Osborne Executive Panasonic, Sanyo 1255, Sanyo PC 1250 Sinclair ZX-80, Sinclair ZX-81 Sol Model 20, Sony SMC-70, Spectravideo SV-328 Tandy 1000, Tandy 1000SL, Tandy Coco 1, Tandy Coco 2 Tandy Coco 3, TRS-80 models I, II, III, IV, 100, Tano Dragon, TI 99/4, Timex/Sinclair 1000 Timex/Sinclair color computer, Vector 4 Victor 9000, Workslate Xerox 820 II, Xerox Alto, Xerox Dorado, Xerox 1108 Yamaha CX5M etc. etc. etc. Dead computer languages. Fortran I, II and III, ALGOL 58 and 60, Lisp 1 and 1.5 COBOL, APT, JOVIAL, SIMULA I and 67 JOSS, PL/1, SNOBOL, APL Dead operating systems. Dead Internet techniques. We are actively hunting data in all these categories. We are also searching for new taxonomical methods and alternative categorization schemes. Send email if you (a) are personally willing to re-format this list along some specific taxonomical scheme or (b) you have a novel idea for a taxonomical approach. Bruce Sterling (bruces@well.com) Jan 18, 1997 {}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{} ************************************************************************ EXURPTS FROM THE CIA TOUTURE MANUAL As reprinted in Harper's Magazine, April 1997 issue. ************************************************************************ NOTE: Harper's states that "in 1985, the CIA renounced the use of coercive interrogation techniques,"...yeah, sure.... Psychological Torture, CIA-Style >From the "Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual--1983," a handbook written by the Central Intelligence Agency and used during the early 80's to teach Latin American security forces how to extract information from prisoners. The manual was obtained in January through a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Baltimore Sun as part of an investigation of the CIA's involvement in Honduras. In 1985, the CIA renounced the use of coercive interrogation techniques and amended the manual accordingly; in the copy obtained by the Sun, the original 1983 text is legible beneath the agency's handwritten revisions and deletion marks. THEORY OF COERCION The purpose of all coercive techniques is to induce psychological regression in the subject by bringing a superior outside force to bear on his will to resist. Regression is basically a loss of autonomy, a reversion to an earlier behavioral level. As the subject regresses, his learned personality traits fall away in reverse chronological order. He begins to lose the capacity to carry out the highest creative activities, to deal with complex situations, or to cope with stressful interpersonal relationships or repeated frustrations. COERCIVE TECHNIQUES Arrest The manner and timing of the subjects arrest should be planned to achieve surprise and the maximum amount of mental discomfort. He should therefore be arrested at a moment when he least expects it and when his mental and physical resistance are at their lowest--ideally, in the early hours of the morning. When arrested at this time, most subjects experience intense feelings of shock, insecurity, and psychological stress, and have great difficulty adjusting to the situation. Detention A person's sense of identity depends upon the continuity in his surroundings, habits, appearance, relations with others, etc. Detention permits the questioner to cut through these links and throw the subject back upon his own unaided internal resources. Detention should be planned to enhance the subject's feelings of being cut off from anything known and reassuring. Deprivation of Sensory Stimuli Solitary confinement acts on most persons as a powerful stress. The symptoms most commonly produced by solitary confinement are superstition, intense love of any other living thing, perceiving inanimate objects as alive, hallucinations, and delusions. Threats and Fear The threat of coercion usually weakens or destroys resistance more effectively than coercion itself. For example, the threat to inflict pain can trigger fears more damaging than the immediate sensation of pain. The threat of death has been found to be worse than useless. The principal reason [for this] is that it often induces sheer hopelessness; the subject feels that he is as likely to be condemned after compliance as before. Some subjects recognize that the threat is a bluff and that silencing them forever would defeat the questioner's purpose. If a subject refuses to comply after a threat has been made, it must be carried out. Otherwise, subsequent threats will also prove ineffective. Pain The torture situation is a contest between the subject and his tormentor. Pain that is being inflicted upon the subject from outside himself may actually intensify his will to resist. On the other hand, pain that he feels he is inflicting upon himself is more likely to sap his resistance. For example, if he is required to maintain a rigid position such as standing at attention or sitting on a stool for long periods of time, the immediate source of discomfort is not the questioner but the subject himself. After a while, the subject is likely to exhaust his internal motivational strength. Intense pain is quite likely to produce false confessions, fabricated to avoid additional punishment. This results in a time-consuming delay while an investigation is conducted and the admissions are proven untrue. During this respite, the subject can pull himself together and may even use the time to devise a more complex confession that takes still longer to disprove. Hypnosis and Heightened Suggestibility Answers obtained from the subject under the influence of hypnotism are highly suspect, as they are often based upon the suggestions of the questioner and are distorted or fabricated. However, the subject's strong desire to escape the stress of the situation can create a state of mind called "heightened suggestibility." The questioner can take advantage of this state of mind by creating a situation in which the subject will cooperate because he believes he has been hypnotized. This hypnotic situation can be created using the "magic room" technique. For example, the subject is given a hypnotic suggestion that his hand is growing warm. However, his hand actually does become warm with the aid of a concealed diathermy machine. He may be given a suggestion that a cigarette will taste bitter and could be given a cigarette prepared to have a slight but noticeably bitter taste. Narcosis There is no drug that can force every subject to divulge all the information he has, but it is possible to create a mistaken belief that a subject has been drugged by using the "placebo" technique. The subject is given a placebo (a harmless sugar pill) and later is told he was given a truth serum that will make him want to talk and that will also prevent his lying. His desire to find to find an excuse for compliance, which is his only avenue of escape from his depressing situation, may make him want to believe that he has been drugged and that no one could blame him for telling his story now. This provides him with the rationalization that he needs for cooperating. REGRESSION As mentioned earlier, the purpose of all coercive techniques is to induce regression. A few noncoercive techniques can also be used to induce regression, but to a lesser degree than can be obtained with coercive techniques: *Persistent manipulation of time *Retarding and advancing clocks *Serving meals at odd times *Disrupting sleep schedules *Disorientation regarding day and night *Unpatterned questioning sessions *Nonsensical questioning *Ignoring halfhearted attempts to cooperate *Rewarding noncooperation Whether regression occurs spontaneously under detention or is induced by the questioner, it should not be allowed to continue beyond the point necessary to obtain compliance. A psychiatrist should be present if severe techniques are to be employed, to ensure full reversal later. As soon as possible, the questioner should provide the subject with the rationalization that he needs for giving in and cooperating. This rationalization is likely to be elementary, an adult version of a childhood excuse such as: 1. "They made you do it." 2. "All the other boys are doing it." 3. "You're really a good boy at heart." {}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{} ************************************************************************ INTERVIEW WITH TERENCE MCKENNA - ICA, London, 11/10/96 by Gyrus & John Eden ************************************************************************ Trivial background information: It can be quite fun where I work. The people are great and I regularly get these weird post-it notes saying things like "what does it all mean?!!!" and "I have stolen your journal and you will never get it back! Ner de ner ner!!!". Today's note read "Gyrus called and said that if you want to help him interview Terence McKenna then you'd better get your ass down to the ICA by 3 o'clock." Uh? The connections started to flicker together. Gyrus is the groovy editor of the essential Towards 2012 magazine. The ICA is a rather corporate "cool" (in the sense of unemotional and unforgiving) establishment that brings in great ideas..... and then strangles them in the name of whatever-it-is-this-week. And Terence McKenna? Well, I dunno about him. I'm always wary of the stars that the counter culture tends to throw up. From what I've read (which is very little) he's got a few interesting ideas. I went to a salon with him organized by Fraser Clarke which I enjoyed. He was funny and intelligent and was asking SOME of the questions I thought were important at the time. I saw a little dogma creeping in there along the "drugs are GRRREAT and everyone should take LOTS" line. When Paul Eden asked him about gnosis through drumming and dancing he was kind of dismissive. But, y'know, not being one to miss an opportunity, I deftly left work 3 hours early and went on down to the CIA, er, the ICA. And it was fun. Monsieur McKenna came across as someone who was coherent, interested in what we had to say, and open to criticism. He didn't seem to be playing the fame game to me and I found myself re-appraising a lot of his ideas when Gyrus asked him to expand on them. It was a dogma-free-zone. Check it out and see what you think. The Interview: Gyrus: Firstly, have you seen Independence Day, and what did you make of it? I didn't see it, because I saw enough of it in shorts to realize it's The Day The Earth Stood Still with worse actors and more money. G: Fair enough. Now, do you see a contradiction in the desire to leave the planet and the desire to save it? Is it merely a case of delaying global catastrophe so that we're here long enough to leave? I don't really see a contradiction. We probably saved the Earth the first time in 6000BC, when we decided to move into cities. That gave the Earth enormous breathing room - up until the present moment, in fact. At what cost to ourselves is hard to assess. Certainly, we've become different creatures than we would have been otherwise. Probably the Earth and the human segment of the biosphere must be parted, not only to save the Earth, but in a sense to save ourselves. Our thing is to unfold the imagination, and that's all very well when the best trick you can do is a Gothic cathedral. But we're capable of things far, far beyond that, and if we were to try to unfold these dreams on the surface of the planet, we would probably wreck it and toxify ourselves. On the other hand, outer space is almost like mental space. Where we're headed, whether we leave the planet behind or not, is into the imagination. And either it will be a three-dimensional space colonizing, a kind of Buck Rogers deal; or the more contempo-vision I think is of a nanotech immigration into some kind of virtual or cybernetically maintained space. The whole question revolves around the body. What is it? Where are you going to put it? What role should it have? Is the body the defining quintessence of humanness, or is it the ball and chain that holds us from forever realizing what humanness is? That's an ideological cat-fight that I'd like to sit in the front row and watch, but I don't think I want to get down on the mat. It'll sort itself out. G: I was interested in this because the in plot of Independence Day, the aliens were basically seen as going from planet to planet, using all the resources, going to another planet, and so on... This seemed to be some sort of projection of ourselves - if we leave the planet, still with this potential for destroying resources, that's what we would be. All projections of aliens are statements about the human condition. And I think you're quite right. I mean, this horrific vision of alien triage and waste-making is precisely how we would conduct ourselves if we were to ever make it out there. The point being that it may be possible that you can't organize a global society for starflight without stripping out some of its more savage and brutal tendencies. For example, how long has it been? Thirty years since the landing on the moon? And our humanness has made it impossible to go beyond that. It was essentially a stunt, staged for political and ideological purposes. It wasn't an evolutionary thrust, unstoppable and leading to starflight. It was a political stunt. Now, there may come a time when we can pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and spread out into the galaxy, but I think we have to do a lot of dirty laundry here before that's possible to contemplate. A friend of mine, somebody worth quoting - Howard Reingold, who's a hot VR guy... I was with him once on a psychedelic trip, and in the middle of it, he stood up and said, "My God! I've understood what virtual reality is for!" [laughter] And I said, "What is it for, Howard? You invented the term 'teledildonics', I thought you'd already figured out what it was for." He said, "No, no, virtual reality will keep us from ever leaving the planet." So he saw it as a cheap shot, a second prize. No, you can't conquer the galaxy, but here's a simulacrum of Madonna that you can screw forever. Real colonization of the galaxy is quite a technological leap from anything that we're capable of now. Clearly, virtual reality, indistinguishable from reality as we know it, will arrive long before anyone sets foot on Zeta Reticuli Prime. That's way out in the future, if possible at all. G: In your writings, you've really aligned yourself with Huxley rather than Leary in the psychedelic propaganda argument. I was interested in why you worked with such an overground band like The Shamen. I know you appeared with them at the Birmingham NEC. How does that stand with your statements... ...I think when I worked with The Shamen, they weren't so above ground. Time is a curious thing. We did all that stuff... four years ago? Something like that. So they were respectably underground at that point. Nothing ruins you for the underground like success. So when Boss Drum went double platinum, they were obviously 'establishment'. G: So you were on the cross-over... That's right. I worked with bands like Spiral Tribe and Zuvuya - truly, authentically impossible to project into the commercial domain type bands. I'm much more comfortable with that. I've talked to Colin about this, and he agrees. It would have been wonderful to hit it big at 23. At 35 it becomes a pain in the ass, and you just have to manage the money and the image. John Eden: Are you still interested in working with popular cultural things like music? I'm interested, but I have no interest in giving advice to the young. I don't want to become a grandfather figure. I would like to follow. I'd like to be accepted as the oldest and longest-toothed in the pack. But I have no illusions that my generation has great wisdom to impart. We impart a strong example; but that isn't to say that those that went through it understand the kind of example they've become. My hope is that the present youth culture will be a bit more resistant to co-option than the youth culture of the sixties, because those people just turned into the unbearable yuppies of the seventies and the eighties. The thing that keeps the youth culture vital in the UK is that there's no social escape into respectability. A very small percentage may go on to nice houses in Hampstead, but the English social system has condemned most people to marginal positions vis-a-vis the official culture... G: And they've made it worse with the Criminal Justice Act, they've just marginalized people and politicized loads of people like ravers... who may have just been into going out. And then when government say, "You're not having free parties in the countryside", they think... "Let's get ourselves together." Well I think good art arises from a certain state of discomfiture. If you were to be totally embraced, what would be the point? G: You've mentioned a few times the production of dimethyltryptamine in the human brain, and all the statements I've found in which you mentioned it have been up to ten years ago. I was wondering have there been any new developments in this, new research, especially in relation to dream activity? Well the only research that's been done since ten years ago is work done by Rick Strassman at the University of New Mexico. And it was very interesting. It certainly showed that DMT can be safely used. Although the fate of that research is very interesting. He was, he is, a Mahayana Buddhist, and at some point the Lamas came to him and asked him to stop that research, because they said it was "messing with peoples' deaths." And, without a lot of debate, he folded. I respect Rick, but I would have asked, "Based on what published papers and in what journal of religious studies can we find this data?" [laughter] I think the most terrifying thing about DMT is it's utter harmlessness. So there is no rational argument against it. And yet here it is, so much more powerful than any other psychedelic that it barely is in the same category. G: You've made statements condemning the view that mathematical equations can bring us closer to a view of reality because they don't come into our immediate experience of life. How does Timewave Zero fit into that? With it you're trying to describe our felt experience of time, and yet it itself is a mathematical equation. My gripe with mathematics is not that it's remote from human experience, but that it uses a language that's excruciatingly remote. You've referred to it as mathematical equations. What you see when you use Timewave Zero is not mathematical equations, but an easily understood picture like a stock market graph. The great revolution in mathematics, that's going to make every one of us a mathematician, involves the fact that you no longer need numbers to do it. It all can be seen with computers. So I could cover this wall with equations and you wouldn't know what I was talking about. But I can show you a ten second video clip of a certain object rotating in space - and you've got it. And that's the same thing as all those equations. So what's happening is mathematics is being taken out of the hands of an elite priesthood who speak a special secret language, and being put into the common language of visual appearances, by people like Ralph Abraham, and so forth and so on. This is very exciting stuff. So it isn't mathematics per se that my argument is with, but the style of doing mathematics that was imposed upon it by the limitations of technology, pre-computer. G: Most of the questions I came up with going through your work were all about paradox. There's so many paradoxes in your work. But it seemed to me that the biggest one was the actual practice of Timewave Zero, which is about setting a date for the end of time - at least in one of its interpretations. But you've stated that you see the run-up to 2012 as a time of ever increasing paradox. What are your thoughts on this? Well, who was it? Oscar Wilde, or somebody said, "Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds." Reality is inherently paradoxical. And the beginning of intellectual maturity is to be able to simultaneously hold two contradictory ideas in your mind at the same time. People ask me if I believe in the 2012 prediction. I don't believe in anything. My anti-ideological stance makes it very important to believe nothing. I regard Timewave Zero as a fascinating model of a previously unmodelled system - which is human history. The fact that it seems to deliver interesting data... for instance, I predicted a very deep plunge into novelty this past summer. Just as it was at its deepest, the Martian meteorite chock full of fossils arrived - along with a lot of email demanding to know where was the miracle I had predicted. [laughter] I like the word models. What we're trying to do is build models. By saying the word 'models', we make it very clear that this is not 'Truth', and that there will be a better model, and we'll swap the old for the new. So at the moment Timewave Zero is simply a better model of history than the idea that there is no model at all, which is what's taught in the Academy. The definition of history, if you study history in the Academy, is: it's a trendlessly fluctuating process. If true, it's the only trendlessly fluctuating process ever to be observed in this universe. So obviously it's not true, it's just that we lack a model. So people say... like, Toynbee's model was that 'God is waiting', somebody else had a 'Great Man' model, Marx believed it was all driven by class struggle, and Freud that it was all libido. Well, these are just opinions. Those aren't theories, those are opinions. A theory has an ability to make predictions, and refine itself, so that's what I offer with Timewave Zero. It arises out of my relationship to the psychedelic experience. Because I believe that when we finally understand what a psychedelic trip is, we'll realize that during the experience consciousness unfolds into a higher dimension. Not metaphorically, but literally a higher dimension. And that that's how the shaman can tell where the game has gone, that's how the shaman predicts the weather, that's how the shaman knows more than the people he serves - because they're all caught in a lower-dimensional slice of reality, and he's looking down from a place that becomes accessible to him when cultural boundaries are dissolved. This is a key concept in my thinking: dissolution, and maintenance, of cultural boundaries. This is what psychedelics do. Whether you love 'em or hate 'em, what they do is dissolve boundaries. And this is of course closer to the way reality is. The boundary-riven reality is always the creation of a local language - English, French, Witoto - they create synthetic boundaries at the convenience of local syntax. What the psychedelic state shows you is that beyond that localism which is historically finite is the wisdom of the body, and the wisdom of the body is higher-dimensional. And I mean these things very precisely. I'm not at war with the New Age, it's the only category they have to put me in, but I really believe the New Age is a flight from authentic experience. That's why the New Age is so uncomfortable with the psychedelic experience - they would rather have you drinking wheatgrass juice and staring at your navel. You could almost say of the New Age that they will accept anything as long as they can be assured of its lack of effectiveness. [laughter] That's an assurance you don't get with psychedelics. Even the critics of psychedelics grudgingly admit, "It works." But... you don't work hard enough, or it doesn't last long enough, or some other gripe. No gripe with its effectiveness. G: You've said quite often that the world is made of language, and this seems to have caused quite a bit of confusion, myself included. Could you clarify what you mean by the word 'world' and what you mean by the word 'language' in that context? Well, for example (the example I always use), the child lying in a crib with an open window - a pre-verbal or nearly pre-verbal child - and a hummingbird flies through the room. It's a psychedelic miracle, it's absolutely stunning. The boundaries of that experience are completely undefined. But then the mother or the nanny walks into the room and says, "Oh! It's a bird, baby. Bird." The miracle immediately collapses down into a hard little tile, and by the time a person is six years old, reality has been entirely replaced by a mosaic of defined and very non-numinous meaning. And so people are then imprisoned in this language. And they will remain so imprisoned until the yawning grave, unless they are put in touch with the transhistorical wisdom of the body. And that means psychedelics. By the way, this idea that reality is made of language is actually the standard position in structural linguistics. This is not a radical position, this is dull-as-dog-shit orthodoxy for those people. G: I was talking with a magickian the other week and he was in complete agreement. You said once that the true secret of magick is that the world is made of words, and if you know what words the world is made of, you can do with it as you wish, and yeah, he was... Yes, and energy follows attention. So, what we care about is what we take to be real. And there are all kinds of realities around us that we don't even see. And then when these realities intrude into our vision, we become very upset. And often the urge is to suppress, because it presents itself as somehow threatening. This is why, in my opinion, psychedelics, though they do very little social harm, and don't promote criminal syndicalism, we don't have people overdosing in doorways, and so forth and so on; nevertheless, they are at the top of the agenda for suppression. Because, whether you're a fascist state, and industrial democracy, a monarchy or whatever, the one thing you're not interested in is having people question first premises. And psychedelics will force you back to do that. All social systems are to some degree con-games, because they're always inconvenient for individuals, and they're always extremely convenient for institutions. Psychedelics are hideously unfriendly to all forms of institutional thinking, and tremendously supportive of what I call the felt presence of immediate experience. That's what ideology, and propaganda, and government, social programming, they all make war on the felt presence of immediate experience, and try to get you to deny the obvious wisdom of the body - and replace it with Christianity, Islam, the work ethic, whatever they're pedalling at the moment. J: Is that one of the reasons you backed off from an academic approach to all this? Oh, I could never fit myself into an organization like that. I live in Hawaii, I'm virtually a hermit, I organize my own speaking, I say what I want. My fortunes ebb and flow with forces mysterious even to me. I can't imagine committing myself to any kind of institutional structure. It's tremendously disempowering. I mean, there's nothing more contradictory than a radical in an organization. That's why - let's whisper it low - the ICA is an entire contradiction. The very idea of institutionalizing the avant-garde means that you don't understand what the avant-garde is. G: I'm interested your theories about the Stropharia cubensis mushroom evolving extra-terrestrially. Is this entirely due to information imparted in the trance that it induces? I was curious because there's so many other species of mushroom, and other plants, that access these same dimensions, why is Stropharia cubensis this 'special case'? Well, it's a complicated argument. There are a number of things you could say about Stropharia cubensis. First of all, an organism that wastes energy is slated for extinction. Thousands of mushrooms exist on this planet that don't make psilocybin. Stropharia cubensis channels approximately fifteen percent of its metabolic energy into making psilocybin. Why, if mushroom existence doesn't require that for any important purpose? It begins to look to me as though the mushroom may be a kind of technological artefact. The other thing to notice is that, and this is true of all fungi, they're what is known as primary decomposers.They exist only on dead matter. That's the only karmaless place in the food chain. Vegetarianism compared to that is an orgy of mass slaughter. I guess I have a slight Buddhist bias here. But it seems to me that we've only known about DNA since about 1950, and we're already talking about completely redesigning ourselves based on reprogramming the human genome. So it may be that this is a stage that any intelligent being, species, organism, anywhere in the universe passes through, a phase where it takes control of its own design process. And Stropharia cubensis looks to me like it's been designed for immortality, information storage, low-speed space flight, an ability to adapt to an incredible variety of environments. So I'm willing to at least entertain the possibility, based on the fact that it talks to you and fills you with alien information, that it may in fact be an artefact of extra-terrestrial origin. This is how real aliens would do it. They don't arrive in the middle of the night with an interest in your asshole like the stories we're given, that's preposterous. Still less do they have an interest in the electrical grid, or the Gross National Product, or any of that. The problem with an extraterrestrial is to know when you're looking at one. I once visited the world's largest radio telescope in Araceibo, Puerto Rico, and they search for extra- terrestrial life with this thing. It's so large a telescope it's basically a dish suspended in round valley. And underneath the dish there's pasture land, and white cattle, and Stropharia cubensis... It's like this amazing image of this instrument studying the centre of NGC-3622?, and yet a hundred feet from the main control booth is probably what they're looking for. [laughter] G: This is probably a peripheral question, but a lot of your descriptive, poetic language that you've used to describe the psychedelic experience has very industrial connotations. There's been a lot of digital metaphors about the DMT trance, but you use... "machines elves", and "the green vegetable engine of nature"... ...That's a steal from Dylan Thomas... G: ...Right - so that's where it comes from? "The greeny engine that drives the flower." Yeah. So what about that? G: It's interesting that this very thing that you seem to be railing against a lot of the time... well, not railing against, but putting a lot of environmental destruction down to the industrial revolution - and these adjectives are seeping into your description of this state... Well, I don't think the problem is with machines per se, I think it's that we're in a very early and primitive stage with machines. Nanotechnology holds out the possibility of building as nature builds, atom by atom. I think that the machines that we possess today are to the machines of the future what the chipped flint of the palaeolithic is to our machines. The key concept is prosthesis - in other words, the extension of human understanding and feeling by mechanical means. That's tremendously exciting to me. I mean, given the human body, that's hardware enough to integrate into a group of seventy hunting-gathering nomads. But a city like London - you need the tube system, you need the black cabs, you need radio and all of it, and these things are all prosthesis. And if we're really talking about going to the next level, a global collectivity, a global telepathic state of mind, this can only be done at this stage by prosthesis. At some point, perhaps, one could reprogram human beings to be able to talk to each other on the other side of the planet. On the other hand, we see no animals who do that. There simply may be some things that lie beyond the capacity of mere unassisted flesh to achieve. But assisted flesh, flesh in marriage to prosthesis, can do anything. I think the whole curious fascination with piercing, and the mechanization of human body parts, and so forth and so on, that informs art at the moment is actually art performing the function it's always performed - of anticipating where we're headed. G: As far as that concept of prosthesis goes, you've talked about machines and cultural artefacts as an extension of humanity, and you condemn laboratory-manufactured psychedelics to a large extent. Why would they not fall into the... Well, I don't condemn them out of some kind of purist 'Plants are good, chemicals are bad'... No, I condemn them for very practical reasons. First of all, a white powder drug. You have no idea what it is. You can be fairly sure it was manufactured in an atmosphere of criminal syndicalism where the major goal was to make money. That's not a very reassuring statement of drug purity and chemical attention to detail. And the other thing is, the vegetable psychedelics, we have our human data - five thousand years of mushroom use in Mexico, and so forth and so on. With a new drug, since it's illegal to do research on it, we have no human data. And sometimes it takes a generation or two to see what the consequences of exposure to a compound are. So I don't have an absolutist position against laboratory drugs, it's simply that if we're trying to get to a certain place - which is the dissolution of the ego, and the entry into psychedelic space - at this stage, the vegetable psychedelics are just simply more effective, better track record... they work. G: So your argument is bound by the context of human society now? Sure. If someone can produce a drug that meets all these requirements... And DMT occurs in nature, but when actually smoked, it's usually coming out of a laboratory. G: You've said that you don't consider yourself a shaman just because shamans cure and you don't cure anyone. Also you write a lot about the re-emergence of the shamanic institution. What do you think of its re-emergence in the modern world - how can it's integrity be preserved, if at all, and how must it evolve? The music. And the trance-dance drug-taking situation is the establishment of a ritual space outside the conventions of ordinary society, that is the new shamanism. And that's again what makes it so suspect in the eyes of the establishment. They sense that this is something they can't get a handle on and control, or that it takes them some time to get a handle on - they have to figure out how to co-opt each generation in a new way. My generation was co-opted in a very crude way, with money. Your generation... The Establishment's not interested in that, they'd rather keep the money for themselves. I'm hoping that the new trance-dance culture has enough integrity to resist being folded into commercialism and ordinary mass cultural entertainment. But we shall see. G: Could you outline the influence of Teilhard de Chardin on your work? Yes. Essentially, he's me without drugs or immediacy. [laughter] My rap would be much more palatable if I said it was all gonna happen fifty thousand years in the future, a million years in the future... The only difference between me and a lot of apocalyptarian thinkers is that I see this curve of increasing novelty and approach toward the transcendental as happening at a much faster rate. But I base my estimate of its acceleration by looking at how fast it's accelerated in the past. I don't see how anyone can speak in rational terms of a thousand years in the future, or five hundred years in the future. The twentieth century is ten times weirder than the nineteenth, and the twenty-first will be a thousand times weirder than the twentieth. Well then how can anyone extrapolate any institution or idea or style that far into the future? It's perfectly clear that we sought transcendence from the very first moment of consciousness. It takes about fifty thousand years to go from the "Gee, wouldn't it be nice?" to the "My God, it now stands at the door...", and it now stands at the door. We've been planning and plotting this since the Pyramids and Stonehenge - it's all been about this, apparently, moving ourselves, positioning ourselves for an evolutionary leap off the planet. Nature is not interested in sustainability. Ninety-five percent of all life that ever existed on this planet is now extinct. J: I've got one last question. You said that you don't see yourself as a shaman, and I guess you don't see yourself as a guru either - so what do you see yourself as? A troublemaker. A messenger, and somewhat of a troublemaker. Gurus... the mushroom said to me once, it said, "For one human being to seek enlightenment from another is like one grain of sand on a beach to seek enlightenment from another." The point being, the holiest, highest person you've ever met, Dalai Lama, Shree Bhagwan, you pick your guy, is no different from you. It's an illusion that anybody is smarter than you are. People love to give away their power, and follow Christ, or Hitler, or Shree Bhagwan... They don't understand that no one is smarter than you, no one understands the situation better than you, and no one is in a position to act for you more clearly than you are yourself. But people endlessly give away this opportunity, and subvert their identity to ideology. It's the most perverse thing about human beings. G: Where do you think this comes from? Well, I had a professor once who said if you think of human beings as angels, it's a shit of a scene. If you think of people as apes - it's the most astonishing accomplishment you've ever laid eyes on. [laughter] And this is where we are, with one foot in a carnivorous, cannibalistic ape, and the other reaching out for deity. You talk about a coincidentia oppositorum, a union of opposites, a living contradiction - human beings are that. Every one of us individually and then the entire enterprise as a collectivity. We're in the process of changing - from an animal, into a god. It takes thirty thousand years. That's a very uncomfortable moment. But in the life of a species, it's the blink of an eye. We just happen to, because we live seventy years, it takes what? Five hundred generations to stumble through that zone of uncertainty that we call human history. Now, I think we're close to the jackpot. I can feel the heat of the thing. And a lot of people fear it, because they cling to the old order. But there's no room for clinging at this point. I mean, hang on, do not attempt to stand up, do not attempt to leave the carriage, we're going over the top! [laughter] Scream if you must, but stay seated please! {}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{} ************************************************************************ AN EMAIL DEBATE BETWEEN NICOLAS PATTEE & PAUL LAURENDEAU ************************************************************************ Upon checking the TAF mailbox one morning I came across an email from Nicolas Pattee about Paul Laurendeau's article "The Doom of Religion" (TAF issue#2). The letter was written in French (which I embarrassingly admit to having very little understanding of) so I forwarded it to Paul (who's first language is French) and asked for a translation. He gave me the translation and then asked for the sender's email address so he could reply. He cc'd me on his reply (as did Nicolas Pattee) and the email debate you will read below ensued. Both writers knew of my intentions to publish their words. What follows is, what I found to be, a very interesting exchange between two very well written individuals, freely expressing their beliefs in a forum that is not very well suited to the traditional notions one has of a debate, philosophical or otherwise. Note that Mr. Laurendeau's comment's that are in capital letters are not indicative of him 'shouting' as 'netiquette' would dictate, but rather he was just trying to separate his words from those of Mr. Pattee's in a visual sense (as well as philosophical). Read and enjoy. Date: Mon, 20 Oct 1997 00:10:00 -0400 From: Nicolas Pattee Subject: Doom of religion Beau blabla plein d'hormones et d'une certaine aigreur envers la religion qui mitige grandement l'intŽrt qu'aurait pu avoir cette recherche. C- Translation: A beautiful babbling filled of hormone and of a certain bitterness about religion that strongly discredits the interesting research it could have been. Translated by Paul Laurenedeau ------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Mon, 20 Oct 1997 17:08:33 -0400 (EDT) From: Paul Laurendeau Subject: A PROPOS D'UN CERTAIN "BEAU BLABLA" UN PEU SCABREUX Bonjour Nicolas, Merci de votre commentaire, dont l'editeur de la FONTAINE ANNIHILATRICE a deja obtenu traduction anglaise et qui sera publie dans le numero 3 du site (texte original et traduction). La FONTAINE a un ton et, comme toutes publications, implique ce que l'on appelle les "lois du genre". On n'ecrit pas dans LE CANARD ENCHAINE ou dans CROC comme on ecrirait dans la REVUE DE PHILOSOPHIE ET DE MORALE. Je me conforme a ces lois du genre avec jubilation et plaisir mais aussi par conviction: je crois que le ton mordant et scabreux et les developpements de contenus ne sont nullement incompatibles et, qu'au contraire, ils s'eclairent l'un l'autre avec une nettete tres utile a la reflexion. Sans pretendre arriver a la cheville d'un tel titan litteraire, je vous renvoie a l'article EZECHIEL du DICTIONNAIRE PHILOSOPHIQUE de VOLTAIRE, ou la totalite de la problematique tourne autour de l'ordre donne au prophete par son Dieu de manger sa propre merde, situation servant a l'auteur d'occasion de discuter la question du libre arbitre en matiere de soumission religieuse! Juge tres choquant a son epoque, cet article est un pur delice humoristique pour nos contemporains. On pourrait citer bien d'autres exemples de ce compagnonnage licencieux mais fructueux entre ton virulent et contenu rationnel. Pour ce qui est de l'eventuel discredit de l'un par l'autres, je suis pres a vivre avec, tout en restant convaincu qu'un argument solide ne perd rien de son impact qu'il sorte d'un beau ratelier aseptise et Palmolive ou d'une gueule edentee et lepreuse qui pue la fiente et le souvenir recent de fellations suspectes. Encore merci d'exprimer vos vues dans ce forum de la libre expression qu'est la FONTAINE ANNIHITATRICE. Elle sont hautement appreciees de Monsieur Neil McKAY, l'editeur du site, et de moi meme. Respectueusement Paul LAURENDEAU Translation: REGARDING A CERTAIN RATHER SHOCKING "BEAUTIFUL RAMBLING" Hello Nicolas, Thank you for your comments, the English translation of which the editor of THE ANNIHILATION FOUNTAIN has already obtained and will be published in issue no. 4 of the site (in both its original and translated versions). THE FOUNTAIN has a certain tone and, like all publications, it implies what is called the "laws of the genre." You don't write in LE CANARD ENCHAINE or in CROC in the same way you would write in the REVUE DE PHILOSOPHIE ET DE MORALE. I abide by these laws with jubilation and with pleasure, but also with conviction: I believe that a biting, shocking tone in a piece and the development of its content are not at all incompatible; on the contrary, I believe that they clarify one another with a sharpness that is very useful upon reflection. Not that I'm claiming to even hold a candle to such a literary giant, but I refer you to Voltaire's article EZECHIEL in his DICTIONNAIRE PHILOSOPHIQUE (Philosophical Dictionary), wherein the entire problem revolves around the order given the prophet by his God to eat his own shit. This gives the author the opportunity to discuss the issue of free will as regards religious submission! Deemed very shocking at the time, this article is pure humourous delight to our contemporaries. Many other examples could be cited of this licentious yet fruitful association between harsh tone and rational content. With regard to the eventual discredit of one in favour of the others, I'm prepared to live with that, steadfast in my conviction that a strong argument loses nothing of its impact whether it comes from a beautiful scrubbed and sterilized set of false teeth, or a leprous, toothless cakehole that reeks of birdshit and the recent memory of suspected blow-jobs. Thanks again for expressing your views in the forum of free expression that is THE ANNIHILATION FOUNTAIN. They are very much appreciated by the editor of the site, Mr. Neil MacKay, and myself. Respectfully, Paul Laurendeau Translated by the ultra cool Angie Cornack (thank's Angie! -Ed.) ------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Mon, 20 Oct 1997 19:31:45 -0400 From: Nicolas Pattee Subject: Answer to an answer A word of praise! My compliments on your answer, it gave me quite a laugh! It is a kind of humor I respond to. I used French in my reply because of your last name. I was not aware that the article was part of something greater because I stumbled upon it while searching something very different. Nevertheless I could not help but read and enjoy that typical specimen of atheistic propaganda. I majored in religious studies (the faithless version, i.e. not theology) so I am familiar with the speech construction of religious persons and, of course, of anti-religious persons. What ticked me off, but then again, it always does, was the way quotations were used to back up an evidently subjective reasoning. My main question is what is the difference in thought structuration between that piece of work and that of a Jehovah Witness? It seems to me both are using a most partial selection of quotations to maintain a position, which to me revolves around a false problem. Religion as an institution is shit like any other institution. But then the real object of critique should be its exercise of power and its motivations to do it so. The rest is only a matter of cultural relativism and personal beliefs. Truth and fact are false problems when it comes to religion because its object is beyond in its essence and it does not matter whether that object exists or not. >From where I stand I feel we are religious creatures like it or not because religion is a matter of belief and belief is what we have built our world upon. Knowledge in its true form is scarce and gained only through personal experience. Knowledge is related with truth but if knowledge is gained through experience and experience is not exchangeable between human beings in its numenal dimension, therefore truth is not exchangeable. What then do we trade between each other if not beliefs (very strictly speaking because, functionally there is little difference between belief and knowledge unless we stretch their meaning to such extremes and even then...)I have never experienced Tokyo so I must refer to the experience of others in order to draw some sort of conviction, a logical process called sophism, if I am correct. But until I experience Tokyo I will only have a belief functioning as knowledge with little incidence, if any, on how I run my life. But lets say I cook myself up a mystical experience in which I feel one with the universe, the level of certainty attained through such an experience will be way higher in its impact upon my life than any so-called knowledge I have about Tokyo, but to others it will forever remain belief because that truth can not be shared... But "knowledge" and truth are so filling to oneself that one is compelled to share the bliss of revelation (haha) so there is inevitably a problem because one cannot possibly transmit every determining factor in personal experience. Therefore, imperfect accounts arise to feed the venom of enlightened people like you. The point of the whole big picture being, from a religious point of view or not, requiescant in pace!!! ------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Oct 1997 14:23:41 -0400 (EDT) From: Paul Laurendeau Subject: Re: A PROPOS D'UN CERTAIN "BEAU BLABLA" UN PEU SCABREUX (fwd) > A word of praise! My compliments on your answer, it gave me quite a laugh! > It is a kind of humor I respond to. I used French in my reply because of > your last name. I was not aware that the article was part of something > greater because I stumbled upon it while searching something very > different. Nevertheless I could not help but read and enjoy that typical > specimen of atheistic propaganda. WHAT YOU CALL "TYPICAL SPECIMEN" IS IN MY SENSE AN ORIGINAL ANALYSIS. COULD YOU QUOTE THE SOURCES WHERE YOU SAW THE PROBLEM ADRESSED THE SAME WAY AS I DO? "ATHEISTIC PROPAGANDA' IS TOTALLY ACCURATE. MY TEXT WAS DEFINITELY NOT AN HAGIOGRAPHY! > I majored in religious studies (the faithless version, i.e. not > theology) so I am familiar with the speech construction of religious > persons and, of course, of anti-religious persons. What ticked me off, > but then again, it always does, was the way quotations were used to back > up an evidently subjective reasoning. My main question is what is the > difference in thought structuration between that piece of work and that > of a Jehovah Witness? It seems to me both are using a most partial > selection of quotations to maintain a position, which to me revolves > around a false problem. ON THE USE OF QUOTATIONS I COULD ACCUSE YOU OF "CALLING ME NAMES" BY COMPARING MY PROCEDURE TO THE ONE OF THE JEHOVAH WITNESSES. I PREFER TO STICK TO THE THESIS PROPOSED BY THAT IRONIC COMPARAISON, ITSELF RELYING EXCESSIVELY ON THE USUAL GIMMICK OF ACCUSING THE IRRELIGIOUS OF BEING RELIGIOUS!. TO QUOTE A LA JEHOVAH WITNESS IS SOMETHING VERY SPECIFIC. IT IS, ROUGHLY, TO TRY TO REPORT A DOGMATIC SOURCE, ALLOWING YOURSELF ONLY SUBSIDIARY COMMENTS. THERE IS A SMALL DIFFERENCE HOWEVER. A "SPECIALIST" LIKE YOU SHOULD BE AWARE OF THAT. THE JEHOVAH BUNCH QUOTES AD NAUSEAM A UNIQUE BOOK THAT YOU CAN FIND IN ANY MOTEL WHERE YOU GO OR DONT GO FOR A HEALTHY FUCK, A BOOK THAT THEY ASSUME BEING KNOWN AND TAKEN FOR GRANTED AS AN OBJECT OF FAITH BY THE PERSON THEY SPEAK TO. IT IS PREACHING, AND PREACHING IS REITERATING FOR MEMORY OR REFLEXION THE TEXT OF A COMMONLY AGREED UPON SACRED BOOK. I QUOTE A SERIES OF MATERIALIST THINKERS WHOSE THOUGHT IS OCCULTATED AND UNKNOWN, DISREGARDED AND REJECTED IN OUR CONTEMPORARY CULTURE. MY QUOTING IS FLAT DIFFUSION, PURE SHIT PITCHING IN THE FACE OF BELIEVERS AND CRYPTO-BELIEVERS. THERE IS NO EXPECTATION OF THE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF ANY FORM WHATSOEVER OF COMMUNITY TEXT IN MY ACTIVITY OF REFERENCE. CONSEQUENTLY, I AM NOT ATTEMPTING TO "GUIDE" YOU IN THE UNDERSTANDING OF OUR COLLECTIVE SACRALITY. I AM USING MY BROTHERS AND SISTERS ATHEISTS AND MATERIALISTS OF THE PAST AS SIMPLE PROPAGANDA COMPANIONS. IT IS VERY DIFFERENT AS A PROCEDURE. > Religion as an institution is shit like any other institution. But then > the real object of critique should be its exercise of power and its > motivations to do it so. IN THE VIEWS OF THE BELIEVERS WHO POSTULATE IT YES. THEY OPPOSE NOT TO RELIGION BUT ITS ABUSES. FOR THE PHILOSOPHICAL ATHEIST THE INNACURACY OF RELIGION IS SOMETHING ABOUT WHICH A DEMONSTRATION IS TO BE DONE, LIKE ANY OTHER SPECULATIVE MATTER. THE POWER OF THE CLERICS HAS BEEN DESTROYED PRACTICALLY SINCE CENTURIES, NOW. YOU ARE LATE! AS I SAID AT THE END OF MY TEXT, I AM INDULGING MYSELF IN A PHILOSOPHICAL DEVELOPMENT WHERE THE HISTORICAL MATERIAL GAME IS ALREADY PLAYED. > The rest is only a matter of cultural relativism and personal beliefs. > Truth and fact are false problems when it comes to religion because its > object is beyond in its essence and it does not matter whether that object > exists or not. AGAIN THIS IS THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE BELIEVER AND OF THE IDEALIST PHILOSOPHER. FOR MATERIALIST PHILOSOPHY THERE IS NO INTELLECTAL "BEYOND". > From where I stand I feel we are religious creatures like it or not > because religion is a matter of belief and belief is what we have built > our world upon. Knowledge in its true form is scarce and gained only > through personal experience. Knowledge is related with truth but if > knowledge is gained through experience and experience is not > exchangeable between human beings in its numenal dimension, therefore > truth is not exchangeable. What then do we trade between each other if > not beliefs (very strictly speaking because, functionally there is > little difference between belief and knowledge unless we stretch their > meaning to such extremes and even then...)I have never experienced Tokyo > so I must refer to the experience of others in order to draw some sort > of conviction, a logical process called sophism, if I am correct. But > until I experience Tokyo I will only have a belief functioning as > knowledge with little incidence, if any, on how I run my life. THAT IS AN OLD PREACHER TRICK WHICH WAS ALREADY MAKING ME FEELING SLEEPY WHEN USED BY THE OLD FRENCH CANADIAN VILLAGE PRIEST OF MY CHILDHOOD. THE FALSE EQUATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND BELIEF. RELIGION IS NOT "BELIEF" AT LARGE, BUT RATHER A SUB-SET OF IT. IT IS THE BELIEF IN THE OBJECTIVE EXISTENCE OF ONE OR SEVERAL SUPREME BEINGS CREATORS AMD "MODERATORS' OF THE UNIVERSE, PERPETUATORS OF ITS COHESION, ETC. I CURRENTLY "BELIEVE" THAT MY PASSPORT IS IN THE DRAWER OF MY DESK. THAT IS A STRONG "BELIEF" I HAVE, BUT THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO RELIGIOSITY INVOLVED IN IT. I SIMPLY CONSIDER TRUE AN UNVERIFIED FACT, WITH NO REFERENCE WHATSOEVER TO ANY SUPRANATURAL FORCE. IT IS THE SAME CASE FOR YOUR TOKYO GIG. ATHEISTS ALSO HAVE GOOD REASONS TO CONSIDER THE EXISTENCE OF TOKYO A FACT! SINCE A WHILE, IN ITS DECLINE, RELIGION TRIES TO SWALLOW THE TOTALITY OF WHAT-IT-IS-TO-BELIEVE IN ORDER TO TRY TO KEEP ITSELF FLOATING. DOING SO, IT SIMPLY AND BLATANTLY DISTORT THE UNAVOIDABLE FACT THAT IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO KNOW EVERYTHING FROM DIRECT EMPIRICAL EXPERIENCE. TYPICAL. > But let say I cook myself up a mystical experience in which I feel one > with the universe, the level of certainty attained through such an > experience will be way higher in its impact upon my life than any > so-called knowledge I have about Tokyo, but to others it will forever > remain belief because that truth can not be shared... But "knowledge" and > truth are so filling to oneself that one is compelled to share the bliss > of revelation (haha) so there is inevitably a problem because one cannot > possibly transmit every determining factor in personal experience. > Therefore, imperfect accounts arise to feed the venom of enlightened > people like you. The point of the whole big picture being, from a > religious point of view or not, requiescant in pace!!! THAT FRAGMENT OF THE REASONIMG POSTULATES THE ACCURACY OF THE MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE. I KNOW ITS CURENT EXISTENCE. I DENY ITS GNOSEOLOGICAL ACCURACY. THANK YOU FOR THE GOOD WISHES. I WILL CONTINUE TO SLEEP WELL. I WILL DIE WHEN MY DAY COMES, AND I WILL ROT IN ALL SIMPLICITY! Paul LAURENDEAU ------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Oct 1997 21:34:40 -0400 From: Nicolas Pattee Subject: And going... Well met, Paul, I am thoroughly enjoying this debate! Let me clarify some of the points I was trying to make and also allow me to establish the position from which I speak in order to legitimize my right to speak and reason in the way I do. Your piece of work, whose academic rigor I can approve, is typical of atheistic propaganda even though you say you addressed the problem originally. You asked for quotes· Well, that is one thing you won't obtain from me. Should you seek info on some religious topic, I'll manage to find references but, when it comes to reasoning and debating I am a most firm believer of independent thought. That in itself is an epistemological debate we could address on an separate basis. What I was wondering was what experience do you have with religions besides bookworming through a subjective though vast selection of works? A part of my formation is anthropology and from that point of view I very strongly believe in participating observation. My quotes come from my field experimentation. Remember something first: I am faithless, creedless and to some extent godless. To me god's relevancy come from its signifying position as a cognition because there is absolutely nothing for or against it that can be said safely besides the fact that when you examine the concept from a semiotical point of view, it falls into a category of cognition which will potentially allow any other cognition to continue the string of thought, (though not in the same mind). I call the concept allowing me to categorize it in such a way "density of signification". That density is manifested in the relation between object and sign: a table is a table, a picture of you isn't really you but represents you nonetheless, the sun is the sun but can also mean truth (Pierce and Eco for the relationship between sign and object but not for the density concept which I have not found anywhere but to say frankly never saw the point of looking for it. Suffice it to say it appears operational to me, personal epistemological point of view again). That density determines also the potential quality and abstraction of the thought patterns it will produce. When I said typical, I meant that whenever I speak to a confirmed atheist (I become very religious at such times) the same behavior patterns almost always come forward and that would be fool proof coherency and crystallization of conviction in such a way that contradiction cannot possibly be left without answer. Typical because such strong bearings on a particular topic subjects the human mind potential cognitive dissonance (psychological concept: two contradictory cognitions happening at the same time in the same mind, and the processes used to resolve the dilemma). This comes as a consequence of the endeavor and the only way to avoid it is not to give a damn. Though the contents of your analysis may be original, its container (motivation and deployment pattern) is typical. Quoting· Let us admit after Durkheim (I cannot avoid them all it seems!) that religion is a coherent system of beliefs and practices· the rest of the definition isn't worth any shit but that of tearing it down. But that first part gives religion something in common with many other institutions not to say all of them. Bearing that in mind, you were mislead when you thought I was using a gimmick of accusing the irreligious of being religious. Again I use the nuance between content and container, between objects and the way they are organized. Now, tell me seriously that you do not speak from the position of a coherent system of beliefs and practices. You referred to brother atheists and certainly are using the admitted academical protocol· The Jehovah Witness banging on your door comes to you straight to the point: fundamentalist application of the contents of the Bible. He knows he has about 2 minutes before you kick him out, he's been there before but he'll try and hammer the word of god into your mind in one mighty blow. He knows he does not have time for interminable developments and that most probably the person he is addressing has not the mind for it. Because don't delude yourself, it takes a hell of a lot more imagination to maintain coherency in such a thought system because it hinges on the most abstract of concept, god, than it takes to maintain coherency in appeasing one's furious routine· Consequently, I have indeed found closed minds in religious people (and in many others), but certainly never downright morons. Of course, most of the faithful can be called foolish, but never can you say the same of the person that has taken the time to write on the topic of went out of his way to tell you about it. And that is to me empirical certainty. As for your disregarded thinkers, I know most of them though I have not read all of them and it so happens you will find some of the same arguments in the texts of many mystics over the world (the sufi, the upanishads, our own mystics and even the prophets of the old testament hold the same grudges toward religion) The power of the clerics· Again you simplify· "Power of the clerics" as a sentence is a mistake. A part of the power belongs to the institution and is distributed to its enactors in the form of authority. When the role of the institution becomes pointless so becomes the authority it conferred to its enactors. What power the cleric personally has remains his own. For most people, in my country, religion is pointless. Nevertheless, there remains statistically a permanent 10% of the population for which it still signifies something. This goes true for most parts of the world where death is not the penalty of faithfulness and even then. But curiously enough, when you speak (have you ever done so?) with clerics some of them contradict that fact because they are faced with a greater participation percentage· There are many factors coming into play, of course, education, average age, but also, the personal charisma of the cleric which is a power he would have even if he were a politician or a salesman. Sorry to shatter your dreams but religion is not dead and won't die because that 10% is comprised of the grown up faithful and they live on and change the world in much the same manner than the 10 % of the academical riff-raff that makes it to emitting positions· The question is: even though the fight against religion seems won and over does that mean it is a consequence of "evolution" (one of the deadliest concepts man has ever created)? I doubt that anything but a sophism can come to that conclusion· What conclusion can be drawn on the accuracy of religion I cannot begin to fathom? You may address the problem all you want, what can you hope to achieve? Considering the fact that there are 3000 religions in the USA and about 900 in my home province (to say nothing of the rest of the world) you'd better get started right away if you wish to demonstrate their inaccuracy by discrediting them by their faith content. If you want to discredit them as containers of signification you'll have do the same with every other coherent thought system· I am sorry to say this but what kind of argument is that: "the point of view of the idealist philo vs the materialist" Does that mean something akin to: I am so sorry sir but us protestant don't give credit to what the pope is saying. They have tried to feed me such notions through the nose but I fail to see the relevancy of name tags appointed to groups who were not even necessarily aware they were groups to begin with. Could it be that your are trying to derive some sort of authority by claiming kinship with post mortemly institutionalized philosophical churches? > THAT IS AN OLD PREACHER TRICK WHICH WAS ALREADY MAKING ME FEELING > SLEEPYWHEN USED BY THE OLD FRENCH CANADIAN VILLAGE PRIEST OF MY > CHILDHOOD. THE FALSE EQUATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND BELIEF. > RELIGION IS NOT "BELIEF" AT LARGE, BUT RATHER A SUB-SET OF IT. IT IS THE > BELIEF IN THE OBJECTIVE EXISTENCE OF ONE OR SEVERAL SUPREME BEINGS > CREATORS AMD "MODERATORS' OF THE UNIVERSE, PERPETUATORS OF ITS COHESION, You missed the real equation hidden in the supposed equation between religion and belief. The real equation was between man and belief. Remember I do not believe there is any other knowledge than what is obtained through experience, ALL the rest is belief. What we are doing right now would be an exercise in futility should we think any "knowledge" is to be derived from it. I am stating beliefs and you are too except you back them up with the beliefs of others. As for your definition of religion there are a few problems with it stricto sensu for the whole wide world provides quite a few counter examples but it bring an interesting question to mind: "what are the other sub-sets of belief?" As for the gnoseological accuracy of experience, damn not necessarily mystic, of course you cannot admit it, fuck, you have not experienced it but you cannot deny the simple fact that putting your hand into fire will give you some pretty gnoseological certainty that it burns and that afterwards no amount of arguments will ever make you believe the contrary because then you KNOW it burns. Of course that experience cannot be equated in contents with a mystical experience but it nonetheless functions in the same way. Put that in relation with, say, Berger's Social construction of reality· You seem also to forget that we are not on different sides of the fence. My own motivations for studying religion are exactly the same as Voltaire's bewilderment with Ezechiel eating shit out of a plate. I am also a French Canadian and I have suffered from the stupidity of our parish priests nuns in private schools etc etc etc. Simply, instead of rallying myself to a philosophical atheist church, I took upon myself to see from inside, to try to witness that strange experience which will forever elude me as enacted in others. Do not quotation mark my "specialist" until you have stopped being a prophet in your own country. I can say truthfully that if you had been a convinced believer I would have been as wordy· Could you? Farewell, Nick ------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Wed, 22 Oct 1997 19:55:29 -0400 (EDT) From: Paul Laurendeau Subject: Re: And going... NOT YELLING AS USUAL... > Well met, Paul, > > I am thoroughly enjoying this debate! Let me clarify some of the points > I was trying to make and also allow me to establish the position from > which I speak in order to legitimize my right to speak and reason in the > way I do. IT MIGHT CERTAINLY PROVIDE USEFUL DESCRIPTIVE ELEMENTS ABOUT YOU, BUT IT WILL NOT "LEGITIMIZE" YOU. YOU MAY BE EITHER HEGEL OR THE LAST RAILROAD HOBOE, THE LEGITIMITY OF YOUR INTERVENTION IS ALREADY INTEGRAL AND COMPLETE IN A FORUM DEVOTED TO FREE-SPEECH... > Your piece of work, whose academic rigor I can approve, is typical of > atheistic propaganda even though you say you addressed the problem > originally. You asked for quotes· Well, that is one thing you won't > obtain from me. Should you seek info on some religious topic, I'll > manage to find references but, when it comes to reasoning and debating I > am a most firm believer of independent thought. That in itself is an > epistemological debate we could address on an separate basis. THERE IS NO SUCH THINGS AS "INDEPENDENT THOUGHT". OUR FRAME OF REFERENCE IS EITHER IMPLICIT OR EXPLICIT. WHEN IT STAYS IMPLICIT IT CERTAINLY CULTIVATES AN ILLUSION OF INDEPENDENCE REASSURING FOR THE SELF, BUT SURPRISING DISCOVERIES ARE OFTEN AT THE CORNER OF THE STREET, LIKE OUR "OPINION" WRITTEN ALMOST WORD FOR WORD (IF NOT IN A BETTER FORMULATION!) IN SOME FREAK PHILOSOPHER OF TWO OR THREE CENTURIES AGO... A FAIR LESSON OF MODESTY, GENERALLY. ON THESE MATTERS I AM DEFENITELY A SPINOZIST: "FREEDOM" AND "INDEPENDENCE" OF THOUGHT OR ACTION IS JUST THE MANIFESTATION OF THE IGNORANCE OF OUR DETERMINATIONS. FOR THE MOMENT ALL THAT I SEE IS THAT YOU PROCLAIM MY LACK OF ORIGINALITY WITHOUT CORROBORATING IT. > What I was wondering was what experience do you have with religions > besides bookworming through a subjective though vast selection of works? > A part of my formation is anthropology and from that point of view I > very strongly believe in participating observation. My quotes come from > my field experimentation. Remember something first: I am faithless, > creedless and to some extent godless. IF YOU ARE FAITHLESS AND GODLESS, IT WILL HAVE TO SHOW UP NOT ONLY THROUGH YOUR EXPLICIT LIP SERVICE BUT ALSO IN THE INNER ECONOMY OF YOUR ARGUMENTATION. IF YOU SAY "I AM FAITHLESS" BUT YOU ARGUE AS A CHURCHY, AS A CHURCHY YOU WILL BE DELT WITH. I RELY ON WHAT YOU DO, NOT ON WHAT YOU CLAIM OR BELIEVE OF YOURSELF. NOW, FOR THE SECOND TIME IN A ROW YOU QUALIFY MY ARGUMENTS AS "SUBJECTIVE", WHEN I CLAIM I MADE A DESCRIPTION OF THE OBJECTIVE MOVEMENT OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. ONE CAN AGREE OR DISAGREE WITH THE MOVEMENT ANIMISM-THEISM-DEISM-ATHEISM, BUT IT IS DIFFICULT TO CALL IT A SUBJECTIVE HYPOTHESIS ON A SET OF SUBJECTIVE OPINIONS... THE FACT THAT I BELIEVE IN IT PERSONNALLY DOES NOT MAKE OF MY ANALYSIS A SUBJECTIVE APPROACH. A SUBJECTIVE WAY TO ARGUE CONSISTS RATHER IN FOCUSSING ON THE SUBJECT, OR THE SELF ,RATHER THAN ON OBJECTIVE REALITY, OR THE HYPOTHESIS ATTEMPTING TO DESCRIBE IT. ACTUALLY, YOU PROVIDE AN HONEST EXAMPLE OF A SUBJECTIVE APPROACH BY YOUR CURRENT FOCUS ON YOUR AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL CREDENCIALS... AND YOUR QUASI-COMPULSIVE CLAIM FOR MINE. TO THAT EFFECT YOU CAN READ MY BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY IN THE FOUNTAIN. WHY ASK FOR MORE? MAYBE BECAUSE YOU HYPERTROPHY YOUR ATTENTION ON THE ARGUING SUBJECT MORE THAN ON THE OBJECTIVE REALITY OF HIS ARGUMENTATION! FOR THE MOMENT YOU TALK ABOUT YOURSELF (AND QUESTION ABOUT MYSELF, MY PERSONNAL SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCES, ETC) INSTEAD OF TALKING ABOUT YOUR OBJECT. THAT IS A SUBJECTIVE APPROACH, IN THE TRUE SENSE OF THE WORD. IT IS MY CLAIM THAT YOU CALL ME "SUBJECTIVE' WITHOUT PROVIDING ANY DEMONSTRATION WHATSOEVER OF MY SUBJECTIVISM... > To me god's relevancy come from its signifying position as a cognition > because there is absolutely nothing for or against it that can be said > safely besides the fact that when you examine the concept from a > semiotical point of view, it falls into a category of cognition which > will potentially allow any other cognition to continue the string of > thought, (though not in the same mind). I call the concept allowing me > to categorize it in such a way "density of signification". That density > is manifested in the relation between object and sign: a table is a > table, a picture of you isn't really you but represents you nonetheless, > the sun is the sun but can also mean truth (Pierce and Eco for the > relationship between sign and object but not for the density concept > which I have not found anywhere but to say frankly never saw the point > of looking for it. Suffice it to say it appears operational to me, > personal epistemological point of view again). THE OPERATIONAL APPEARANCE AND THE REFERENCE TO PIERCE (THANK YOU FOR IT!) RINGS TO ME THE OLD BELL OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF PRAGMATISM. WILLIAM JAMES KEPT GOD IN HIS SYSTEM BECAUSE IT WAS USEFUL AS A SOCIAL COHESIVE SUBSTANCE. YOU CALL YOURSELF GODLESS. I CALL YOUR POSITION THE ONE OF DEISM. GOD DOES NOT ACT OBJECTIVELY, BUT WE KEEP IT AS A HANDY "SEMIOLOGICAL" HYPOTHESIS FOR ITS VALUABLE THERAPEUTICAL AND SOPORIFIC ("OPERATIONAL" IN YOUR FLASHY TERMINOLOGY) QUALITIES. > That density determines also the potential quality and abstraction of the > thought patterns it will produce. When I said typical, I meant that whenever > I speak to a confirmed atheist (I become very religious at such times) the > same behavior patterns almost always come forward and that would be fool > proof coherency and crystallization of conviction in such a way that > contradiction cannot possibly be left without answer. Typical because > such strong bearings on a particular topic subjects the human mind > potential cognitive dissonance (psychological concept: two contradictory > cognitions happening at the same time in the same mind, and the > processes used to resolve the dilemma). This comes as a consequence of > the endeavor and the only way to avoid it is not to give a damn. Though > the contents of your analysis may be original, its container (motivation > and deployment pattern) is typical. AN ATHEIST BEHAVES LIKE AN ATHEIST AND ITS TENDENCIES TO BEHAVE LIKE ANOTHER ATHEIST ARE VERY HIGH. THANK YOU FOR THAT CRUCIAL INFORMATION! I COULD SAY THE SAME THING OF A POODLE OR OF AN ELVIS IMPERSONATOR, BUT YOU HAVE A POINT: I CANNOT DENY SUCH A MERCILESS TRUISM. > Quoting· Let us admit after Durkheim (I cannot avoid them all it seems (SPINOZA, SPINOZA HA, HA, HA! - P.L.) > that religion is a coherent system of beliefs and practices· the rest of > the definition isn't worth any shit but that of tearing it down. But > that first part gives religion something in common with many other > institutions not to say all of them. Bearing that in mind, you were > mislead when you thought I was using a gimmick of accusing the > irreligious of being religious. Again I use the nuance between content > and container, between objects and the way they are organized. Now, tell > me seriously that you do not speak from the position of a coherent > system of beliefs and practices. You referred to brother atheists and > certainly are using the admitted academical protocol· The Jehovah > Witness banging on your door comes to you straight to the point: > fundamentalist application of the contents of the Bible. He knows he has > about 2 minutes before you kick him out, he's been there before but > he'll try and hammer the word of god into your mind in one mighty blow. > He knows he does not have time for interminable developments and that > most probably the person he is addressing has not the mind for it. > Because don't delude yourself, it takes a hell of a lot more imagination > to maintain coherency in such a thought system because it hinges on the > most abstract of concept, god, than it takes to maintain coherency in > appeasing one's furious routine· Consequently, I have indeed found > closed minds in religious people (and in many others), but certainly > never downright morons. Of course, most of the faithful can be called > foolish, but never can you say the same of the person that has taken the > time to write on the topic of went out of his way to tell you about it. > And that is to me empirical certainty. THE HIGH COHERENCE OF CERTAIN DELIRIUS (PARANOIAC DELIRIUS, FOR EXAMPLE) IS NO WARRANT OF THEIR VERACITY. A CONCEPTUAL BODY CAN EASILY BE COHERENT AND FALSE: THE GEOCENTRIC SYSTEM OF ARISTOTLE, THE TOURBILLON THEORY OF DESCARTES, SO ON SO FORTH... > As for your disregarded thinkers, I know most of them though I have not > read all of them and it so happens you will find some of the same > arguments in the texts of many mystics over the world (the sufi, the > upanishads, our own mystics and even the prophets of the old testament > hold the same grudges toward religion) MATERIALISM CAN BE SEEN IN SACRED TEXT. I NEVER DENIED THAT. THE BOOK OF SOLOMON, AS AN EXAMPLE, IS A FULL AND EXPLICIT PRESENTATION OF THE DOCTRINE OF EPICURUS. I NEVER OBJECTED TO THAT POSSIBILITY. WHO ARE YOU ARGUING WITH? > The power of the clerics· Again you simplify· "Power of the clerics" as > a sentence is a mistake. A part of the power belongs to the institution > and is distributed to its enactors in the form of authority. When the > role of the institution becomes pointless so becomes the authority it > conferred to its enactors. What power the cleric personally has remains > his own. For most people, in my country, religion is pointless. > Nevertheless, there remains statistically a permanent 10% of the > population for which it still signifies something. This goes true for > most parts of the world where death is not the penalty of faithfulness > and even then. But curiously enough, when you speak (have you ever done > so?) with clerics some of them contradict that fact because they are > faced with a greater participation percentage· There are many factors > coming into play, of course, education, average age, but also, the > personal charisma of the cleric which is a power he would have even if > he were a politician or a salesman. Sorry to shatter your dreams but > religion is not dead and won't die because that 10% is comprised of the > grown up faithful and they live on and change the world in much the same > manner than the 10 % of the academical riff-raff that makes it to > emitting positions· The question is: even though the fight against > religion seems won and over does that mean it is a consequence of > "evolution" (one of the deadliest concepts man has ever created)? I > doubt that anything but a sophism can come to that conclusion· What > conclusion can be drawn on the accuracy of religion I cannot begin to > fathom? You may address the problem all you want, what can you hope to > achieve? Considering the fact that there are 3000 religions in the USA > and about 900 in my home province (to say nothing of the rest of the > world) you'd better get started right away if you wish to demonstrate > their inaccuracy by discrediting them by their faith content. If you > want to discredit them as containers of signification you'll have do the > same with every other coherent thought system· THE ARGUMENT OF THE GREAT NUMBER OF RELIGIONS! YOU SPOKE TOO MUCH WITH CLERICS, OBVIOUSLY. HOW MANY CASTLES IN FRANCE AND ENGLAND. THOUSANDS. BUT FEODALITY IS OVER ANYWAYS! THESE CONSTRUCTIONS ARE ALL MUSEUMS! THE SOCIAL ORDER THAT CONSTITUTED THEM IS GONE WITH THE HISTORICAL WIND. THE "MULTIPLICITY OF RELIGION" (ANY BOZO PUTTING A RADISH ON A PEDESTAL IS CALLED A RELIGIOUS LEADER!) IS A BLATANT INDICATION OF THE FRAGMENTATION, THE DWINDLING OF THE RELIGIOUS PARADIGM, A CLEAR SYMPTOM OF DECLINE. > I am sorry to say this but what kind of argument is that: "the point of > view of the idealist philo vs the materialist" Does that mean something > akin to: I am so sorry sir but us protestant don't give credit to what > the pope is saying. They have tried to feed me such notions through the > nose but I fail to see the relevancy of name tags appointed to groups > who were not even necessarily aware they were groups to begin with. > Could it be that your are trying to derive some sort of authority by > claiming kinship with post mortemly institutionalized philosophical > churches? THERE ARE TWO FUNDAMENTAL PHILOSOPHICAL STREAM. YOU ARE WITH ONE OR WITH THE OTHER. THIS IS NOT A TAG, BUT A DEMONSTRABLE INTELLECTUAL FACT. > THAT IS AN OLD PREACHER TRICK WHICH WAS ALREADY MAKING ME FEELING > SLEEPYWHEN USED BY THE OLD FRENCH CANADIAN VILLAGE PRIEST OF MY > CHILDHOOD. THE FALSE EQUATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND BELIEF. > RELIGION IS NOT "BELIEF" AT LARGE, BUT RATHER A SUB-SET OF IT. IT IS THE > BELIEF IN THE OBJECTIVE EXISTENCE OF ONE OR SEVERAL SUPREME BEINGS > CREATORS AMD "MODERATORS' OF THE UNIVERSE, PERPETUATORS OF ITS COHESION, > > You missed the real equation hidden in the supposed equation between > religion and belief. The real equation was between man and belief. > Remember I do not believe there is any other knowledge than what is > obtained through experience, ALL the rest is belief. What we are doing > right now would be an exercise in futility should we think any > "knowledge" is to be derived from it. I am stating beliefs and you are > too except you back them up with the beliefs of others. As for your > definition of religion there are a few problems with it stricto sensu > for the whole wide world provides quite a few counter examples but it > bring an interesting question to mind: "what are the other sub-sets of > belief?" NOW YOU APPEAR AS AN EMPIRICIST, DAVID HUME WOULD PLEASE YOU: NO KNOWLEDGE, ONLY BELIEF. THAT COULD BE ARGUED AGAINST THOROUGHLY. I MIGHT DO IT LATER. LET JUST SAY FOR THE MOMENT THAT EMPIRICISM AND PRAGMATISM ARE TWO IDEOLOGICAL BROTHERS. PHILOSOPHICAL IDEALISM IS THEIR NURISHING MAID. YOU ARE PHILOSOPHICALY COHERENT, MY FRIEND!. > As for the gnoseological accuracy of experience, damn not necessarily > mystic, of course you cannot admit it, fuck, you have not experienced it > but you cannot deny the simple fact that putting your hand into fire > will give you some pretty gnoseological certainty that it burns and that > afterwards no amount of arguments will ever make you believe the > contrary because then you KNOW it burns. THANK YOU FOR PROVIDING MY ANSWER: > Of course (THAT OF COURSE DOES NOT PROTECT YOU FROM THE NECESSITY TO ANSWER TO THAT ARGUMENT:) > that experience cannot be equated in contents with a mystical > experience but it nonetheless functions in the same way (NO, NO, NO. I DO NOT TAKE THAT VERBAL NON DEMONSTRATIVE TRICK). > You seem also to forget that we are not on different sides of the fence. > My own motivations for studying religion are exactly the same as > Voltaire's bewilderment with Ezechiel eating shit out of a plate. I am > also a French Canadian and I have suffered from the stupidity of our > parish priests nuns in private schools etc etc etc. Simply, instead of > rallying myself to a philosophical atheist church, I took upon myself to > see from inside, to try to witness that strange experience which will > forever elude me as enacted in others. Do not quotation mark my > "specialist" until you have stopped being a prophet in your own country. > I can say truthfully that if you had been a convinced believer I would > have been as wordy· Could you? WHEN I WROTE THE DOOM OF RELIGION I WAS NOT A FRENCH CANADIAN. I WAS A HUMAN BEING. I AM NOT FIGHTING YOU AS A SUBJECT OR AS A PERSON, MY FRENCH CANADIAN BROTHER IN ETHNO-CULTURAL OPPRESSION. I AM RATHER CONTRIBUTING TO THE STRUGGLE AGAINST THE OBJECTIVE SYSTEMS OF REPRESENTATIONS THAT OPERATE THROUGH YOU AS I SAW THEM IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF YOUR ARGUMENTATION. DONT BE SO SUBJECTIVIST, NICOLAS, MA BONNE GANACHE! > Farewell, SEE YOU SOON, AS YOU SAY. I AM STILL WAITING FOR A REFUTATION OF THE CONTENT OF THE DOOM OF RELIGION ITSELF... ------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Sat, 25 Oct 1997 15:16:08 -0400 From: Nicolas Pattee Subject: (demande de prŽcisions You asked for a refutation of your objective account of the evolution of the god and religion concepts into atheism. Reportedly, the game has already been played out and the conclusion imposes itself on our reality. The modern mind, freed from the manacles of irrationality, embraces more and more the ideology of atheism, that being that there is no such thing as God. Such state of enlightenment has been painfully reached through successive stages, which proceed from one another by modifying the space man is allowed to occupy in the world and by reducing progressively the space the god concept is allowed to occupy in collective representation. Nowadays, there remains mainly the dwindling theist position while most god addicts are now hooked on to deism and the forerunners are atheists driven onward by the tentative examples of a few visionary predecessors. These atheists form the true yolk of intellectual rigor and are bound to sweep away the last remnants of the churchy heresy as they shed light on the uselessness of religion and god as organizing factors of human consciousness and social cohesion. Is this synthesis correct? If not complete it. Also, I am not that much a fan of yours yet to wish to undertake yet another of your tedious reading. So, please explain in palatable words your distinction between ontology and gnoseology. I fucked off and enjoyed it very much thank you. Once I have the necessary precisions, I shall proceed with the refutation of your text. Though as I said, it is not entirely untrue but demands, screams and supplicates for nuances and subtle readjustment before it can properly cum out of your ivory tower with any hope of fertilizing anyone or anything but your own flock of pews! See ya! P.S. Also, should you find yourself idle while I prepare the final assault, try to answer that question you so deftly avoided: What experience do you have with religions ans religious persons? ------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Sat, 25 Oct 1997 20:52:48 -0400 (EDT) From: Paul Laurendeau Subject: Re: (demande de prŽcisions > You asked for a refutation of your objective account of the evolution of > the god and religion concepts into atheism. Reportedly, the game has > already been played out and the conclusion imposes itself on our > reality. The modern mind, freed from the manacles of irrationality, > embraces more and more the ideology of atheism, that being that there is > no such thing as God. I CERTAINLY DID NOT ADOPT THAT FLASHY POSITIVISTIC VISION. I DESCRIBED THE STEPS OF THE DECLINE OF RELIGION AND RELIGIOSITY WITHOUT TAKING ANY STAND ON THE "FREEDOM FROM IRRATIONALITY" IT MAY OR MAY NOT INVOLVE (THERE CAN BE NON-RELIGIOUS MANIFESTATIONS OF IRRATIONALITY - I DID NOT ADRESS THAT MATTER). YOU PRESENT ATHEISM AS A POSITIVE IDEOLOGY THAT ONE MIGHT EMBRACE OR ADHERE TO. THAT IS VERY WRONG. ATHEISM IS A NEGATIVE FRAME OF MIND. A- IN ATHEISM IS PRIVATIVE. WE ARE DESCRIBING A FADE OUT, A DECLINE, A BLURR AWAY! THE HEADS ARE EMPTYING THEMSELVES OF THEOLOGICAL REFERENCES AND CULT-LIKE PERSPECTIVES. THE PHENOMENON IS NOT DUE TO ANY POSITIVE REVELATION WHATSOEVER BUT TO A DECOMPOSITION OF A CERTAIN VISION OF THE WORLD WHERE THE DIVINE USE TO HAVE A ROLE. FLAT DERELICTION IS WHAT IS DESCRIBED HERE. YOU CONTINUE TO THINK ATHEISM AS SOME PECULAR TYPE OF FAITH IN SOMETHING, WHEREAS IT IS A NO-SOMETHING (YOUR DEFINITION OF IT CATCHES EXACTLY WHAT THAT THING IS). > Such state of enlightenment has been painfully reached through > successive stages, which proceed from one another by modifying the space > man is allowed to occupy in the world and by reducing progressively the > space the god concept is allowed to occupy in collective representation. > Nowadays, there remains mainly the dwindling theist position while most > god addicts are now hooked on to deism and the forerunners are atheists > driven onward by the tentative examples of a few visionary predecessors. > These atheists form the true yolk of intellectual rigor and are bound to > sweep away the last remnants of the churchy heresy as they shed light on > the uselessness of religion and god as organizing factors of human > consciousness and social cohesion. ONCE AGAIN I DOUBT THAT SUCH A POSITIVISTIC READING IS TO BE DEDUCTED FROM MY TEXT. AT THE END OF YOUR LAST EXCHANGE YOU SPOKE OF AN "ATHEIST CHURCH", YOU NOW GIVE ME THE "CHURCHY HERESY" AND THE "VISIONNARY PREDECESSORS". YOU CONTINUE TO USE THE OLD GIMMICK OF PROJECTING RELIGIOUS CATEGORIES ON A NON RELIGIOUS ANALYSIS. THESE THREE PLAY-ON-WORDS ARE RIDICULOUS ATTEMPTS TO HAM INSTEAD OF ARGUYING. "ATHEIST CHURCH" MEANS NOTHING, IT IS AN OXYMORON, JUST AS "SQUARE CIRCLE". NOWHERE IN MY TEXT DID I, AS YOU PATHETICALY TRY TO MAKE ME DO HERE, PRESENT ATHEISTS AS PROPHETS OF A NEW TRUTH, SO YOU CAN KEEP YOUR "VISIONNARY PREDECESSORS" FOR YOURSELF. "CHURCHY HERESY" IS RIDICULOUS. AN HERESY IS THE ADOPTION OF A VARIANTE OF AN INITIAL RELIGIOUS SYSTEM AS SEEN FROM THE STRICTLY REACTIONNARY POINT OF VIEW OF THE TENNANTS OF THE OLD ONE FROM WHICH IT EMERGES. IF THE REACTIONNARY OPTION REMAINS STRONGER WE SAY "HERESY" TO DESCRIBE THE FAILED ATTEMPT OF REDEFENITION CARRIED BY THE VARIANTE. IF THE "HERESY" IS STRONGER, THE WORD CEASES TO BE USED AND WE END UP WITH A RELIGIOUS SCHISM. YOU KNOW THAT PERFECTLY, BUT YOU ARE STILL TRYING TO MAKE PHILOSOPHY WITH THEOLOGICAL CONCEPTS. THE FUNDAMENTAL GIMMICK BEING TO TRY TO RE-RELIGIONIZE AN INTELLECTUAL AND MATERIAL MOVEMENT EXTERNAL TO ANY RELIGIOUS REPRESENTATION, AND CONSEQUENTLY THE ONLY ONE APT TO DESCRIBED ITS DOOM > Is this synthesis correct? If not complete it. IT IS VERY POOR. WHERE ARE MY ARGUMENTS? SO, CF ANNIHILATION FOUNTAIN #2. > Also, I am not that much a fan of yours yet to wish to undertake yet > another of your tedious reading. So, please explain in palatable words > your distinction between ontology and gnoseology. I fucked off and > enjoyed it very much thank you. BEING MORE AND MORE CERTAIN THAT YOU ARE AN EMPIRICIST, I UNDERSTAND YOUR HESITATIONS TOWARD THESE ONE. ONTOLOGY: DOCTRINE OF BEING. GNOSEOLOGY: DOCTRINE OF KNOWLEDGE. EXAMPLE. YOU TAKE A NOTION: SAY THE IDEA OF JUSTICE. QUESTION: IS JUSTICE AN ONTOLOGICAL OR A GNOSEOLOGICAL CONCEPT. IF YOU CONSIDER THE NOTION OF JUSTICE AS ONTOLOGICAL, YOU CLAIM THAT JUSTICE IS A CATEGORY OF EXISTENCE, THAT SOME FORM OF IMMANENT JUSTICE EXISTS IN THE WORLD INDEPENDENTLY FROM OUR CONSCIOUSNESS. YOU BELIEVE THAT WE EVENTUALLY PAY OR GET REWARDED FOR EVERYTHING DE FACTO. IF YOU CONSIDER THE NOTION OF JUSTICE AS GNOSEOLOGICAL, YOU CLAIM THAT JUSTICE IS A CATEGORY OF KNOWLEDGE, AN INTELLECTUAL NOTION SUCEPTIBLE TO VARY WITH THE CHANGES OF HISTORY AND TOTALLY DETERMINATED BY THE EXISTENCE AND CONFIGURATION OF HUMAN SOCIETIES. AN IDEA SUBORDINATED TO THE SET OF BELIEF OR KNOWLEDGE WE HAVE OF THE WORLD. IS THAT SO COMPLICATED? IF SO CF MY PART IN THE FOUNTAIN #1. > Once I have the necessary precisions, I shall proceed with the > refutation of your text. Though as I said, it is not entirely untrue but > demands, screams and supplicates for nuances and subtle readjustment > before it can properly cum out of your ivory tower with any hope of > fertilizing anyone or anything but your own flock of pews! SO ARE YOU GOING TO PRODUCE A GENUINE OPPOSITIVE REFUTATION OR A SIMPLE AMPLIFICATION OR REFINEMENT OF MY ARGUMENTATION??? AND WHAT IS YOUR OWN TOWER MADE OF: GOLD, PLATINUM, OR SIMPLY IVORY TOO (SINCE WE ARE INDULGING OURSELVES TO INTERACT IN THE SAME SPHERES)? > See ya! > > P.S. > Also, should you find yourself idle while I prepare the final assault, > try to answer that question you so deftly avoided: What experience do > you have with religions ans religious persons? THE STANDARD EXPERIENCE OF AN ORDINARY CITIZEN OF THE WESTERN WORLD AT THE END OF THE MILLENIUM. I MET BELIEVERS, I MET ATHEISTS. I INTERACTED WITH CATHOLICS, PROTESTANTS, MUSLIMS, SIKHS, AND BUDDHIST. WHAT ELSE DO YOU WANT TO KNOW? BE MORE SPECIFIC? ------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Fri, 31 Oct 1997 19:43:37 -0500 From: Nicolas Pattee Subject: Final Being a very busy person, I seem to have lost interest in the debate. The main reasons for this are that it seems to me you have failed to adress the most important parts of my argumentation to focus on rather insignificant parts. Is also seems to me you were in no way paying it the attention I gave it myself. Though you may not wish to be religionnized, you nevertheless evolve in the field of belief. I CANNOT see what argument you can bring on that save the old myth of objectivity or that ludicrous notion of knowledge. I claim your subjectivism because there is absolutely no way it can be avoided for anyone unless they are delusionnal and believe themselves objective. If you read our texts again, you will notice you contradict youself on that point, "ignorance of our own deterninism" "I wrote as a human being" Seems to me I would have to undertake the tedious task of teaching you that objectivity is a myth... As for the dwindling of religion, I would rather adress the current phenomenon as a category translation. My own definition of religion is apparently less restrictive than yours and I doubt you could so easily maintain your position should you be prepared to accept my definition. but then again, that would take too long to be spilled on someone as set in their beliefs as you are. Open your TV on Much Music. Though I doubt you have the eye for it, try and notice the multitude of religious inputs you`ll find there... I am sorry to say but from my point of view, even though you can call it marketing, I call wall-mart morning pep-talks W-A-L-L tadidaa! M-A-R-T ritual behavior whose purpose is intensification of belief. Though you may call it a uniform, I call a judges regalia the means by which he or she imposes respect and fear and that my friend are both proprieties of an object called sacred. the example of category transferal are... Legion haha! I see fragmentation as the survival of religion not as its dwindling, much like stepping on mercury. Religion as a mass uniting factor is truly dwindling but look hard and you will notice that ALL mass uniting institutions are dwindling. Isn't that called postmodernity? Surely you have heard that trendish word? I adress the mechanics. I believe you just don't like the word religion to be applied to anything else than your own conception because it becomes suddenly harder to deflate. I said it was reductionnist and I maintain that position though I will not try to expand your horizons. BECAUSE, MY FRIEND, IT HAS BECOME APPARENT THAT NEITHER OF US ARE GOING TO CHANGE POSITION OR HAVE ANY INTENTION TO DO SO. Also, from the point of view of cognitive dissonance, the easy parry that no valid argument was given does not hold because in essence, there will always be a way to circumvent it and that, my friend, is religious behavior... Like it or not... See ya! P.S. As for your personnal experience, I just wanted to know if you had ever bothered to step out of your way and go see inside... It appears not. You are right, I am probably an empiricist, and from that position, I believe we cannot relate for all my experience tell me the contrary and it appears it would be necessary for you to have at least some prolonged contact with a religion in order to understand my position. This refers to my own incapacity of transmission. Having been there, a lot and in many places, I say you don't even begin to understand the phenomenon you adress with your classy definitions. All I see there is yet again an evolutionnist theory whose hidden purpose is to glorify us occidentals to pole position ( I just cannot admit that Indians who remain polytheists and are nevertheless authorities in computer dynamics, thanks to very old Panini`s sanskrit grammar, are less evolved than we are). And to use one of your own gimmicks, don't even try to say the contrary cause you'll be ignoring your own determinisms ------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Fri, 31 Oct 1997 13:20:39 -0500 (EST) From: Paul Laurendeau Subject: THE FINAL DUD OF SAINT NICOLAS NOT YELLING (NOT IMPRESSED ENOUGH FOR THAT) > Being a very busy person, I seem to have lost interest in the debate. > The main reasons for this are that it seems to me you have failed to > adress the most important parts of my argumentation to focus on rather > insignificant parts. Is also seems to me you were in no way paying it > the attention I gave it myself. THIS SUDDEN LACK OF INTEREST HAPPENS AT AN INTERESTING MOMENT IN THE EXCHANGE: EXACTLY WHEN THE "FINAL" ASSAULT OF YOUR REFUTATION WAS SUPPOSED TO STORM OVER. YOU COULD HAVE WASTED LESS ENERGY WITH YOUR MAMBO-JAMBOISH PERORAISONS ABOUT PIERCE AND SO ON EARLIER. BUT THAT IS OKAY, IT WAS ENTERTAINING TO READ... LET NOW INQUIRY INTO YOUR FINAL DUD. > Though you may not wish to be religionnized, you nevertheless evolve in > the field of belief. I CANNOT see what argument you can bring on that > save the old myth of objectivity or that ludicrous notion of knowledge. > I claim your subjectivism because there is absolutely no way it can be > avoided for anyone unless they are delusionnal and believe themselves > objective. If you read our texts again, you will notice you contradict > youself on that point, "ignorance of our own deterninism" "I wrote as a > human being" Seems to me I would have to undertake the tedious task of > teaching you that objectivity is a myth... RIGHT. THE STANDARD EMPIRICIST ATTACKS AGAINST THE POSSIBILITY TO STABILIZE AN OBJECTIVE KNOWLEDGE. BISHOP BERKELEY IN PERSON (I WILL POSSIBLY WRITE SOMETHING LATER IN THE FOUNTAIN ON THIS...). HEAR CAREFULLY THE ANSWER. IF OBJECTIVITY IS A MYTH IT MEANS THAT IT IS EITHER TOTALLY OR PARTIALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO STABILIZE AN OBJECTIVE KNOWLEDGE. IF YOU ENTERTAIN THE HYPOTHESIS THAT IT IS TOTALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO STABILIZE ANY OBJECTIVE KNOWLEDGE YOU ENCOUNTER SEVERAL PRACTICAL DIFFICULTIES. WHAT MAKES YOU OPEN YOUR UMBRELLA AT THE RIGHT MOMENT WHEN IT RAINS, WHAT PERMITS YOU TO DISTINGUISH A GLASS OF COKE FROM A GLASS OF 7UP, OR EVEN WHAT PERMITS YOU TO OBSERVE THAT I DIRSREGARD WHAT YOU CONSIDER IMPORTANT. INFORMATIONS GRASPED ABOUT THE OBJECTIVE WORLD, COMING FLATLY THROUGH YOUR SENSES OR THROUGH A CONGLOMERATE OF PERCEPTION AND REASONNING. HELVETIUS USED TO SAY THAT EVERYBODY IS SEEING THE MILK WHITE NOT RED, SOME CAN SEE IT LIGHTER, DARKER, OFF OR BRIGHT, THERE IS A CERTAIN FLUCTUATION BUT THERE IS A STABILIZED ELEMENT. BACON, VERY MISTAKENLY CONSIDERED AS THE FATHER OF EMPIRICISM, USED TO SAY THAT SENSES ARE AN UNEVEN MIRROR. AH, AH, AH! "UNEVEN" WILL YOU SAY... BUT STILL "A MIRROR", WILL I ANSWER. ADD ALSO THE IMPACT OF THE COLLECTIVE. IF EVERYBODY SEES THE AIRPLANE IN THE SKY BUT YOU, YOU WILL PEACEFULLY CONCLUDE THAT YOU MISSED THAT PERCEPTION OF A REAL OBJECT WHEN EVERYBODY WAS SCREAMING "THERE OVER THE BARN!", AND NOT THAT YOUR GROUP OF PEERS IS A BUNCH OF MYTHOCRATIC OBJECTIVISTS. THE TOTALLY SHIZOPHRENIC UNIVERSE WHERE WE HAVE NO PERCEPTION WHATSOEVER OF OBJECTIVE REALITY IS TO BE TOSS ASIDE. THEN, LET ENTERTAIN THE SECOND HYPOTHESIS. OBJECTIVITY IS A MYTH BECAUSE IT IS PARTIALLY, OR EVEN MAINLY, IMPOSSIBLE TO STABILIZE AN OBJECTIVE KNOWLEDGE. FAR MORE ACCURATE, AND MORE IN CONFORMITY WITH THE GENUINE NOTION OF MYTH: NOT AN INTEGRAL FALSITY BUT A DISTORTED LORE MIXING THE HISTORICAL AND THE LEGENDARY. BUT YOUR CLAIM IS NOW IN JEOPARDY DUE TO ONE OF ITS FLATLY DIRECT CONSEQUENCES. IF OBJECTIVITY IS PARTIALLY, OR EVEN MAINLY, DISTORTED, IT HAS TO BE PARTIALLY, EVEN MINIMALLY, ACCURATE AT THE SAME TIME. 'COURSE! THAT IS WHAT PARTIAL AND IMCOMPLETE IS ALL ABOUT, SWEETIE! TO DENY THE INTEGRALITY OF OBJECTIVITY IS TO ACKNOWLEDGE ITS LOCAL EXISTENCE, THE CATEGORY YOU WERE TRYING TO REJECT FROM THE SYSTEM IS BOUNCING BACK ON YOU. A FLAWED MACHINE IS STILL A MACHINE. IT IS A WRECK, BUT THE STRAIGHT FACT THAT IT DOES NOT WORK WELL CONFIRMS THAT IT WORKS. AND THE MINUT WE CAN KNOW OBJECTIVELY EVEN A LITTLE BIT AND IN A DISTORTED WAY, THAT BIT CAN BE BIGGER OR SMALLER, IMPROVED OR DETERIORATED. THE POSSIBILITY OF THE PROGRESS OF OBJECTIVE KNOWLEDGE, WHATEVER YOUR IRRATIONALIST HYSTERIA CAN BE ABOUT IT, IS UNAVOIDABLE. IN OTHER TERMS, THE MINUT YOU CANNOT LIVE WITH THE CERTAINLY THAT WE ARE INTEGRAL AND COMPLETE IGNORANTS OF THE OBJECTIVE WORLD, ROUND AND INERT PEBBLES ON THE BEACH OF EXISTENCE, YOU HAVE TO ACKNOWLEDGE OBJECTIVITY AND YOUR COLLAPSE IS UNAVOIDABLE. > As for the dwindling of religion, I would rather adress the current > phenomenon as a category translation. My own definition of religion is > apparently less restrictive than yours and I doubt you could so easily > maintain your position should you be prepared to accept my definition. > but then again, that would take too long to be spilled on someone as set > in their beliefs as you are. THAT IS CALLED THE CONVENTIONNALIST ARGUMENT. IT GOES AS FOLLOWS. IN MY TERMINOLOGICAL CONVENTION "IDIOT" HAS A DIFFERENT MEANING. IT MEANS "PERSON". THEREFORE, DUE TO MY "APPARENTLY LESS RESTRICTIVE" NOTION OF IDIOCY, I AM SIMPLY REFERRING TO YOUR EXISTENCE AS A PERSON WHEN I CALL YOU AN "IDIOT". IF YOU ARE NOT WILLING TO FLIP ENGLISH LANGUAGE UP SIDE DOWN TO ACCOMDATE MY LITTLE CONCEPTIONS, IT IS BECAUSE YOU ARE "TOO SET IN YOUR BELIEFS" > Open your TV on Much Music. Though I doubt you have the eye for it, try > and notice the multitude of religious inputs you`ll find there... I am > sorry to say but from my point of view, even though you can call it > marketing, I call wall-mart morning pep-talks W-A-L-L tadidaa! M-A-R-T > ritual behavior whose purpose is intensification of belief. Though you > may call it a uniform, I call a judges regalia the means by which he or > she imposes respect and fear and that my friend are both proprieties of > an object called sacred. the example of category transferal are... > Legion haha! I see fragmentation as the survival of religion not as its > dwindling, much like stepping on mercury. Religion as a mass uniting > factor is truly dwindling but look hard and you will notice that ALL > mass uniting institutions are dwindling. Isn't that called > postmodernity? Surely you have heard that trendish word? THE DISTINCTION IS TO BE MADE HERE BETWEEN RELIGION AND RELIGIOSITY. APPLYING IT STRICTLY TO RELIGIOSITY AS A SPECIFIC TYPE OF GNOSEOLOGICAL SENSITIVITY, I AM READY TO FOLLOW YOU PARTLY HERE (WITH SEVERAL RESERVATIONS: WHAT YOU SAY HERE IS TOO GROSS AND SIMPLISTIC). BUT THAT CONFIRMS MAGISTRALLY MY VIEWS. RELIGIOSITY, OR RELIGIOUS SENSITIVITY, SHOWS A CERTAIN TENDENCY (OVERESTIMATED BY YOU, BUT TO EXIST PARTIALLY IS TO EXIT, AS I SAID. SO, FINE...) TO MANIFEST ITSELF OUTSIDE OF THE CULT EXPLICITELY DELIVERED TO A GOD, AND IN INTEGRALLY SECULARIAN SECTORS (WALL-MART!). THAT IS A BLATANT AND FLAMBOYANT SYMPTOM OF THE DOOM OF ITS ORIGINAL TRADITIONNAL CHANNEL OF MANIFESTATION: RELIGION(S). > I adress the mechanics. I believe you just don't like the word religion > to be applied to anything else than your own conception because it > becomes suddenly harder to deflate. I said it was reductionnist and I > maintain that position though I will not try to expand your horizons. DO YOU LIKE THE WORD "IDIOT" APPLIED TO A "PERSON". TO PLAY MONOPOLY WITH THE TERMINOLOGY BY SPECULATING AT THE STOCK EXCHANGE OF TERMINOLOGICAL CONVENTIONS WILL NOT PROTECT YOUR ARGUMENTATION FROM ITS BANKRUPCY... > BECAUSE, MY FRIEND, IT HAS BECOME APPARENT THAT NEITHER OF US ARE GOING > TO CHANGE POSITION OR HAVE ANY INTENTION TO DO SO (YOUR TEXT - P.L.). THANK YOU FOR REVEALING AT LAST YOUR DOGMATIC FOUNDATIONS. AS FAR AS I AM CONCERNED, I CHANGE MY MIND THE VERY MINUT I AM CONVINCED. I DO NOT PLAY "DEVILS ADVOCATE" JUST FOR THE PLEASURE OF ARGUYING, WITHOUT RISQUING THE TOTALITY OF MY CONCEPTIONS IN THE EXCHANGE. YOU DO. > Also, from the point > of view of cognitive dissonance, the easy parry that no valid argument > was given does not hold because in essence, there will always be a way > to circumvent it and that, my friend, is religious behavior... Like it > or not... TERMINOLOGICAL DISTORTION. > See ya! THANK YOU FOR BEING GENUINE AND EXPLICIT. > P.S. > As for your personnal experience, I just wanted to know if you had ever > bothered to step out of your way and go see inside... It appears not. > You are right, I am probably an empiricist, and from that position, I > believe we cannot relate for all my experience tell me the contrary and > it appears it would be necessary for you to have at least some prolonged > contact with a religion in order to understand my position. This refers > to my own incapacity of transmission. Having been there, a lot and in > many places, I say you don't even begin to understand the phenomenon you > adress with your classy definitions. All I see there is yet again an > evolutionnist theory whose hidden purpose is to glorify us occidentals > to pole position ( I just cannot admit that Indians who remain > polytheists and are nevertheless authorities in computer dynamics, > thanks to very old Panini`s sanskrit grammar, are less evolved than we > are). And to use one of your own gimmicks, don't even try to say the > contrary cause you'll be ignoring your own determinisms I REJECT AND DISREGARD THE ACCUSATIONS OF ETHNOCENTRISM. YOU SPEAK FOR THE INDIANS AND DECLARE THEM POLYTHEISTS. YOU CONFUSE INDIAN AND HINDUIST. STOP PLAYING THE CHEAP 19TH CENTURY ETHNOLOGIST AND LISTEN FIRST DEGREE TO WHAT THESE PEOPLE HAVE TO SAY. THE INDIAN MUSLIMS WOULD SIMPLY LAUGH AT YOU. EVEN THE HINDUISTS WOULD PROVIDE YOU WITH A PANTHEON COVERED UNDER THE DEIST VISION OF A SUPREME BEING. BUT WHAT CAN I SAY TO A BOZO WHO EVEN USES PANINI AS A INSTRUMENT OF THEOLOGICAL GARBAGE. ------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Tue, 18 Nov 1997 21:49:03 -0500 From: Nicolas Pattee Subject: Re: THE FINAL DUD OF SAINT NICOLAS Just read your reply... Well... Seems to me that your refusal to acknowledge possible discrepancy between our reciprocal definitions of religion and its import on our debate closes it efficiently. So be it. I do not feel that the relation between extra-institutionnal religious behavior and secularization as a sign of religion dwindling has been demonstrated properly. I call it survival you call it dwindling... I fail to see... Though I may well have underestimated you, I must say that you final reply about hinduism is also an underestimation of me... Do you really think I don't know these facts? Come on... That is as cheap as any Jehovic exegetical brainless shortcut... Sad... See ya Nick ~~~~~ And here ends the debate. Is there a clear winner or loser? Is it a draw? Does it matter? I guess it's up to the individual reader to come to their own conclusions... {}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{} ************************************************************************ CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS ISSUE... ************************************************************************ RICHARD KADREY is the author of the COVERT CULTURE SOURCEBOOK. BRUCE STERLING is the author of numerous science fiction books. Both Mr. Kadrey & Mr. Sterling envisioned the idea of the Dead Media Project as an attempt to create entirely new kind of book on media. A media book of the dead which they inviting a user(s) of the Internet to go ahead and write. JOHN EDEN is active on-line and off via connections to A.I.N., TURBULENCE & RAIDO AAA (BM Box 3641, London WC1N 3XX, England - U.K.). He can reached via various sites on-line including: Chaos & Uncarved. GYRUS is the groovy editor of the essential Towards 2012 magazine. PAUL LAURENDEAU is an associate professor in linguistics at the department of French Studies, York University. Influenced by the thought of Spinoza, Diderot, and Marx, he is currently working on a book titled MATERIALISM AND RATIONALITY (PHILOSOPHY FOR THE SOCIAL ACTIVIST). Describing himself as a materialist rationalist atheist, Laurendeau formulates the religious debate in philosophical terms in the tradition of the progressive struggle against the mystical and irrationalist tendencies of philosophical idealism. His previous contributions to TAF enclude On a Philosophical Implication of the Astronomical Big Bang Theory, from TAF issue #1, The Doom Of Religion, from TAF issue #2 and I Stink, Therefore I Am from TAF issue #3. NICOLAS PATTEE majored in religious studies (the faithless version, i.e. not theology). He stumbled across the article that was the catalyst for the email debate in this issue by accident while searching for something else but, as he put it, "could not help but read and enjoy that typical specimen of atheistic propaganda." He is "interested in pursuing the deconstruction of the truth concept according to my own special blend of skills and thought systems." {}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{} The Annihilation Fountain & TAF Copyright c 1997-99 Neil MacKay http://www.capnasty.org/taf/ the_annihilation_fountain@iname.com