Escape Velocity
Page 38
Elapsed Horizon /Enhanced Assumption (1990).
Photo:T. Figallo
The Virtual Arm clones itself in cyberspace.
Photo: T. Figallo
Video still with virtual limbs
superimposed on Stelarc, from
Graft/Replicate: Event for Virtual Arm (1992).
© Stelarc 1995
Stelarc performing with industrial robot arm. Photo: Martin Burton
D. A. Therrien with members of
Comfort / Control.
The Body Drum.
Information Machine: Ideological Engines
(1993). © Paul Markow/Southwest, Comfort /Control
© 1995 bOING-bOING. Art and design by Mark
Frauenfelder; photo by Clayton Spada
Siliconsensual Acts: bOING-bOING and
Future Sex imagine the ultimate commodity
fetish.
© 1992 Kundalini Publishing, Inc. Used with
permission. All rights reserved.
Orlan, Fourth Operation.
Photo: Andre Dhome/SIPA Press
The salaryman menaced by the Monstrous
Feminine in Tetsuo: The Iron Man. © Kaijyu
Theater/Toshiba EMI, 1991. Directed by Shinya
Tsukamoto.
Phallic horror: screwing literalized in
Tetsuo. © Kaijyu Theater /Toshiba EMI, 1991.
Directed by Shinya Tsukamoto.
Biomechanical “ripper” tattoo, Guy Aitchison. Photo and tattoo by Guy Aitchison
Techno-tribal tattoo: biomechanical ornamentation inside primitive motif, Jonathan Shaw. Photo appears courtesy of Jonathan Shaw. Tattoo by Jonathan Shaw, Fun City Studios, New York City.
Alien III (1979), H.R. Giger. © 1979 H. R. Giger. Reprinted with permission, through Leslie Barany Communications, NYC.
Giger-inspired “backpiece.” © 1995 B.J. Papas. Model: Rick Healey. Tattoo by Andrea Elston.
H.R. Giger. © 1992 Willy Spiller
Blueprint for a winged human, by Dr. Burt Brent. From Burt Brent, M.D., “Thoracobrachial Pterygoplasty Powered by Muscle Transposition Flaps” in The Artistry of Reconstructive Surgery (St. Louis: C.V. Mosby Co., 1987). Reprinted with permission.
Hans Moravec with robot. © 1995 Michael Llewellyn
A robot bush, one of the posthuman beings envisioned by Moravec. © Hans Moravec, Carnegie Mellon University, 1988
A COMMENT ON SOURCES
All unattributed quotes in this book are taken from interviews conducted by the author, who is grateful to the following for willingly submitting to lengthy interrogations:
Guy Aitchison, J. G. Ballard, John Perry Barlow, Glenn Branca, Stewart Brand, Rodney Brooks, Pat Cadigan, Gary Chapman, David Cronenberg, Erik Davis, Maxwell X. Delysid, Eddie Deutsche, Julian Dibbell, K. Eric Drexler, Rhys Fulber of Front Line Assembly, William Gibson, H. R. Giger, Brett Goldstone, Rob Hardin, Eric Hunting, Billy Idol, Greg Kulz, Jaron Lanier, Brenda Laurel, Timothy Leary, Bill Leeb of Front Line Assembly, Chico MacMurtrie, Terence McKenna, Michael Moorcock, Paul Moore, Hans Moravec, David Myers, Orlan, Rodney Orpheus, Marcus Pacheco, Mark Pauline, Genesis P-Orridge, Lynn Procter, Dr. Richard Restak, Trent Reznor, Dr. Joseph M. Rosen, Andrew Ross, Rudy Rucker, Rick Sayre, Barry Schwartz, Elliott Sharp, Jonathan Shaw, John Shirley, Pat Sinatra, R. U. Sirius, Stelarc, Bruce Sterling, David Therrien, Mark Trayle, Shinya Tsukamoto, and his translator Kiyo Joo.
A word about quotes from electronic bulletin board systems: I have attempted, when possible, to observe the YOYOW (“YOU OWN YOUR OWN WORDS”) dictum that is a cornerstone of netiquette, securing the written permission of anyone quoted. Unfortunately, as was the case with several contributors to BaphoNet echomail discussions, dogged attempts to track down users sometimes proved fruitless. I can only hope that they will be flattered to find their quotes in these pages.
Responsibility for any errors of fact or misrepresentations must be laid, as always, on the author’s doorstep.
NOTES
Introduction
1. Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, The Medium Is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects (New York: Bantam Books, 1967), p. 63.
2. Robert B. Reich, “On the Slag Heap of History,” New York Times Book Review, November 8, 1992, p. 15.
3. Bernard Weinraub, “Directors Battle Over GATT’s Final Cut and Print,” New York Times, December 12, 1993, International section, p. 24.
4. Michael J. Mandel et al., “The Entertainment Economy,” Business Week, March 14, 1994, p. 59.
5. Sales figures quoted in the Computer Museum’s “People and Computers: Milestones of a Revolution,” Annual Report 1991 (Boston: Computer Museum, 1992), p. 18.
6. Otto Friedrich, “The Computer Moves In,” Time, January 3, 1983, p. 14.
7. Philip Elmer-Dewitt, “First Nation in Cyberspace,” Time, December 6, 1993, p. 62; John Markoff, “The Internet,” New York Times, September 5, 1993, p. Vll.
8. Estimate given in Markoff, “Internet”.
9. Figure cited in Gareth Branwyn, “Compu-Sex: Erotica for Cybernauts,” Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyberculture /South Atlantic Quarterly, ed. Mark Dery, vol. 92, no. 4, (fall 1993), p. 781.
10. Bruce Sterling, Schismatrix (New York: Ace, 1985), p. 179.
11. Mark Dery, “Flame Wars,” in Flame Wars, p. 565.
12. Ted Nelson, “Pain Killer,” New Media, June 1994, p. 118; John Holusha, “Carving Out Real-Life Uses for Virtual Reality,” New York Times, October 31, 1993, p. Fll; N. R. Kleinfield, “Stepping through a Computer Screen, Disabled Veterans Savor Freedom,” New York Times, March 12, 1995, Metro section, p. L39.
13. Frank J. Tipler, The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of the Dead (New York: Doubleday, 1994), p. 1.
14. Terence McKenna, “Psychedelics before and after History,” recorded 1987 lecture, available on cassette from Lux Natura, 2140 Shattuck Avenue, Box 2196, Berkeley, Calif. 94704.
15. Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), p. 207.
16. Quoted in Richard Guy Wilson, “America and the Machine Age,” in The Machine Age in America, ed. Richard Guy Wilson, Dianne H. Pilgrim, and Dickran Tashjian (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1986), p. 24.
17. From the song “Re: Creation” by the Shamen, Boss Drum (Epic, 1992).
18. Thomas Hine, Facing Tomorrow: What the Future Has Been, What the Future Can Be (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991), p. 34.
19. Donna J. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991), p. 153.
20. Quoted in Bryan Miller, “Got a Minute?” New York Times, April 24, 1994, sect. 9, p. 8.
21. Adbusters Quarterly, vol. 3, no. 3 (winter 1995), inside front cover.
22. Bruce Sterling (bruces), topic 1220: “AT&T’s ‘You Will’ Campaign,” in the WELL’s telecommunicating conference, June 20, 1993.
23. The resident CIA analyst (amicus) aka Ross Stapleton-Gray, ibid., June 20, 1993.
24. Mitch Ratcliffe (coyote), ibid., June 25, 1993.
25. Gary Chapman, “Taming the Computer,” in Flame Wars, p. 844.
26. Kelly is quoted in Paul Keegan, “The Digerati!” New York Times Magazine, May 21, 1995, p. 42; Zerzan is quoted in Kenneth R. Noble, “Prominent Anarchist Finds Unsought Ally in Serial Bomber,” New York Times, May 7, 1995, National section, p. 24.
27. Constance Penley and Andrew Ross, “Cyborgs at Large: Interview with Donna Haraway,” in Technoculture, ed. Constance Penley and Andrew Ross (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), p. 16.
Chapter 1
1. Eric Scigliano, “Relighting the Firesign,” New York Times, May 2, 1993, p. 11.
2. New York Times, April 4, 1993, p. 17.
3. “The Trip,” Details, March 1993, p. 128.
4. Howard Fineman, “The Sixties: The GOP’s New Strategy,” Newsweek, March 25, 1991, p. 39.
5. Bruce Sterling, The Hacker Crac
kdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier (New York: Bantam, 1992), p. 235.
6. Fractal geometry, a field of study pioneered by the mathematician Benoit Mandlebrot in the seventies, offers mathematical recipes for generating stunningly detailed images reminiscent of snowflakes, inkblots, paisleys, tree branches, coastlines, and so forth; their seeming randomness bears a striking resemblance to “many of the irregular and fragmented patterns around us,” in the words of its founder. See Benoit B. Mandlebrot, “How Long is the Coast of Britain?” in The World Treasury of Physics, Astronomy, and Mathematics, ed. Timothy Ferris (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1991), pp. 447-55.
7. Inner Technologies catalogue, fall 1991, p. 21.
8. Smart drugs, many of which are controlled substances in the United States, are not be to confused with smart drinks, the supposedly brain-boosting blender confections served at raves. Largely a mixture of fruit juice, vitamins, amino acids, caffeine or the caffeine-like 1-phenylalanine, and choline, which allegedly nourishes brain cells, the latter are far less potent.
9. Philip Elmer-Dewitt, “Cyberpunk!” Time, February 8, 1993, pp. 64-65.
10. Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology, ed. Bruce Sterling (New York: Ace, 1988), p. xii.
11. Ibid.
12. Camille Paglia, “Ninnies, Pedants, Tyrants and Other Academics,” New York Times, May 5, 1991, sect. 7, p. 1.
13. Jane and Michael Stern, Sixties People (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), pps. 164, 166.
14. Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades, p. xiii.
15. Theodore Roszak, The Making of a Counter Culture (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1969), p. 177.
16. James Haskins and Kathleen Benson, The ’60s Reader (New York: Viking Kestrel, 1988), p. 163.
17. Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (New York: Bantam, 1969), p. 145.
18. Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (New York: Dell, 1984), p. 162.
19. Ibid., p. 156.
20. Theodore Roszak, “The Misunderstood Movement,” New York Times, December 3, 1994, p. 23.
21. “Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan,” Playboy, March 1969, p. 66.
22. Frank Kappler, “A Film Revolution to Blitz Man’s Mind,” Life, July 14, 1967, p. 22.
23. Wolfe, Acid Test, pp. 60-61.
24. Ibid., p. 123.
25. Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage (New York: Bantam, 1987), p. 207.
26. Arthur C. Clarke, “The Mind of the Machine,” Playboy, December 1968, p. 293.
27. Ibid., pp. 293-94.
28. Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America, The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster; and In Watermelon Sugar (New York: Delacorte Press, 1971), p. 1.
29. Queen Mu and R. U. Sirius, editorial, Mondo 2000, no. 7, fall 1989, p. 11.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid.
32. Douglas Rushkoff, Cyberia: Life in the Trenches of Hyperspace (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994), pp. 181-82.
33. Gitlin, The Sixties, p. 213.
34. Ibid., pp. 208-9.
35. Throughout this section, I look to the writings and interview comments of the magazine’s publisher, Queen Mu, and the erstwhile editor-in-chief R. U. Sirius, for Mondo’s deeper meanings. It goes without saying, of course, that it, like all magazines, is the collective brainchild of diverse contributors, most notably its influential art director, Bart Nagel. Nonetheless, it was indelibly stamped in its formative early issues with the ideologies, attitudes, and aesthetics of Mu and Sirius; their manifestos, spoken and written, must play a prominent role in any critique of the magazine.
36. HarperPerennial catalogue, June 1992, p. 48.
37. The Firesign Theatre, “I Think We’re All Bozos on This Bus,” in The Firesign Theatre’s Big Book of Plays (San Francisco: Straight Arrow Books, 1972), p. 107.
38. Queen Mu, “Bacchic Pleasures”; John Perry Barlow, “Virtual Nintendo,” Mondo 2000, no. 5, pp. 46, 82.
39. Queen Mu, “Orpheus in the Maelstrom,” Mondo 2000, no. 4, p. 131; Andrew Hultkrans, “The Slacker Factor: GenXploitation,” Mondo 2000, no. 10, p. 14.
40. Queen Mu interviews herself in “Tarantismo and the Modern-Day Rock Magician,” High Frontiers, annual, 1987; Sirius’s girlfriend Sarah Drew is profiled by Marshall McLaren in “Infinite Personalities, Multiple Orgasms, Cyborgs & Foucault,” Mondo, no. 4; Sirius’s band, Mondo Vanilli, is profiled in Mondo, no. 7; Doug St. Clair (aka Ivan Stang) reviews Three Fisted Tales of Bob, ed. Ivan Stang, in Mondo, no. 2; Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw, peddlers of Designer Foods and Psychoactive Soft Drinks, were interviewed in High Frontiers, annual, 1987, as well as the no. 7 (fall 1989), summer 1990, winter 1991, and no. 4 issues of Mondo, all but two of which they advertised in. Their departure from the magazine is coincident with the disappearance of their advertising.
41. R. U. Sirius, “New World Disorder: All Is NOT One,” Mondo 2000, no. 4, p. 9.
42. D. H. Lawrence, “A Sane Revolution,” in The Complete Poems of D.H. Lawrence, ed. Vivian de Sola Pinto and Warren Roberts (New York: Viking Press, 1971), p. 517.
43. Vivian Sobchack, “New Age Mutant Ninja Hackers: Reading Mondo 2000,” Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyberculture /South Atlantic Quarterly, ed. Mark Dery, vol. 92, no. 4 (fall 1993), pp. 573-74.
44. R. U. Sirius (rusirius), topic 288, “Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyberculture by Mark Dery,” in the WELL’s Mondo conference, February 21, 1994.
45. R. U. Sirius, “The New Species Comes of Age,” High Frontiers, no. 4, 1987, p. 6.
46. Martha Sherrill, “Virtually Unreal! A Mag for the Millennium,” Washington Post, February 19, 1992, p. C2.
47. Richard Scheinin, “Tune In, Log On, Drop Out,” San Jose Mercury News, May 30, 1989, p. 8F.
48. Norman Spinrad, Science Fiction in the Real World (Carbondale and Edwardsville, 111.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1990), p. 133.
49. R. U. Sirius, “Upwingers: Looking for Solutions in the Solution Box,” High Frontiers, annual, 1987, p. 26.
50. Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave (New York: Bantam, 1981), p. 166.
51. Wes Thomas, “NanoCyborgs,” Mondo 2000, no. 12, 1994, p. 16.
52. R. U. Sirius, topic 22, “Flame Wars,” in the WELL’s Mondo conference.
53. R. U. Sirius, “Sirius’ Soapbox,” High Frontiers, annual, 1987, p. 3.
54. Hakim Bey, “Pirate Utopias and the Temporary Autonomous Zone,” Mondo 2000, no. 5, p. 128.
55. Ibid.
56. Gracie and Zarkov, “An Acid Take on Camille Paglia,” Mondo 2000, no. 5, p. 118.
57. William L. O’Neill, Coming Apart: An Informal History of America in the 1960s (New York: Times Books, 1971), p. 265.
58. Ibid., p. 240.
59. Quoted in Richard Scheinin, “Tune In”; Leslie Harlib, “Alison in Wonderland,” The Monthly, December 1990, p. 10.
60. Catherine McEver, “Sex, Drugs & Cyberspace,” Express, September 28, 1990, p. 12.
61. “Homo Technoeroticus,” Mondo 2000 advertising brochure.
62. Ellen Willis, “Let’s Get Radical: Why Should the Right Have All the Fun?” Village Voice, December 20, 1994, p. 33.
63. R. U. Sirius, “Upwingers,” p. 26.
64. Ibid., pp. 26-27.
65. Gitlin, The Sixties, p. 227.
66. Rushkoff, Cyberia, p. 232.
67. “Laura Fraser (phraze),” topic 266, “Future Sex-the Magazine: Feedback and Discussion,” in the WELL’s sex conference, June 29, 1992, and July 2, 1992.
68. Rushkoff, Cyberia, pp. 21, 37, 59.
69. Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo (New York: W. W. Norton, 1950), p. 87.
70. Rushkoff, Cyberia, p. 7.
71. All quotes this paragraph, ibid., pp. 13, 48, 61, 67, 77.
72. Ibid., p. 23.
73. Ibid., p. 5.
74. Manuel De Landa, War in the Age of Intelligent Machines (New York: Zone Books, 1991), p. 15.
75. Ibid., p. 7.
&nbs
p; 76. Ibid., p. 121.
77. Ibid.
78. Tom Wolfe, Acid Test, p. 147.
79. Quoted in Rushkoff, Cyberia, p. 7.
80. “Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan,” p. 72.
81. Teilhard de Chardin, quoted in Stephen Toulmin, The Return to Cosmology: Postmodern Science and the Theology of Nature (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), p. 124.
82. “Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan,” pp. 72, 158.
83. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Future of Man, trans. Norman Denny (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), pp. 275-76.
84. Paul Keegan, “The Digerati!” New York Times Magazine, May 21, 1995, p. 42.
85. Ibid., pp. 42, 88.
86. Ibid.
87. Gary Wolf, “Don’t Get Wasted, Get Smart,” Rolling Stone, September 5, 1991, p. 60.
88. Craig Bromberg, “In Defense of Hackers,” New York Times Magazine, April 21, 1991, p. 47.
89. Hugh Ruppersberg, “The Alien Messiah,” in Alien Zone: Cultural Theory and Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema, ed. Annette Kuhn (New York: Verso, 1990), p. 35.
90. Rushkoff, Cyberia, p. 61.
91. Ibid., p. 147.
92. All quotes this paragraph, ibid., pp. 19, 172, 189, 214.
93. Walter Kirn, “Cyberjunk,” Mirabella, June 1993, p. 24.
94. Ibid.
95. Quoted in Joe Haldeman, Star Trek: World without End (New York: Bantam, 1979), epigraph on opening page.
96. Quoted in Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America Today, rev. ed. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986), p. 368.
97. Because of their common relationship to science and technology, I have fuzzed the distinction between neopaganism and the New Age throughout this section. It should be pointed out, however, that while they share a reverence for the Earth and the spiritual beliefs of indigenous peoples or archaic civilizations, neopagans and New Agers see themselves as polar opposites, representing the earthy and the airy, the chthonic and the celestial, respectively.