Escape Velocity
Page 41
89. Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (New York: Dell, 1984), p. 83.
90. Rosemarie Robotham, “Robopsychology,” Omni, November 1988, p. 44.
91. Ibid.
92. Tracy Kidder, The Soul of a New Machine (New York: Avon, 1981), p. 96.
93. Geoff Simons, “The Biology of Computer Life,” in Questioning Technology: Tool, Toy or Tyrant? ed. John Zerzan and Alice Carnes (Santa Cruz, Calif.: New Society Publishers, 1991), pp. 119-20.
94. Cited by John A. Barry in Technobabhle (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991), p. 146.
95. Levy, Hackers.
96. Patty Bell and Doug Myrland, Silicon Valley Guy Handbook (New York: Avon Books, 1983), passim.
97. John A. Barry, Technobabble, p. 123.
98. Levy, Hackers, p. 18.
99. Ibid., p. 126.
100. Harvey B. Milkman and Stanley G. Sunderwirth, Craving for Ecstasy: The Consciousness and Chemistry of Escape (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1987), p. 133. I am grateful to Douglas Trainor, whose post in the WELL’s “Computers and Drugs” topic brought this arcane reference to my attention.
101. “Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan,” March 1969, p. 65.
102. Ibid.
103. Susie Bright, Susie Bright’s Sexual Reality: A Virtual Sex World Reader (Pittsburgh: Cleis Press, 1992), p. 67.
104. Marilyn French, The War Against Women (New York: Summit, 1992), p. 159.
105. Re/Search 13: Angry Women (San Francisco: Re/Search, 1991), p. 77.
106. Joseph D. Younger, “Novelist Tom Clancy, American Dreamer,” Amtrak Express, November/December, 1992, p. 35.
107. Cited in James Ledbetter, “Deadlines in the Sand: How the Pentagon Ambushed the Press,” Village Voice, February 5, 1991, p. 31.
108. John J. O’Connor, “Labeling Prime-Time Violence Is Still a Band-Aid Solution,” New York Times, July 11, 1993, section 2, p. 1.
109. Quoted by Edwin Diamond, in Sign Off: The Last Days of Television (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982), p. 47. The judgment rendered by Roberts is, admittedly, over a decade old, but a casual graze around the daytime dial will confirm that it is as accurate now as then.
110. Laura Miller (lauram), topic 266: “Future Sex-the Magazine: Feedback and Discussion,” in the WELL’s sex conference, July 4, 1992.
111. Rheingold, Virtual Reality, p. 350.
112. Ballard, Crash, p. 16.
Chapter 6
1. Earlier, far less evolved versions of this chapter were rehearsed in Mondo 2000 and the South Atlantic Quarterly, and in lectures given at Youngstown (Ohio) State University and the Dia Foundation in New York.
2. Ovid, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, trans. Rolphe Humphries (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1955), p. 3.
3. David F. Channell, The Vital Machine: A Study of Technology and Organic Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 129.
4. John Harris, Wonderwoman and Superman: The Ethics of Human Biotechnology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 1-2.
5. Gretchen Edgren, “The Transformation of Tula: The Extraordinary Story of a Beautiful Woman Who Was Born a Boy,” Playboy 38, no. 9 (September 1991), p. 105.
6. William D. Marbach, “Building the Bionic Man,” Newsweek, July 12, 1982, p. 79.
7. Thomas Hine, Facing Tomorrow: What the Future Has Been, What the Future Can Be (New York: Knopf, 1991), pp. 230-31.
8. Digby Diehl, “NeXTWORLD Interview: Alvin and Heidi Toffler,” NeXT-WORLD, March/April, 1991, p. 14.
9. Anthony Robbins, Awaken the Giant Within: How to Take Immediate Control of Your Mental, Emotional, Physical & Financial Destiny! (New York: Summit Books, 1991), pp. 120-21.
10. Ibid., p. 127.
11. Andrew Kimbrell, “Body Wars: Can the Human Spirit Survive the Age of Technology?” Utne Reader, May/June, 1992, p. 60.
12. Ibid., p. 62.
13. Anthony Beadie, “Body-Parts Black Market on Rise, Film Says,” Arizona Republic, November 12, 1993, p. A1.
14. Ibid.
15. Barbara Ehrenreich, “Why Don’t We Like the Human Body?” Time, July 1, 1991, p. 80.
16. Ibid.
17. J. G. Ballard, “Project for a Glossary of the Twentieth Century,” Zone 6: Incorporations (New York: Urzone, 1992), p. 269.
18. Linda Hasselstrom, “A Real Workout: Our Bodies Are Designed for More Than Pushing Pencils,” Utne Reader, May/June 1992, p. 63.
19. Bruce Sterling, Crystal Express (New York: Ace, 1990), p. 30.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid.
22. Laurie Anderson, Words in Reverse (Buffalo, N.Y.: Top Stories, 1979), unnumbered page.
23. Ballard, “Project for a Glossary.”
24. Quoted in Cronenberg on Cronenberg, ed. Chris Rodley (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1992), p. 80.
25. Northrop Frye, The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982), p. 19.
26. Rodley, ed., Cronenberg on Cronenberg, p. 79.
27. Bruce Mazlish, The Fourth Discontinuity: The Co-Evolution of Humans and Machines (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1993), p. 218.
28. Jeffrey Meyers, D. H. Lawrence (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), pp. 105, 363.
29. Hans Moravec, Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), p. 4.
30. Transcript of Nova program, “Killing Machines,” originally broadcast on PBS November 13, 1990, p. 12.
31. R. W. Apple, Jr., “U.S. Jets over Iraq Attack Own Helicopters in Error; All 26 on Board Killed,” New York Times, April 15, 1994, p. A12.
32. Quoted in Anne Balsamo, “Feminism and Cultural Studies,” Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association 24, no. 1 (spring 1991), p. 64.
33. Ibid., p. 63.
34. Leonard Cohen, Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs (New York: Pantheon, 1993), p. 97.
35. Stuart and Elizabeth Ewen, Channels of Desire: Mass Images and the Shaping of American Consciousness (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), p. 99.
36. Stuart Ewen, Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976), p. 180.
37. Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used against Women (New York: William Morrow, 1991), pp. 82-83.
38. Stuart Ewen, All Consuming Images: The Politics of Style in Contemporary Culture (New York: Basic Books, 1988), p. 91.
39. Quoted in Panic Encyclopedia, ed. Arthur Kroker, Marilouise Kroker, and David Cook (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989), p. 186.
40. “Brian D’Amato Talks about Art, Writing, and Beauty,” undated, unpaginated Delacorte press release.
41. Margalit Fox, “A Portrait in Skin and Bone,” New York Times, November 21, 1993, p. 8.
42. Barbara Rose, “Is It Art? Orlan and the Transgressive Act,” Art in America, February 1993, p. 86; James Gardner, Culture or Trash? (New York: Birch Lane Press, 1993), p. 171.
43. Orlan, undated letter to the author, 1994.
44. Ibid.
45. Wolf, Beauty Myth, pp. 266-67.
46. M. G. Lord, Forever Barbie: The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll (New York: William Morrow, 1994), p. 244.
47. Ibid., pp. 244, 251.
48. Wolf, Beauty Myth, p. 267.
49. Ibid., p. 269.
50. The title is borrowed from Donna Haraway’s essay “The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others,” in Cultural Studies, ed. Lawrence Grossberg et al. (New York: Routledge, 1991).
51. Claudia Springer, “Muscular Circuitry: The Invincible Armored Cyborg in Cinema,” Genders 18 (winter 1993), pp. 95-96.
52. Scott Bukatman, Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1993), p. 20.
53. Donna J. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991), p. 150. The italics are mine.
54. Ibid., pp. 151, 1
73.
55. Ibid., pp. 150, 161, 164.
56. Ibid., p. 152.
57. Ibid., p. 174.
58. Ibid., p. 157.
59. Ibid., p. 162.
60. Ibid., pp. 165, 181.
61. J. G. Ballard, Crash (New York: Vintage, 1985), pp. 3-4.
62. Joan Howe, “Housebound,” Questioning Technology: Tool, Toy or Tyrant? ed. John Zerzan and Alice Carnes (Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1991), p. 103.
63. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women, p. 181.
64. Anne Balsamo, “Feminism and Cultural Studies,” p. 65.
65. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women, p. 151.
66. Arthur Kroker, Spasm: Virtual Reality, Android Music, Electric Flesh (New York: St. Martin’s, 1993), p. 26.
67. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women, p. 150.
68. Kroker, Spasm.
69. Bukatman, Terminal Identity, p. 247.
70. David Skal, Antibodies (New York: Worldwide Library, 1988), p. 25.
71. (jcourte), topic “Flame Box,” on the WELL, February 13, 1993.
72. Mondo 2000: A User’s Guide to the New Edge, ed. Rudy Rucker, R. U. Sirius, and Queen Mu (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), p. 170.
73. William Gibson, interviewed by Terry Gross on Fresh Air, National Public Radio, August 31, 1993.
74. Meyers, D. H. Lawrence, p. 103.
75. William Gibson, Neuromancer (New York: Ace, 1984), p. 5.
76. Ibid., pp. 5, 51.
77. Ibid., p. 6.
78. Ibid., p. 21.
79. Ibid., p. 10.
80. Ibid., p. 203.
81. Kimbrell, “Body Wars,” p. 61.
82. W. David Kubiak, “E Pluribus Yamato: The Culture of Corporate Beings,” Whole Earth Review, no 69 (winter 1990), p. 6.
83. Gibson, Neuromancer, pp. 4, 12, 14, 21, 97.
84. Ibid., p. 46.
85. Ibid., p. 258.
86. Ibid., p. 256.
87. Andrew Ross, Strange Weather: Culture, Science and Technology in the Age of Limits (New York: Verso, 1991), p. 150.
88. Ibid., p. 25.
89. Pat Cadigan, Synners (New York: Bantam, 1991), p. 232.
90. Cadigan, Synners, p. 283; William Burroughs, introduction to Naked Lunch (New York: Grove Press, 1966), p. xli.
91. Cadigan, Synners, pp. 253-54.
92. Ibid., p. 331.
93. Ibid., p. 234.
94. Ibid., p. 232.
95. Ibid., p. 235.
96. Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth (New York: Doubleday, 1988), p. 211.
97. Norman Spinrad, “On Books: Virtual People,” Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, mid-December 1991, p. 171.
98. Anne Balsamo, “Feminism for the Incurably Informed,” Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyberculture /South Atlantic Quarterly, ed. Mark Dery, vol. 92, no. 4 (fall 1993), p. 688.
99. Ibid., pp. 692-93.
100. Ibid., p. 703.
101. Ibid., p. 695.
102. New York Times Magazine, April 14, 1991, p. 46.
103. Jeffrey Rothfeder, Privacy for Sale: How Computerization Has Made Everyone’s Private Life an Open Secret (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), p. 180.
104. Ibid., p. 181.
105. Ibid., p. 189.
106. Steve Kurtz, E-mail to the author, November 19, 1993.
107. Critical Art Ensemble, Critical Art Ensemble: The Electronic Disturbance (New York: Autonomedia/Semiotext(e), 1994), pp. 57-79.
108. Steve Kurtz, E-mail to the author, February 10, 1994.
109. Steve Kurtz, E-mail to the author, March 11, 1994.
110. Quoted in K. G. Pontus Hulten, The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1968), p. 11.
111. Hine, Facing Tomorrow, p. 174.
112. Ehrenreich, “Human Body,” p. 67.
113. Alan M. Klein, “Of Muscles and Men,” Sciences, November/December 1991, p. 36.
114. Paul Solotaroff, “Living Large,” Village Voice, no. 44 (October 29, 1991), p. 30.
115. Ibid., p. 156.
116. Erik Hedegaard, “Making It Big,” Details, October 1993, p. 192.
117. F. T. Marinetti, “Multiplied Man and the Reign of the Machine,” in Marinetti: Selected Writings, ed. R. W. Flint (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1972), p. 91.
118. Ewen, All Consuming Images, p. 188.
119. Klein, “Of Muscles and Men.”
120. Ross, Strange Weather, p. 152.
121. Ibid., pp. 145, 152.
122. Marinetti, Introduction to Marinetti, p. 6.
123. Ross, Strange Weather, p. 162.
124. The Beacon Book of Quotations by Women, ed. Rosalie Maggio (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992), p. 14.
125. Hunter Thompson, Hell’s Angels (New York: Ballantine Books, 1985), pp. 116, 119.
126. Quoted in Naomi Wolf, Fire with Fire: The New Female Power and How It Will Change the Twenty-first Century (New York: Random House, 1993), p. 283.
127. Klaus Theweleit, Male Fantasies, vol. 2 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), p. xix.
128. Ibid., p. xix.
129. All quotes this paragraph from Margot Dougherty, Entertainment Weekly, no. 74 (July 12, 1991), sidebar to cover story on T2, p. 18.
130. 1988 spring supplement to the Loompanics Unlimited Main Catalogue, p. 2.
131. Claudia Springer, “Sex, Memories, and Angry Women,” p. 726.
132. Mark Dery, “Black to the Future: Interviews with Samuel R. Delany, Greg Tate, and Tricia Rose,” Flame Wars, p. 777.
133. Tony Rayns, “Tokyo Stories,” Sight and Sound, December 1991, p. 15.
134. Ballard, Crash, p. 5.
135. Bukatman, Terminal Identity, p. 20.
136. Ibid., p. 308.
137. Ibid.
138. J. Hoberman, “Reanimators,” Village Voice, April 28, 1992, p. 51.
139. Undated press release.
140. “Tetsuo: The Iron Man/Synopsis,” undated program for a screening of the movie at London’s ICA artspace.
141. Ballard, Crash.
142. William Bohnaker, The Hollow Doll (A Little Box of Japanese Shocks) (New York: Ballantine, 1990), p. 121.
143. Unbylined editorial, “Exhibit Hall A: Alien Art,” Tattoo Flash, no. 7 (February 1995), p. 14.
144. Anonymous futurist, quoted in Angelo Bozzolla and Caroline Tisdall, Futurism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 81.
145. David Levi Strauss, “Modern Primitives,” in Re/Search 12: Modern Primitives, ed. V. Vale and Andrea Juno (San Francisco: Re/Search, 1989), p. 158.
146. Herman Melville, Moby Dick or The Whale (New York: Vintage Books, 1991), p. 53.
147. Ibid., p. 537.
148. Re/Search 12: Modern Primitives, p. 4.
149. Ibid., p. 153.
150. Rosalind Coward, The Whole Truth: The Myth of Alternative Health (London: Faber & Faber, 1989), p. 197.
151. Ibid.
152. Mary Douglas, Re/Search 12: Modern Primitives, p. 195.
153. Ibid., pp. 4-5.
154. Rodley, ed., Cronenberg on Cronenberg, p. 65.
155. Re/Search 12: Modern Primitives, p. 36.
156. Ibid., p. 5.
157. Ibid.
158. Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, The Medium Is the Massage (New York: Bantam, 1967), p. 63.
159. “Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan,” March 1969, p. 64.
160. Ibid., pp. 62, 64.
161. Ibid., p. 70.
162. Gibson, Burning Chrome (New York: Ace, 1987), p. 18.
163. Richard Kadrey, Metrophage (New York: Ace, 1988), p. 3.
164. Walter Jon Williams, Facets (New York: Tor, 1990), pp. 69-70.
165. Queen Mu and R. U. Sirius, editorial, Mondo 2000, no. 7 (fall 1989), p. 11; Bukatman, Terminal Identity, p. 302.
166. William Gibson, Virtual Light (New York: Bantam Spectra, 1993), p. 220.
167. Dr. Fritz Billeter, “H. R. Giger’s Environments,” in H. R.
Giger’s Necronomicon (Zurich, Switzerland: Edition C, 1981), p. 74.
168. Cliff Cadaver, “How to Make a Monster: Modifications for the Millennium,” Outlaw Biker Tattoo Revue 6, no. 31 (December 1993), unnumbered pages.
169. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women, p. 179; Cadaver, “How to Make a Monster.”
170. Ray Bradbury, The Illustrated Man (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, 1951), p. 11.
171. F. T. Marinetti, “Multiplied Man,” p. 91.
172. Cyberpunk (VHS, 60 minutes, available from ATA/Cyberpunk, P.O. Box 12, Massapequa Park, N.Y. 11762).
173. Gibson, Burning Chrome, p. 14; Gibson, Neuromancer, p. 59.
174. Cyberpunk.
175. Ibid.
176. Burt Brent, “Thoracobrachial Pterygoplasty Powered by Muscle Transposition Flaps,” in The Artistry of Reconstructive Surgery: Classic Case Studies, vol. 2 (St. Louis: C.V. Mosby Company, 1987), p. 967.
177. Ibid., p. 959.
178. Cyberpunk.
179. The New Hacker’s Dictionary defines a “wirehead” as a hardware hacker who concentrates on communications systems; Gareth Branwyn notes that the term “specifically applies to techies who hack LANs (office networks), ToasterNets (cobbled-together Internet sites using cast-off PCs and shareware), and telecom hardware hackers in general.” But in Schismatrix, Bruce Sterling refers to the prosthetically enhanced, electronically interconnected Mechanists as “wireheads,” and the term is loosely used in cyberpunk circles as a synonym for “aspiring cyborg.” It is in this sense that it is used here.
180. Gareth Branwyn, “The Desire to Be Wired,” Wired, September/October 1993, p. 65.
181. Ibid., p. 62.
182. Gibson, Neuromancer, p. 56.
183. John Leonard, “Gravity’s Rainbow,” Nation, November 15, 1993, p. 585.
184. David P. Snyder, “Repairing the Mind with Machines: The Supernormal Possibilities of Prosthetics,” Omni, September 1993, p. 14.
185. Ibid.
186. Janice M. Cauwels, The Body Shop: Bionic Revolutions in Medicine (St. Louis: C. V. Mosby, 1986), pp. 208-9.
187. Snyder, “Repairing the Mind.”
188. Ibid.
189. Ibid.
190. Darrell E. Ward, “Gaze Control,” Omni, December 1988, p. 30.
191. Andrew Pollack, “Computers Taking Wish as Their Command,” New York Times, February 9, 1993, Section D, p. 2.
192. Branwyn, “The Desire to Be Wired,” p. 113.
193. Ibid., p. 65.