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