ostings).
Msg#:16849 *INTERSHOP*
05-26-94 19:54:35
From: JEFFREY SCHULZ
To: GISELA EHRENFRIED (Rcvd)
Subj: 4CYBERCONF
Actually, I think the Nomad project that you referred to was a residency
program. I didn't see any work associated with this program. The events that I
attended were the 4th International Conference on Cyberspace and the Art and
Virtual Environments Conference. I attended only the first day of the latter --
it was two days long. The three-day 4CyberConf covered a variety of topics,
with speakers from disciplines including psychiatry, economics, virtual
reality, communications, architecture, and others. In my opinion, there was a
dearth of presentations on vr and not enough on the many social effects of
information technologies. In some ways, it wasn't a conference on IT, but on
VR. Another problem that I had was that much of the discussion was oriented in
terms of the future, stressing that we do not yet live in a virtual world, so
to speak, which bypassed my belief that we *already* exist in cyberspace, at
least to a certain extent.
There were some VERY bright spots, one of which was Sandra Braman, who
presented a totally intense treatment of economics in and of cyberspace. Among
other issues, she stressed the fact that equilibrium economics is no longer a
valid model -- if it ever was -- with which to analyze the information economy.
I felt very honored when she expressed her appreciation of my own presentation.
Other bright spots were Sandy Stone, who presented a very similar version of
her talk here at the Drawing Center; Perry Hoberman's Bar Code Hotel, a virtual
reality kind of fun house; and Katherine Hayles, who is just plain great.
There were some great tense moments, too, especially after a presentation on
the rave-esque qualities of cyberspace, and a sociological study of the Banff
program in general.
Oh, and the weirdest moments were when we would walk outside and see elk only a
few yards away. They were apparently very dangerous, and signs were posted
everywhere warning not to get too close. I guess it was the New York equivalent
of those rat poison postings in subways.
<*>Replies
Msg#:17486 *INTERSHOP*
05-29-94 18:37:53
From: GISELA EHRENFRIED
To: JEFFREY SCHULZ (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16849 (4CYBERCONF)
Your piece at the Blast benefit show is about the fact that virtual reality
is already firmly established in our lives - for example, whenever we use ATM
machines, we enter personal data into a program that records these activities
and evaluates our credibility accordingly. Your offer to the collector is a
performance... rollerblading up and down Manhattan, from ATM to ATM using the
collector's card for your transactions, which are recorded in data space, but
also on printed receipts which trace your whereabouts, which you return as a
kind of map to the collector. But why on earth, Jeffrey, did you promise to
the collector, that you will only check his balance and not deduct any money???
To the collector, the piece would have gained proportionally in value... and
you could have settled payment for the piece right there!
Sandy Stone is a fabulous performer, but I think she's on auto repeat mode.
Not only did she talk about the "Habitat" virtual environment at
Banff/4Cyberconf _and_ at the Drawing Center, NYC, but also last September at
the "Electrotecture" symposium (organized by ANY). In her presentations she
doesn't really analyze Habitat, no pros or cons, just description. Do you
think she has a promo contract? What do you think about the cartoonish
interface of Habitat (actually, an answer to this would fit well to the
Interface thread in
Msg#: 917 *INTERSHOP*
01-06-94 10:16:00
From: JOERG SASSE
To: ALL
Subj: STILL CONNECTED?
no message here since nov, 14th?? Are we still connectet?? Please reply.
---
* Origin: THE THING DUESSELDORF [+49 211-9913642] (42:1002/2)
Msg#: 974 *INTERSHOP*
01-10-94 15:19:21
From: WOLFGANG STAEHLE
To: JOERG SASSE
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 917 (STILL CONNECTED?)
We are still connected, however all theory activity has shifted to Symposia.
You know these dynamics...people just flock to where the action is.
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: The Thing - New York City (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 1051 *INTERSHOP*
01-09-94 22:33:00
From: ULRICH SCHROETER
To: JOERG SASSE
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 974 (STILL CONNECTED?)
> no message here since nov, 14th?? Are we still connectet?? Please reply.
42:1002/4 connected ....
regards, uli 8-)
---
* Origin: AMBROSIA - ThingNet Frankfurt - 63067 Offenbach/M. (42:1002/4)
Msg#: 1063 *INTERSHOP*
01-13-94 09:37:15
From: JEFFREY SCHULZ
To: FRANK KRUSE
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1056 (MUSIC&SPEED)
** Message forwarded by SYSOP at 11:35:44 on 01-14-94 **
Please use this forum for music and cross cultural issues. If there is
continued interest we will install a music forum.
[Original Message Follows]
Actually, I haven't been following his work all that much lately. I was talking
about Spillane, the Ennio Morricone (sp?) cd, etc.
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: The Thing - New York City (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 1068 *INTERSHOP*
01-13-94 11:41:31
From: DANIEL GEORGES
To: WOLFGANG STAEHLE (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1020 (HELLO HELLO)
Please tell me a little about MOO and where I can find out more. I saw a
message about Post Modern Culture, but that is the extent of my exposure.
thanks.
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: The Thing - New York City (42:1001/1)
<*>Replies
Msg#: 1081 *INTERSHOP*
01-14-94 02:36:06
From: WOLFGANG STAEHLE
To: DANIEL GEORGES (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1068 (HELLO HELLO)
I just wasted 2 hours in one...they're fun. Perhaps we should try to set
one up here. The PMC-MOO is at hero.village.virginia.edu 7777. Watch out for
Sister_Madly.
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: The Thing - New York City (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 1136 *INTERSHOP*
01-16-94 00:09:09
From: WOLFGANG STAEHLE
To: MICHAEL JOHNSTON (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1081 (HELLO HELLO)
I had no character. I was the Magenta_Guest. Who are you?
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: THE THING - NEW YORK CITY (I guess it had to be in caps.)
(42:1001/1)
Msg#: 2327 *INTERSHOP*
02-06-94 20:49:00
From: MICHAEL KROME
To: DAVID KELLERAN
Subj: SPEECH ACTS
silent times, my dear, but wait...
---
* Origin: Intershop from THE THING DUESSELDORF (42:1002/2)
Msg#: 3454 *INTERSHOP*
02-17-94 10:15:36
From: JEFFREY SCHULZ
To: ALL
Subj: DESCRIPTION
Blast 4: Bioinformatics Description
Matters pertaining to spatial orientation are often expressed through
cartographic interfaces -- maps -- that facilitate positioning within various
environments. Such environments are comprised not only of physical components
(buildings, streets, landmarks) but also dynamic systems (financial flows,
product flows, population flows) and various codes (social, cultural,
linguistic). Maps that show the flows of various dialects throughout
geographical regions, for example, not only situate the reader in a specific
dialect-ical physical location within an environment; they also situate the
reader within dynamic dialect-ical flows. If a map is an admixture of
locations, systems and codes, however, the same is true of its reader-maker,
whose body and actions are a combination of subject positions, circulatory
flows, and genetic information. The interaction between a person and a map,
-More-
then, produces a web -- of biological entity, social relation, and various
systems and codes -- that facilitates negotiation with diverse environments.
As such, the map mediates a traversal by which the reader-maker is
simultaneously a producer of the map as well as an embodied product of the map,
positioned by it while destabilized by its flows.
Coding systems, in regard to which maps provide embodied orientation, are
increasingly complexified via information technologies and economies. Through
the circulatory dynamics of often interchangeable and increasingly digitized
biological, social, linguistic, and cultural codes, these technologies
reconfigure the contemporary landscape as they refigure us. The resulting
network of relations, which has been characterized by Donna Haraway as
"informatics," is one in which biological systems, like other systems, function
as nodal entities with wider, dispersed nets of transactions. Given this
situation, a primary question becomes, how might we orient ourselves and
negotiate with the various intersecting spaces that are generated by this nexus
of codes? How might we articulate ourselves, our relations, and our positions
as living entities through these codes? In short, how might we configure a
bioinformatic map?
According to Deleuze and Guattari, "The map is open and connectable in all of
its dimensions; it is detachable, reversible, susceptible to constant
modification. It can be torn, reversed, adapted to any kind of mounting,
-More-
reworked by an individual, group, or social formation. It can be drawn on a
wall, conceived of as a work of art, constructed as a political action or as a
meditation." Bioinformatics constitutes such a map -- one that configures
itself as a shifting transactional interface and its participants as
constellations of biological and informational processes. As such, this
project functions as a guide with which participants can situate themselves as
living and livable bioinformatic entities in the world. This is useful in that
many cultural productions, notably those of science fiction, have often
constructed bioinformatic interfaces that have been fundamentally unlivable.
Although examples of relatively tranquil bioinformatic life sometimes prevail
-- as in Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness -- the primary images of
such life are dismal. The often dystopian tales ranging from Jean-Luc Godard's
Alphaville and Vernor Vinge's "True Names" to, more recently, Ridley Scott's
Bladerunner, William Gibson's Neuromancer and Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash are
well-known examples. Indeed, with technology-as-Big Brother looming in the
background of many such fables, we have usually come to know bioinformatic life
as inherently fatal and catastrophically doomed.
It is not necessary, however, to visit these science fictive worlds in order to
experience life as a bioinformatic entity; for such is our experience of
normal, everyday life. The nets of transactions that we initiate, for example,
with each use of a credit card, each medical exam, each subscription to a
magazine, or each telephone call, connect us across various spaces and systems,
-More-
producing us as nodal entities within extensive, diffused informatic networks.
By investigating the negotiations that occur between biological organisms and
these currently existing networks, Blast 4: Bioinformatics positions itself,
its participants, and their social relations *within* the fluidity of their
exchanges, yielding a set of relations that is complicit, counteractive,
collusive, and contradictory.
Please save this message for future reference. We encourage Thingusers to
circulate this document.
Msg#: 3761 *INTERSHOP*
02-22-94 18:06:22
From: JEFFREY SCHULZ
To: ALL
Subj: PROCEDURAL ISSUES
As this is the first posting, I want to mention just a few procedural items
that might help the dialogue along. These are simply based on my online
experiences. Anyone else who has procedural suggestions should feel free to
post them.
First, this is not a moderated dialogue. No one is "in charge" of the course
of what is addressed here. Participants constitute the direction and flow.
Second, I think it would be beneficial if everyone would pay particular
attention to the "Subject" of each posting, as well as the subject of each
response. If the content of a response to a certain subject thread seems to
diverge from that thread's already established content, then the subject of the
response should be changed. If, for example, the subject of a thread is
"Politics," but I'm responding to the thread in a way that concentrates on a
specific aspect of politics -- like the current health care debate -- then the
-More-
subject of my reply could be "Politics: Health Care," or something similar. I
know this might sound obvious, but I have been in situations where an entire
dialogue gets mushed into one thread. It's nice to be able to get close and
follow the threads *and* to step back and look at the entire quilt.
Msg#: 3762 *INTERSHOP*
02-22-94 18:08:27
From: JEFFREY SCHULZ
To: ALL
Subj: INITIAL IDEAS
A few news items and other events have recently emerged that directly address
some of the issues that are relevant to this dialogue. What I think is
significant is that the following occurrences emerged from everyday life.
Perhaps what we can do here is to try to disentangle various issues from them.
One of the news items concerns the use of the Bovine Growth Hormone to
stimulate milk production in cows. This is actually old news -- BGH has been
in the news for a while now. But, as the milk that is produced by these cows
is reaching the market, consumers are voicing concerns about its safety. What
is interesting to me about this situation is that people who are not normally
politically active or engaged have been flooding various offices with calls of
protest. This phenomenon was described on the back page of the "The Week in
Review" section of the Sunday, February 20 issue of *The New York Times*. In
the context of Bioinformatics, it is notable that the interjection of
biologically altered food products into everyday life has the potential, in
-More-
this case, to mobilize a social group that is not normally mobilized.
Another event that occurred recently was the malfunction of software in
Chemical Bank's ATM system. Each deduction via an ATM card was inadvertently
deducted twice. This problem became a big news item -- almost as big as the
recent slew of storms that has hit New York. Some 11:00 news programs even
kicked off with a story on the problem, and a report on the malfunction was the
lead story on the front page of the "Business Section" of the issue of the NYT
cited above. When was the last time when a bank mistake made such headlines?
But the more important aspect of this situation for us here is that this
informational mistake caused over 100,000 people to shift their lives around:
calls were made to the bank, customers went out of their way to visit their
branch banks, the bank shifted around employees in order to take care of the
problem, etc. A whole set of social and biological process were set in motion
all because of a very small computer problem -- a coding problem.
Msg#: 3790 *INTERSHOP*
02-23-94 00:11:06
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: JEFFREY SCHULZ (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 3762 (INITIAL IDEAS)
this is relatively minor compared to the islamic world's response to a
successful human embryonic cloning experiment. It was perceived as a
transgression on the devine perogative. No *fatwa* was pronounced, as it was on
Rushdie, but the tremors ran deep nonetheless.
The hysteria of contemporary Islam stems from their perception of being
overwhelmed by an unstoppable and profoundly degrading media culture that
undermines their distinctions between the sacred and the profane.
Biotechnology has added a new threat.
Msg#: 3809 *INTERSHOP*
02-23-94 08:05:45
From: JEFFREY SCHULZ
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: SACRED AND PROFANE
It's interesting that you bring up the idea of the sacred and the profane in
this context. Although I have some difficulties with Mircea Eliade's classic
book of the same name (*The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion*,
New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1957.), he provides some intriguing
points. He writes, "The threshold that separates [the interior of the church
from the exterior of the city] also indicates the distance between two modes of
being, the profane and the religious . . . The threshold, the door *show* the
solution of continuity in space immediately and concretely; hence their great
religious importance, for they are symbols and at the same time vehicles of
*passage* from the one space to the other." (P. 25.) He also writes, "The
sacred reveals absolute reality and at the same time makes *orientation*
(asterisks mine) possible; hence it *founds the world* in the sense that it
fixes the limits and establishes the order of the world." (P. 30.)
These excerpts provide a clue about the use of the "gateway" and "threshold"
-More-
metaphors that abound in the online world. Indeed, in many ways, the threshold
of an ATM doorway, for example, facilitates general orientation with the world.
<*>Replies
Msg#: 3812 *INTERSHOP*
02-23-94 09:13:32
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: JEFFREY SCHULZ (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 3809 (SACRED AND PROFANE)
that might be stretching the point, but, it might not. ATM machines have a
common feeling with confessional booths in Catholic churches...
You will want to read "Human Clones and God's Trust: an Islamic View" by
Munawar Ahmad Anees in the Winter '94 New Perspectives Quarterly, the
"Biocracy" issue.
A key point here is that there are civilizations that are threatened, in
their looking out at the world, with cultural extinction by the same
technologies that fill us with awe (or indifference).
Their implicate criticism is that we have become a culture of indifference,
that we cannot distinguish the commercial transaction from the sacred (the
popularity of "cargo cult" televangelism in America is strong evidence for this
position).
Transitional spaces, and transition rituals, protect against psychological
contamination. The Moslem must wash before he prays (ablution), even if he must
wash symbollically with sand. There is the declaritive aspect to his action,
the "I remain conscious of the difference, and the importance of respecting it"
-More-
statement that ablution is...
Machanistic approaches to life, an unspoken consequence of a biotech driven
world (and it must become that, once population densities exceed a threshhold)
have the power to shatter the Islamic belief system, much in the same way that
Galileo was a grave danger to the Medieval Christianity.
Islam is a comforting religion, and a deindividualizing one. "Islam" is the
Arabic word "to submit". It is also a rigid one, and like rigid personality
structures in individuals, has difficulty with counterexample and innovation.
Linguistically, Arabic has almost no borrowed words, few exogenous concepts
enter gladly into its lexicon and thought maps.
We have many of theirs, zenith, nadir, algebra, hasish, assassin, possibly
whore (from houri, heavenly consorts provided in the afterlife?), and so on.
And so, a great conflict of values arises, an eschatological one, what is the
final purpose of our being?
If Personality Media (i.e. Vanity Fair) can be accurately described as "irony
free zones", we might make the leap, and come to see modern western culture as
an "eschatology free zone" where the act of raising questions of human destiny
attains the mortal sin of Tastelessness.
End of Replies, add yours(Y/N)? N
Msg#: 4181 *INTERSHOP*
02-26-94 14:03:32
From: JEFFREY SCHULZ
To: CAROL BROAD (Rcvd)
Subj: FEMINISM AND BIOINFORMATICS
Regarding your message in , "what's feminism got to do with
Bio[informatics]," I would bring up (at the very least) the recent uproar over
older women having a baby. This is an interesting phenomenon in that it
combines ethical issues with genetic issues, and the genetic issues are
sometimes densely intertwined with issues pertaining to information
technologies. As genetic engineering is becoming more and more advanced,
ethical issues pertaining to women's bodies and biological processes will more
than likely figure prominently in wide-ranging debates about childbearing. If
abortion is one of the cornerstones of feminism and of the decisions that
affect womens' own bodies, what will genetic engineering -- and the spinoff
debates into ethics and information technologies -- produce?
<*>Replies
Msg#: 4223 *INTERSHOP*
02-27-94 01:25:23
From: ELIZABETH LICATA
To: JEFFREY SCHULZ (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4181 (FEMINISM AND BIOINFORMATICS)
This isn't really the direction I was headed with my previous message but I
think an interesting parellel might be drawn between the Big Brother aspect of
current informatiation technologies given their intrusive/destructive
capabilities and the waste that has already and continues to be laid re the
environment. Who blew the whistle on Hooker/Occidental when Love Canal was the
issue? A housewife, Lois Gibbs. I've also seen a lot of powerful installation
work on environmental issues by women--some men, but I believethey're in the
minority. There seems to be a natural questioning process employed through
feminist strategies when corporate intrusion is the issue, often at grassroots
levels not always visible in the current sense. Corporate intrusion and control
is what you're talking about, although now the parties are becoming far more
+difficult to pinpoint. That's one angle although
I'm uncertain of how it applies here.
Msg#: 4505 *INTERSHOP*
03-03-94 23:40:36
From: PETER JOHNSTONE
To: ELIZABETH LICATA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4223 (FEMINISM AND BIOINFORMATICS)
I think corporate control and intrusion does apply here, but for the argument's
sake I want to keep it from drifting into conspiracy theory. In the intro to
this discussion, Schulz describes the mapping web:
>
> The resulting network of relations, which has been characterized by
> Donna Haraway as"informatics," is one in which biological systems,
> like other systems, function as nodal entities with wider,
> dispersed nets of transactions.
> I want to point out that when Haraway uses this word in *Cyborg Manifesto*
it is part a larger phrase: *the informatics of domination*
Forgive my nit-picking (I'm afraid it's a bit of a pet peeve for me, how
Haraway is quoted ten times as often for her tech as for her politics... and
why doesn't anyone quote her on monkeys?) but the distiction, and her linking
of the phrase to socialist and feminist principles of design, points out a
specific edge to Bioinformatics. When Lois Gibbs blew the top off Love Canal,
her accessing of information technologies is as revolutionary as the message
-More-
she carried. And I think a useful question to ask is, if women had designed the
internet, tell me what that would have been like? The answer is not pink.
*
for your reference, here is a chart of *transitions from the confortable
old...dominations to the scary new networks* haraway describes as
*informatics of domination:*
*
Representation Simulation Bourgeois Novel, realism
Science fiction, postmodernism Organism Biotic
component Depth, integrity Surface, boundary Heat
Noise Boilogy as clinical practice Biology as inscription Physiology
Communication engineering Small group Subsystem
Perfection Optimization Eugenics
Population Control Decadence, MAGIC MOUNTAIN Obsolescence, FUTURE
SHOCK Hygiene Stress Management
Microbiology,tuberculosis Immunology, AIDS Organic divison of
labor Ergonomics / cybernetics of labor Functional
specialization Modular construction Reproduction
Replication Organic sex role specialization Optimal genetic strategies
Biological determinism Evolutionary inertia, constraints
Community Ecology Ecosystem Racial chain of being
Neo-imperialism, United Nations
humanism Scientific management in
-More-
home/ Global factory/electronic cottage
factory Family / market / factory Women in the Integrated
Circuit Family wage Comparable worth Public /
private Cyborg citizenship Nature / culture
Fields of difference Co-operation Communications
enhancement Freud Lacan Sex
Genetic engineering Labour Robotics Mind
Artifical intelligence Second World War Star Wars White
Capitalist Patriarchy Informatics of Domination
*
now, print THAT and tape it on your fridge.
Msg#: 4817 *INTERSHOP*
03-05-94 01:42:48
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: PETER JOHNSTONE (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4505 (FEMINISM AND BIOINFORMATICS)
women will soon be on the net - especially when they have to work with it and
the future office job isn't thinkable without these networks - and obviously
women will have a big share
Msg#: 4832 *INTERSHOP*
03-05-94 10:09:17
From: JEFFREY SCHULZ
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4817 (FEMINISM AND BIOINFORMATICS)
Actually, women already carry a "big share" of the load when it comes to using
the net for business purposes. Likewise, they are once again some of the most
highly monitored workers: networked productivity is extremely easy to quantify
in terms of number of keystrokes, length between keystrokes, etc. etc. etc. In
this way, networked data workers -- who are often women -- are subject to some
of the most stringent surveillance tactics available.
Msg#: 4919 *INTERSHOP*
03-06-94 03:17:32
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: JEFFREY SCHULZ (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4832 (FEMINISM AND BIOINFORMATICS)
this is a very good point. and here I might add something I pointed out already
a year ago in this forum that the talk about the absence of the body is total
nonesense. the body subjected to computer works is much more stressed then with
traditional working methods. it is precisely the discrepancy between a minimum
of body movements and a maximum of high level concentration that stresses all
body functions. and here again, who is doing most of the work : women. (I was
just somehow disturbed by the supposed to be little participation quote of
femals on networks, something I haven't heard before and something I don't
know: but I ask myself whether it is true ... true with the minitel, true with
university networks, true with intertainment webs?
Msg#: 4939 *INTERSHOP*
03-06-94 15:58:01
From: PETER JOHNSTONE
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4919 (FEMINISM AND BIOINFORMATICS)
Here's the latest quote i could find on feminine participation on the net:
Various estimates put the overall percentage of women online somewhere between
ten and fifteen percent. I found this in a laudetory article about ECHO, in
which they went on to point out: *But females comprise 37 percent of the
members on ECHO, and nearly half of its conference hosts are women (Horn [stacy
horn, founding sysop] hosts the culture conference).*
well, I suppose you've got to give them credit.
Msg#: 5240 *INTERSHOP*
03-07-94 21:13:11
From: MICHAEL JOHNSTON
To: PETER JOHNSTONE (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4939 (FEMINISM AND BIOINFORMATICS)
I was a female too when I was on ECHO!
Msg#: 5248 *INTERSHOP*
03-08-94 00:39:07
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: PETER JOHNSTONE (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4939 (FEMINISM AND BIOINFORMATICS)
well, it probably is this way, but this is only one study concerning one echo
board. I can't serve you with studies at all, (statistical ones) also, I
wasn't focusing so much on the difference between computer work and networking
.... so again, we might talk of different things... (my opinion on this
division is that in the near future, it will be diminished to insignificance
and all kind of computer work will be networking... i.e. interconnectedness of
stations and nets is going to be the standart configuration.
Msg#: 5259 *INTERSHOP*
03-08-94 02:06:00
From: SABINE B. VOGEL
To: ALL
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 5248 (RE: FEMINISM AND BIOINFORMATICS)
can anybody explain more about this project? the subject, what will happen
with the msgs etc.
as long as I know, Blast is a box with objects. so how will text-files fit
into that?
and maybe about the connection to the Koeln Kunstverein?
Sabine
Msg#: 5340 *INTERSHOP*
03-09-94 08:47:39
From: JEFF HARRINGTON
To: JEFFREY SCHULZ (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4181 (FEMINISM AND BIOINFORMATICS)
Here's a text file prepared by Choice in Dying (where I work - yes, I have a
real day job) as an educator and computer programmer:
Thought it might fit into the discussion... women as incubators et al...
Jeff Harrington
FACTS ABOUT: WOMEN AND END-OF-LIFE DECISIONS
The right to refuse medical treatment at the end of life is not the same
for women as it is for men. Advance directive laws in individual states often
explicitly limit the applicability of living wills or durable powers of
attorney for health care during the course of a woman's pregnancy. Even when
the law is the same for men and women, there is evidence to suggest that the
courts apply that law differently for the two sexes.
-More-
Pregnancy Exclusions
"Pregnancy exclusions" -- the phrase used to describe the restrictive
provisions of state law that forbids a woman's advance directive from being
honored while she is pregnant -- illustrate this imbalance between the rights
of women and men in end-of-life decisionmaking.
In the landmark right-to-die case Cruzan v. Director, Missouri
Department of Health, the United States Supreme Court recognized that competent
adults have the constitutional right to refuse medical treatment, even if that
treatment is necessary to sustain life. This right can be preserved through
advance directives such as living wills and durable powers of attorney for
health care in the event the individual loses the ability to make decisions for
herself.
In Roe v. Wade and more recently, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern
Pennsylvania v. Casey, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a woman's decision to
end her pregnancy is a "liberty interest" protected against state interference
by the Fourteenth Amendment prior to viability of the fetus.
Combined, these cases clearly suggest that, at least prior to viability
of the fetus, no state may force a pregnant woman to receive unwanted medical
treatment.
-More-
State laws do not follow suit:
Of the 47 states and the District of Columbia that have living will
statutes,
o Thirty-four states explicitly forbid withdrawal of or
withholding life support under a woman's living will if
the woman is pregnant;
o Ten states and the District of Columbia make no mention
of pregnancy in their living will statute, implicitly
allowing her to refuse life support during pregnancy;
o Only three states permit the woman to choose to refuse
life support if she is pregnant.
Of the 37 states and the District of Columbia that have durable power of
attorney for health care or health care proxy statutes:
o Seven states explicitly forbid a health care agent from
ordering the withholding or withdrawal of life support
from pregnant patients;
-More-
o Twenty-six states and the District of Columbia are
silent on the issue of whether an agent may order the
withholding or withdrawal of treatment from a pregnant
patient, implicitly allowing her to refuse life support
during pregnancy;
o Only four states permit the woman to choose whether her
agent can withhold or withdraw life support in the event
she is pregnant.
Right-to-Die Court Cases
Women may also be subject to unequal treatment by the courts when
end-of-life medical treatment is at issue. Two researchers (Miles and August,
1990) studied the outcomes of all right-to-die cases decided by state appellate
courts involving patients without advance directives. This study found:
o Out of eight cases involving men, the court found
sufficient evidence of the patient's treatment wishes
from prior statements in six cases;
o Out of 14 cases involving women, the court found
sufficient evidence of the patient's treatment wishes
-More-
from prior statements in only two cases;
o Many courts characterized past statements made by male
patients as "rational." The female patients' statements
were characterized as "unreflective, emotional, or
immature;"
o Some of the courts never even mentioned the women's
prior statements. (rev.2/94)
Msg#: 5996 *INTERSHOP*
03-14-94 11:05:46
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: SABINE B. VOGEL
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 5259 (RE: FEMINISM AND BIOINFORMATI)
Blast is not only a box with objects; it's also a system for examining
and producing objects and textualities as art. It's like a deconstructed,
three-dimensional magazine, openly connected to other systems at all of its
points. The editorial units are loose and there are many possible content-
combinations; the editorial content spills in and out of the box, traversing
its borders and blurring its boundaries.
What we do is explore the ways in which editorial material is produced,
circulated, and consumed as art, in light of information technology's
hypertextualization. This editorial material is not limited to artists,
curators, and writers; students, physicians, psychoanalysts, physicists,
information technologists, cognitive theorists, architects, and so on,
contribute editorially and in the process of examining the construction of
content as art. So in this case, art becomes a way of examining how meaning is
so produced--how material signifies, how it traverses discursive spheres and is
"claimed," how it interrelates and transacts, how it is socially and culturally
negotiated.
-More-
Each Blast investigates a topic, and builds on what the previous Blasts
have developed. In the last Blast (#3), we developed a way to "map" editorial
content, so that it can occur in social space, outside of the box. So this
fourth Blast, which we have titled "Bioninformatics," will exist partially on
The Thing. There will be dialogues going on here about it, and projects
developed online and offline, in varying combinations. Blast will map this
content through an indexing-system inside the boxes. Some of the projects will
be included in the box in their entirety, so to speak, as texts, objects,
images, sound pieces, computer programs, etc.; some of the projects will exist
partially in the box, and some of the projects won't be in there at all--only
mapped.
So by participating in this forum you're contributing to Blast. We may
develop a hypertext version of this forum to include in the boxes on computer
disk, or we may decide just to leave it on The Thing and provide a route for
Blast participants to access it in The Thing's archives. You can also propose a
project; I will net-mail you the editorial guidelines for doing so. (If anyone
else would like them, please ask Jeffrey Schulz and he will e-mail them to
you.)
The topic "Bioinformatics" deals with the interrelations between
biological organism and information flow: how informatics penetrates biotics
and how biology extends itself into social, economic, and cultural space. There
is a description at the beginning of this forum. This material directly relates
to the material we developed here on The Thing in the "Transactivism"
-More-
symposium. It was structured through that discussion. As always, we expect the
topic--and the projects and the boxes--to develop in a way we haven't forseen.
What we do is structure a system for editorial to be developed, and then try to
accomodate whatever occurs, within our limitations. It is a collaborative
project; even readers, who buy the Blast boxes, become participants, involved
in the construction of the content of their own boxes and future boxes (we
extend a special invitation in each box for them to contact us and
participate). Things change, sometimes drastically.
Blast is also a collective artwork in itself. Blast #4 will be
exhibited at the Kunstverein Koeln from early January through mid-March, 1995,
organized with Udo Kittelmann. There may also be a corresponding exhibition
here in New York in early 1995.
Let me know if you have any other questions.
End of Replies, add yours(Y/N)? N
Msg#: 4210 *INTERSHOP*
02-26-94 19:43:59
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: ALL
Subj: RESPONDEAT SUPERIOR
this is more informatics than bio, but bears mentioning nonetheless...A long
standing legal doctrin, *respondeat superior* (employers only responsible for
employees acts which are committed within the scope of their employment) is
being transformed into a more broad responsibility of employer for the acts of
the employee. This is progressing at differing rates in various states.
So what? you reasonably ask. Well, this is what...the employer, or
prospective employer, is now under greater legal pressure to know everything
about his employees, more about their backgrounds and psychological make up,
medical histories, credit ratings, and such...because if he/she/it doesn't make
a rigorous ( and probably intrusive ) examination, he/she/it can be held liable
for not finding out abot it and doing something about it.
The name of the game today is "negligent hiring". Nobody wants to be left
holding the bag, so they are going to up the level of investigation
considerably (good business opportunity for the naturally curious types), and
privacy is going to have to take its lumps.
This is part of an ongoing trend toward a low privacy. Maybe in fifty years,
-More-
the concept of privacy will begin to fade from our language as a quaint notion
along the lines of "honor".
Msg#: 4497 *INTERSHOP*
03-03-94 22:01:58
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: ARABIC
I feel a little bit confused by your certainty about the sealedness, the
impermeability of the arabic language. I do really not have the slightest idea
about arabic but I can not imagine that the turkish, british and french
colonisation didn't affect the arabic language at all. it shouldn't be
forgotten that at the end of the french domination of Algeria Arabic was
declared as a foreign language next to the official "national" language that
was in this case French. With the Russian language you can tell every dominant
influence at any time absorbing lots of foreign words, also with Japanese and
all the European languages. (this is a comment to what you wrote earlier
under the "sacred and the profane" subject)
<*>Replies
Msg#: 4539 *INTERSHOP*
03-04-94 09:16:09
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4497 (ARABIC)
That's just the way it is, exactly why I know not. Saudia proper is xenophobic,
and does not admit "tourists" as such. Pilgrims on *hajj*, the essential visit
to Mecca, are very carefully hearded there and back out.
A girlfriend of yore lived in Riyadh as her father was an engineer for
Aramco (she was Anglo-California) and supplied me with numerous impressions
that quite few Westerners are permitted.
The ruling family saw value in importing Western technology, but they were
contemptuous of Western ideas, especially liberal ones.
Nabokov, on the other hand, tells us that the Russians have a great fondness
for new words, and that their sense of slang is second to none, with little of
the hang ups about linguistic purity that Arabs have.
End of Replies, add yours(Y/N)? N
Msg#: 4537 *INTERSHOP*
03-04-94 08:25:34
From: JEFFREY SCHULZ
To: PETER JOHNSTONE (Rcvd)
Subj: POLITICS
> I think corporate control and intrusion does apply here, but for the
> argument's sake I want to keep it from drifting into conspiracy
> theory.
Yes, I think you're absolutely right about control and intrusion. The
continuing push of information brokerage houses into *domestic* houses, for
example, is perfect fodder for conspiracists (as is Morgan's posting on
RESPONDEAT SUPERIOR, #4210). But it's increasingly difficult for me to maintain
the binary distinctions that propel not only conspiracy theories but also, at
least in part, Haraway's rhetoric of domination. (It's interesting to note that
the "informatics of domination" comparisons first appeared in *Socialist
Review* in 1985, before the fall of the Berlin Wall.) For me, the format of the
list in your message is much closer to the way I perceive the situation than is
the format of the original print version. In the original version, the
separations between "categories" are perfectly clear: Second World War vs. Star
-More-
Wars, Reproduction vs. Replication, etc. In your version, however, it is
unclear where the boundary lines are drawn: is Corporate Worth the "opposite"
of Public/Private? How does one affect the other? Where do they overlap,
intersect, interact? For me, your format, which I believe was unintentional,
signals that the questions and methods for addressing a variety issues have
become much more complicated than a strict binarism can accommodate -- if they
could have *ever* been accommodated in this way. For example, one of the
comparisons from the original list, "tuberculosis" vs. "AIDS," is already
ineffective because of the rising incidence of TB in various areas of the
culture.
The intended purpose of your posting foregrounds some very important
distinctions, and it makes a nice bridge between some of the concerns of the
Transactivism symposium and this dialogue. One question raised by both was/is,
what kind of politics can be created in a networked environment? With the
disappearance of many of the clear distinctions that have historically
operationalized resistance (distinctions that have often characterized politics
in general) what kind of models -- plural -- for a "webbed" politics can be
configured?
> Forgive my nit-picking
Nit-picking is what we need, I think.
-More-
> why doesn't anyone quote her on monkeys?
Hmmm, I wonder.
Msg#: 4818 *INTERSHOP*
03-05-94 01:58:29
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: THOSE WITHOUT ACCESS
Subj: NET POLITICS
unfortunately, but it is already now very clear: it will be the politics of the
creditcard with its expiring date that is making it... this is not a cynical
comment but terms like communication, consumption and purchasing are the first
to merge in a liquid screen firmament of portable ideologies.
<*>Replies
Msg#: 4831 *INTERSHOP*
03-05-94 10:05:09
From: JEFFREY SCHULZ
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4818 (NET POLITICS)
> unfortunately, but it is already now very clear:
Could you clarify this? I think I've lost some part of your thought process.
Msg#: 4921 *INTERSHOP*
03-06-94 03:37:17
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: JEFFREY SCHULZ (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4831 (NET POLITICS)
the "unfortunately" means that I regret the fact that the networks are far from
being neutral open highways, stressing the metaphor of a more or less
democratic travel surface (- even this metaphor sucks, since one needs first a
car, then the paytoll, then the fuel and an aim to go for)."it is now very
clear" .... that it is more an extented version of shopping, of consuming, of
distracting
End of Replies, add yours(Y/N)? N
Msg#: 5872 *INTERSHOP*
03-13-94 14:20:13
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: BILL CHAPMAN
Subj: REVIEWS
I am also trying to send these three reviews as enclosed files herein.
*Enclosed File: perrone
Msg#: 6948 *INTERSHOP*
03-20-94 13:10:07
From: DENNIS SUMMERS
To: ALL
Subj: NO MATERIAL EXISTENCE
Following is a page from an artist's book (No Material Existence: Cincinnati-
the book) that documents a work I created last summer. I believe that it has
more than tangential bearing to the Intershop subject at large. Anyone
interested in purchasing the book can E-mail me for more info.
From June 1- 4, 1993, I appropriated much of metropolitan Cincinnati,
Ohio and northern Kentucky. I appropriated the power grid, radio and TV trans
mission towers, and the telephone lines. I controlled them via a drumming
action at the Central Nexus located on 344 W. 4th Street. These strategic
sectors were claimed by the placement of ikons at sites specific to both the
pertinent physical structures, and a larger, significant geometry.
There were three different kinds of ikons. Electro-Power (EP) Intens-
ifiers were located at strain towers for high voltage lines. At these sites,
the Intensifiers could channel energy to power the No Material Existence Grid
(NME Grid). In order to claim the ethereal communication frequencies, Broad-
cast Resonant (BR) Filaments were anchored near radio and television trans-
-More-
mission towers. Here, the BR Filaments could filter signal as desired.
Finally, Axis Magnifiers were hammered into telephone poles. This was done to
focus signals by tapping and capturing them along new lines of force. For
more details on structure and placement of these devices, please look to doc-
umentation within this book.
Note that although these devices were built using common materials and
techniques, they were, nonetheless, done so according to the most exacting
physical, metaphysical and metaphorical standards. The geometries used to
guide location were designed to maximize the NME potential. At the Central
Nexus (CN), a drumming ceremony was performed in order to initiate system
function. The drumming was transmitted throughout the NME Grid by a tower at
the CN. Incoming communication was received by six antenna dishes. An array
of six iron rings and copper wire supplied start-up energy. The lines of force
were directed by a large iron spike wrapped in a copper coil, vertically
suspended from a bamboo tripod. Backup communication systems were supplied by
a telephone (disconnected) and a deer skull. Once activation energy was
reached, the system became self-sustaining.
The weather during the four-day set-up period was largely rainy and
unpleasant, punctuated by short periods of sunshine. There were unanticipated,
yet positive sociological consequences. Although unintended, the placement of
the NME Grid crossed socio-economic and environmental lines, tying them
together within its vast interactive web. For example, the placement of the
Axis Magnifiers were within the following neighborhoods. To the north: large
-More-
academic buildings in a collegiate, somewhat urban environment, along a four-
lane highway. To the east: large expensive homes behind well-kept lawns along
a quiet, shady tree-lined road. To the south: dilapidated wood and brick homes
(many vacant) on a dirty run-down street. To the west: neat two-story
working-class homes, behind plain lawns on a cross-town highway.
Thus, a unification system of physical variables becomes one of a
sociological nature. The Axis Magnifiers combine and communicate amongst the
four neighborhoods. The EP Intensifiers and the BR Filaments worked in similar
ways, further extending into rural areas. The CN was naturally down-
town - the traditional center for economic and social activity.
The NME Grid functioned fully until it was decomissioned on July 9,
1993.
<*>Replies
Msg#: 7007 *INTERSHOP*
03-21-94 02:10:05
From: PETER JOHNSTONE
To: DENNIS SUMMERS (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6948 (NO MATERIAL EXISTENCE)
> The NME Grid functioned fully until...
so, I would be interested in knowing your definition of function here. If I
read your text right, the NME grid produced nothing quantifiable in the
traditional scientific method. If your idea of "function" is different from
classical science's, let me have it. have you finally perfected the perpetual
motion machine?
Msg#: 7452 *INTERSHOP*
03-23-94 21:08:28
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: DENNIS SUMMERS (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6948 (NO MATERIAL EXISTENCE)
this is wonderfully nuts...Nikola Tesla one hour after a generous dose of
mescaline...
Msg#: 8934 *INTERSHOP*
04-02-94 10:49:37
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: DENNIS SUMMERS (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6948 (NO MATERIAL EXISTENCE)
What did this communicate to these four neighborhoods? Was it the drumming,
picked up by others via radio, tv, etc.? Also why do you call it "No Material
Existence"?
End of Replies, add yours(Y/N)? N
Msg#: 7128 *INTERSHOP*
03-22-94 21:12:26
From: DENNIS SUMMERS
To: PETER JOHNSTONE (Rcvd)
Subj: NO MATERIAL EXISTENCE
Function does not necessarily imply perpetual motion. Organic organisms
"function" yet are not considered perpetual motion machines. Also as I wrote
in the text I appropriated the Metropolitan Cincinnati power system, which
supplied ample energy for the NME Grid. To answer your more general question,
(if I understand it correctly), you are correct in assuming that the NME Grid
produced nothing quantifiable in the "traditional scientific method". How-
ever that is to beg the question, because certain fields of contemporary
physics fail to produce the quantifiable. Now, although I am not certain what
you consider to be the "classical science" definition of function, let me
suggest (keep in mind that I'm not a writer) that function could be defined as
"operating to cause an effect, an effect may exist physically, mentally, some
combination of the two, or something else entirely." Does that help?
Msg#: 9969 *INTERSHOP*
04-10-94 19:26:14
From: DENNIS SUMMERS
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO #8934
>What did this communicate to these four neighborhoods?
>Was it the drumming, picked up by others via radio, tv, etc.?
I'm not sure I understand this question, could you rephrase or expand?
It is called "No Material Existence" a few reasons. The origin of this
phrase came from a collage I did many years ago where I included the xeroxed
phrase "...radio waves....no material existence..." taken from a textbook on
electromagnetic radiation. I began to see NME as a useful metaphor for the
theme of so much of my work, which is about things that have no material
existence, some of which are recognized as "real" by the techno-
scientific world, other of which is not.
Msg#:10228 *INTERSHOP*
04-11-94 17:39:35
From: JEFFREY SCHULZ
To: ALL
Subj: ROUNDTABLE: NOMADS
We are pleased to initiate the first in a series of roundtable discussions to
be conducted in this forum. Periodically, a topic will be introduced here, and
a group of roundtable participants will serve as the catalyst in addressing the
topic as it impacts the Bioinformatics project. Neither the forum nor the
roundtable will be restricted areas, however, and all Thingusers are invited to
pull up a chair. The only request to all participants is that this thread not
be broken (i.e., that the subject of the thread not be changed).
The following text, which introduces the first topic, was culled (and very
slightly re-worked) from a full article by Kirk Johnson, which appeared in the
Tuesday, February 8, 1994, Metro Section of the New York Times. Seated at the
roundtable are: Jordan Crandall, Rainer Ganahl, Elizabeth Licata, JFS, Wolfgang
Staehle, and Laura Trippi. By way of beginnings, perhaps everyone can offer hir
initial thoughts on the text, mentioning points of interest and connection,
allowing the dialogue to take shape and coalesce along the way.
-More-
Rootless, mobile, armed with 120 megabytes in his briefcase, Mr. John A. Cruz
-- a 32-year-old account executive at Travelers Insurance -- is one of a new
breed of high-tech nomads who are changing the face and the culture of many
companies. Few industries are very likely to be transformed [by these nomads]
as fundamentally as the paper-heavy insurance business. Under fierce pressure
to cut costs, insurance executives say that two important insights make the
mobile work force irresistible. First, insurance is essentially a disembodied
product anyway, ideally suited to being electronically blipped, faxed and
phoned from one place to another, without regard to place. The second is that
all the apparatus of modern telecommunications -- laptops, modems, cellular
phones, voice mail, electronic mail and beepers -- keeps everyone in touch all
the time and lets management track non-office workers and their performance
even more closely than people sitting just down the hall. What pushes hard
against such change, however, are the decades gone before, when the insurance
business was defined by its vast corporate cocoons. Being solid was more
important than being swift.
[The impact of this nomadism] has already turned many lives upside down. Joel
Corbin, for example, a senior claims adjuster for ITT Hartford, has become a
sort of gypsy moth of natural disasters: Eleven weeks in Hawaii for Hurricane
Iniki, eight weeks in South Carolina for Hurricane Hugo, three weeks in Oakland
for the wildfires there. His current field office is the Burbank Holiday Inn in
-More-
southern California where he expects to spend perhaps three or four months. An
independent insurance owner said of this and similar situations, "Now you can
have an organization where you can go weeks at a time and not see anyone else
who works for that organization."
In living with this situation, many insurance sales people say they have become
little more than the sum of their E-mail.
<*>Replies
Msg#:10244 *INTERSHOP*
04-11-94 18:42:06
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: JEFFREY SCHULZ (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 10228 (ROUNDTABLE: NOMADS)
Well this article is interesting for its shortcomings: it oscillates between a
skeptical, if not even critical attitude towards the abrupt changing of the
work places- of people who are more or less pushed out of their offices and
their social circuits. In an almost lamenting tone the article points out those
facts but doesn't have a better explanation then just the one of facts. on the
other end the article even tries to describe it with wrong oppositions and call
this phenomena decentered versus centered (in the office building), mobile
versus controlled. these oppositions made me really angry because they are just
cover ups of the opposite truth. i.e. that now, those sale agents with their
personalized remote control high tech equipments in cars are constantly
reachable, always controllable, always at any time and place in touch with the
main frame units. every little mistake is detectable immediately.
decentralization ideologically means a distance from the center not in just a
topographical sense but in a logistical, operational, referential, decision and
responsibility related sense. I would even say that the opposite is true since
-More-
the main frame brain is extending and sends its tentacles via e-mail and other
remote technologies out there at all times and in all spaces. the best quote of
this article is the bon mots by an agent saying that now he isn't more than the
sum of his e-mail communications. one other positive aspects of the article:
in one other sentence they point out that with the disappearance of the class
of clerks all the related business also are going to suffer and the city itself
might change its face. I would have liked a better description of these
consequences consequences. what is really happening to the worker (they say
that de facto every high tech worker works 90 minutes longer every day), what
happens to the rights of a worker, to the definitions of work as such. what are
the social, psychological, and economical impacts of it....
Msg#:10316 *INTERSHOP*
04-11-94 19:32:05
From: DENNIS SUMMERS
To: JEFFREY SCHULZ (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 10228 (ROUNDTABLE: NOMADS)
This article reminds me of an "article" I heard on NPR news a month or
so back. They basically said the same thing, but pointed out that it ap-
plies to people in all sorts of occupations. Furthermore, they made the
sociological point that because of this, people could live anywhere, and still
earn a living. Many people were moving to the mountains of colorado, etc. This
raises several issues. First, will people, given this opportunity choose to
leave urban centers. I myself intend on doing so, first chance I get. What
will this do to the previous wide open, underpopulated areas, that I selfishly
want to keep that way? If the so-called technological elite leave (this shows
my own bias, perhaps many would still choose to stay, any thoughts on this?)
such centers, who will be left carrying the bag? The political implications
of course are obvious. Maybe I'm overly simplistic, but it seems to me a
nation of Walden Pond type living situations would lead to political isolation,
and lack of centralized political control. The NPR story said that many of
-More-
these new-comers to the mountains, were not, as I recall, involving themselves
in local politics.
Msg#:10323 *INTERSHOP*
04-11-94 21:37:40
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: DENNIS SUMMERS (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 10316 (ROUNDTABLE: NOMADS)
I plan on doing much the same when technology gets over the interconnection
hump, and so does everybody else I talk to. Look for rather funkier urban
experiences coming to a future near you.
Msg#:10327 *INTERSHOP*
04-11-94 23:14:43
From: JFS
To: JEFFREY SCHULZ (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 10228 (ROUNDTABLE: NOMADS)
The "you could be replaced by a computer" warnings are now coming true. All
those nomadic insurance salesmen are their own secretaries, their laptops are
their administrative assistants, internet is their company mailroom. One
executive's job today represents four office jobs of yesterday. Does this mean
one executive does the work of four?
I sense that what constitutes "work" and "job" has changed a lot in the last
few years. People I have worked with at Kodak and IBM who held senior
positions in those companies have lost their jobs to downsizing. The struggle
to guarantee regular hours (8 hours a day, really), health insurance,
retirement package, and seniority is lost when companies hire younger people
as freelance, contract and per-project employees. 'Company loyalty' is over
when IBM dumps 25,000 people in a year.
-More-
The company is smaller, responsibility is greater and the corporate executive
is on a perpetual business trip. His mobility is of greater value to the
company - he can cover more jobs. Everyone knows that a company's greatest
cost (especially a service company) is personnel. Big companies must cut
payroll, insurance, and retirement costs. The plan is to reduce staff through
electronic automation. The plan is working.
The nomadic insurance executive has fewer choices and must perform under
greater scrutiny if he wants to keep his benefits. He cannot rely on his
friendship with someone he sees everyday at the company. He must produce
satisfactory numbers. If we are being disembodied from our workplace, our
value to a company may be only representable as statistics. How many documents
processed? What percent of sales calls were successful? How much attendance
did we generate? How many people downloaded the report? I wonder who will
advance through this kind of competition and what kind of company will emerge.
And come on, a measly 120MB HD? No one should have to suffer like this!!!
Msg#:10463 *INTERSHOP*
04-13-94 01:12:38
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: JFS (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 10327 (ROUNDTABLE: NOMADS)
today my mind was yet again blown by the rate that change is overtaking us;
even the rate of acceleration is accelerating...I used to order a report on a
company and it would arrive express mail in two days (this was as of last
week), now I fax in an order with the joint I want to know about, and the
report is back to me over the fax (plain paper fax damn nice, looks like real
printing job) in about three hours...so I call the treasurer of Immulogic and
sound like I know what I am talking about all before quitting time, then locate
and book a flight to a seminar on OAG without talking to a soul (tix will
arrive by mail in a couple of days), put a stop payment on a stolen check
through another program, again without any personal contact, listen to a 45
minute lecture on freedom of speech on cassette (go to a class?fugedaboudit,
who has the time), plug into the brain machine for a while to get some extra
theta in the right mix with some high alpha and beta...omigod, this is becoming
normal...you gots a plan?
Msg#:10787 *INTERSHOP*
04-14-94 21:00:57
From: WOLFGANG STAEHLE
To: JEFFREY SCHULZ (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 10228 (ROUNDTABLE: NOMADS)
I am reminded of a recent AT&T ad campaign. In one version the caption read:
"Did you ever attend a meeting in bare feet?" and then at the bottom: "YOU
WILL." It showed a picture of a nicely equipped notebook computer next to the
bare feet of its operator on a wooden table on what looked like a porch of a
vacation house. The background vista was a Caribean landscape with a nice ocean
view. I must admit I was quite seduced. Just imagine running TT somewhere
offshore (no taxes, no obscenity laws, etc.), moving headquartes to Port
Antonio in Jamaica and doing sysadmin work remotely from the porch between
sailing trips and an occasional ganja spliff. Ahh...bunker dreams!
Msg#:10788 *INTERSHOP*
04-14-94 21:01:10
From: GISELA EHRENFRIED
To: JFS (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 10327 (ROUNDTABLE: NOMADS)
What company will emerge?
I saved a New York Times article by Phil Patton,"The Virtual Office Becomes
Reality," Oct. 28, 1993. It's about the ad agency Chiat Day transforming their
headquarters into a virtual office.
The work force is split in "teamers," employees who work in the main office,
and "mobiles," who move around a lot to increase the "face time," the time
spent face-to-face with clients. But the term mobile applies also to workers
back at headquarters who don't have their own office, but rather use a "drop-in
office" (an office used in turn by many employees), or are "hotelling" (setting
up offices for temporary use, like hotel rooms).
Saves office space, of course... and gives us the second-class citizen
phenomenon: a work force divided into the ones who spend most of the time in
-More-
the office and the office-less mobile who may come to work and find all desks
taken, a work force more and more consisting of part-time and temporary workers
and consultants, which can be easily adjusted, reduced or enlarged in number.
Chiat/Day has come up with a strange wrapping for it. The organizing model for
their virtual office is the college campus and the classroom - pick up your
laptop and phone at the "company store", go to the concierge to register for a
project room [class room], go to the media center which figures as the library,
where you can do research on a CD-ROM-based computer... there is also a
"student's union." Chiat/Day College, the training camp for the work forces!
The organizing model for the preceeding office type was the factory. There is
a foto of a large office space designed in 1906 by Frank Lloyd Wright for
Larkin Company, where every female clerk is flanked by male executives "to
promote productivity." Gentlemen, these were the times!
Msg#:10840 *INTERSHOP*
04-15-94 14:18:51
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: JEFFREY SCHULZ (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 10228 (ROUNDTABLE: NOMADS)
I find this situation interesting because it concerns the insurance
industry and what might be loosely called the disaster industry, which lock in
place to generate complementary pushing-pulling forces like an enormous pump:
insurance sucks in and casts a protective net, instilling comfort and safety;
disaster thrusts out, disembodies, dissolves, dismembers. This mechanism is
productive of a certain kind of ongoing psychogeographic panic, a looming
state of perpetual fear and intoxicating emergency, a lurid and invigorating
desire for both the safety of home and the thrill of crime, of walls built safe
and blown down, of a self secured and a self unhinged. Individuals, social
relationships, biotic components, and psychogeographies are enmeshed in this
dynamic, disrupted, dispersed, and radically reordered along the shifting fault
lines of the information economy, which fragments self and space even as it
provides for their integration. In many ways this is the natural environment
for our Travelers Insurance man: always in transit, stalking scenes of death
and disaster, he is a being-in-conversion, a specter hovering at the periphery
of the roadside accident and the storm shelter, summoned by the collective
-More-
states of the victims and the victims-in-waiting, who long to be written into
the script, validated, absolved--to traverse the television screen and to touch
the collective mind, to enter the delirious storm systems of the televisual
economy, to traffic in the disaster commodity and the apocalyptic oratory.
"There is a history of connection between the mutilation of a body and
the need to record that feat," Thyrza Nichols Goodeve writes in a recent review
of *The Diary of Jack the Ripper*;
such recording or inscribing is an act of insuring (as the Ripper diarist
himself writes, "I cannot stop the thrill of writing"), a scripting of safety
in the face of danger, an embodying of the disembodied, which produces the
latter even as it seemingly effaces it. Acts of insurance, bodies of
information, and dynamics of disaster are connected at all points to the
economies and technologies that generate them, which are connected to the
embodied subjects who produce and are produced by information, economies, and
technologies of both integration and disintegration. Their systems of linkage
constitute dynamic arterial networks, through which blood, wind, and codes flow
and around and through which bodies coalesce.
So not only has the impact of this so-called nomadism "turned many
lives upside down," it has sent them careening headlong into a world which
requires alternate psychosocial geographies and climatic conditions, a ghostly
but hyperreal terrain marked at each step by its continual breakup and
reformation--that is, by the modes and manifestations of its circulation. What
kinds of maps might we envision to accomodate this? It is interesting to
-More-
consider this in the context of "insured" disaster space, because this
embodied/disembodied, attached/detached, safe/high risk, health/dis-ease (as
the New Agers write it), integrative/disintegrative dynamic has always ordered
our sense of world. And here the circulatory energies are that of nature, the
economic and the informational, all of which are rooted in the biologic, and
which traverse it and employ its logics of production. What are these ghostly
social geographies and the loci of circulatory energies--such as selves--that
drift through them, simultaneously disrupting them, producing them, and being
produced by them?
End of Replies, add yours(Y/N)? N
Msg#:10466 *INTERSHOP*
04-13-94 01:58:08
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: H T N
Subj: NEW BREED
there is a new interesting article in the NY times today about commerce in the
e-mail: entitled: commerce comes to the internet. "a new high speed network
offers security for business data" .. . finally it is here... what once was
reserved for research and art school kids is no being marketed for other
ends...
Msg#:10467 *INTERSHOP*
04-13-94 02:02:08
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: NEW BREED
as the title of the article I am supposed to discuss is called "New Breed of
High-Tech Nomads" I want to call my string "new breed" from now on...
Msg#:11431 *INTERSHOP*
04-18-94 23:19:23
From: CHRIS KRAMER
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 10244 (ROUNDTABLE: NOMADS)
> *what is really happening to the worker (they say
> that de facto every high tech worker works 90 minutes longer
> every day), what
> happens to the rights of a worker, to the definitions of work
> as such. what are
> the social, psychological, and economical impacts of it....*
> For me this question is significant, and unanswered.
> Wishful thinking that somehow the trajectory of development
> promises equity down the road will get us absolutely nowhere.
> There is good reason to think more clearly and
> carefully about the vision of the future we hope to realize.
> Inspirational messages are not very useful, but serious
> thinking about concrete issues and long term goals definitely
> is.
> Demand equals need plus *buying power*, so the poor are out of
> the equation all together (except where their labor can be
> exploited to create luxury items for those of us with money).
> The problem for most CEOs is how to get rid of these useless
> creatures who will only get in the way.
> The elites, to justify their advantages in
> material and influence, inevitably come to see themselves as
> superior, deserving more, better able to rule, etc. etc. The
> rabble belong where they are.
> Indeed, far from the gap between rich and poor shrinking, it
> steadily increases, because output rises and
> the share to capital stays constant or rises.
> This, indeed, is my definition of alienation. What we
> get, we get because it benefits others and, indeed, preserves
> our ultimate subodination.
> the only thing that is ever
> going to cause that situation to change to a truly egalitarian
> distribution of both material and circumstance and influence
> in the economy is the irradication of class rule,
<*>Replies
<->,
Msg#:12305 *INTERSHOP*
04-23-94 13:30:03
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 10840 (ROUNDTABLE: NOMADS)
Jordan, it has dawned on me that your writing is intensely auditory; tonal,
dramatic, needing vocal inflection. It is like a fusion of John Zorn and
sociology. Have you thought about reading your postings aloud (or better yet,
having several readers go at it) and recording the work as a performance and
distributing the cassettes? That would be really fun!
Msg#:12353 *INTERSHOP*
04-23-94 20:39:18
From: WOLFGANG STAEHLE
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 12305 (ROUNDTABLE: NOMADS)
I usually have the Amiga read my messages to me. For your messages I prefer
the robot voice. Jordan's messages sound good when read by the female voice
with the pitch lowered to about 40.
Only when I read Roberta Smith's reviews in the Times I read them aloud to
myself imitating the inflection of Winston Churchill.
Msg#:12404 *INTERSHOP*
04-24-94 09:31:15
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 12305 (ROUNDTABLE: NOMADS)
Thank you Morgan, I never really thought about that. I'll do this if you do
some more Channeling.
Msg#:12688 *INTERSHOP*
04-24-94 21:12:08
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 12404 (ROUNDTABLE: NOMADS)
well, me and Bob will do a regular hook up, so the Rausch doesn't have to mess
with all this pomo computer gumbo but can still tune in to his fabulous fans. I
was talking to Jerry Lewis about a mind link too, but his vibrations are tough
to follow...he screams too much. QUIET!!!!!!!!!!!!
Msg#:12689 *INTERSHOP*
04-24-94 21:15:06
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: WOLFGANG STAEHLE (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 12353 (ROUNDTABLE: NOMADS)
how does your Amiga do this? Make me sound like Charlton Heston, OK? My ego
needs the boost. Just for fun, make Roberta Smith sound like Imelda Marcos! As
for Jordan, let him be Helen Frankenthaler for a day, just cause!
Msg#:12401 *INTERSHOP*
04-24-94 08:20:05
From: JEFFREY SCHULZ
To: JEFFREY SCHULZ (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 10228 (ROUNDTABLE: NOMADS)
For me, one of the issues that grows out of this situation has to do with
community. One aspect of this issue has to do with corporate culture and the
fact that the community of insurance workers no longer provides the sense of
group cohesion that it once did. When the insurance owner says in the article,
"Now you can have an organization where you can go weeks at a time and not see
anyone else who works for that organization," one of the implications is that
the community has been dispersed, perhaps along with the sense of security and
comfort that was provided by that community.
The issue of community also emerges in terms of the intense, short-term
communities that gather around these workers as they make their way from one
disaster to another. For just a short period of time, the insurance worker
might, in fact, become the most *important* source of consolation for certain
people, fulfilling the need for an intense and personal communal experience.
But, of course, this community is founded on a very short duration.
In many ways, this also seems to be characteristic of the communities that form
around bulletin boards such as this one. Often, online communities are
short-lived, extremely intense, and fleeting. In terms of Jordan's question
regarding social geographies, it seems that information technologies are
seriously impacting our notions of community in ways that we might not have
possibly imagined. For example, how do these changes effect notions of place?
If a new sense of place is emerging, what changes might be in store for
stability and/or community?
Msg#:12921 *INTERSHOP*
04-25-94 01:40:51
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: JEFFREY SCHULZ (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 12401 (ROUNDTABLE: NOMADS)
technology does change our places.... by place I mean a culturally and socially
construed entity negotiated through the way we deal, live and communicate in
it. technology seems to annihilate distances and the specificity of places and
turn them into something neutral, faceless, without living provil. but it does
something interesting too: it creates a new symbolic landscape we can travel
through: for ex. there is an entire new linguistic and graphic world one
encounters in interfaces that start to substitute for "places", "commun places"
we usually would encounter in, we usually would talk about and reassure and
readapt our common views. so to one degree it is right to mourn a loss of
geography (even if you gain new territory you fly or drive through) but on the
other side one gains new land, a kind of terra informatica, an interfacial
passage, a symbolic realm that not just hosts us but also serves as a new kind
of reference point.
Msg#:13057 *INTERSHOP*
04-25-94 22:35:50
From: CHRIS KRAMER
To: JEFFREY SCHULZ (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 12401 (ROUNDTABLE: NOMADS)
> Strange as it is to consider how
> Often, online communities
> sucks in and casts a protective net, instilling comfort and
> safety;
> disaster thrusts out, disembodies, dissolves, dismembers.
> How come?
> more often than not people operate under conditions of conflict;
> they may have
> several reasons that motivate their actions and behavior...
> It could be that if I had a different set of experiences or a
> different way sto
> see the material universe I would be as exited
Msg#:13082 *INTERSHOP*
04-26-94 08:41:05
From: JEFFREY SCHULZ
To: CHRIS KRAMER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 13057 (ROUNDTABLE: NOMADS)
>> It could be that if I had a different set of experiences or a
>> different way sto
>> see the material universe I would be as exited
You would be as excited as . . . ?
Msg#:13896 *INTERSHOP*
05-02-94 21:54:51
From: CHRIS KRAMER
To: JEFFREY SCHULZ (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 13082 (ROUNDTABLE: NOMADS)
> You would be as excited as . . . ?
> as much as
> you are
> about
> online communities
> Perhaps I wasn't clear enough.
> you seem to be seduced by the drive of your
> nature of the ideal
> but
> ideals are always confounded by the human condition.
> our age is
> not
> essentially different than other ages in terms or the complex
> relations between an individual and access to the mediums of
> idea exchanges.
> Our age is no less shot through with the methods of power, the
> molding of opinions, the spin doctoring, its own strange
> faiths and quests for redemption,
> I keep hearing that
> there is such a thing as progress, and above all that you are
> it
> and while I remain dubious of this,
> Sometimes it seems to me as if certain strata of the
> practitioners and supporters
> are not at all interested in this,
> why?
> What is it, that it is good.
> For example it might be possible that
> this
> is universally appealing,
> if this is so then it seems to me that this appeal is derived
> not from some objective beauty
> but rather on the fact that
> within the male or female body we are atracted to
> abundance
> In other words this aesthetic is based upon the human
> condition.
> On the other hand
> Far, far too much stuff between people is weak and trivial, no
> doubt because we inhabit a society that has a fear of real
> emotion. We cling, consequently to the banal, or make every
> effort to reduce what goes on aound us to the banal, the
> *consumable*. The passions fly in the face of all this, as
> well they should;
> It's just that it describes certain, but not all, of
> essentialities
> which gives it a continuing interest.
> There is still something yet to be assimilated
Msg#:14038 *INTERSHOP*
05-04-94 08:10:07
From: JEFFREY SCHULZ
To: CHRIS KRAMER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 13896 (ROUNDTABLE: NOMADS)
>
>> You would be as excited as . . . ?
>
>
>> as much as
>> you are
>> about
>> online communities
>
Not necessarily excited, but interested.
Yes, the "human condition," whatever that means exactly, can be said to
compound idealization. Reality bites, ya know. I find it a stretch, however, to
deny the fact that online communities exist, and that they will continue to
exist. Given this, I think it is important to consider the ways in which
communities have changed. There really *are* communities out there in the
online world, and there are ways that those communities function that *are*
unique. And the dynamics produced by those communities as they intersect with
various aspects of our lives -- through people like insurance agents -- is a
development that needs to be unpacked.
Of course, it needs to be unpacked in a way such that the only thing that
remains is not an empty piece of Samsonite.
Msg#:14045 *INTERSHOP*
05-04-94 11:06:22
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: CHRIS KRAMER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 13057 (ROUNDTABLE: NOMADS)
or just consider the fact that one becomes here a reader/writer, something that
wasnt really possible "before" - of course there always had been reading and
writing but here there is a kind of "new", "direct" #reading/writing# going on
that hadn't been possible otherwise... all "ontological" or "existentialist"
mournings or claims about the exchange itself has to be negotiated somewhere
else.
Msg#:14740 *INTERSHOP*
05-07-94 23:05:12
From: CHRIS KRAMER
To: JEFFREY SCHULZ (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 14038 (ROUNDTABLE: NOMADS)
> The most troubling trend I see is the increase in
> "unreflective" consumption and production.
> There are things happening in there that need attention.
> in the sense that as far as our butts are concerned,
> every little mistake is detectable immediately.
> The political implications of course are obvious.
> decentralization ideologically means a distance from the
> center
> the ones most effectively being redistricted at the present
> juncture
> the corporations and the privileged few with *real* access to
> information
> what are the social, psychological, and economical impacts of
> it....
> Look for rather funkier urban experiences coming to a future
> near you.
End of Replies, add yours(Y/N)? N
Msg#:12335 *INTERSHOP*
04-23-94 19:37:04
From: JEFFREY SCHULZ
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: ZORN AND POMO
> It is like a fusion of
> John Zorn and sociology.
Morgan, that is *so* interesting! I always thought Zorn was so much more pomo
than pomo itself, especially visual pomo and its theoretical theatrics
(fragmentation, etc.). I get a glint of dispersal in what you are suggesting to
Jordan, and I think it's right on the mark.
<*>Replies
Msg#:12405 *INTERSHOP*
04-24-94 09:34:58
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: JEFFREY SCHULZ (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 12335 (ZORN AND POMO)
I've never listened to Zorn, but will have to now, his name keeps popping up.
Msg#:12684 *INTERSHOP*
04-24-94 21:01:30
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 12405 (ZORN AND POMO)
he can be next to impossibly difficult to listen to, the bursting all over the
place with magnesium flares of clarity. I think a group reading of your work a
la Firesign Theatre with varying tape speeds and pitch shifting would make a
fantastic CD. *Get A Handle On Jordan Crandall*!!! Also with some samples
employed...could be a monster, Jordan!
Msg#:12895 *INTERSHOP*
04-24-94 22:51:35
From: JEFFREY SCHULZ
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 12405 (ZORN AND POMO)
He's one of my faves.
End of Replies, add yours(Y/N)? N
Msg#:13272 *INTERSHOP*
04-27-94 03:13:25
From: ED GRANT
To: ALL
Subj: LOW CULTURE
"Sometimes, I find it hard, so hard to find the will, whatever, nevermind"
Nirvana from NEVERMIND "I'm afraid" HAL, from 2001, A Space Odessy. While talk
about the new worker with all the high tech is interesting, in an academic way,
and all.... What about transparent tech? TV, Music, Movies, News? The stuff
we all (the bulk of the US) consume daily without reflection. Kids on Seattle
who morn Kurt's passing, the AMERICANS who reflect on Dick? How do I know WAR
from the "in bomb" video footage? Yes, the world is changing...Information
Tech, ATMs, the NET...Yet, people seem to be generating identities through
consupmtion, deal with "reality" through movies and videos. Who really fucking
cares about the man from THE HARTFORD, I don't. I'm more worried about the
ability to interact on a level that it at least a bit removed from the market
(and the Institution, for that matter). Whats up, we are all input devices,
but must we all be passive output devices also? One would wonder.......
<*>Replies
Msg#:13431 *INTERSHOP*
04-28-94 09:15:51
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: ED GRANT (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 13272 (LOW CULTURE)
I understand you're concerned about
> the ability to
> interact on a level that it at least a bit removed from the market
but then, as a way out, are you proposing to enmesh yourself in an unreflective
orgy of productization?
Msg#:13887 *INTERSHOP*
05-02-94 21:06:41
From: ED GRANT
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 13431 (LOW CULTURE)
Not in the least. In some ways Kurts suicide has some virtue (but I guess
thats a whole other story). The most troubling trend I see is the increase in
"unreflective" consumption and production. Over a three year period that I
taught intro art to Fresh and Soph college students was a drop in the ability
to solve problems. Even worse, there was an increase in resistance to problem
solv
....Problem solving. The students expected to learn tricks and formulas to
make art. I was not well liked by some of the class. One needs to take in
information, refect on it, sythesize it, not merely reflect it.
End of Replies, add yours(Y/N)? N
Msg#:13657 *INTERSHOP*
05-01-94 03:15:00
From: JOHN DUNN
To: ED GRANT (Rcvd)
Subj: RE: LOW CULTURE: PC
So you belong to the political correctness movement that wants to
intervene in unreflected, positivist, consume-oriented, free market.
Let me know if I can help. I think the kids in Seattle mourning Kurt's
suicide weren't just passivly or ritualistically mourning, maybe a lot
watching TV were though.
I recently read an article in Psychology Today that talked about the values
of depression(made me feel a bit better). Most, if they are too sick
physically, don't go to work and are quiet. If however the blues come to
town they do(go to work). I think this comes from the hundreds of years
of the mind/body dualism. The brain(soul) also gets sick and needs time
to recuperate or reorganize and feel what the right thing is to do next.
I also think meditation is too forced: like commanding your soul to be
healthy, active, and have fun, and be relaxed and disciplined and everything
else just through the simple act of emptying the consciousness. After
four hard hours of emptying it'll just fill right back up and probably
a bit faster than four hours. The article recommended reading a book
taking a walk, cleaning up the private space, or just sitting quietly.
There are things happening in there that need attention. It's like
solving a riddle, or like a dog with a big stick in it's mouth trying
to get through a narrow door: it turns his head this way and that and
rams awkwardly against the opening and then suddenly it's through and
probably itself a bit shocked how easily and suddenly it went.
--- Blue Wave/RA v2.12 [NR]
* Origin: Intershop from THE THING DUESSELDORF (42:1002/2.0)
<*>Replies
Msg#:13888 *INTERSHOP*
05-02-94 21:15:27
From: ED GRANT
To: JOHN DUNN
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 13657 (RE: LOW CULTURE: PC)
Well, I don't think I've ever been called PC before, except maybe by this very
conservative Catholic professor. And, when I'm feel very aggresive, I take my
small dog for a long walk and play with a large stick. She makes much of the
shit seem less important. Dogs are close to pure ID. I guess I must ask you
to clarify your PC labeling. And, wouldn't it be more appropriate to call Kurt
Cobain the Ian Curtis of this generation, not the John Lennon or Sid Vicious
(Rolling Stone, Andy Rooney and John McClaughlin (sp?). When I get really
bummed out, Joy Division tends to pick me up, 'cause at least I'm not a
depressed as old Ian. And, I got a dog.
End of Replies, add yours(Y/N)? N
Msg#:13658 *INTERSHOP*
05-01-94 03:15:00
From: JOHN DUNN
To: JEFFREY SCHULZ (Rcvd)
Subj: RE: ROUNDTABLE: NOMADS:DECENTRALIZED
JS> example, how do these changes effect notions of place? If a new sense
JS> of place is emerging, what changes might be in store for stability
It is not a new sense of place. It is important to look at europe's
history of city development as a consequence of technology development and
class struggle(certain societies don't allow certain types of technology).
The latest development being that the affluent go to the
suburbs, but that cannot be seen as some fluke of modern times or a new
notion of place, exactly as the traveling salesman is a consequence of
history and not due to a new notion of place. Like you wrote: it is
emerging, but out of what? Nomads are a consequence of the city and
land power struggle.
--- Blue Wave/RA v2.12 [NR]
* Origin: Intershop from THE THING DUESSELDORF (42:1002/2.0)
<*>Replies
Msg#:13660 *INTERSHOP*
04-30-94 06:41:57
From: JEFFREY SCHULZ
To: JOHN DUNN
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 13658 (RE: ROUNDTABLE: NOMADS:DECENTRALIZED)
Yeah, that's a really good and important point. The politics of land and city
are very much a part of what's going on with the nomads. I think the Tofflers
address this in a section on the revolt of the rich (or something like it) in
their most recent book.
Perhaps a *singular* new notion of place is not emerging, but an *array* of new
notions of places: the nomads who have the power to migrate, those who choose
to telecommunicate, those who must remain in urban areas for economic/political
reasons, etc.
Msg#:13832 *INTERSHOP*
05-01-94 23:03:37
From: GISELA EHRENFRIED
To: JEFFREY SCHULZ (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 13660 (RE: ROUNDTABLE: NOMADS:DECEN)
> Perhaps a *singular* new notion of place is not emerging, but an
> *array* of new notions of places: the nomads who have the power to
> migrate, those who choose to telecommunicate, those who must remain
> in urban areas for economic/political reasons, etc.
I don't envy the poor guy from the insurance company who has to migrate from
client to client while under tight suspervision from headquarters, nor the
employee who has to register for desk space at Chiat/Day. I also believe
Wolfgang has fallen prey to an ad where you do your work via laptop on the
sandy beaches of a Caribbean island (doesn't this rather imply that you will
have to work for your company even on your vacation?).
A future privilege seems *not* to have to move, seems that places will come to
people, not people go to places. Marshall Blonsky said something very
provocative at last week's panel: "We" do not need more space... not the
Balkans, not the Dominican Republic... "We," meaning the corporations and the
privileged few with *real* access to information (a "we" excluding most of us,
of course. And contrary to you, Rainer, I had the impression that Marshall
didn't count himself in, either). Quite a radical departure of politics as we
know it!
Msg#:13879 *INTERSHOP*
05-02-94 13:34:04
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: GISELA EHRENFRIED (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 13832 (RE: ROUNDTABLE: NOMADS:DECEN)
vell, dahlink, in my travelling around through varieties of hotel waystations
inlife I cannot but help notice the transformation of hotel into office with
bed. Phones now have "dataports" which is juicy term for an extra jack in the
phone to plug your trusty six shooter computer into and logon to the company
host database/computer thing. Your office/corporate suite is now awaiting you
whereever you go in criminal free environments, now generally attached to an
airport so you walk from plane to office/bedroom and plug in for a rap session
with home base while room service brings you a pizza. You send out for some
babes to do Extasy with while watching Wayne's World between doing deals and go
to floor 6 to partake of the "spa" and sweating out the wages of sin in the
sauna the order some stuuf for the house from the Compu-Serve catalog because
who wants to trudge to Wal Mart anymore. Do you care less about Art'n'Politix?
Cripes no! All around is the great sea of "restructured" former employees of
mega corps gone belly up through every fault of their own, and joining that
number is about negative infinity on your priority list, so you better behave
and drink lots and lots of spring water before that urine test gets sprung on
you, maybe an original and certified Dali print for the master bedroom to
compliment the bidet nobody can figure out how to use but looks impressive next
to the potty in the sense that as far as our butts are concerned, we are highly
continental, ah welcome children, to the labyrinth, but carefulnow, the
Minotaur has been prowling the corridors, maybe waiting to jump you out by the
Coke machine.
Msg#:14047 *INTERSHOP*
05-04-94 11:32:12
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: JEFFREY SCHULZ (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 13660 (RE: ROUNDTABLE: NOMADS:DECENTRAL)
some very intersting points have been addressed once notions of power and
struggle come into discussion: it has become very trandy to identify with the
icons of deprivation and excommunication: ignoring so historical, cultural and
class struggle relationships. it is totallynot the same whether people were/are
nomads in a site and a culture that hasn't yet undergone settelment or people
who were chased out of their houses, their villages and cities, (or haven't
allowed to integrate and devellop according the full possibility of their
social environement) - with deleuze and others suddenly everybody wanted to be
a 'nomad" - also IBM was using for the companies logo culture the icon of
charly chapling, a modernist tramp who was not just fighting for all his life
such big interests as IBM can be seen as emblematic for, but a figure that even
got chased out of this country as he was at a point unbearable for the
ideological make up of the US (I vaguely remember that he had big troubles with
the immigration of the mac carthey time for his political engagements and
films... /if I am not totally wrong/) most successfull art world members (to
name just one group) are in some way "homeless" and vagabonding in aerports and
train stations... but it is pathetic and insultilng to even compare it with
real homelessness of contemporary cities (it shows the danger and power in
the usage of metaphors)
Msg#:14136 *INTERSHOP*
05-04-94 19:34:55
From: JEFFREY SCHULZ
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 14047 (RE: ROUNDTABLE: NOMADS:DECENTRAL)
Yes, I think you're absolutely right about the danger and power of metaphor
usage. And, given the current trendiness of the "nomadic individual" that you
indicated, an investigation of the ways in which this term appears in various
contexts is important; as well as is an attempt to address issues that you
bring up concerning homelessness, forced migration, and others. Perhaps others
will contribute to the dialogue as well.
End of Replies, add yours(Y/N)? N
Msg#:13866 *INTERSHOP*
05-03-94 00:51:00
From: JOHN DUNN
To: JEFFREY SCHULZ (Rcvd)
Subj: RE: ROUNDTABLE: NOMADS:MOVEMENT, HIS
I'm really overwhelmed at this point. Too many things come together
here. There is an amazing similarity between Mr. Crandall's opening
literale and Julia von Heyl's cosmological apocalypse on text droning
and semantic relativity in Meta forum on 4,24,`94(you'll have to wait
a while for a translation. I'd probably ruin it anyhow. Maybe Staehle,
Krome, or Ganahl, or whoever would absolutely love to do it.)((the
usual comparison European labyrinth psyche vs. American awe-of-natural
forces could also come up but that's a bit sticky and romantic).But that's
not even the main part of it because their texts are so telling in
their actuality without historical complications. Drink the history
cocktail in addition and your just spinning around. That is the
puzzle. From whence come you, where are you, and whither do you go?
For example the ancient Egyptians are easy in a small way, regarded as
a period that we are far away from looking through history books, but
they influenced every age and continue to do so(Christo, Rueckriem).
Not only that; the movements and mystery in how, why, what, where changed
in itself must be seen as an interchange of Nomads, technology, and
class struggle. No one will ever get over their rudimentary, statement
of hierarchy.
I`m not helping anyone out with this garbage though. It's a good
thing I wasn't Jesus at his sermon on the mount. Everyone would
have, pulled their hair out, and screamed- jesus fucking christ,
shut the fuck up and go get laid.
These problems may seem to throw the brakes on this thread but I think
it is very easy to come out of the history books back to a traveling
insurance salesperson(their is probably a big difference in how men
and women on the road percieve thier existence and community).
For example the feudal landlords vs. the church as central city power.
He moved away from the city in the first place to avoid church taxes
much as big company executives do today to avoid bureaucracy. In
any case there is a book I read(partially) titled "Freedom Power City"
but in German that has a second meaning because Power in German is
spelled the same as the a conjugation of the verb "to make"(Freiheit
Macht Stadt) and I'll have to check it out again because the article
about the development of the city was brilliant.
To answer your message: there may be an array of nomad types but,
unfortunately you'll have to be more specific and, of course, tell
me from where they imerged or are imerging from. As stated I have
to get a bit more specific too.
--- Blue Wave/RA v2.12 [NR]
* Origin: Intershop from THE THING DUESSELDORF (42:1002/2.0)
Msg#:13872 *INTERSHOP*
05-02-94 09:16:50
From: WOLFGANG STAEHLE
To: GISELA EHRENFRIED (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 13832 (RE: ROUNDTABLE: NOMADS:DEC)
> A future privilege seems *not* to have to move, ...
Exactly! Our new slogan here: HOW TO HAVE SUCCESS WITHOUT GOING ANYWHERE!
<*>Replies
<->,
End of Replies, add yours(Y/N)? N
Msg#:14387 *INTERSHOP*
05-06-94 10:02:33
From: ED GRANT
To: ALL
Subj: CLIPPER
I don't know how many of you read WIRED, but there is an interesting
development on the Clipper (government standard encryption, for easy
wiretapping) issue. There is an e-mail based petition to oppose Clipper.
Using the net to possibly affect change in a grassroots manner is great. Now
that there are so many people on the Net, the government can't ignore it. It
could become an potential threat that they could not control. I believe that
we as Net users need to be very active in keeping it free of VP Gore and the
rest of them. For more infor on Clipper, e-mail clipper-info@cpsr.org. Also,
Sen. P. Leahy, D-VT will hold hearings on the issue sometime this summer. I
have heard that the good senator is e-mailable, but have not found his address.
Leahy is a half way cool guy, and could be convinced that Clipper is inherenlty
evil (I'm from VT and have watched him for about ten years). Anyway, hope you
find this as interesting as I.
<*>Replies
Msg#:14533 *INTERSHOP*
05-06-94 17:30:23
From: SYSOP
To: ED GRANT (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 14387 (CLIPPER)
Why read WIRED when you can read the Cypherpunks List? Check