The Scriptures of the Un-Dead
a journey into the church of VIRTUALITY/REALITY
ABULAFIA J. PURPLEFLOWER -THE PROFIT OF CYNICISM
In the beginning there was the ugylidig
... and then from the MUD, life was born
On a Wednesday, mid March '92, four silly people decided to see what would
happen if they took their minds at warp speed without a seatbelt. An innocent
enough exercise, each individual having equally valid, if not bizarre reasons
for their trek into obscurity, each individual returning from the abyss with
the consolidated insight and enthusiasm of the elder gods, and with a piece of
each other. And so the "oh so mutually enlightened ones- Qix, Pippin, Flesh
and Abulafia" began to delve into the abstractions of reality and their own
virtualities and realising the future of man lay in panspace, and cyberspace
set out upon a quest to guide the inhabitants of the planet towards themselves
and towards the future before we all implode.
Here is their story ......
"In the beginning there was the ugyldig
...and then from the MUD, life was born,
and the church of Virtuality/Reality came into being"
virtuality is the way that an individual perceives reality. Each virtuality
is unique, an extension of the psyche.
reality is everyone's collective virtualities. Without the individual
virtualities reality gets warped.
"Mr_Society" has for centuries dictated the basis of reality and those whose
virtualities did not conform with the 'standard government issue reality'
were outcast, thrust onto the fringe of humanity. With recent socio-political
changes occuring around the globe (The fall of communism, the greening of the
earth and previously concrete-grey politics) "Mr_Society" is having to seriously
rethink its bastardous attitudes of the past . We are entering a new era.
A time of global awareness, integral awareness, individual awareness.
We are being forced to re-evaluate everything we have blindly believed, question
everything that we have been taught, look for our essence which just wandered
away during the commercials. We know we're not real.... Do you?
When you walk along the street, whose mind are you in?
When you're riding the "Dream Express" whose dream are you in?
When you rub the tally-ho's whose thoughts are you in?
Don't touch that dial !
THE BIRTH OF AN IDEA:
"Everything rose from the ugyldig, to whence it shall one day return."
The ugylig is the nothingness from which life itself is constructed.
It is the void where nothing exists but everything has the potential to exist.
It is potential energy. The beginnings of an idea rise from the ugyldig.
When an idea is in it's most fundamental state we reach into the ugyldig with
our minds, and provide the sperm, releasing enough kinetic energy to transform
the idea egg into embryonic form. The embryonic idea is nurtured and fed by
the mind until it develops into an ideaette and then finally gathers enough
energy to cast itself from the ugylig at high speed into the right frontal
cortex of the brain yelling "i am idea, hear me gargle..."
When we are struck with such occurances, the usual response is "oh i've
been hit by inspiration". But that is not true. You have been hit by a psychotic
ideaette travelling at high speed and yelling "i am idea. hear me gargle..."
Some people are of course more receptive to these processed than others.
These people usually have their own virtualities and need not concern
themselves with with passages of inhibition or cleaning their back teeth.
When an idea is born, some people will look at it and say "oh what an ugly
little idea - i want nothing to do with it " upon which they will promptly
lock it away in the deep caverns of their minds never to see the light of day.
Everyone has lots of ideas, the ones they consider of value and importance to
themselves, they keep and nurture, the others they neglect. It does not
necessarily follow that an idea holding no value to one particular person,
will not hold any value for another individual. It was with this idea in mind
that the "Garbage bin of Thought (c) " was designed. The "Garbage bin of
Thought (c) " is a huge green plastic bin placed strategically just outside
of the door of the birthing room in the ugyldig. People are free to cast
unwanted ideas into the bin, or to rummage through and claim an idea as
their own.
There is always the possibility that two or more minds will be rummaging
through the bin at once and stumble across exactly the same idea simultaneously
and decide that they really really really want that idea. Consequently unless
an arrangement can be made, a fight ensues and the idea, becoming basically
upset by the fights over it's rights, launches itself out into cyberspace,
where it floats aimlessly around until it is picked up by a receptor of stray
thoughts who just happens to be passing by.
A receptor of stray thoughts is a person whose mind is so open that all of the
traditionally important stuff falls out. So they tend to be a bit vague, but
most receptive to stray thoughts and ideas.
"Ideas are born, but they never die
....they just bounce around quite happily
in cyberspace until they become realities."
THE REALITY FILTER:
There are many more absolutely huge things out there in the
universe than any of us can perceptively acknowledge. A range of
colours we cannot dream of, psychic energies and life forms we have no
access to. This is through no fault of our own. It is the great design
of the guru_like_ones. Our minds have been designed to let only a
specific amount of information in; otherwise, if we actually knew what
was going on, we would probably be so freaked out by it all that we
would all sprout wings and colonise venus. So the guru_like_ones
fitted us with reality filters, which allow only certain amounts of
censory information to penetrate the mind.
Like all things, reality filters can malfunction. Some are even
manufactured to a substandard. This occurs with rather interesting
results. In the case of a Reality Filter malfunctioning, a person
could be quite happy going through the motions of living their life,
when all of a sudden "PING!", the rubber band holding the Reality Filter
together snaps, and s/he begins to see things never before encountered
in the realms of normality. S/he decides "oh wow this is great i must
share what i am seeing with all of the other poor deprived souls on this
planet", but when S/he tries to do this, s/he is suddenly accosted by
muscly black men and fitted for a wardrobe of white sleeveless jackets
and rooms with padded walls./.,
Others are just so completely freaked out by their recent
enlightenment that they go completely loony and resign themselves to
spend the rest of their lives staring understandingly at a brick wall,
deciphering the secret codes of the algae formations which have attached
themselves to it.
Then there is the case of those who are born with substandard
reality filters. Now for some strange reason these people tend to be
fucked up right from the very beginning. They are sensitive to things
that other people have no concept of. They know what is really
happening out there in cyberspace, and because they have had the visions
from an early age, they are accepting and nurturing of them. So
instead of going insane, they become psychic and science fiction
writers. They are truly god_like.
Many of us aspire to the god_like state, but this is exceedingly
difficult because in order to do this, we must be able to dilate our
Reality Filters. Most people are unaware that they even possess a
Reality Filter, let alone know how to manipulate one. So we are faced
with a slight problem. At the present stage, the only known way to
dilate the Reality Filter is with the assistance of hallucinogens, or
through sleep deprivation.
\pippin\rave\reality.doc
April 19, 1992. Swann Rd., St. Lucia
Reality is a flower. A flower is the sexual organ of a plant.
It comprises petals, stamen, gametes, pollen.
A flower is the symbol of the peace movement. Flower power. No
resistance, but passive.
A flower is painted by artists everywhen, in rich glorious colours or
static hues, moving lines and tone.
So which is the flower? Which is reality? Each is different
according to the observer. The observer makes the flower. All the
flowers combined are reality. And
Reality is a flower.
@}-,'->---
My impression of reality is my Virtuality. My Virtuality is NOT
reality. It may seem real to me. I may contrive to make it real to someone
else, but mostly, it is not real to others. And it certainly won't is
be real to you.
I create my Virtuality to protect myself from reality. To
protect my attitudes and beliefs from Change, which is painful, I must distort
reality. This distortion of reality is my Virtuality.
A lot of conflict arises when people try to impose their Virtualities
as reality to others.
Virtualities are ok. As long as you realize it isn't reality.
We know we're not real, do you? It is ok to have 10 Virtualies or even 100!
Although then it can be easy to get lost in them. Doorways between Virtualities
are very useful. Reality checks. So are maps. Integrated Virtualities are
closer to portraying reality than ones that aren't.
Your Virtuality is your own and no one else's. It is your friend,
your hideaway, your sanctuary. No one can ever invade it, and only you can
let others into it.
Your Virtuality is utterly malleable. You can change it at will.
Except most of the time, your will probably won't like it. Then it is really
hard, but it has never been easy.
A Definition (but it is the only one you will get)
Virtual -- not real, not physical. Virtual, in computing terms,
means not physical. A computer can have physical and virtual drives. A
computer user can put a disk into a physical drive, but you can't put a disk
into a virtual drive. Essentially the computer has been fooled into thinking
that there is a drive there. It will even treat it like a drive and store data
there. The drive is still real, but it is very different too. A computer user
certainly can't put a disk into a virtual drive. It is a model of a "real"
drive.
So how can one have Virtual Reality? A thing is either real or virtual.
So the Virtuality thought found a home. Virtuality is the "model" of reality
that we have all been fooled into believing is reality. There is Virtuality
and reality. Virtuality\Reality. V\R to be distinguished from VR which is a
contradiction in terms.
We know we're not real, do you? We are the first religion that isn't
going to tell you what to believe. Except to believe in yourself and to listen
to the imaginary voices in your head. We will let you believe what you want to
believe; we will even PROVE it too you!
Once upon a time, God created the world. God was a computer project
student, who believed in the Internet, and the world was a computer simulation.
What happens to us at the end of the project when the hard drive is laid to
rest? What is consciousness? How will we escape the final powerdown?
We are the first religion that doesn't have all the answer. We
want you to answer OUR questions!
The Church of V\R, like all good, well-respected churches :),
has sacraments. Pancakes, coke, chocolate, coffee, and LSD. ( or an
equivalent psychedelic. )
The Church of V\R has rituals, but you can decide what they are.
The principle is important. The principle is role play. Role playing
to allow the imagination to interact with the physical. Virtuality with
reality.
"Challenging the nature of reality." You cannot change reality. What
will you change it too? Reality already contains everything that you can think
of, but you can expand your Virtuality to integrate more of reality. So that
it is more REAL to you, and to others. So the rituals are the interaction
whereby you influence the processes that change your Virtuality. You cannot
directly influence your Virtuality. Other "things" do that.
Your Virtuality is only your own. Trying to share a Virtuality
with someone else only creates another one. You still have your own.
The magical colour of V\R is purple.
The celebration of V\R is anti-parties. These are where
everyone gets around and is anti-social.
A joke: How is one anti-social at an anti-party?
Answer: By being social :)
At an anti-party, one is free to do whatever one pleases, not
necessarily what one is "supposed" to do. Mr_Society is eager to tell us what
we are "supposed" to do. But Mr_Society is an illusion. You are free to do
what Mr_Society says you must, but we won't be forcing that upon you.
One favourite activity of the anti-party would be for everyone to sit
around and be perfectly silent and perfectly still. Also called staring
understandably at the brick wall and deciphering the secret patterns of the
algae on it, or Zenning.
The Church of V\R is my ritual for embracing reality, and "living in
the real world". For living in the real world is impossible. It is my solace
for a life without the Internet. The balm for withdrawal symptoms which still
plague me. My way of changing my Virtuality, what I see as reality.
*)--)---
Want a cure for procrastination? So do I. *sigh* So. Write it all
down on paper. Paint it into a picture. Your problem. See it. Visualize it.
Do something! Anything creative well do. As long as it creates or constructs.
Think new thoughts. Do something that you have never done before. Shakti
Gawain calls it Creative Visualization. Live on the Edge of Reality.
"Cleverness and creativity are alive and well and living in a
cartoon universe."
Reality is a wall, Virtuality is a can of paint.
...-+=*&*=+-...
The Edicts.
1. Do not play with buses and taxis. Or persons studying any of the
martial arts.
2. It is a crime to spill you coffee.
3. Always talk to your thoughts. They get lonely.
4. The ground is meant to be sat upon. The floor is meant to be lain upon.
5. The day does not end until 3 am.
6. You only get mushrooms out of bullshit.
7. Always take your sense of humour with you wherever you go.
8. God was leaked.
9. What acid is to life, Powaqqatsi is to the world.
10. Paranoia is a heightened state of awareness,
and security guards are Baaaaaad Karma.
July 23, Tracey's Flat
Actually i have just realized that V\R contains the Model of Itself. A
ritual i describe is to write everything down, and that is exactly how
V\R started. A map of my mind.
\abulafia\relig.rav
Religion
"There cannot be design without designers
contrivance without a contriver
order without choice
arrangement without anything capable of arranging
subserviency and relation to a purpose without that which could intend a
purpose,
means suitable to an end executing that office in accomplishing that end
without ever having been contemplated or the means accomodated to it."
-John Hale (hypnotised by mr_god)
previously of the house of insanity
bullshit /.,
O.K
The aim of most religions is to give people something to believe in, or
someone, if they can't believe in themselves. It gives them an easy way out.
"oh there IS a greater plan - if it happens it is <insert your favorite diety>'s
rule or plan. If you fail it is due to <insert your favorite dieties>'s plan.
If you die etc etc etc. It allows us to take our minds on holiday, pack up
the old fears and lets all go to heaven. It gives us a way to deal with our
mortality. How does it do this. It lies silly, through it's rotting
crumbly teeth.
"hasn't he heard ??? god is dead ....."
-Nietzsche
It is taking the responsibility out of peoples lives and replacing it with
subserviency. Taking the power from the people and givin it to the church.
Indoctrinating the weak with the inane tenkemate in an attempt to
strengthen the church and its ever so blatently humble bank balance.
"little girl want a lolly?" no fuck off thank you, i've had enough.
and now....a message from our sponsors...
(music fades in and a fat bald man dressed completely in white - with the
exception of his pink underwear screaming so subtly-jumps on the set)
"We offer you eternal-life"..."now how much would you expect to pay?"
"but wait..we'll also forgive you for being born, and if you call now we'll
even throw in a free crucifiction, that's right viewers a TOTALLY FREE IN
FLASHING NEON LIGHTS crucifiction....so call now" "remember <insert your
favorite dieties>' lines are never engaged." "What else are you going
to do with your sundays ? All the shops are shut, we've seen to that,
there' nothing on t.v, we've seen to that...we even got <I.Y.F.D> to create
roosters. Useless bloody animals but they make a fucking huge racket if you
try and sleep in on a sunday. So yeah where was I? oh yeah ...and how much
would you expect to pay ???? Well viewers ALL THAT WE ASK YOU TO GIVE US IS
YOUR SOUL, that's right just your body and soul, that's all we ask in
order to protect you from the devil/satan/beelzebob/the mafia/
your mother-in-law.....
and well maybe a bit of money, not much, just hmmm 80%
of your wages should do....
and oh yeah, just in case we get into one of those horrid-but-totally-
necessary-to-protect-YOU-from-the-devil-holy-wars, we'll take your only son,
and rape your daughter, and pillage your homes, and eat your chocolate cake..
But it's all in the name of <I.Y.F.D> ....honest......." (music fades)
The aim of the Church of Virtuality/Reality is to give people back the
right to their own lives. Live out your own virtualities. In fact we'll
even help you to help others to understand your virtuality.
Everyone's virtuality is unique, and they collectively embody what
society so righteously calls Reality.
Reality is fucked up.
This is basically because Mr_Society insists on dictating peoples virtualities.
We must fight for our minds, and the right to use them as we choose.
We must fight for our insanity.
We must be totally accepting of other peoples virtualities, they are after all
a mere extension of our own.
"Anarchy is the basis of our society - without chaos there IS NO ORDER"
The suppression of chaos has festered like a horrid wound which must now once
more face the air in order to heal.
We must seek the chaos, embody it, lend it our souls and drawing from our
strength it will grow, and liberate us and free once more the earth and its
soul.
Creativity and imagination allowed to roam free merge and mutate reality.
You must find your own oath through the mess. The Church of V/R is only
a guide. We will hold your hand, validate your mind, help you find
your vertuality.
We are the portal to the future, the gateway to truth.
When the world becomes so self absorbed that it finally implodes, the gates
to panspace will open, and those who roam freely in the ugyldig will be
drawn in.
opss getting a bit carried away /.,.
turning into a musical.,.
\qix\vslashr.txt
Church of Virtuality/Reality - what is it about? a genuine historical document.
Elder Gods
what do we actually offer people?
send us money and we send you.. what?
* COBOL assignments?
custommade realities
teach you how to mold your own reality to your own specifications
customized realities
pay us, and we'll show you how to believe in yourself / believe what you
want to believe
[internet advertising]
We send you proof that what you believe is true.
reality is everybody's collective virtualities so it has to be there somewhere
reality can't exist without your specific virtuality
we'll validate YOU!!
send your money with an SASE to PO Box whatever Brisbane 4001
(try PO Box 1620, Toowong, Q 4067, Australia)
T-shirts "I know I'm not real, do you?"
"I control my own virtuality"
"Hole in reality" [zzz]
"I stir coffee"
"I played Windy Mud"
a radio program on 4ZZZ nightshift
graveyard shift
bank acct - 3 people with i.d
- call acct whatever
- laws on organizations with their own accounts??
constitution????
[in case of dissolution, all funds divided between elder gods]
all income from church's operations to be divided equally between elder gods
band - Elder Gods
customized realities relatively expensive - CRs come illustrated
How to Convert Other People to Your Reality - expensive
How to make people understand your reality - a lifetime
do you want a career change? do you want a new profession?
become a virtuality understander
why say its impossible? it should be possible
free tshirt with any of expensive options
class 3 etc subscriptions
a - normal memeber
b - subscribe to newsletter [quarterly newsletter]
c - newsletter +
v/r like MUd
church of Mud
to become a god you have to devise a way to make lots of money
for elder gods - can become an honorary god
As you navigate your way through the real world, you must always ask,
`is this course-related?'
St Bill Fisher - the Fish - omen bringer
the Eye in the Rectangle
is there good and evil? or is it all One? YOU decide!!!
we let you think for yourself!!
We're the first church in history to invite you to THINK FOR YOURSELF..
story of internet gods..
story of church's creation... one day the god of the internet was bored and
said `zap!' `ping!' and the church of virtuality/reality came into being
spawned in the primeval electronic mud
life emerging from MUDs...MUSHes and MUCKs
mucking about in the mushy muds...
we'll tell you God's internet address! [and port number]
god is just a phone call away... as long as you have an account
we want mass appeal with non hard work on our part
questionnaire [idealism/realksm/none of the above tc]
pay for membership of the church....
propaganda slogans,
meetings [qut laser printer for banners around the city]
ads in papers around the world
- crosspostings in usenet underground newspapers and magazines
- newspaper articles starting to surface from the underground
- give it a respectable history... Jerry Wirerammer eg semper, utopia...
our first interview with jana w; high priest/priestess of church of v/r
may fold at any time - elder gods if they get tired may fold it all up
at any time... constitution etc
obituaries etc....
we wish to finance an alternative communication network..?
our PLAN includes CAFEs meeting places for virtuality engineers...
CAFE = computer assisted functional environment
CAFE s would be the place of worship for v/r people
truly useful operating system - TrUOS/trosm,tos
ThOP: Thingy-Oriented Programming
gifs on the walls, computer graphics, pictures by elder gods on
silicon graphics workstation
candles? twin peaks music.... 24 hrs open... elder gods music...
35% of all funds go to development of v/r research centres, rest to elder
gods/high council/ whatever ultimate jurisdictive body is called.
learn from scientology and subgenius re organization etc...
take most profitable bits of every other religious organization..
[understanding reality is more important than having money]
$$$$$$$$$$
god of reality
abulafia, goddess of skepticism
qix, the dreaming god
Samarobrin
madness is permissible, encouraged, nay advocated
`1. provocation
`and then out of the MUD rose the Church of Virtuality/Reality...'
find out about oz law regarding commercial religious orgs.
`this new religion is sweeping the campuses of australia....'
free subs to anyone who helps us [bottom level only]
power bases in the universities especially computing centres
the first Scripture which you can revise in the comfort of your own home!
a Draft Example... a Sample automystic text...
a book to which you refer as you might to the I Ching or the bible or the
sunday comics... but with the difference that you are free to revise it
at any time...
virtuholic, reaholic, panaholic
Relieve Your Reality Problems..
do you have problems with reality?
ever have days when reality gets you down?
membership drives...
so the whole reason for commercial dimension is twofold:
to enrich original founders to whom humanity should forever be grateful etc
and to build the CAFEnet which will form humanity's launchpad into panspace
[or whatever]
corporation, pays less tax
Profits/Prophets Abulafia the Profit
robes black, medallions with symbols [offround, battered edges] so it is
imperfect, because we are an organization that opposes perfection.
perfection is the ultimate evil saith abulafia the
profit. we strive to develop our imperfections to a state of perfect purity.
what are the aims -> symbolic rep
tk now designing symbol.
GAIA - global alliance of internet anarchists
this announcement was brought to you by Gaia Inc.
we now return you to your ordinary flashing prompt.
GAIA Inc.
CAFEnet/Gaianet
Samarobrin server
Elder Gods the antirock group
norwegian
BOD the Bored
Gordon, god of the shady deal
fourfold nucleus
v/r performs miracle of making you perform your own miracles
lara working on scripture
elder gods may fold gaia inc at any time, but that would only be the end
of their virtuality, u can always continue with yours
GAIA Inc begins simply as a distributor of printed matter, later moves to
other media...
pamphlets on various topics...
Government by MUD/hypertext
What is GAIA 2000?
Steps in the creation of GAIA Inc: The history of GAIA
Gaia's plot to simultaneously dominate and liberate the world.
+ pamphlet translations, once we start branching out???
+ aim to get Amway-style distribution network say the size of Scientology
+ Elder Gods remain ANONYMOUS
What is the CAFE about?
+ Church of V/R
+ the Meta-Religion of the Information Age
or Hyper-Religion
"co-creation of new virtualities through interactive electronic media"
we admit it - we're amateurs. between us we don't have 1% of the technical
knowledge of the employees of the big corporations. but we have FAITH in our
DOUBT...
but we believe in our selves
1999 by Samarobrin
Lara's Holy Writ
The Internet posting that started it all
* stamp to certify a pamphlet as a gaian publication and not a photocopy
* Be your own guru! CUSTOMIZED SCRIPTURE!!!
Coincidensity getting too high? Go for a Reality Check!
Spend all your time rehearsing routines you never use? There's a reason.
The Universe is a giant computer, and you are one of its subroutines. It's
using you to compute its way through certain situations.
GAIA Inc may never write a single line of code or own a single CAFE itself.
THAT NEEDN'T MATTER, so long as it acts as a catalyst for someone else to
perform equivalent tasks. Our primary purpose at present is to popularize
impossibly anarchistic schemes for the information networks of the future
and to proselytize the new panspatial meta-religion of V/R.
New Age types say: You create your own reality.
We say: There's nothing you can do to change reality.
You can never even know what it IS.
What you can alter is your VIRTUALITY.
What is Your Virtuality?
It is that thing in your life that looks *like* reality (but isn't).
* sell collections of aphorisms, gifs [taken from videos?]
Some religions have a guru at the centre of things - Ron, "Bob", Jesus, Dave,
Pippin, Buddha, Rajneesh. In V/R, YOU are at the centre of YOUR virtuality
(unless you care to have it otherwise).
We just have Pippin. And God, don't we know it. -Pippin
TECHNIQUES FOR SELF-REALIZATION (for the mystic)
TECHNIQUES FOR SELF-DECEPTION (for the cynic)
[continued from above]
Send us YOUR picture and we'll paste it in throughout the Scripture that we
send you
find out how Amway operates -= network marketing of strange pamphlets,
ideas products etc
subscription to newsletter? ["reality is not what you thought it was"]
The Secrets of Your Universe are within you! And you can buy from us the
secrets of how to work out what they are!
rituals help you visualize things - they help the unconscious part of
you that actually molds reality. "this is not a crazy thought"
qabbalah, tarot, magical implements, runes, hieroglyphs, hierarchs,
hexes and charms...
It's like playing Dungeons & Dragons by mail, except that it's for REAL!!
You really WILL acquire the new magical powers that we say you will,
and you really will have to pay to do so
We like Capitalism as much as you do. It's a means to an end. Come December
31, 1999, and the world will turn upside-down. But until then, Money will
continue to be a primal force in our virtuality... so become part of the
distribution network! Get a card from us and you can go into biz for
yourself... Speak and spread nonsense in the name of higher truth and
make money for it! Start your own currencies and bartering systems - it's all
part of creating your own virtuality! Of course, it'll make the "world in
general" a hell of a lot more confusing...
What we envision is a global network of sites, like Scientology but less
organized..
[sounding too much like sub genius]
send us your ideas! we'll be a receptacle for your STRAY THOUGHTS
[there could be a pamphlet on Stray Thoughts]
ultimately we should get into software, networking etc
* trying to create the global brain by allowing the rapid creation and
exchange and integration of information
* the point is to get the world's economic system tied up with illusory
exchanges taking place within the metaMUDs of Cafe-net
in the future, personal technologies are going to allow wider and wider
networks of unregulated unregistered uncentralised anything
- trading planning discussing etc.
Quote your friends!!
eg "Don't let me limit you" -Pippin
"Just don't let me get lost in my own delusions of grandeur" -also Pippin
form groupings: eg The Elder Gods [so-called because we did it first],
Heavenly Household of West End, etc etc, groupings can submit quotes
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
become likea god in your little vr universe,call up whatever little
reality you want: love, death, sex, infinity, potato... but what's the
point of it all?[fritz leiber]. the information universe is HERE via ftp
in each chapter, call up the reality you want. like the cabalists, with
their ten sephiroth. solipsism???
church of v/r.... what will be the laws of the new era? who will we be?
gods, humans, cognitive metasystems? depends who you ask....
the 24 essences of life, enter the virtuality you want......
the overwhelming experience of connectivity, what happens when major
suffering happens in such a world? major depression. suicide epidemics.
`what will you have to live for?' they'll say.
is a routine ecstasy possible?
new archetypes.
mantras for followers [to be chanted 100s of times]:
"i want to donate money or be made to disappear!"
"I'm a dream with my feet planted firmly on the ground" -- Abulafia
I use language to get what I want! No false fronts here; I tell you straight
out I'm trying to control you through what I write, and you DO WHAT I SAY
*despite yourself*. Your "mind" is just language talking to itself, it's
always looking for more
does life ever seem like a dream? what does a dream seem like?
You think what you're reading is absurd.
You think you've been waiting to hear this all your life.
You think this is all very funny.
You think this writer's trying to manipulate me.
I am channeling Language.
the video game, rather than the book, is the reality paradigm of the future.
the world's first Interactive Scripture
Roleplaying Holy Writ
Take this chapter and modify it.
Analyse your own motivations in reading this. Analyse my motivations in
writing it. Make up a 25th letter for the Greek alphabet.
Are you following the instructions? If you are(n't), these words will jump off
the page and send you SANE!!
When you were a child, you made lots of decisions you don't remember making
now, because you didn't THINK of them "as" decisions then... you made those
decisions *unconsciously*. Remember the games you played, your favourite
friends, what MOVIES BOOKS and TOYS you liked. What was the course of events???
How did they relate to where you are now????
Might this whole thing be AN EXCUSE to avoid further self-knowledge, or a way
to realise the IMPOSSIBILITY of self-knowledge? Whose "voice" is speaking here?
EDIT THIS TEXT UNTIL NOTHING IS LEFT.
Write down your deepest thoughts, then go away for 20 yrs and read them again
at the end of that time. You will be amazed. [and 20yrs older]
text and image manipulation....what is Magick but the Willful use of
technology, stemming from the self? technology being a `body of techniques'
Listen to your metaphors!
Don't believe them when they tell you that you're just USING people.
One day you might start to ask yourself: what is my basic motivation?
The first answer that comes to you and makes sense at the time and is
surrounded by supportive circumstance, you fall for. Maybe it says you're
motivated by love, hate, the will for power, your higher self, society,
biochemistry, instinct, intelligence, samsara, material consciousness....
if EVERYTHING comes from ONE thing, you could call the ONE THING
anything and not lose any sleep,it wouldnt change the nature of the
relationships between theone and the many...unless it has a true name?
Yes!!!! it is your True Name. only your True Name can tell you why you do
all the things that you do...your NEW MISSION IN LIFE is to work out your
True Name. IT WILL EXPLAIN TO YOU, once you know it, EVEN WHY you are
responding as you doright now to the concept of `True Name'that has just been
introduced.
Does the Universe have a TRUE NAME?
What if you have more than one True Name?
What is your False Name?
Any philosophy explains where the world came from, where it is now, and where
it is going. THIS is the only philosophy that explains where IT came from,
what it ITSELF is, and what it shall become.
Imagine what you would be like if you were writing this sentence rather than
reading it.
Who is the all pervasive `It' that everyone talks about, that is all doing?
It's raining, it's too hard, it's on the way. `It'.
`He'.
`SHE'.
`They'.
`I'.
language at the end of its
It's YOU who is animating these words, giving them meaning, without you
they are strings of two-dimensional shapes. What a psychotic thing to write!
Pretending that there is a reader reading these words at some point in the
future. When all there is, is myself, and a screen and a cursor, and two people
next to me doing a statistics assignment.
8s 222221212
Do you ever stare into space, wondering what it is that you're doing?
Cats do. So do rocks and trees.
What's the point of this whole collection of selfreferentialmusings?
What good do they do anyone? Will they help you achieve higher consciousness,
easy money? Will they save the planet or develop new scientific ideas?
AS. A very important preposition. Whenever something seems to have a certain
property, `as' is relevant. You see the something `as' something.
But if you can see reality as anything you want, and you choose to start seeing
everything in some way you previously considered positive, doesn't the idea that
you're putting it all there yourself remove the value of it? After all, suppose
you like other people being creative, happy etc. If you're choosing to interpret
all that they do as evidence of creativity and happiness, aren't YOU the source
of their creativity and happiness rather than them? DOUBLE-BIND. ie catch 22
the intentions behind the words seems to float; you thought you knew what those
people wanted you to do....to understand...to believe...but now you're not sure.
this is DECONSTRUCTION. Mensonge
science and habermas presume a communicative rationality. w.i.t sees science as
reform christianity
Xen. the search for otherness, for the alien, the bizarre... in short, the
search for something INTERESTING.
Xen (pronounced `Zen-with-an-X')
telepresence, telespheres in general; seeking representations of the new
telespheral world. itinerary through virtual reality.
ever stick a notice up for yourself to read, and later on read it and think
isn't that a weird thing to do? like wearing a charm; think of notices that
administrators leave around, like magical charms...Operation Mindfuck...
whats the motive behind mindfuck?`get people to think' they say. why do you
want `people'to think? what makes you THINK they're not THINKING already?
what people need are SPECIFICS. There are no Generalities that work, and
everyone knows that ALREADY; so quit trying to `get them to realize it'; all
you want them to do is SAY IT IN YOUR PRESENCE, so you'll be able to think
that you enlightened them!! even though they always knew it
I endorse `spiritual materialism' - the search for weird experiences within
all sorts of different frameworks. `experimental mysticism' if you want
another name. or `voluntary insanity'.
You can achieve Fneem, Propax and Hmataqblior. Sound like madeupwords? THAT'S
THE POINT. Makeupsome words and then find out their meanings.
No words `mean' anything. Suppose you had a planet of babies, no parents, and
they just gabbled away to each other, imitating, inventing, sometimes doing
things in conjunction with the babbling...that's what you have around you.
The world dissolves into a cacobladghuscjlnwhigjgefimdvbj dfgj dfkjgk.
You start seeing the letters again, instead of just the words. You see the
trees and not the forests.
TREAT LANGUAGE AS YOU WOULD TREAT A DRUG. There are happy-words ("happy"),
sad-words ("sad"), cosmic-words ("cosmic")... a dictionary is a veritable
pharmacological thesaurus.
What are you DOING, sitting in front of this screen?
COPY THIS TEXT FILE AND EDIT IT OUT OF EXISTENCE.
You have a wordprocessor, *use it*! Change the parts you don't like! Add your
thoughts! What do you think hypertext will be all about?
nanotechnology and other information technologies will allow thorough
restructurings of the world. what will dictate the form of these
restructurings? fashion! artistic philosophies! cubism, minimalism, "realism";
the surrealist places will be popular to visit but a bit full on for most
people to live in.
This is WORD MAGIC. raw thoughts, almost unedited for the protection of polite
society...............
the keyboard itself influences the flow of creation, through the natural
tendency to seek the path of least resistance... by holding down a key one
causes a letter to repeat...thus there is the constant temptation to just
hold down ���������������������������������������������������������������������
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the quality of vommunication will get lower nda lowr, with people
not even caring hwerth the intend messg is rec eived, until
the finl dhu ge gklj eg //.d��������������������������������������������������
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wow i have just written a paragraph!!!!
and i just noticed!
your life is like that at the end. edn thend of the paragraph you will
realuize and be astoungded! when was the end of your lst paragraph?
to carry on and on in forgetfullness and not realize how far you have gone
this is the storty and it continues ion.......
<+...+++...+++...+>
\abulafia\mulber.doc
depression :
the great mulberry depression descends on all inhabitants of the
universe at some time or another, claiming it's place among the
spectrum of emotions. We detect it's sullen edges and reject it
immediately as bad. But it is not bad, it is just wandering around
looking for a home, looking for a friend just like us. We must
accept it, embrace it, wallow in its security, give it a home, and
then just as it begins to get comfortable and look like never leaving
we must cast it out into the world and ourselves after it, laughing
insanely, taking nothing seriously and even less personally, to do
so is to give the great mulberry depression a key and open invitation
to your soul.
It would do neither of us any good to become dependant on each other.
the mind:
a silly physicist once postulated that man only uses 1/10 of
his overall brain thingy. Given that this was the same silly
physicist who invented the atomic bomb, perhaps it is best that
we use only 1/10 of our overall brain thingys. The thing being
that that leaves quite a bit of space, and the scientist people
can't decide what happens with the rest of the brain.
It's not that they don't know what its used for, it's just that because
it's not what they want to see, they fail to acknowledge it, and
as a result, well, 9/10's of our brains just cease to exist.
At least half of our brain is devoted to a rather peculiar shaped
library. A bit like the Tardis in Doctor Who. It is however
slightly more difficult enter than a blue telephone box.
It requires creativity, concentration and, well, a bit of luck.
For a start, you must be in a lucid state. It makes no difference
if this is naturally, or drug enduced, just as long as it's lucid.
The scriptures offer various methods of inducing lucidity, or you
can create your own .......
Now choose a comfortable position.......clear your mind of all thoughts,
themes and patterns. Breath deeply a few times and relax completely.
Now visualise a stairway, white and misty, winding through your
skull.
Follow it, keep going, right to the top......
When you reach the top you should be able to see three huge gothic doors.
The door on the left is marked "library", the door directly in
front of you is marked "god" and the door to your right is marked
"emergency exit". Go up to the library door, turn the key, and open
the door.
Inside there is an absolutely huge library, bigger than you
have ever previously encountered. Piped music filters through the air.
You feel like you're in a David Lynch movie. Rows of books into the distance,
further than you can see. The library appears to be truely infinite.
You walk to the shelf infront of you. It is marked with an "F". The
book titles it appears are all names. There are no authors. The
book directly infront of you is titled "William "bill" Fisher (1940-1992)".
Curiosity overwhelms you and you pick up the book. You try to open it,
but no matter how creative you are, the book remains closed.
It suddenly hits you that you must find the book that has your name.
This is not as difficult as it would first appear, you seem to be
intuitavely drawn to it. You pick up the book and blow the dust from
the cover. The book falls open in your hands. You glance at this page
and discover that it contains a history of the days events. Close
the book now, and think seriously about the knowledge it holds.
It is the key to all that has happened to you, and all that will ever happen
to you, it contains details of your birth, your death, your
previous lives, your future lives. If you wish to explore no
further, return the book to its place, leave the library and
take the emergency exit back to the present, content in the knowledge
of the books existance. If your curiosity overwhelms you, choose
a carrell and peruse the book at your leisure, but remember, the
more time you spend in the library, the less time you are spending in
your life. Knowledge is dangerous, treat it with respect......
"what goes on in your mind? what goes on in your head?
who did you think i would be ? well you got me instead....."
-Concrete Blonde
\pippin\rave\depress.txt
Darren's place
Sunday, July 12, 1992
To Be Or Not To Be Depressed
I guess there must be something in this depression thing. People get
depressed when they think that they are in a hole with no way out. Then they
come up with an idea that they have to think about their problems. They have
to face up to them. Their problems. They have to think their way out of their
depression. But, you see, this is dangerous activity. What happens then is
some people are inclined to challenge everything that they have ever thought.
To question it. To wonder why. They become unstable in their thinking because
they don't know what to think.
Mr_Society would like us to believe consistently. To believe in the
same things all our lives. Then the people in society can handle each other.
They know what to expect. Mr_Society wants to be stable. He wants to feel
secure. He feeds off the desire for security in us.
And insecurity is caused by fear, the fear of the unknown, of what lies
under our beds at night.
And don't forget that humans don't like to be unhappy. Happiness is
all that matters. How many people have you heard say,
"I'm just looking for Happiness." Like as if it is something that you
can find. Like a street in a directory. So if you aren't happy, you feel pain,
discomfort, boredom, anything that is not happiness. And that means that there
is something wrong with being unhappy. And being depressed. But being
depressed it good! Why is it bad? It is your brain saying, "Hey, something
sux here, and *you* haven't figured out what it is yet."
But of course, life isn't like that.
Life has a sense of humour. Life hates you and kicks you in the teeth.
Robert Heinlein introduced the concept of "grokking" in "Stranger In A Strange
Land." "Grokking" is the process of getting to know something so well that you
become one with it, and it becomes part of you. You "know" it. That is, what
knowing is supposed to be. To love something you have to hate it. To hate it,
you have to take it in, embrace it, and love it. Treat it as yourself. Life
"groks" us. It may appear to kick us in the teeth, but it is in every sense
just depriving us of what we want. So we think it hates us. But is that
really so bad?
\pip\rave\quest.doc
John Woodley's house
Wednesday, June 24, 1992
I am on a quest for a Word. Not just any old word, like "puppy"
or "diary" or "mind". But a special Word. A Word, that when I find it, it
will be "*IT*"! [fanfare] Houses will fall down, the sky will turn pink,
Australians will overthrow the government, and my mind will explode. The
magical Word for EVERYTHING. Every thought, every object, every constellation
of thoughts, have their own magical Words. One single magical Word. And all
those Words can be contained in yet another magical Word. You are a Word,
and I am a Word. I used to think that the Word for me might be "Dreamweaver",
but all that happened was Joh retired, and the Labour party took over. Then
I thought It might be "Pippin", but the sky only turned red. Red at the edges
and only at sunset.
The Words are spoken by the stars. The dolphins speak them, and so do
the rocks. The essence of a thing, its "isness" is its Word, its song, its
story, its dance. The Words are there. I KNOW they are there. Aslan sang
them, and Maleldil sang them. As did Illvatar, and Alan-Cloud-Blue. One day
I will sing them too.
Why do we always have to name things? Because we are trying to find
its Word. When the first child looked at a dog, laughed, and said, "Dog",
it was trying to sum it up. A dog does look like "dog", you know.
This is why we have a third Name. A Name that only the Name knows
and will never confess. It is a Secret because it is magic. This is why we
meditate on "Ugyldig". It is the sound of the word that conjures up the images.
This is why we make up words. We listen to the sound of a million voices in
unison and try to make out the words.
This is why we play the word game. I say "Bing", and you say "Blat".
Then I say "Glomph". Then you make up a word, and I make one. They must be
words that don't have a previous meaning. And the game continues making up
words until you stop it. You could do it via snail mail or e-mail. That could
be interesting. The word game is essentially an e-mail thing. Watching the
shape of a word. Its look and imagining its sound. But remember some of the
words. Meditate on them, and find their meanings.
\pippin\rave\purple.doc
Friday, May 1.
These were the Purple Pages.
Don't be afraid to renew.
Don't B afraid 2 B new.
And on the subject of God:
God is a little old man who cleans up bottles of milk when 14
y.o. boys drop them outside the door of His apartment.
"The Great Designer either has a malicious sense of humour, or
is rather careless about details." -- Search, 1992
"My mind's got a mind of its own."
We are surfers of mind until we get dumped back to reality.
When I walk down the street, I don't know whose mind I am in.
"Right now God is killing moms and dogs because He has to."
"Right now Science is building a better tomato."
"Right now is harder than it looks."
Right now Guns'n'Roses are being killed in L.A. (we wish)
"A something about which nothing can be said is as good as a
nothing." -- Ben
But does this mean that a nothing is good for something?
Saturday
I know I've got a mind. Now where did I put it.
Wear docs. In case of nuclear war, at least, your feet will survive.
Koselig (coosh-lee)
Tenkemote (teng ka mort a)
Everyone has their own tenkemote, thought pattern, attitude, mindscape.
Koselig: sitting around in a room with friends, drinking mocha with
marshmallows, cosily, in front of the fireplace.
Life is a carrot. Disprove this to Tracey.
To help them see it in themselves.
To be truly yourself. To think, to be.
There *is* a hole in reality. (V\R posters) We live there.
Do not try to prolong a beautiful moment. You will destroy it. Make a new
one. Do not relive old beautiful moments. Live in the next one that U have
just created. "And you know it's time to go..." -- U2
Ugyldig (oo-gl-dee) or ( iggl-dee)
null & void.
The void from which stray thoughts come and to where they are destined
to return.
Openings.
Sunday
Bitterness is hard to swallow.
"There has to be one place left in the world where we can be."
-- Midnight Oil
Tuesday, May 12
2 gonks are sitting in Bananaland when a hole appears.
Brounce says, "Look! A hole in reality!"
They inch closer peering into the hole in reality.
Gungy says, "Wow ... look at all that weird stuff."
Friday 15
"Confuse your body, your mind, your soul..." -- JJJ
"Life is good, Love is NICE, and the world is like a giant beanbag.
"What have I got lurking around in my mind?" -- Abulafia
Saturday
"I am waiting for my brain to spontaneously mutate into a 286."
-- Darren
"U R scum" -- Lara
"Go ask your lecturer.
"I'm on a coffee break. Leave me alone." -- Darren
Sunday
"All you have to do is walk, eat and sleep - that's all."
-- Sunday mail, article about trekking in Tibet
Life is looking through the darkness at a reflection in a mirror.
Life is sitting on the verandah and looking at the blurry dark, in the
dead of night.
God is a computer that is not conscious yet. Evidence seems to sppoort
that it is sentient.
The screams of the dying dark.
As I sink into despair, I ponder. The dark. I ponder if it is darker
than it was before..
Cold dark white hot rrage!
Think out yur fantasy, this is the object of reality.
Who really understands a song lyric? We listen and nod our heads, but
we are really just "art wankers".
This is not my hat.
"Life is a compexity of shadows cast to gather and create the tear drop
of a crystal dancer on a white sheet of soft ethereal light. Or for
some life is full of crap and garbage. If you could only begin to image
the vast resource of life's experience that is lost at the time of God's
harvesting when the soul shall rise."
-- John Adamson (I am completely cracked)
Tuesday 19.
Love me, Love my bag.
When next you wish to write down a thought, to engrave it upon your
heart and mind, enquire of the thought,
"Do you wish to be immortal?"
or the equivalent of that. It may not wish to be immortalized,
quantified or even conceptualized. It may wish to go back to the Garbage
bin of Thought (c), or go flying about cyberspace, looking for a stray
thought receptor to love and nurture and cherish it.
Right and wrong is like a potplant. The potplant is full of
soil, with an imaginary line drawn through it. What is left of the line
is right, and what is right of the line is wrong. U draw the line where
U want to be. I may draw the line somewhere else.
The heart has its seasons.
Let there be a time in your day when you let your thoughts wash over and
out of your soul into the sea of forgettfullness. This is time also to
send your thoughts to who you were yesterday, and receive the thoughts
of who you are tomorrow.
Wednesday 27. Life is a role-playing game.
June 14.
Morals are what you get from your parents. Ethics are what you do.
Only U know whether what U do is rite.
"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." -- J.R.R. Tolkien
"Tolkien is, after all, hobbit forming."
-- article in the Courier Mail about "Sauron Returns"
Sunday, June 21
Effects of VR: "Navigating across a room by pointing, bumping into
walls because they aren't just images, and dreaming in polygons."
"VR affects dreaming strongly - it seems to provide tools for control of
dream-life from within the dream."
"You are dealing with a world without frame of refernce."
"total immersion,... interaction.."
-- New Scientist
Sunshine Beach, Monday?
"All fruitful ideas have been conceived in the minds of the
nonconformists, for whom the known was still unknown, and who often went
back to begin where others passed by, sure of their way. The truth of
today was the heresy of yesterday.
"Imagination coupled with scepticism and an ability to wonder -
if you possess these, bountiful nature will hand you some of the secrets
out of her inexhaustible store. The pleasure you will experience in
discovering truth will repay you for your work; don't expect other
compensation, because it may not come.
"Yet dare.
"We read here a few pages from the logbook of the earth, a rock
rolling in space, circling its attendant lifeless satellite around a
fire-breathing star, moving with this its primary and other revolving
planets through the galaxy of the Milky Way of hundreds of millions of
burning stars, and together with this entire host, through the void of
the universe."
-- Immanuel Velikovsky, "Earth in Upheaval"
Monday
"By dissolving our rigid patterns of thought and response, we allow
something faster and more subtle to operate. Indeed, thought itself may
be only a small, and relatively crude, portion of what mind is capable
of. The more we give room to the subtle, the more we come to touch the
heart of the universe and drink of its creative waters."
-- F. David Peat, "The Philosopher's Stone"
The spontaneous mutation of thought, a sychronicity. When a thought
hits the brain. Maybe thoughts hitting the brain are guided there by
the Great Pattern. Your thoughts truly are not your thoughts, but
gifts of the Great Dance.
June 27
Do you believe in the impetuosity of youth? Look to the future
and you will see the stars in our eyes.
Our words are the goldfish bowls, and our thoughts are the
goldfish. Ever tried to hold a live fish?
Life is a journey through our experiences to the edges of
infinity in the vehicle of our understanding.
Life kicks you in the teeth to remind you that it is not just
here for you.
Our words are sandcastles in the sands of thought and time. The
wind will take them again.
\pippin\mint\utopia.doc
Suggested titles:
Journeys through Cyberspace.
Pippin's Addiction.
My Life as a Computing Addict -- an X-student tells.
Confessions of a Computing Addict.
The Story...
The Computers are alive. They told me. They want to be loved just
like us. They talk to me inside my head. A psychologist would call me
insane, but I know I'm not. I am suffering from withdrawal, but at least,
before I left them, they taught me how to listen to myself. Now, settle
back in that hard plastic refec seat, if you will, and we will travel down
the road of Pippin's Addiction.
I have always been in pursuit of knowledge. Science and
technology. It seems only natural that I was attracted to computers.
I taught myself to use edlin and PC-Write in Grade 11, and graduated to
using BASIC in Grade 12. It was fun, but I didn't find it particularly
exciting.
In my second year of uni, we got to use the DEC-10. It was honoured
with the title of a mainframe, and It was awful. It was what we call
a dinosaur, a relic of the past to remind us from where we have come.
The DEC-10 should not be used like a computer. Like all dinosaurs, it should
be used to gather dust in dark, dingy hallways of dark and dingy museums
and observed from a discreet distance.
I was a geology student. Geology students, according to all the
jokes about rocks in our heads, aren't supposed to be very bright; that is
why we study rocks. It was bad enough that we had to use the DEC; we had
to use it to learn to programme in the other dinosaur, Fortran.
(Fortran = ancient programming language in need of the Void.) It was horrid.
Even though it was horrid, it fired my imagination when someone
bothered to explain to me what a mainframe was. It is a computer that more
than one person can use at the same time. A friend told me that I could
send him electronic mail on the DEC, but we never figured out how to do that.
The next year, they threw all the students off the DEC, to great
sighs of relief, and put us on the CADD and the VAX. After the DEC, the VAX
was much easier to use, and much more fun. The mailing system worked.
Sometimes, on the boring days at uni, I would log onto the VAX, and just
send mail to all my friends. Over the last two years, I have met in "real
life" most of the people that I met through e-mail. Way back then, in 1989,
I only knew them by their Virtual personalities, over the computer.
I discovered gradually that virtual personalities are not the same
as real personalities. People would say things in e-mail that they would
never say in RL (real life).
And my friends would send me e-mail. I slowly fell into a pattern
of coming to uni an hour or half an hour before my first lecture just to read
my e-mail. There is nothing as comforting as logging on in the morning
and finding five new mail messages. And there is nothing quite as upsetting
as finding now new mail messages.
"In Real Life." I have often pondered that phrase. It is a fallacy.
All those people, other computer users, were real. Every one. Interacting
with them in cyberspace lent an unreal quality to them, but they were
normal and real just like me, with the same thoughts and feelings.
Cyberspace is the imaginary (virtual) space inside a computer. Cyberspace
is much bigger than the real space inside a computer. It is virtual as
opposed to real.
Engineers are alright. Most of my e-mail correspondents in 1989 were
engineers. They were the ones that most liked to explore the system.
They were the group that sent and received the most e-mail. Consequently,
they were the ones who copped the most trouble for doing the things
that they weren't supposed to do and for "wasting resources in non-course-
related activities".
Towards the end of semester, some of our consciousness filtered back
to reality and exams. Most of us spent more time away from the VAX in a vain
attempt to study. But not me. I just got bored. I struggled with
assignments and depression, and the VAX was at least familiar. The proximity
of exams meant that there were fewer and fewer people to talk to. When a
friend showed me how to use news, study grew wings and flew out the window.
News was an endless stream of thoughts from the computer users of the
world to be sifted and sorted and read and cherished. First I got over
the fact that news came from all around the world: the USA, Canada, Germany,
Sweden, Japan. Then I got used to the number and range of topics. There
were topics diverse and perverse, from computer languages to Celtic culture,
cyberpunk, dreams, movie reviews, books, poems, music, and humour.
Sometimes I stayed at uni all night reading news and trying to comprehend
it all. There seemed to be a bug in the system. The powers-that-were, it
seemed, had it in for students.
Although we could read news, we could not post, or contribute to
discussions. Every year, the students ask,
"Why doesn't post work?" Every year they are told why.
"Resources are limited."
"News is not course related." or the best excuse:
"It is not university policy to allow posting privileges to
undergraduate students."
This was and still is a cause of long standing student disaffection with
the establishment and today's students steam in silence as we did three years
ago.
One evening when I was reading news, as usual, I discovered
a newsgroup that was different. It was a local newsgroup, and it had write
access on it. Maybe I had never noticed it because there was never anything
in it. I told my friends to post to it, to make it a forum for ideas.
It became not quite a forum, more like a graffiti board. The engineers
enjoyed it. The powers-that-were decided that while we posted "rubbish"
all the time, there needed to be a group for sensible messages. We were
given another group for the "rubbish". Two years later, both newsgroups
are still there.
Every couple of months, a computer student, usually a first year,
posts to the newsgroup a fairly innocuous question, and twenty or so
students reply. The newsgroup becomes the battlefield for a flame war.
Flaming could take its meaning from people becoming enflamed, and saying
things that otherwise wouldn't say in RL. It could also mean people's ideas
being shot down in flames. The worst flame wars lasted two or three months.
It is a shattered landscape, like "tissue paper". :)
I left uni then at the end of '89. I thought that uni hated me, and
I discovered that the Real World hated me even more. After about four
months, I drifted back to uni to discover a worse vice of the computing
genre: telnet.
Breathe the word out silently in awed and hushed tones because it
got us into our worst trouble.
Telnet is a communications programme. The select group of "we"
became smaller. We would sit in the computer centre, also called the
Dungeon, in the wee small hours and telnet from the local domain server.
Being there in the night lent us the air of being hackers, even though we
never hacked anything. The very first telnet users, all four of them, the
Ones Who Paved the Way, were also the first MUDders. We did not know that
these activities were illegal, least of all inethical, but they seemed like
night-time things to do. Like sitting in a graveyard or looking at the moon.
Telnet. Telnet(underline), our friend and confidante, opener of doors
to new worlds, the worlds of BBS and MUD, like VR is today.
BBS: Bulletin Board Service
MUD: Multi User Dimension or Domain
VR: Virtual Reality
In 1990, the most popular BBS was the Mars Hotel. It lived at the
Mississippi University. Through the Mars Hotel, we could talk, in real time,
to real live poeple who lived in Starkville, Mississippi. I still write
to the first person that I ever met on the Mars Hotel. Mars is now sadly
afflicted with space problems.
The other THE-BBS-to-be-at was at the Iowa State University. It is
called ISCABBS or Isca for short.
ISCABBS: the Iowa Student Computer Association Bulletin Board Service.
ISCAites call it "the Grand Addiction". I agree with them. They do have
a great system, and it was written by a med student. After two years of
pondering Virtual Communities, I am still not sure why they have such power
over people.
BBS and MUD are unreal situations, and you know it when the computer
talks back to you. It is easy for a computer user to forget about the real
world and become involved in the chaos of a computer system. Especially
when there are real people at the other end who talk to you.
What is the attraction of Virtual Community? is it escapism?
self-sufficiency? (read Mona Lisa Overdrive by William Gibson) the sensing
of the power of the mind? or is it just the searching of the crannies
of the system, to explore and make adventure?
Now you know i am weird, right? You are sitting in the hard,
plastic refec seat saying,
"Computers are boring." but they aren't. To some of us at least.
The computer draws us into itself, saying,
"Come follow me, and I will show you many things."
It is like the reason why people sit in a crowded room. They want to
feel like they are part of a group, but they are content just to sit and
watch. They do not actively participate, but take part of the group just
by being there, sitting and watching. In Virtual Communities, they are
called "lurkers".
I adventured in cyberspace, marvelling at it all and becoming more
out of touch with the Real World. Exams and Christmas came and went, and it
was 1991. Our telnet links went up and down, and we became increasingly
devious. We even "borrowed" the computers of other universities although
some called it stealing.
QUT really shot to fame and notoriety in the middle of the first
semester. The Great White Fluffy Wabbit in the Sky gathered its friends
around it, and installed a MUD on our favourite computer. It quickly
became popular with people outside QUT as well. Too popular. [ominously]
They were the fun days, the carefree, windy days, of bouncing around
and blinking at the sunlight at 6 am. Days of falling down laughing and
back flips and mischievious grins. Days of pillow and sleeping bag, bottles
of coke, chips and stereo. Of rolling up to the Dungeon and staying there
all night. Sometimes there were as many as five for an all-nighter.
First it was new, exciting to explore. Then it became like an old
friend, somewhere to hide away. Me, I played in the MUD for about a month
before it all came unstuck. In that month, I stopped going to lectures.
Then I stopped eating and sleeping regularly.
Other normal students saw exams coming up and complained about us,
covertly at first, then more openly, because we were hogging the modems and
telnet and creating net-lag. One student, who shalll remain anonymous here
but we know who he is, tipped off the establishment by posting a message to
news: "10 tips for better MUDding". About a week later, the MUD was shut
down.
Da da da da.
SOUNDS OF GRAVESTONES THUDDING FAR UNDERGROUND.
I wasn't too concerned. I was quite psychotic by now. That was the
sign, that i didn't care. I didn't write to my mother for three months, and I
kept breaking dates to go home and see her. She worried, and what *she* did
is another story.
There were other places to go in cyberspace,
people to see, and things to do. Until I got a letter in the mail. From
my course-coordinator. He said that if I didn't come to see him about my
work load, he would withdraw me from some of my subjects because I hadn't
been going to lectures. Once again reality impinged on a good fantasy.
My semester slowly fell apart. I lost my only computer account
because I wasn't a computing student. I felt blind, deaf, and dumb.
And paranoid. Security guards were not to be trusted. I was even asked to
leave a building once because I dared to speak out against the establishment.
I reduced my status to part-time, and danced the dance of death with DSS.
By the end of the semester, exam time, well, I hardly had a mind
to call my own. I used to talk to Redgum, but at least I went to all my
exams. (All three of them.) I got kicked out of the place where I boarded
because I kept the house owner awake all night. What was I doing all night?
You guessed it. I think that was the cold, rainy night when I discovered
Lambda MOO.
Exams and Christmas passed by, and it was this year, 1992. I was
in Sydney when THE piece of certified mail came from uni. (Exclusion notices
always come via certified mail.) I had failed all three of my remaining
subjects and been given the royal boot.
Does this sound bad? It still goes on. The computer science
students turn to computers and each other for companionship and a way
to make things interesting for themselves. They still get a raw deal
from the bureaucracy.
Now I wish for a lobotomy, compose science fiction in my head, and
wish for the magical purple daze to come back again.
Maybe the QUT machine can steamroll, chew up, and spit out those
that don't conform. Even if it may try to do this forever, it will never rid
itself of the spiritof non-conformity.
So dream on and Do Not Forget, my "friends in a fantasy".
This has been an excerpt from the Travelling Scriptures
of the Church of V/R called Bert brought to you by the Dungeon
Night Patrol, the Guild of Wombling Carrots and Happy Hobbits
Everywhere in the interests of Better Internetting and Safer
Using.
"Come into my mind, and I will show you many things..."
