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Re: distortion
John Pastore (venture@CANCUN.RCE.COM.MX)
Fri, 24 May 1996 20:47:23 +0000
On 24 May 96 at 22:34, mike shupp wrote:
> On Tue, 21 May 1996, John Pastore wrote:
>
> > Co-opted? Hardly. The State (?) or, at least, the far right has
> > not been taking the defense, but only the offense, since, at
> > least, Regan's visit to Jimmy Swaggart's ranch to party during
> > Ford's acceptance speech. The monumental mythmaking of the far
> > right is not only defending so-called orthodoxy, but is also
> > inventing a new pathos. Having successfully convinced today's
> > college students that it was Nixon and Kissinger who had not
> > prolonged the Vietnam War for political leverage, but, in fact,
> > ended the war, the neo-mythmaking has also gathered steam with
> > the celebration of the so-called "Desert War" by "Storm Troopers"
> > who were never there.
>
> I have good news for you, John. The name "Robert Mcnamera" came up
> in a class I was taking and after everone looked blank for twenty
> seconds one daring soul asked, "He was a general wasn't he?"
> What matter the accuracy or meaning of the myths our ruling
> classes shove down our throats if no one is capable of remembering
> them?
>
You're sort of young to 'remember' McNamara, no? Probably you
weren't born yet. In any case he was about as memorable as the Edsel
--hardly the material for a myth: dry to the bone.
> > All such pales in
> > comparison to the greatest myth of them all: "The Liberating
> > New-Age of the Internet via the Information Highway".
> >
> > While private investors and scientists, permitted and driven by a
> > political agenda, compete to create and control ever larger and
> > more pervasive parallel mining machines, the rhetoric of the new
> > myth has now passed even their imposition of their fundamentals of
> > science as a new fundamentalism for science to include no more
> > thinking (as there are now machines properly programmed and
> > amendable for thinking). They are now also preparing the way for
> > would-be users of the internet to buy a whole new generation of
> > diskless work-stations connected to the internet, and storing
> > their information, and even puny thinking, there --apparently
> > within internet information banks, to make the mining of
> > information -of power- that much easier. Why not, after all, when
> > a CD disk the size of Beethoven's ninth mysteriously costs 1000%
> > more when placed within a PC tower?
>
> I'm not especially worried by the "mining of information"
> aspect of the Internet-- likely because I'm a played out source.
They're not interested in what you think, per se. Sometimes, only in
what you think about them, and how vocal you will be about it, and
most of the time just flashing their bubble-gum machine, just to let
you know their around.
> And while diskless internet workstations may simplify the task of >
> the information gathers, I fairly certain that was not their >
> rationale.
>
Mike, you are young. Tell me what did you think of that Black Java
Virus alert? Remember: the "virus" that was so selective in its
destruction as to not import whatever information it was looking for?
Heck, I didn't even have a chance to 'not' disengage Java as advised
by the U.S. Defense Department (?), when everything went down for
three days anyway. I still haven't disengaged Java --I'd just as soon
disengage Sumatra.
> I think the real threat of the internet is that it is becoming the
> opium of the intellectuals. Look at all the bright, once-upon-a-
> time sensible people who are using all their free time to creat ever
> more impressive WWW home pages. And Here we all sit, for example,
> the 700 members of ANTHRO-L, the hundreds of us in Aegeanet, in ANE,
> in sf-writers-group, in primatology, in popper and
> rec-writers-wodehouse and sci-sspace-policy, and so on, in front of
> our terminals reading our messages, answering our e-mail, persuing
> imaginary monsters through MUDdy virtual lairs, browsing the
> contents pages in Science, looking for net new software to
> download.... hour after hour, day after day.
Sort of like a whole generation going to pot again. Whose going to
do the work!?!
The making of a Web Page as opposed to e-mail junkyism by the way,
is the difference between those who present themselves like magazine
ads, and those who present themselves with, at least, their own
voice --though Web Pages can have a voice too. I'm making "The New
World Gazette", by the way. I'm hoping some people here will become
featured columnists.
The internet, agreed though, is the new opiate of the masses, and
while everbody is bombed-out on the internet (myself included),
perhaps, seeking a collective consciousness, there are those who
would want to form it, and it no longer requires armies to conquer,
just a few, well-placed computers. California is entertaining the
idea of voting via the internet, by the way. Sounds so great and
progressive, doesn't it? Maybe Bianca's Smut Shack will become a
polling center. I'd love to mark some ballots there, wouldn't you?
> Having fun, to be sure. But that's time that might have > been
> spent writing books, organizing farm workers or picketing >
> abortion clinics, or writing nasty letters to Bill Clinton and Newt
> > Gingrich, or trying to bring back the gold standard.
But that's what people are doing, bombed-out as they are, on the
net. If you want to write a book, just save your correspondance and
recompile it one day. That's why all my correspondance always looks
like first drafts. The only problem with that though is that no one
will ever buy it, as its already there: free to have or ignore.
If you don't believe your writing a book, go to some webcrawler,
spell your name in the blank, and see what comes up. Something quite
true about what Martial once said, something like: "A word uttered,
is a word escaped." Spooky isn't it? I'm sure "surpressed
necrophilia", for example, is going to come back and haunt me.
Martial was how many centuries pre-net?
> So the net is going to give us a more connected citizenry, a more
> > sophisticated and aware citizenry? Maybe. Is it going to give
> us a more involved citizenry. On the evidence so far, No.
>
More involved in their own opiated dreams. More connected as in a
contact high. Preferring not to be aware of the grand illusion, the
manipulation of it all?
Ka Xiik Keech Ya Utzil,
John Pastore
Writer/Guide in 'El Mayab'
("The Mayan Homeland")
venture@cancun.rce.com.mx
"A teepee is a pyramid, isn't it?"
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