Re: CyberAnthropology anyone?

Mike Scher (strange@tezcat.com)
30 Apr 1995 07:21:46 GMT

Gil Hardwick (gil@landmark.iinet.net.au) wrote:
:
: In article <g94e1913.360.2F9B679C@warthog.ru.ac.za>, MR PJJS ELS (g94e1913@warthog.ru.ac.za) writes:
: >I am currently doing a project on the Cyberspace community and trying to
: >define exactly what is meant by it. Information on the Net itself seems hard
: >to come by and I have been able to find only snippets here and there with
: >the exception being the CyberAnthropology Home Page of Seeker1/Steve Mizrach
: >at http://www.clas.ufl.edu/anthro/Seeker1_s_CyberAnthro_Page.html.

: Christ this bullshit jargon is becoming overbearing.

The word "cyber" (or rather the prefix) should be stricken from the
record. Its last accurate use was perhaps in the early 1960's with Reush
and Bateson.

: CyberAnthropology Home Page of Seeker1/!@#$%^&gobbledegookthingamyjig/
: whosemibobber@www.htpml_ufo_gluesniffer@gradeschool.edu INDEED!

: With a capital letter in the middle into the bargain. What some people
: will do in their silly efforts to attract "research funding" to their
: "projects" and credibility as anthropologists, defies the imagination.

Well, they do cite Tim Leary, Terry McKenna, and philip K. Dick. I like
and admire all their works, but none are anthropologists by any sleight
of hand, except perhaps the circular one of dissolving meanig systems and
making them so.

: NOTHING IS MEANT BY ANYTHING HERE WHATSOEVER!

See above.

: It is all nothing more than the usual bunch of self-indignant fuckers
: jousting away at one another as they always have done, here via bits
: of wire strung between whole lots of computers scattered around the
: planet.

Consider it a brute-force representation of fledgling society?
Or perhaps an unimaginative version thereof?

: Whereas in earlier days it was via two bits of #8 fencing wire strung
: across the paddock. And before that via some messenger boy running
: from house to house.

: Before that with flintlock pistols at dawn . . .

Now with email bombs and exploit scripts at dusk.

: Each "service provider" (as the concurrent blather would have it) in
: turn making some passing sort of living at delivering other people's
: messages for them.

Or rather at placating their ignorance with kind words and magical
passes, priest-like.

: He who refuses to qualify data is doomed to rant.

He who rants will probably be forced to tabulate data.

-Mike

--

Michael Brian Scher             | TEZCAT.COM Staff and In-House Counsel

strange@tezcat.com              | Wicker Park's own connectivity provider

http://www.tezcat.com/~strange/ | "The Good Guys"   Info:(312) 850-0181

    I'm a legal anthropologist; what's an illegal anthropologist?