\qix\aboutvr \qix\biblio \qix\cvrmisc \qix\plasmate \qix\nov92\181192 and notes on CafeNet from the folder of Pippin [transcribed by Qix] \qix\aboutvr about "the Scriptures": although portions of the Scriptures may be available in printed form, I envision them as being primarily an *on-line* phenomenon, an ever-growing pool of information, stories, perspectives, and strangeness to which people contribute and add, available through BBSs, ftp sites... a body of text far larger than can fit within any one book, but which will be available electronically to all, and which will be the "memory bank" or "knowledge base" to which GAIA 2000 will refer... if this definition were to be generally accepted it would mean that *anything* posted to Usenet (for example) would become part of the Scriptures, which perhaps demonstrates that this is a silly definition. Even postings urging people to reject GAIA 2000 would be part of the Scriptures, in the fashion that people who reject the Discordian revelation are Discordian Popes (of the House of the Rising Hodge, I think). about 2000 vs 2012: Arguelles contrasts the Western/Babylonian/Christian calendar to the Mayan calendar: the Mayan calendar is allegedly in tune with the "cosmic seasons", or something like that, whereas the other is an invention of a patriarchal, business-oriented culture out of tune with the universal cycles. Etc. In this case, GAIA 2000 could be seen as a *premature* attempt to immanentize the Eschaton, doomed to failure since the true "singularity" (in W.I.T.'s sense, of a moment from which a new revelation will emerge) occurs December 2012, whereas GAIA 2000 sets its deadline according to the first calendrical system. Maybe the world *did* change fundamentally July 26, 1992, and we just haven't noticed in what respect it did. I *think* that was the day that V/R Scriptures first went online somewhere. about GAIA 2000 as `Earth Summit in cyberspace': USENET is already in a sense an ongoing metaconference on all possible topics; if GAIA is somehow `Internet-mediated', what might distinguish it from the ongoing meeting of minds occurring through Usenet all the time? An important feature of the Event was to be that anyone could reach anyone else and interact with them in real-time. If `the Event' is to happen "properly", this state of affairs ought to be reached some time before December 31 2000, so that people are able to do whatever it is they wish to do on that occasion. People have to have access, and they have to know that *something* is coming up on that date. One possibility is to make December 31 2000 some sort of `deadline for the realization of desires' concerning the state of the world, much as Greenpeace has done. This sets up the challenge for people to imagine what the features of a better world might be, lets them know that millions of others are seeing (and perhaps rising to) that same challenge, and provides a date on which to take a look around and see how they've gone. \qix\biblio QIX'S RECOMMENDED READING (as at 12 August 1992) 1. *The Fringes of Reason*. a Whole Earth publication 2. Hakim Bey. "T.A.Z." 3. Avital Ronell. "The Telephone Book". "Crack Wars". Also interview in RE/Search #13. 4. Barbara Marx Hubbard. "The Evolutionary Journey". "The Hunger of Eve". 5. Ayn Rand and Objectivism. Murray Rothbard. 6. Bob Black. "The Abolition of Work". 7. Celia Green. "The Human Evasion". "The Decline and Fall of Science". "Advice for Clever Children". 8. Terence McKenna. "Food of the Gods". "The Archaic Revival". (with Dennis McKenna) "The Invisible Landscape". 9. Ivan Stang, editor: "The Book of the SubGenius". "High Weirdness by Mail". "Three-Fisted Tales of `Bob'". 10. E.E. Rehmus. "The Magician's Dictionary". 11. ? Ravenscroft. "The Mark of the Beast". see also Rudolf Steiner 12. *Principia Discordia*. 13. Jacques Vallee. "Dimensions". "Confrontations". 14. William Irwin Thompson. "At the Edge of History". "Passages About Earth". "Evil and World Order". "Darkness and Scattered Light". ? "The Time Falling Bodies Take To Light". ? "Pacific Shift". "Gaia: A Way of Knowing" (ed.) "Imaginary Landscape". ? "Gaia 2" (ed.) ? "The American Replacement of Nature". 15. Jose Arguelles. "The Transformative Journey". "The Mayan Factor". 16. Jeremy Griffith. "Free - The End of the Human Condition". OR "Beyond the Human Condition". 17. Stanislaw Lem. "Imaginary Magnitude". "A Perfect Vacuum". "One Human Minute". "Solaris". 18. Hans Moravec. "Mind Children". K Eric Drexler. "Engines of Creation", + new book. Foresight Update. Grant Fjermedal. "The Tomorrow Makers". Jerry Pournelle. "A Step Farther Out". 19. William Gibson. "Neuromancer", "Burning Chrome". Bruce Sterling. "Schismatrix", "Crystal Express", "Islands in the Net". Vernor Vinge, "Marooned in Real Time". ?, "The Hole in the Zero". 20. Olaf Stapledon. "Star Maker". "Last and First Men". 21. Greg Bear. "Blood Music". "Eon". "Queen of Angels". 22. H P Lovecraft (various). 23. Gene Wolfe, "The Book of the New Sun". 24. ? Stelarc. 25. FM-2030 aka FM Esfandiary. "Optimism One". "Upwingers". ? "Telespheres". "Are You a Transhuman?" 26. Robert Anton Wilson. "Cosmic Trigger", vols 1 & 2. "Prometheus Rising". "Quantum Psychology". "The New Inquisition". "Reality is What You Can Get Away With". "Masks of the Illuminati", "Illuminatus!" trilogy "Schroedinger's Cat" trilogy "Coincidance" "The Illuminati Papers" 27. Aleister Crowley (various). eg "777", "Book of Lies", "Eight Lectures on Yoga" ? Kenneth Grant. ? G I Gurdjieff. U G Krishnamurti. 28. Christopher Hyatt. "Undoing Yourself". "Undoing Yourself Too". 29. Timothy Leary. "Neuropolitique". "Info-Psychology" (formerly "Exo-Psychology"). "The Politics of Ecstasy". "The Intelligence Agents". "The Game of Life". 30. "In Pursuit of VALIS", concerning Philip K Dick. 31. Postmodernism, poststructuralism. "An Introduction to Superstructuralism". Foucault, Baudrillard, ? Deleuze and Guattari. 32. Roger Penrose. "The Emperor's New Mind". Stephen Hawking. "A Brief History of Time". Richard Feynman. "QED". Douglas Hofstadter. "Goedel Escher Bach". F David Peat, "Superstrings and the Search for the Theory of Everything". "The Philosopher's Stone". James Gleick, "Chaos". Barrow and Tipler. "The Anthropic Cosmological Principle". James Lovelock, books on "Gaia". 33. ? Stan Deyo. "The Cosmic Conspiracy". and "similar" books. 34. James Joyce. "Ulysses", "Finnegans Wake". 35. Gerald Edelman's trilogy on neural Darwinism. books by the Churchlands. 36. Nietzsche, ? Schopenhauer. 37. ? Garry Reith, "Neutron Gun". 38. "Gnosis", "MONDO 2000", ? "Now What" (Waves Forest) 39. "State of the World". Murray Bookchin, "The Ecology of Freedom". 40. R Buckminster Fuller. "Critical Path" "Grunch of Giants" 41. Kevin Solway (various; available as shareware). 42. The Travelling Scriptures of the Church of V/R. \qix\cvrmisc by end of the century gaia2000 may have metamorphosed into something very specific eg something like the earth summit but carried live to the world with its participation via the internet and other media, some sort of meeting of minds meant to bring together the different virtualities where would alpha and omega fit into such a scheme? the ultimate ao might be a sort of performance on my part.. try to explain the *origins* of religious texts, occult traditions etc, in terms of : w.i.t's idea that moderns are literally misreading old cultures; plus cognitive theory etc, ought to be able to explain where information might come from, hwo a voice of god might structure itself etc.. g2000 in mold of nwnm or earth summit: look at bmh's syncon ideas (...ooo000ooo...) 1 august 92. at present v/r is a bunch of files on tracey's bbs, and a slightly smaller selection on an ftp site in w.a., + some vague impressions spreading word- of-mouth. what might it become..? i see it as primarily inhabiting the internet. whatever other media it might spread to, the [inter]net is its true home, and a v/r / cafe-net aim is to bring the net to the streets, so everyone can see it there. some version of the scriptures may appear at different locations on the net, and once there is an ugyldig node people will be able to send us responses, contributions etc. also may serialize scriptures / write other stuff for mag [eg thru circle]. gaia2000 and alpha/omega. the development of these ideas is still my responsibilty. gaia2000 i think is becoming perhaps more concrete - might lead to an internet-mediated 'earth summit in cyberspace', with popular participation on a global scale. at present alpha/omega looks like this: net outline -> album -> novel -> movie -> ... -> EVENT ( -> 1989-2012 ??? ) how might i explain/justify it? `alpha and omega is an attempt to imagine the nature of a gaia2000-instigated event, which is everything at once, and the consequences of it [onto 2012]. the reason for ao's progression through different media is to help bring the 'thing itself' into being, by making it progressively more and more imaginable... so the album/novel/etc becomes a seed or propagator of the idea of the *possibility* of such an event, and the internet the medium of its "organization". "this book you hold, if you are reading it before dec 31.2000 is one means whereby the possibility of this event is circulated..." where does the 24part structure etc of a/o fit in? cf vr1: maybe the event will just be me doing some sort of performance art, so to speak, for the world i have two particular 24fold "things" to fit in, one is timothy leary's 3x8 circuit model, the other is my 1989 to 2012 progression - 1989 is already "agreed upon" as having been a pivotal year, 2012 comes from thompson arguelles mckenna - most convincing thing for me here is timewave zero, if i am to think that there really is "something" in this i want to see it make a prediction - i would also like to see a sort of archaeo- or paleo- cognitive explanation of why the mayan calendar has the structure it does. one idea was that 24 hr sequence serves as a global initiation - into what? initiation must be structured - so leary's model would act as a sequence of 24 [neurological tarot, out of game of life - see also uq book on tarot as sequence of archetypes..] also idea that 24 yrs '89 to '12 somehow recapitulate for global society the 24 stages - '89 birth of global consciousness, '92 birth of ??what -next circuit in any case. this of course is "numerology" just as "bad" as 1998 = 3x666 etc. still it would be funny (if it was "true")... and if it *doesn't* mean anything, what are the ontological implications of the possibility of such creativity? [ie the fact that it is possible to stitch together correlations and "make a meaning" from them - what does that imply about the universe and our relationship to it?] panspace - where does that fitin??? problem i have with ao / gaia2000 relationship is that the whole 24part leary/mckenna stuff may be too esoteric and plain WRONG or so much so that what definitely appears to be the positive potential of gaia2000 [independent of ao.o] might be lost as a/o details might detract or distract HOWEVER - what is the gaia2000 idea *independent of ao*? it is the idea of a global convergence/conference/event etc mediated via the internet. if its going to happen, it has to happen *at some time*. so may as well set dec 31 2000 as "the date" /"deadline" what have you. it's certainly more likely than 1995, and it's closer than 2012, and it *is* the start of the new [christian] millennium - which leads to a point requiring further contemplatin , how will this idea "plaY" IN CULTUREs with other calendars...... if gaia2000 were to lead to an earth summit in cyberspace WHAT WOULD BE ON THE AGENDA??????? one thing to make up in advance would be a [planetary] "wish list".. ie "no hatred wars or poverty", "sustainable development", "anarchy", "new world order of democratic capitalism", etc.... so it sort of sets the timer for a moment when there could be a massive mobilization of the world to "do" something/lots of things, if people can only decide beforehand what it is they want to do.. (...ooo000ooo...) 2 august 1992. if late 2012 really is the date of the "singularity", what is going to happen then? i imagined that the world might be transformed, blood-music-fashion, into a giant computer a la golem xiv, trying to understand the nature of (its own) existence and the historical process which brought it into being; or that some means of destroying the universe [false vacuum bubble etc] was developed and some final battle took place over its activation; or i imagined while in trafalgar square that perhaps the universe is collapsing [s dali, quoted in 3fisted tales] and so all of space will be "rolled up in a little ball" by 2012, in which case we may have no choice but to try and escape through the singularity, or something like that; such a scenario might combine janor's "universal fuck" + leary's fusion with the metaphysiological circuit at the last stage, + the apocalyptic notion of "time intersection"... arguelles, mayan factor, predicts "a projection into realms presently inconceivable", which seems to have something to do with everyone using their "light bodies" all at once... apart from my own pattern building [1989-2000; 2001-2012] *why* does 2012 have this apocalyptic expectation attached to it? for most people, mayan calendar. but mckenna says he hit on dec 2012 "independently"... i would like to know more about the process whereby he arrived at that date... from "archiac revival": p162 Terence could you identify Philo for us and tell us who he was? ...made it his business to travel around the hellenistic world discussing all the major cults and religions and cosmogonic theories of the day.. original wandering jew? also sounds like PHILO drummond.. p22 my notion of the posttransition felt experience is that it is a domain where appropriate activity is the path of least resistance... in this current realm tao and ego seem impossibly opposed.. in the posttransition world, it's possible that there will appear to be only ego, and there will actually be only tao... the kingdom of heaven... conceivably this is what gaia2000 is trying to bring about? but idea that 2000 represents a failure, owing to forcing the issue, and that 2012 is the real date when it has to happen... also sounds like Age of Slack... what's the role of everyone who's already died in the cosmic scheme of things? [assuming there is one..] there is always the posthumanist/existentialist strain - the emptiness of the cosmos is absolute. pure freedom. hassan i sabbah. not sure where fm2030 would place his own outlook. 2012 as start of age of maat - equilibrium. texts are virtualities through which one can 'see' new or old worlds; subgenius represents a reality which one might 'enter into' [crossing the boundary into the new form, r.a.w's schrodinger's cat]; gaia2000 is an attempt to stitch virtualities together????? community of shattered egos the vacant horror of existence [see above] - both ronell. full of phrases like these. * what is relationship between imagination, will, reality? eg idea that ufo's are 'created' by unconscious psychokinetic wish-fulfilment. suppose such a thing is possible, and a striebertype alien/visitor is created, is the visitor selfaware? if so where does it think it came from? each person sees 3d space from a different pointofview in a very mundane sense - i think i am here, that guy typing off to the left sees *his* screen in front of himself, etc. how do these 3d virtualities relate to the [hypothetical] 3d reality? is it possible to have a reality model which somehow represents all the 3d virtualities & if so is there any need to postulate a 3d reality as well, independent of observers with 3d virtualities? * even though i am not working at a job or at a school/uni, i feel as if i spend too much time doing things i would rather not be doing, or rather that i am not doing some things i would like to be. i feel primary restriction on this second class of things is money, so simplest thing would be to make v/r partly commercial and say, by buying our journal/whatever you help to pay for us to do certain things [buy books, interview various individuals, etc] ok. could make one aim of v/r publication "expansion of all our virtualities." we at v/r have heard of certain things, individuals etc.. who we cannot easily reach. money will help us eg to contact terence mckenna and ask him, *when* did you decide on dec 2012 as date for immanentizing the eschaton? and will help us get a copy of timewave zero. interview celia green, etc. * it seems to me that global anarchy could be fairly "safe" if everyone knew it was coming...so to speak. how could the coming of anarchy be negotiated or eased into play? ao-type strategy [anticipates the antipation of the anticip- ation of the real thing] + ever larger and more frequent TAZs [culminating in a PAZ]...permanent autonomous zone... what does a.o the event have to do with transition from leary's 1st 4 to 2nd 4 circuits? gaia2000 is supposed to mark end of dominator culture end of hierarchies etc etc all of which rely on existence of domesticated primates activation of 5th circuit appears to amount to dedomestication, so end of dec 31 2000 could lead to "hippification" of the planetary population :)... i have viewed online scriptures of v/r as a place where people might post crazy thoughts etc and certainly much of it has this interesting but discordant appearance, but there will have to be some degree of stitching together also at some point, picking and choosing of parts to develop and emphasize.. chaotic proliferation followed by weeding... archaic revival p215 I guess I'm a soft Dark Ager. I think there will be a mild Dark Age. I don't think it will be anything like the dark ages that lasted a thousand years; I think it will last more like five years and will be a time of economic retraction, religious fundamentalism, retreat into closed communities by certain segments of the society, feudal warfare among minor states, resource scarcity, and this sort of thing. But I think it will give way in the late nineties to the global future that we're all yearning for, and then there will be basically a fifteen-year period where all these things are drawn together with progressively greater and greater sophistication, much in the way that modern science and philosophies have grown with greater and greater sophistication in a single direction since the Renaissance. Sometime around the end of 2012 all of this will be boiled down into a kind of alchemical distillation of the historical experience that will be a doorway into the life of the imagination. 2012-15=1997,date of SubGenius takeover according to "dateline for dominance" ;) what is the attraction of the "nothing matters" school of thought? it means you can take all the time you want to, since it's all futile in the long run.. what is the relationship between creation and destruction? stabilities seem to be destroyed to make way for new complexities? (...ooo000ooo...) 3 august 1992. re terence mck's claim that ayahuasca promotes group telepathic experiences: he says one person can leave off describing the scene being beheld and another will take it up "Everyone is seeing the same thing!" what might be happening here is that ayahuasca promotes synaesthesia [the crossing of the senses - whatever that feels like] - and since everyone is hearing the same thing, and seeing what they hear [this is the synesthetic effect], then it is as if telepathy is occurring - but it must be mediated by hearing and then the drug, presumably. what's the point of suicidal openness, or doing things "in public" [eg airing strange thoughts on the net etc]? the point is to try to force the rate of change by pioneering the expression of certain thoughts or the performance of certain actions. if someone is *seen* to do something for the first time, it then becomes more imaginable to others that they themselves could express their true feelings or act on their true desires. of course, this process of gradual pioneering may lead in directions that one judges undesirable - eg war, serial murder have both become "familiar". \qix\plasmate 13-11-92 qut linklab 2.21am etc. [using qedit for once!] written only a few hrs after 121192, nickiu and kelly long gone [an hour ago?] have just been looking at disk b, where i have the relatively small no. of gavinfiles that i have actually transfered to disk thus far. 3 major groupings: net fiend - rez - scott. [+other stuff like otis, cog, futfaq] i am thinking in terms of trying to bring together some of the virtual worlds i have explored so far, or whatever i am to call them. there's mine - netfiend + a.o - which i presume i will make available in the form of qixbio, and then a.o itself; there's general leri-dialog & in particular rez - leri will probably become a supercategory, according to various threads & leri also includes scotto with whom i haven't talked as much as rez; and gerold pirl, and mike gourlay.. [& solan@no?]; and then there's private correspondence with scott. also correspondence with lizi, although he did make his public domain note so, point is, if at some future stage i was to try to 'share' notes or resources or something, scott's are the ones that would require mopst consultation [with him] since they are email. i need a good name for the different net affinity groups, meme- clusters etc that exist, and which i am trying to involve in some sort of symbiotic relationship or other form of communication. take this to leri-l? mindmelds?? mindfields? maybe memes aren't alive, but we need some other concept for this idea of a groupmind sort of thing which can be considered semiautonomous. something with 'net' and or 'cog' in its name. cf cyborg. netorg? cognet? netmeld? maybe there's a word already in the lerifaq. metamind. cognitive domain. netamind? i'll call them domains for the moment. domains i know of, which i want to bring into visible contact: mitch-scott jeremy-scott mitch-lizi mitch-rez (a subdomain of leri) and there seems to be something on alt.satanism / alt.destroy.the.earth involving corleyj/locklin/lizi/perhaps semhaza/and i wonder if tagi is a part of this? find out this morning maybe. should add alt.horror.cthulhu to the above list. and judex to the list of names. it's a small world after all. of the people i've spoken with a bit, scott definitely seems to have the biggest agenda, although i'm still not in the full picture. know next to nothing about tagi and semhaza. so, as far as 'bringing together in one place' what i've already mentioned goes: if jeremy & scott were to join leri, that would potentially make jermey-mitch-scott triangle a subdomain of leri ie it could be conducted within the 'space of visibility' that leri offers. so leri provides the advantage of a 'space' of sorts where such things can be discussed, but has the disadvantage that any discussion there is 'exposed' by the presence of so many minds and so many other threads. [domain concept i want to add before i forget to record it: idea that each person *in RL* is a potential source of 'leaks' in the integrity of a domain [when considered in its excluding aspect, ie as a place that is not universally accessible to inspection], eg i show things to fellow elder gods, blab to flatmates or people like caroline&co about aspects of life on the net, etc; and regionally each of us is in a similar situation, ie scott in mass, leri people in iowa, etc. is juxlus ever going to do his leri-map?] another thing with leri: magick/occult, cthulhoid/thelemite topics are not high profile at present, although they pop up occasionally, eg daath, "bob", & scotto in discussing tremendum and terence mckenna mentions tibetan buddhism & shamanism. contrast here is with the alt.horror.cthulhu/alt.satanism axis, a lot of the traffic of which i think would be along such lines. these topics would probably alienate some of the leri people who may have reasonable drug experience but are relatively ignorant of these conceptual systems. [so what is under consideration here is the future consequence of an 'importation' of ?'occult' memes into leri discussion. * * * * * back from a toilet trip. it would be germane to now note that i am almost certainly going to forward this to scott somehow, & perhaps others mentioned; & it would also be appropriate to recall the june/july posting i made shortly after returning from my travels overseas, which listed perhaps 12 groups which were to be brought together... i shall dig around a bit and see if i have a reough copy of the text anywhere on disk... ok, in transcribing my 'travel diary' i got as far as iowa, which means i have the draft text of the usenet posting [though not the actual final text] & not the groups that i listed, but i can probably remember those. this is what i wrote while traveling, by way of trying to create the conditions for these groups to come together [in a joking-serious tone] & as a way of introducing v/r... [just in my sig, mentioned v/r..] Planet Earth is only a few months away from two historic events (although they may turn out to be historic *non*-events). One is the Earth Summit, taking place in Rio de Janeiro in the first two weeks of June, at which the "powerbrokers" and would-be powerbrokers of the world shall meet for the UN Conference on Environment and Development, ostensibly to lay the ground rules for global governance in the '90s. I read in a newspaper that Maurice Strong, who I think is a (former?) high-ranking UN bureaucrat whose brainchild the Summit is, wants it to be "a success or a dramatic failure". So if the outcome of the Summit is not enough as far as its UN organizers are concerned, they may somehow appeal to the peoples of the world (eg through CNN), bypassing governments, saying "Your rulers have failed you..." The other event is more obscure as yet: the (predicted) `Time Shift' of July 26. Supposed to be the climax of a 5-year period of change initiated by the Harmonic Convergence of 1987, after the Time Shift `telepathy will be the norm', and money, drugs and oil will somehow become useless, according to Jose Arguelles' exposition of the Mayan paradigm he expects to replace `materialism'. If all of this happens, it will obviously be a momentous event; if it doesn't happen, it will still be important, since it will be the first failure of a millennial-style prediction to which are attached the hopes of people _all_over_ the planet. So two (non)-events are looming: between them they may spell the end of politics and religion as we have known them. In such times we need to pool all our intelligence, in order to work out what the hell is going on. To this end I nominate the following individuals and groups as Alternative World Overlords. I say unto you, readers of the groups of the "alt" hierarchy, between them these people are the brain-trust of our species: they *must* be brought together in dialogue or conflict or something; or else our world may descend into the Ugyldig from whence it sprang. and the groups/people would have been: avital ronell barbara marx hubbard upwingers [fm2030] foresight institute [k eric drexler] falcon press [wilson leary hyatt] stanislaw lem celia green [institute for psychophysical research] jeremy griffith [foundation for humanity's adulthood] lindisfarne [william irwin thompson] original cyberpunks [gibson sterling etc] subgenius foundation terence mckenna i'm pretty sure there were only 12. so if i were to stick to this list for the moment ['biblio' is a bigger & much more complex version of the same thing], how am i going by way of finding internet links to these RL 'domains'? avital ronell -> pmc-list, pmc-talk. just starting to explore this one but she's on the editorial board. barbara marx hubbard -> ??? haven't seen her mentioned anywhere, haven't pursued it. upwingers -> ? i am *sure* fm would be on the net somewhere, but have yet to find where. extropians is definitely the closest we come to an 'upwingers' group or list foresight institute -> pretty much as above, except sci.nanotech is a usenet focus. wilson/leary/hyatt -> ?? leri-l. wilson mentioned in alt.satanism faq. and 'where' was wilson.on.cis 'recorded'? leary alleged to lead discussions on the well sometimes. hyatt introduces the whole thelemite / western tradition meme-complex, so alt.magick. stanislaw lem -> ??? haven't tried. rec.arts.books? comp.ai? in a sense the cyberpunks are, finally, the 'movement' exploring some of lem's themes, but lem has a different approach, & other concerns [including surprisingly subgenius-like ones at times]. celia green -> ??? no sign of her either and haven't really tried. philosophy groups? alt.paranormal?? + physics connection. jeremy griffith -> ??? even more unknown. an up-and-coming influence compared to all these other people. more an oz task for me - which suggests interesting future encounters between his memes and kevin solway's. lindisfarne -> this one is just getting underway with my recent xposted inquiry. john mccarthy made a brief reply, one other guy is reading a w.i.t. book, and guy in email is attending a n.y. 'symposium' _right_now_. lindisfarne would already appear to be a sort of global intellectual fellowship, so to a great degree thompson has been trying to bring minds together in a similar fashion. original cyberpunks -> well, alt.cyberpunk. bruces@well.sf.ca.us is most visible net connection. what is mike@highlite.uucp involved with? andy hawks, future-culture. scream baby seems to have lots of connections. subgenius foundation -> if this is taken to refer to 'free' or 'weird' religions in general then these are a dime a dozen on the net - subgenius, discordian, church of spam, v/r, kibology, etc. [i would be interested to have a sort of map of the relationships between kibo, mdw, sramming etc, since they are all in communication thru email as well as on the net, no doubt. kibology i think hasnt got the intellectual substance of anything else here, but it is important within usenet as a highly visible cultural icon of sorts - it is unique in that respect. this is a future factor.] in terms of network of online subgenii, online operation mindfucks, corleyj is starting one of the latter, & perhaps subgenius-l is the closest to a seriously organized subg grouping (and it's just like a smaller alt.slack). HOWEVER, if we talk actual SubGenius FOUNDATION - ie the real organization - not sure about their degree of online participation. two leads: janor h. on mars bbs last year, and phenomicon people - in particular the guy who seems to know 'swinging love corpses'. terence mckenna -> LERI-L. no other candidate needed. leri-l encompasses much more than mckenna, but it is certainly the only mckenna forum on the net, and a very well-informed one at that. so if i'm talking bringing domains together OR at least constructing a picture of their *existing* relationships so that everyone can become aware of what ALREADY EXISTS, what happens if i have a go at stitching together all the netstuff listed above? !... PMC-TALK, Extropians/sci.nanotech, leri-l, alt.magick/alt/satanism, alt.cyberpunk, scream-baby/future-culture, subgenius-l. that's not comprehensive, but it's already a pretty wild mix. so what would i be trying to achieve by bringing these different domains into visible contact? to facilitate memetic crossover, to assist in the birth of a synthesis. they are already crossing over in my head and in the heads of others, in a somewhat chaotic fashion; but i have only finite resources & critical and creative capacities; by distributing - in a computational sense - the 'load', there is a better chance of coming up with something productive. the crossover of domains here is a quantum leap up from what i was discussing before, as i was mostly thinking of connections between groups of 2 or 3, and my only 'semipublic' domain was leri-l, whereas in the list that begins this paragraph there are 7+ such 'very leaky' domains. there is a problem here of dissipation of purpose. in my original list i was trying to bring together in one place all the most interesting/provocative thoughts that i had encountered, to see what was born of their commingling, beyond confusion and wonder. such comminglings, although not of precisely the same domains, are already happening on leri, but the unstructured nature of it leads me & i suspect most or all people to switch off to at least half of it - tune out from threads which are too far away from their present concerns. as a result there is a certain amount of dissipation, i think - ie even if something new comes of a dialogue on a certain topic, it only occasionally has leri-wide ramifications. [a parenthetical addition: i have not mentioned theoretical physics or dynamical systems theory yet, and yet these two bodies of concepts - probably better-defined than any i have mentioned so far - ought to be part of the memetic stew i wish to brew as well. support comes from the recent thread on leri associating the two - it's not just my fondness for these topics which makes them relative to Whatever It Is i'm working towards here. further note: jbaez is an interesting person. see him mostly in sci.physics and sci.math, but he shows up regularly in alt.drugs and posted about voynich ms. to alt.horror.cthulhu, so his conceptual world is definitely broad... so someone else to try to involve, in something?] i think it's time i introduced an element of purpose here. i am hoping not merely to create a map of existing relationships, but to facilitate the birth of something new - new ideas and perhaps a new world. to use the language of memes and meme-complexes for a moment, one way to look at it would be to conceive of the end-result as a meme-scheme [in hofstadter's sense of paradigm framework etc] which can encompass and supersede [at the absolute level] those that exist now. i want to connect this to philip dick's notion of a "plasmate", a living body of information which can pass from a text into a mind which will act as its host; the resultant is a "homoplasmate" in dick's jargon, a human who is a host for the information. dick's plasmate had to do with his idea of what esoteric christianity is about, i think, whereas it seems to me that (say) extropian ideas would be a component of a late20thc plasmate, so i can't say that "my" plasmate and his would be the same, but the metaphor of a LIVING BODY OF INFORMATION that spreads through different media [the meme/virus analogy] is a useful one. ok, so a concise restatement? by bringing about this memetic crossover - which at present is a mostly chaotic process which at times hints at great things to come - i hope to give birth to a plasmate which will circulate throughout the noosphere, transforming human perceptions and thus human actions. why would i want to transform human actions? because it seems to me that the world we have now is 'radically unsatisfactory [because]...the human condition is a dump.' [bruces] this is the primary consideration, we are finite and ignorant, and it is my impression that people hide from things, choose frivolous and relatively purposeless pursuits, because they have accepted that they will always be thus. whereas the whole notion of the SINGULARITY suggests something quite different: that we are at a unique historical juncture, in which there is an opportunity, with luck and hard work, to escape the historical human condition - to be transformed both 'physically' and 'existentially', for want of better terms. but at the same time there are all sorts of uncertainties and possible dangers, the possibility of error both in a practical and an intellectual sense - the wrong step might be taken, or we might have an incorrect worldview - which is why i insist on all these ingredients. ok, to take another leap and relate this to 'alpha and omega': if i really hurry, could the plasmate, or a proto-version of it, be born before the year is out, or at some point in the very near future? because this could be a new statement of what i am trying to do with a.o specifically: make it the textual vehicle of the plasmate [as the book of the subgenius is supposed to be]. the book would point beyond itself in two ways: to the later a.o forms [movie, event], but also to the internet itself, and the sea of information therein which could not be touched upon in a single text. thus a text like this, even if it were not excerpted and made part of the canonical a.o, could implicitly be a part of it in the sense that it is a text closely related to the Final Draft. this has been a very interesting exercise. ... ok, have just been scanning this text, and i think it would go well, not in a.o, since this is all stil inchoate whereas a.o is meant to be the Real Thing, but in this hypothetical qixbio that i might make available by ftp. recent ingredients might include: semper story of my travels diary of a net fiend [the drug aspect of my life] conspiracy posting and lizi's response this file and other ingredients, no doubt. [chart of time from leri-l] \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ i also want to note that as i was writing out the list before, of internet correlates to my list of 12 RL 'domains', that i felt a slightly fearful/ fascinating apprehension of the *reality* of this, the irreversible and unpredictable nature of bringing them together. played out on a global scale, this of course is a familiar worry to me; in trying to immanentize the eschaton, what if you fuck up and bring about the Bad version rather than the Good one? [debates about Good and Bad put aside for the moment.] --------------------------------------- ok, who do i send this to? at this stage i think only scott [@titan] and rez, although certainly scotto [@leri] would understand what it was about, since he's seen all my postings to leri-l - i just think rez because he's the one i was actually debating the merits of a book with, etc. probably quite a few leri people know enough to work out what i'm talking about here, so perhaps this whole thing might get posted to leri at some stage, or a streamlined version or something. i'll have to send scott l. a copy of the leri "chart of time" where i expounded a.o so he knows what i'm talking about re the idea of a book, and maybe chart of time & this document together could serve to introduce the idea to [certain!] people not on leri. probably include some form of the lerifaq file as well, just to explain singularity etc. ------------------- after another break [now 4am], looking ahead. let us suppose that the a.o *structure* in time, book -> movie -> event - 24 hrs at the end of 2000 actually happens, and provides a sort of framework within which whatever the final memetic mix is, propagates. how prominent will we, as individuals - myself, scott, rez, etc - be in whatever historical events occur during 2000? might one of us end up being a new leary or mckenna, for example? could someone involved in this enterprise / the leri enterprise / whatever it turns into, have some degree of 'secular' power ie political influence or privilege, lots of money, high managerial position? this is relevant to me even on the level of writing fiction, because i need to have some idea of how "prominent" the people who initiate such a process are by the time it is reaching its culmination. in terms of people who have a place in existing institutions, when i think of my previous lists i think extropians and [to a lesser degree] pmc (a lesser degree because the humanities are simply not as much of a cultural influence as science and technology). there may well be extropians or extropian-sympathetic people on advisory councils to the american government, u.n. etc by 2000, and if extropian memes are a major component of the plasmate [remember, plasmate denotes the final body of memes that will propagate together - there is an assumption that there will be a somehow harmonious hybrid of all this and more] then any such 'high-up' extropian may well know about & be influenced by the 'weirder' aspects as well. in terms of people from my list of RL domains, barbara marx hubbard has thought a lot about running for president, so she may well be a significant figure by the time the real events roll around. fm also, owing to his history of involvement with the un. the others could perhaps become culturally influential - eg mckenna being sampled by the shamen, william gibson becoming a household name, etc. in a sense what i'm asking here is, *who will be* the individuals who will embody some of these ideas as far as pop culture is concerned? it seems to me that for an idea to circulate there's got to be someone who is its representative in the world of humanity. since drexler, ronell etc are already public figures, the question is already answered with respect to *their* ideas; but assuming that something genuinely novel comes of this crossover process i've been hyping, who will stand for that? i think that as far as the idea of 'alpha and omega' the book etc. itself, i have to take full credit/blame there, if i'm going to be the damn author [unless it assumes some collaborative form which i find presently unimaginable, seeing how *individual* a vision it still is] ; but as far as reality goes, the most that a.o would do is set a deadline and a sort of temporal structure for this hypothetical Event at the end of the century - the content & outcome would NOT follow any script - i'm not that smart. that's why i have envisioned the ending of a.o as being a big question mark, so to speak, saying 'you have now had certain possibilities opened to you, you know how much time remains - what do you do now....?' but that question mark will not last past dec 31, 2000. either the whole thing doesnt take off, in which case i'm left looking for another avenue, or it does and it assumes a definite form and outcome on that date. possible forms might be, say a global extropian-type movement a global green/back-to-nature movement [or some odd combination of these] a mystical, new-agey sort of transcendence - cf hopi indian prophecies a 'cthulhoid apocalypse' [eg the star beings come to devour our souls] [these are the extremes of the 'occult' scenario, so to speak] global love peace and harmony [ie only 'social transcendence'] global despair and destruction - intentional self-annihilation [a 'punk apocalypse' - the extremes of ?social change] business as usual - muddling through, nothing in particular happens. everyone goes back to work the next day. mass enlightenment - the Truth is communicated to everyone - global enlightenment [distinguishable from global happiness] {but would this Truth be more like green or griffith?} in all of those different events the 'key players' would be different sorts of people - in some politicians would be pivotal, in others gurus, in others technicians of different sorts, etc. i have gone a bit off track from my intent, which was to ask, 'which of "us", now - people "we" know personally on the net - could end up a cultural icon, world politician etc?' but i have no particular answers. but the point is, that if something resembling this course of events does happen, we, or some of 'us', may find ourselves in crucial positions. ---------------------------- a final thought: written half an hour later, after going for a walk thinking & eating - one of my goals is the elimination of all fear between people, especially fear of divulgence of information. i have written elsewhere about the idea that when one person performs an action, it makes it more thinkable for others to do the same, and that this is how (eg) openness about sex, drugs, politics, religion etc has progressed, in steps taken by pioneers that were then popularized by others. it was to this end that i have wanted to be open on the internet in particular - thus i have imagined making diaries available via ftp, & the like. it occurs to me that perhaps kibo was the first person to be completely free in this sense - the first not to "hide his shining star" - in which case kibology really may be the way of life in the 21st century! ie kibo was the first to take a step which the mass of humanity will later follow, in the global information culture of the future. (and in what fashion could the first person to take such a step, do such a thing, other than as an enormous joke? to do it with earnest intentions - "i'm going to tell the world all about myself because i want to set an example of openness etc" - i don't think would work; the negative reaction would be too much.) kibo may be just as important as he makes himself out to be. \qix\nov92\181192 18-11-92 wednesday morning 4 am link lab.raining outside & i'm stuck here. what are major recent events? on sunday went to TISEA in afternoon, was fairly interesting; then in evening got amilings from loompanics and waves forest,which i thought was better still. yesterday and today i havebeen at uq rather than griffith..heard from lupo again after thinking he'd disappeared. leri-l fairly quiet lately ,it's as if everyone has withdrawn from the frenzy of trying to follow everything a few weeks back. i have been wondering lately,whether i'm still learning, because at times it felt as if everything purposeful i was doing on the net was in order to spread memes i already know about,rather than learn of new ones. but then i look at a.o - the draft miniversion saved 9 ?oct i think - and i think, gee thatwas a long time ago. what has happened, basically since the compilation of high weirdness by email, is that i am linked into the internet in a really new way, to a degree that hasnt happened before, even when i was regularly bbs'ing. the internet [the "CyberVoid"] is now the ...thing... into which i am pouring most of my efforts,and out of which various responses return to me. with most of my communicating being espeak,my use of the language is changing very swiftly. also the change in my thoughts that i had noticed, that so many ofmy thoughts had to do with online activities and people. this is a whole universe i am entering here. or i am entering into a new intellectualrelationship with the same universe,by becoming part of a domain in which all action involves interaction. my intelligence and knowledge is potentially augmented by the net,both as a form of accelerated experience and as a superresource made upof millions of other networked humans. it is interesting: eventually i will cut back on net use, introduce some sort of regularity and discipline to what i do on the net, whereas at the moment it is all chaos interspersed with spurts of purpose which leadto the completion of tasks at hand. by formulating a precise relationship between myself&the net- "i will readthese groups, answer this mail, complete this projectetc" - i make it easier to act purposively with regards to the net but i fallbehind in the growth of myimplicit knowledge of what's going on on the fringes.[although it is questionable that a lotof that info is really worth knowing anyway. eg is it important to be in on every injoke from talk.bizarre to alt.peeves?] high weirdness by email could be seen as my portrait of the net,or the net as i encounter it given the choices i make. eg the emphasis on alt topics. the 'plasmate' diary entry was a start of a step in the next direction... yes, ok,i am starting to conceive of phases to my recent intensive times on the net, which started with getting email and newsposting privileges. [how was it that i first heardof nyx?] the progressive development (of important new steps) was something like nyx, future-culture, leri-l, then lots and lots ofmailing lists,and all this culminated in high weirdness by email,which is the work of amind going in a dozen different directions. phase two is one of 'rconvergence' and will involve re-relating things and if necessary PRIORITIZING [rez'sfavourite word]. the culmination of phase 3 will most likely be alpha.omega the ?usenet post/ net-trip; and in terms of the development of a.o the new step will be the full integration of ...??? the reality of internet intothe picture.ie i am linking it [the novel] up with a vastly complex entity whose specificities i havetrulybeen learning only in the past month. i'm now going to have a go at constructing a net chronology for my activities of the past month and a bit, so i can get a clearer perspective on what'sbeen going on. ...DONE! an overview from september to mid-november: 10 Sep - 1 Jan deadline 18 Sep - ftp'd hacker mags - idea that ao.post not wholly 'live' 23 Sep - spending time on BBS's from QUT 27 Sep - 4-disk series 1 Oct - 'checking' Samba 2 Oct - 'try to get on to FutureCulture' 3 Oct - regularly copying items from QUTNews - compiling ao.post 8 Oct - NEW HOME 9 Oct - Samba working - 4 brief newsposts 12 Oct - V/R letterhead 14 Oct - Posted re High W b E - using Macs (at commerce,i presume) 15 Oct - FUTFAQ, OTIS [somewhere in here,T16] 21 Oct (NOW ON NYX) - ANTHLAL correspondence - on extropians, leri-l 24 Oct - UQcom, samba wiped everything 1 Nov - have done H W b E, Diary of a N F, alt.necromicon FAQ, ScottL corr lists: obj, extr, leri, anarchy, subg, fut thinking of qix-l; scott, rez, maybe mike wiik and lizi as 'future partners' 6 Nov - busted at UQcom -> G.U.. Con to DestEarth,singularity threads. 'my heartis with leri'. would have posted CFDalt.qixnews soon after 12 Nov - K&N first look at News - W I T mail, jeremy meets GOO 13 Nov - PLASMATE, qixbio 17/18 Nov - this very moment NOW so i have been on nyx for maybe one month. and nyx has been the truly *crucial* factor in being able to do anything at all on the broader net eg contribute to leri,assemble hwbe. [it's funny how similar this is to the end of last year, with a rush of change, only there the ?facilitator was acid rather than the net.] i am now at a point where it really is appropriate to focus consciously on some specific tasks. my main tangent at present would appear to be the singularity essay for extropians/leri - making that point; watching for a while for thompson/green feedback;and getting waves forest out on the net. a little further down the track i might want to have as much of my other 'essential reading' online as possible. thus finding a scanner becoming more and more urgent.once it'sthere online it can be referred to and cannibalized by future etexts. also realistically i think within a month the leri-l institute shouldhave a report on timewave zero,so that will start to come into place. so 3 items: singularity, getting more texts 'out there', and TWZ.oh! and knot theory/interiority etc as well. and a newsgroup with richard raby - it would be much easier for me,at least to keep track of my usenet traffic thatway,i think that was the ultimate motive for alt.qixnews, so all my different threadswould be visibly together in at least _one_place. also start assembling canonical texts for qixbio. i guess this will be one of them. OK,rain is lighter and so is sky and i may go soon [5.45 am]. a final note: i think the most appropiate place for all this stuff would be volume 2 [volume 3?] of the travelling scriptures. so it would naturally encompass semper netfiend lizicon 131192 [plasmate] 181192 [thisfile] (after all, "semper" is already there). plus qix92.not and qixatuq.not for additional background info. i am a bit concerned at taking over the church of v/r entirely for my own purposes, or flooding the scriptures with what i've written, but i don'tthink lara will mind since she wants them to grow, etc. if this proposed addition happens, though.. it is interesting to think what the next one will bring, since from here my main projects are completing the next version of high weirdness by email,and then the usenet version of alpha and omega.. both of which are *related* to scripture, but neither of which can actually be incorporated directly intom scripture, i think. which means thatthe *next* volume will most likely be the work of abulafia pippin & co, a few months from now when they've read all this & all sorts of things may have happened.who knows what it will be by then? ******* EARLY CAFENET MATERIAL ********* Note: what follows are for the most part Pippin's notes, drafts of various documents related to the CafeNet enterprise, etc. As of this writing I have been busy with my activity on the net (see above) & have not at all been involved with the progress of CafeNet; but Pippin has graciously lent me her notes, & I hereby transcribe them in the hope that they may assist and inspire someone in some other part of the world who wishes to `bring the Internet to the street'. -Qix ORIGINAL NOTES \pippin\cafe1 Mitchell's dream is to bring the Internet to the people in the street. We, the Church of V\R and Gaia 2000, propose CafeNet, a network of computers in coffee shops across Brisbane, and eventually, across Australia. In its final stage, CafeNet will provide full Internet access comparable to Compuserve or Aarnet for people not associated with an institution and who do not have lots of money. We propose stages of development for CafeNet. Stage 1. This will involve one stand-alone computer, in a popular cofee shop. The computer will be a 386 or a 486. A 386 can be purchased for $1000. The 386 will be the file server, and it will have about 5 terminals attached to it. This will give users the first taste of real-time contact over the computer medium. Users can leave messages for each other or contribute to an electronic forum. A modem would give outside computer owners an opportunity to ring up the coffee shop and contribute or talk to the coffee shop users. Stage 2. We will then introduce FidoNet to the coffee shop. FidoNet will give Cafe users the opportunity to participate in international conferences and to send and receive international mail. Users would probably have to pay for this, about $35 per year. or UUCP could be used for a Newsfeed and International Mail. This will cost $1000 per year from UQ. I *think( FidoNet will be easier to organize. if FidoNet is used, another modem, 144K, should be purchased. These canbe purchased from Netcomm for $6-- if Netcomm know that it is for a BBS. E-mail can be sued to "sell" the Cafe to business. Overnight mail. Faster than airmali, but not faster than fax. Stage 3. This stage could be interchanged with Stage 2. Virtual Cafes will be set up in other coffee shops. 5 terminals, preferably, another modem for outside users and a file server for each. The file servers will be connected via 2 multiplexers, $1000 for a good one, or over ISDN (?) cabling. This can be connected for $600. This will enable users in different cafes to talk to each other in real time. This is when CafeNet will be a proper Network. Cafe Fileservers can be converted to UNIX or a UNIX Clone to make them more compatible for the Internet. A MUD would make things more interesting. Stage 4. Virtual cafes will spread to otehr cities. But how would they be connected? Stage 5. Connect CafeNet to the Internet. We don't know how we will do this either. Possibly via FalNet who connect Cmopuserve, but we would charge users a yearly rate and ont an hourly rate. Welcome to CafeNet Press F1 for help. SOME NOTES write letters to hardware companies to grovel for stuff in exchange for advertising "your hardware will be seen by a large range of people..." CPU manufacturers, modem makers, hard disk makers, LCD manuf's. Digital, Sun, Western, Apple, HP, Motorola, Silicon Graphics, NeXT, Commodore 3 or 4000, Compaq, IBM * Picture terminal in a coffee shop * lo-tech definition of CafeNet (subscribers) * Physical Liabilities ie computers, who owns them; electricity arrangement; extra phones * Benefits. Why you should allow these things in your shop. Disadvantages. Getting rid of people. Leave client alone. It is going to become a martyr. Have a bean. * Questionnaire * Flyer - explaining CafeNet * Bound Booklet - explaining CafeNet - mechanics * letters for hardware firms DRAFT INTRODUCTION TO CAFENET Your lunch break arrives. After briefly tidying up, you head for the door. Your favourite coffee shop beckons so you enter looking for a strong cup of fresh coffee, a sandwich and a chance to relax with all thoughts of work far behind. The waiter chats with you briefly when you order and then you sit down, savouring the rich aroma of the coffee. Your attention starts wandering around the room until you notice a computer placed discreetly against a wall with a banner: "Welcome to CafeNet" displayed over an intriguing animated background. Perhaps at this point your interest is pricked. Pull it toward you. Connect to CafeNet. Connect to a network of people around Brisbane, around Australia and around the world. From here you can find information and poinions of any topic under the sun. You can join in and air your views in an electronic forum where your voice matters no less than anyone else's. Meet people who share your opinions. Discover the people who disagree and why. Continue discussions privately with electronic mail. Leave messages for others. "Talk" to friends who are connected to CafeNet simultaneously. Join in interactive games with possibly dozens of other people at once. There are many possibilities, but the bottom line is it can be a lot of fun if you get involved. Find out how it feels to be connected to a dynamic and diverse network of people, information and imagination. The larger network of CafeNet is but a small part beckons you from the farthest corners of the world. In the New Year you will be able to broaden your horizons and join this chaotic mass of humanity. DRAFT CAFENET QUESTIONNAIRE (for the purposes of market research) CafeNet is a proposed small business intending to provide communications services using electronic data links. These services are electronic mail around the world (overnight), local and worldwide discussion forums, information services, multiple player games and electronic "chatting". This questionnaire is to determine whether the people of Brisbane would sue these services. 1) Would you be interested in these services? 2) If so, would you pay 10, 25, 50 or ___ dollars as a yearly subscription fee (with no additional costs) for these services? 3) Where would you find it conventient to use these services? eg a library, coffee shop, nite club, pinball parlour 4) Would you sue these services in a coffee shop? 5) If you are not interested in these services is it because: a) these services are already provided by someone else If they are, who are they and what services do they provide? b) they simply hold no interest for you c) computers make you uncomfortable d) none of the above Thank you for your time. DRAFT CAFENET BLURB FOR AROMAS (Brisbane coffee shop) Imagine a man walking into Aromas. He sits down and looks across the table, and sees a computer staring back. He thikns that a coffee shop is a strange plave to find a cmoputer. He is intrigued though, and slides over the seat to investigate. What is CafeNet? CafeNet is a proposed network of computers in coffee shops across Brisbane. CafeNet will provide an electronic mail service, discussion groups, and "chat" system, an information service, and multiple player games. CafeNet will be part of the greater global network of cmoputers called the Internet. Aromas would not have to buy any cmoputers. Aromas would only have to allow CafeNet computers to live in its space. CafeNet would use Aromas' electricity if an agreement about reimbursement could be arranged. CafeNet will have to connect more telephone lines to the shop, but this will be at CafeNet's expense. What CafeNet will do for you. CafeNet will create its own culture of progressive, intelligent people, and Aromas will be seen to be a part of this culture. This could be a disadvantage if this culture is perceived to be undesirable. Another benefit is the association with easy-to-use computer technology and the other businesses with which CafeNet will be in contact. CafeNet will attract people to Aromas, and they will drink coffee. Another disadvantage could be in people coming in to Aromas and wearing out their welcome. That is cmoing in, buying one cup of coffee and then sitting there for hours playing on the computer. There are a number of ways around this. One is to limit the amount of connect time for each day. Most people will out of courtesy buy coffee because it is a coffee shop. Then there are those people who like to socialise in Aromas whether there are cmoputers in there or not. Please think about this as being a way to expand the clientele of Armoas and provide a useful service. Feel free to discuss this with myself and my partner, or even to ask for a guided tour of the Internet. That is the least that we can do. PIPPIN'S FLOWCHART [transcribed by Qix from her notes] 2 1 write .......................................interviews........... vision . . . . 5 buy PC . write . and modem . 4 3 initial . . software business... 6 subscribe development plan . . . 8 . . . 4 demo . 7 market research . model...... . . . 8 finalize business plan . . . . 4 buy 386 . . $ $ . . . . scrub up.................................apply for bank loan...... . 9 . . B E F O R E L O A N ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ A F T E R L O A N 10 submit loan application........NO..........find a real job . write scriptures and novels .YES GRADUATE !! . receive loan . 11 buy $$$ hardware.. . .................[sketch of a rocket launching] 12 ADVERTISE $ $ $...