If Content is King, or a Love Goddess with an endless future lost in
the hyper-Utopia of its ongoing Space, then the Internet is like
some slum-dog trying to find a bone to lick in the sweltering
shadows of the meat-packed neighborhood. Technology is ripping
us right through our brains grounding itself in the liquid DNA that
seeps inside our bodies and all we can do is stare in front of our
monitors wondering when computers and TVs will meet in a holy
matrimony that will replace the Social Realm forever. I can't wait.
The most exciting thing about the Internet isn't the geek- talk that initiated its existence in the electrosphere, it's the growing underground network of do-me anarchists beginning to seize the means of distribution that has made mass media such a monopolist farce. Finally, a supposed free press, where the zamisdat becomes the new nuclear family, or maybe it could be de-nuclearized, like some floating pupil in the classroom of your universal eye. Who here can see what I mean?
Internet can become a writer's dream. Your audience is sort of built-in just by being connected. Being connected is what Amerika is all about. This is where Mr. Thomas Jefferson devised his own private Utopia, writing out his saleable product (The Constitution of a People Free-Floating In Heavy Interzones). This is cyberspace. Anyone for a hypertextual romp in the webbified hay?
Surfing itself is fun. You can click your little furry mouse on the head or, if that's not your scene, you can fondle your keyboard with all sorts of erogenous strokes (the Carpal Jerk-off is especially enticing). The places you go are all over the world, which is almost as good as being a meat-shaman/nomad grooving in the geophysical universe. There's this sense of the user techno- hallucinating a mosaic-mesh that makes the world a holy place to be. What could Mark Twain do with one of these Web servers? Nicola Tesla? William Gibson?
If writing is thinking and thinking is linked to a consciousness doing a kind of narrative-dance, how will our consciousness respond to the non-linear tendencies of hypermedia? How will this new way of thinking, of intuitively making connections as we navigate through the textual sphere, effect the way our writing reads?
Our writing still reads pretty much the way it's always read. Usually sequential, our writing tries to string us along all sorts of subjects and predicates that syntactically hold the meaning of words together. This is good for an old model like Modernism where the world was full of words and was supposed to find its Unity in a kind of linguistic webwork shared by the cultural elite. But technology is individuating our experience so radically in cyberspace that this older model of reading our writing can no longer hold forth. We now find ourselves on the verge of easily importing our recorded vocals, our snapshots, movies, climaxed visions and shamanistic narrative-dances into the never-finished, always-in-formation, product. I can hear one of my software engineer friends now saying "the end is just beginning, so let's get to work on building this new model what will we call it? Internet? The World Wide Web? Electronic Democracy? The Matrix? Cyberspace? Wired? Your Mother?"
There's so much potential not being born out and that's because our focus is clearly set on the development of the technology (as opposed to the development of the content and networked webs of content-providers). When I speak of content I'm not talking about the next Disney movie or the new multi- national, corporate-sponsored propaganda zine delivered by Compuslime or mutant Progeny. I'm talking about the vast amounts of independent writing, recording, videotaping, and desktop publishing that's happening and that creatively investigates the scene of our mutual interaction So, okay, the technology-tail is wagging the content-dog and meanwhile the Masters are getting real hungry and there's so much crap out there we're wondering if maybe we shouldn't send the whole thing to the Humane Society. Sometimes it seems the only alternative. Put the dream to sleep. But wait! There's always Alternative-X!!!!
Who's developing this technology? Is it the guys you used to play music with? Is it defense department decoys? Is it artists of the first degree? Who are the arbiters of judgment that inform most of the decisions being made regarding your freedom to access and create and distribute the multi-media zines you think you need to produce?
Why does creativity have to be marred by commerce? Is your privilege to read this critifictional rant on account of your employer, your school, your local library? Does your Dad get into this sort of stuff? Who is NOT on-line these days and why? Why should they be? Why shouldn't they be? Who should be? Why should they be? Be what? Be free? Or subtley controlled? Controlled by whom? Whom would want to control? Where is the Power that informs control? In the technology? The user? The user interface? Interface with who? For what?
Internet is ugly when it's dressed in Unix. That's why everyone's so hot and slobbering over Mosaic. Mosaic is sexier and leads you to realize that soon, God willing, you may be surfing in the next major historical revolution to ever bombard the crazed yet conscious Ego. Things are really moving now: Money and Ideas are mixing. Creativity and consulting are mixing with Money and Ideas and a lot of Ego. And a lot of Money. But where's the content? The stuff that will change your life?
Content is where it's at. U know it / I know it. This crazy weird thing I'm writing here is part of what I call The Pure Dope. I've got over 15,000 readers and it's growing. At any given time 10,000 new readers are considering interacting with me in my play-site. You can do this too and make money! But first, send ME money. Cash preferred. Any currencies (please identify currency in letter). Send it snail. Make it sail through the hands of MEAT.
Amerika
POB 241
Boulder CO 80306