From ahawks@nyx.cs.du.edu Tue Apr 20 18:46:35 1993
Return-Path: <ahawks@nyx.cs.du.edu>
Received: from relay1.UU.NET by ccu.UManitoba.CA
	(4.1/25-eef) id AA17280; Tue, 20 Apr 93 18:46:22 CDT
Received: from nyx.cs.du.edu by relay1.UU.NET with SMTP 
	(5.61/UUNET-internet-primary) id AA24012; Tue, 20 Apr 93 19:42:22 -0400
Received: by nyx.cs.du.edu (4.1/SMI-4.1)
	id AA25318; Tue, 20 Apr 93 17:31:15 MDT
From: ahawks@nyx.cs.du.edu (andy)
Message-Id: <9304202331.AA25318@nyx.cs.du.edu>
X-Disclaimer: Nyx is a public access Unix system run by the University
	of Denver.  The University has neither control over nor
	responsibility for the opinions or correct identity of users.
Subject: FutureCulture Digest #374
To: future-digest@nyx.cs.du.edu
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 93 17:31:14 MDT
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11]
Status: O



 ______________________________________________________________________
|______________                        /                               |
|                                     /                                |
|                u  t  u  r  e       <___________  u  l  t  u  r  e    |
_______________________________________________________________________|


Issue #374
Tuesday, April 20th 1993
 
Today's Topics:
---------------
 
  Ideological differences
 clipper chip
 future song
 Re: Waco Digital Police State Rant
 Waco Digital Police State Rant
__________________________________________________________________________
 
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 93 13:54:58 EDT
From: rjs@devsrv1 (Rob Sweeney)
Subject: Waco Digital Police State Rant

(inconclusive, longish rant-du-jour follows; press that D, click
that mouse.. or don't)
>  = Mr G R Evans <mld013@cent1.lancs.ac.uk> ;
>> = pmckee@uafhp.uark.edu (Patrick McKee)

>> I guess that most of what I am saying is that ALL these things exist.
>> Police State tactics, Corruption of officials in power, a shitty
>> existance for minorities and the poor, racial hatred...etc.
> And (correct me if I'm wrong), the people who are actually on the receiving 
> end of all these things aren't reading this.
>> But, here we are.  What do we do about it?  Do we just talk?  Do
>> we create mailing lists and take drugs to block out the noise?  Or
>> do we do something?  Try to make it better.  Most of us just want to
>> get our job after school and keep on talking about the problems.  Some
>> actually do something, however this number is VERY few.  Someday, maybe
>> people will realize, after they have taken away the right to own and 
>> operate a bbs, or the right to net access without a plastic card and five 
>> forms of id, that what is needed is action.  A political lobby, the eff, the
>> coming together of this futureculture into a gestalt that says "we will
>> not take this shit anymore". 

What makes the net necessary for me is the way it complements all the
other info that's continually aimed at me.  It's all discordant, all
irrelevant and biased and disorganized, but somehow I find that all the
sources I get are complemented by the talk on the net - it sort of
glues it all together and lets me find synergies in the noise.  And
when the noise all comes together, it's like tremors - distinct
themes become evident, crashing into me from all directions, different
sounds, images, and words beating the same message into me.

Anyway, I was thinking about all this on the subway this morning.
The Waco cult thing was on my mind.  I don't follow the mass-media all
that closely, so I don't remember the exact circumstances of how it all
started, but from the recaps today I gather that the standoff started after
the Feds (specifically the ATF) raided the Branch Davidian compound with
a warrant to search for illegal weaponry.  They came prepared, and met
people who were similarly prepared.  Deaths resulted.  Now, many more
have resulted, including (according to the reports) a good number
of children.  Maybe "good" isn't the word.  Try "awful"? Or "frightening"?

What bothered me was the underlying assumptions that A) prompted the
raid in the first place, and B) that all along, it wasn't questioned.

A: These people are >crazy<.  These people are >armed<.

So, let's break this down.  >Crazy<: they believed in something which
is *radically* opposed to "accepted norms".  That something might be
a system of beliefs, or a person, or whatever.  They engage in
behavior (amongst themselves, for the most part, from media reports)
that most of us consider at least curious, antisocial, maybe alarming,
maybe even a bit dangerous.  This alone provides grounds for eyebrow-raising
- and subsequently official eyebrow-raising.  >Armed<: they possessed
weapons. Weapons are dangerous, particularly in the hands of alarming
and dangerous people, even if those people tend to keep to themselves.

B: These people must be stopped.

(stopped from doing whatever it is that they were doing).  Radical,
apocalyptic - but insular - religion.  Hoarding (but not using) weapons.
Society doesn't like this sort of thing.

now, I don't really know what they were all about, and as I said I'm not
that familiar with the circumstances that brought this situation about.
*These people are (were) crazy, armed, and they must be stopped.*  I
think most of us - myself included - would agree with that statement
at least to a point.  Now they're dead, and the disquieting thing is:
where's that point where we stop agreeing with that statement?  Where
is the point where >we< become >them<?  What level of antisocial behavior -
read "against the accepted norms" - is necessary before the powers-that-be
decide to swat you down?

I've been reading future for only a few months now, but one of the topics
that arises again and again is something like: "the net is great, the net
should be free (free takes numerous meanings), the net should grow, what
can we do to get the net to more people?, but watch out because Big Bro
in one guise or another is waiting, not that far down the road, to rap
our knuckles and take it away".. (reaching back into the future-file):

>[bhulley+@cmu.edu  3/22]
>and the last sound that the dr. science kiddies, the gibson cowboys, the
>data wildcatters, will hear before they are dejacked forever, is the
>sound of those dumb suits chuckling, just like they've chuckled every
>time in the last two thousand years when the natives thought that the world
>was infinitely large and the trinkets terribly pretty.
[ahawks@nyx.cs.du.edu Thu Mar  4 14:39:05 1993]
> [...]but then, relatively, how FAR AHEAD can you go
>and stay and not end up in a straightjacket.  
>the net is a subversive escape for free thinkers.
>THE NET COULD BE BANNED.[...]

.. these were two rants that grabbed me (no, I don't keep everything).

So what's coming together in my head, from all this stuff that's thrown
at me, is that we've got a society with a lot of problems (nothing new), 
workable solutions - at least none that anyone can agree on (nothing new),
and that frustration is building.  That's what Ross Perot - the phenomenon,
not the man - was (is) all about. And >we've< got The Net, with all
this amazing connectivity, and a level of freedom of >global expression<
that has never been seen before in history.  Really.  There's tremors that
come from that, too - to me, they remind me of the feeling I get when reading
an eco-publication, or recycling - doing my small, insignifigant part in
the face of enormous, entrenched, encompassing resistance.  The net as
the nervous system of Gaia... by being a part of it, by writing these
rants, by spreading the word, we're making this happen.  Or we like to
think, and say.  It's good - anyway it *feels good*.  Hell, it IS good.

But outside the window, disturbing things are happening.

>[wch+@andrew.cmu.edu Mon Mar 22 01:40:54 1993]
>[...] you want to understand, listen to public enemy, 
>watch that la video tape, catch cnn, taste a little of that, because the 
>new fences are going to be high, sharp-tipped and data-powered and you 
>ain't too sure which side of the wire you are going to be on.

so.. which side of the wire >are< we going to be on?  When are we deemed
crazy (subversive radical free thinking), armed (lotsa hardware and connectivity
to spread that subversion - remember the fax-publicized Chinese student
revolt)?

When do we get stopped? 

I arrive at work this morning, fire up the workstation, and read my
future-mail.  The same tremors: disquiet.  Something is gradually,
slowly, imperceptably happening.  No one seems to know what it is.  But
I read two separate lists talking about encryption and government
control of the nets, while I read three other academic lists talking about
matter so vaporous that they're not worth recounting.  Murmurs about
the slowly gelling police state in future. A Digital Communications
Commission?  Clipper Chips?  I see this:

> [Mr G R Evans <mld013@cent1.lancs.ac.uk>]
> But, here we are.  What do we do about it?  Do we just talk?  Do
> we create mailing lists and take drugs to block out the noise?  Or
> do we do something?  Try to make it better.  Most of us just want to
> get our job after school and keep on talking about the problems.  Some
> actually do something, however this number is VERY few.  Someday, maybe
> people will realize, after they have taken away the right to own and 
> operate a bbs, or the right to net access without a plastic card and five 
> forms of id, that what is needed is action.  A political lobby, the eff, the
> coming together of this futureculture into a gestalt that says "we will
> not take this shit anymore".

Why do I think they'll say "too fuckin bad!"?

I write this rant, waiting for a meeting about how we're going
to deal with business units who want to keep their customer information
secret (this is a Swiss bank..), and I still feel the tremors as I
watch the newspapers blowing around the park (NY Post hanging on
by its dirty fingernails) outside my Wall Street office window on a
windy but beautiful spring day.  I don't know...
--
/rs				Personal replies to: rsweeney@panix.com (please)
** WARNING: My outbound mailer munges addresses!  CHECK ADDRESSES WHEN REPLYING!
 
______________________________
 
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1993 15:36:07 +0600 (CST)
From: Patrick McKee <pmckee@uafhp.uark.edu>
Subject: Re: Waco Digital Police State Rant

On Tue, 20 Apr 1993, Rob Sweeney wrote:

> (inconclusive, longish rant-du-jour follows; press that D, click
> that mouse.. or don't)
> >  = Mr G R Evans <mld013@cent1.lancs.ac.uk> ;
> >> = pmckee@uafhp.uark.edu (Patrick McKee)
> 

[some stuff deleted.....]
> 
> Anyway, I was thinking about all this on the subway this morning.
> The Waco cult thing was on my mind.  I don't follow the mass-media all
> that closely, so I don't remember the exact circumstances of how it all
> started, but from the recaps today I gather that the standoff started after
> the Feds (specifically the ATF) raided the Branch Davidian compound with
> a warrant to search for illegal weaponry.  They came prepared, and met
> people who were similarly prepared.  Deaths resulted.  Now, many more
> have resulted, including (according to the reports) a good number
> of children.  Maybe "good" isn't the word.  Try "awful"? Or "frightening"?
> 
> What bothered me was the underlying assumptions that A) prompted the
> raid in the first place, and B) that all along, it wasn't questioned.

______________________________
 
From: what!

When it all boils down to it, if your kid were in Karesh's(sp) or Manson's
or Jim Jones hands would you want the cops to just let well enough alone?
If you would want them left alone, would you mind if someone else wanted to
take action?  Do other people have a right to seek help?  Even if you do
not?

How do we decide when people have crossed the
line?  I think that Karesh crossed the line.  But then I have a thing for
cults.  Anytime one man is exalted as supreme leader, trouble will start.
Anybody wants to lead me they had better plug me full of lead and put a
chain round my neck, cause I will fight that kind of shit even in death.

I guess I got tired of breaking shit into parts so just re-read the stuff
below if you want to get the references for what I said.

Basically, so long as FC stays where it is -- fighting for the freedom
of the net from the freedom of the net -- then I dont think that we will
ever have to fear someone coming and battering down our door.  But, if
someone on this list creates a fucking FUTURE-TOWN and declares himself
supreme ruler over the net and all his followers then I say watch out.
Get ready to be blasted by the gov...

I left a bunch of shit trailing here so if you dont want to re-read, just
press D now.....    ;)

> 
> A: These people are >crazy<.  These people are >armed<.
           ^^^^^^

I think that this has always been directed at Karesh.  Not all his followers.

> 
> So, let's break this down.  >Crazy<: they believed in something which
> is *radically* opposed to "accepted norms".  That something might be
> a system of beliefs, or a person, or whatever.  They engage in
> behavior (amongst themselves, for the most part, from media reports)
> that most of us consider at least curious, antisocial, maybe alarming,
> maybe even a bit dangerous.  This alone provides grounds for eyebrow-raising
> - and subsequently official eyebrow-raising.  >Armed<: they possessed
> weapons. Weapons are dangerous, particularly in the hands of alarming
> and dangerous people, even if those people tend to keep to themselves.
> 
> B: These people must be stopped.
> 
> (stopped from doing whatever it is that they were doing).  Radical,
> apocalyptic - but insular - religion.  Hoarding (but not using) weapons.
> Society doesn't like this sort of thing.
> 
> now, I don't really know what they were all about, and as I said I'm not
> that familiar with the circumstances that brought this situation about.
> *These people are (were) crazy, armed, and they must be stopped.*  I
> think most of us - myself included - would agree with that statement
> at least to a point.  Now they're dead, and the disquieting thing is:
> where's that point where we stop agreeing with that statement?  Where
> is the point where >we< become >them<?  What level of antisocial behavior -
> read "against the accepted norms" - is necessary before the powers-that-be
> decide to swat you down?
> 
> I've been reading future for only a few months now, but one of the topics
> that arises again and again is something like: "the net is great, the net
> should be free (free takes numerous meanings), the net should grow, what
> can we do to get the net to more people?, but watch out because Big Bro
> in one guise or another is waiting, not that far down the road, to rap
> our knuckles and take it away".. (reaching back into the future-file):
> 
> >[bhulley+@cmu.edu  3/22]
> >and the last sound that the dr. science kiddies, the gibson cowboys, the
> >data wildcatters, will hear before they are dejacked forever, is the
> >sound of those dumb suits chuckling, just like they've chuckled every
> >time in the last two thousand years when the natives thought that the world
> >was infinitely large and the trinkets terribly pretty.
> [ahawks@nyx.cs.du.edu Thu Mar  4 14:39:05 1993]
> > [...]but then, relatively, how FAR AHEAD can you go
> >and stay and not end up in a straightjacket.  
> >the net is a subversive escape for free thinkers.
> >THE NET COULD BE BANNED.[...]
> 
> .. these were two rants that grabbed me (no, I don't keep everything).
> 
> So what's coming together in my head, from all this stuff that's thrown
> at me, is that we've got a society with a lot of problems (nothing new), 
> workable solutions - at least none that anyone can agree on (nothing new),
> and that frustration is building.  That's what Ross Perot - the phenomenon,
> not the man - was (is) all about. And >we've< got The Net, with all
> this amazing connectivity, and a level of freedom of >global expression<
> that has never been seen before in history.  Really.  There's tremors that
> come from that, too - to me, they remind me of the feeling I get when reading
> an eco-publication, or recycling - doing my small, insignifigant part in
> the face of enormous, entrenched, encompassing resistance.  The net as
> the nervous system of Gaia... by being a part of it, by writing these
> rants, by spreading the word, we're making this happen.  Or we like to
> think, and say.  It's good - anyway it *feels good*.  Hell, it IS good.
> 
> But outside the window, disturbing things are happening.
> 
> >[wch+@andrew.cmu.edu Mon Mar 22 01:40:54 1993]
> >[...] you want to understand, listen to public enemy, 
> >watch that la video tape, catch cnn, taste a little of that, because the 
> >new fences are going to be high, sharp-tipped and data-powered and you 
> >ain't too sure which side of the wire you are going to be on.
> 
> so.. which side of the wire >are< we going to be on?  When are we deemed
> crazy (subversive radical free thinking), armed (lotsa hardware and connectivity
> to spread that subversion - remember the fax-publicized Chinese student
> revolt)?
> 
> When do we get stopped? 
> 
> I arrive at work this morning, fire up the workstation, and read my
> future-mail.  The same tremors: disquiet.  Something is gradually,
> slowly, imperceptably happening.  No one seems to know what it is.  But
> I read two separate lists talking about encryption and government
> control of the nets, while I read three other academic lists talking about
> matter so vaporous that they're not worth recounting.  Murmurs about
> the slowly gelling police state in future. A Digital Communications
> Commission?  Clipper Chips?  I see this:
> 
> > [Mr G R Evans <mld013@cent1.lancs.ac.uk>]
> > But, here we are.  What do we do about it?  Do we just talk?  Do
> > we create mailing lists and take drugs to block out the noise?  Or
> > do we do something?  Try to make it better.  Most of us just want to
> > get our job after school and keep on talking about the problems.  Some
> > actually do something, however this number is VERY few.  Someday, maybe
> > people will realize, after they have taken away the right to own and 
> > operate a bbs, or the right to net access without a plastic card and five 
> > forms of id, that what is needed is action.  A political lobby, the eff, the
> > coming together of this futureculture into a gestalt that says "we will
> > not take this shit anymore".
> 
> Why do I think they'll say "too fuckin bad!"?
> 
> I write this rant, waiting for a meeting about how we're going
> to deal with business units who want to keep their customer information
> secret (this is a Swiss bank..), and I still feel the tremors as I
> watch the newspapers blowing around the park (NY Post hanging on
> by its dirty fingernails) outside my Wall Street office window on a
> windy but beautiful spring day.  I don't know...
> --
> /rs				Personal replies to: rsweeney@panix.com (please)
> ** WARNING: My outbound mailer munges addresses!  CHECK ADDRESSES WHEN REPLYING!

 
______________________________
 
Date:  Tue, 20 Apr 93 14:09:53 PDT
From: Tom Good <tomg@image.com>
Subject:  Ideological differences

Ethan Knipp writes:

 > is it possible for an intimate relationship to
 > survive if there are severe ideological differences?
 > i.e. I'm an atheist and she's a Buddhist, ...

Atheism and Buddhism do not *necessarily* contradict each other 
(depending on your personal interpretation of each of them, of course).  
As for the main question, sure, it's possible. Lots of things are 
possible.  It's just more difficult.

 
______________________________
 
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1993 17:16:56 -0400
From: Johnny Chrome <woogie@wam.umd.edu>
Subject: future song

Whaddaya mean, "the future of all space and time isn't gonna whither and die"?
Who ya gonna believeanyways?
Several hundred well-respected (well, maybe not so much anymore) theoretical
physicists and their gigabytes of nth-decimal place proofs of the eventual 
dissolution of the universe through the force of entropy,
Or Lenny Kravitz and his bare, hairy chest?
Give it some thought, people. 
 
______________________________
 
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1993 17:37:33 -0400
From: Johnny Chrome <woogie@wam.umd.edu>
Subject: clipper chip

You know, I've been reading that White House pronouncement over again, and I
think we're all just freaking over the government before anything's really 
happened.

It seems to me that what's happening is the Fools on the Hill are seeing that
the American communications network is currently encryption-optional. There is
a large industry based around providing this optional service, usually, I think
for large buisinesses. Since They (the Fools, I mean) are currently looking at
vastly expanding the amount of data flow in the US very soon, they are looking
for a standardized form of data-encryption so that in a decade or two when the
encryption industry is Big Shit and the mouth-foaming competition makes last
weeks' codes and tecniques obsolete, the government won't have to go and parley
with the corps for a month just to have access to the phone lines so they can
eavesdrop. And at the same time they get to say they are "providing a service"
by creating such a technology.

But I don't see how it will change things much. The operating questions would be whether or not the clipper chip allows for further encyption to be utilized on top of it's code. If so, I'm not worried, it will just be my responsibility to
code any of my conspiracy before I send it over the net; though they will also
be fooling themselves if they think they can protect America from terrorism that
way, as the terrorists (well, okay, only the smart terrorists) will be just as able to encrypt their info.

If it will not be possible to encrypt on top of the Clipper Chip, then I ask anyone in this mail group who knows: what are laws currently governing encryption
of private transmissions over public information networks? It may be unConstitutional to keep us from coding our data if we feel it neccessary. Of course, the
White House statement was very shadowy on this subject....
 
______________________________
 
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 93 16:19:08 PDT
From: paradox@peg.apc.org

Hi, my name is Dave Cox and I am a Melbourne based film maker.

I recieved some mail from Mindy/Countzero and it goes something
like this:

So, a filmmaker eh?
And interested in cyber-things.
You may be just the person I'm looking for.
I contribute a moderate amount to alt.cyberpunk
I'm relatively busy though, I am a graduate student in Popular Culture
and my emphasis is in Cyberculture.
Anyways, have you ever heard of FutureCulture?
It's a forum which you can subscribe to in real time or in
daily digest form concerning things that deal with cyberculture
in any form.
It's compiled by Andy Hawks, maybe you've heard of him.
It's relatively famous.
To the point though...
The discussion for the past several days has centered on making
a film something along the lines of "A day in the life of FutureCulture"
Showing what the whole cyber culture is really like and all of that.
They're looking for help.

---------------------------------------------------------

I made a documentary for SBS T.V. here in Melbourne last year
on a cyberfeminist group called the Bureau of Inverse Technology
which was screened as part of an experimental t.v. show called
EAT CARPET. I write to David Blair who made WAX a fair bit, and 
my most famous film is PUPPENHEAD (B/W, 16mm, 8 mins) which combines
live action and puppet animation. It played the New York film festival
last year, also Seattle, London. Most of the big ones.

The film also toured Australia with the doco "CYBERPUNK" last year
also.

So how can I help?

Regards, Dave Cox.

 
 _________________________________________________________________________
|                                                                         |
|  That's all for today!                                                  |
|  To send a message to the list:           future@nyx.cs.du.edu          |
|  To subscribe/unsubscribe/change format:  future-request@nyx.cs.du.edu  |
|  All other requests:                      future-request@nyx.cs.du.edu  |
|  List Maintainer is: (andy [aka hawkeye]) ahawks@nyx.cs.du.edu          |
|_________________________________________________________________________|
|                                                                         |
|  The opinions expressed in FutureCulture are those of the individual    |
|  author only.                                                           |
|_________________________________________________________________________|


 