[HN Gopher] High Tech High Life: William Gibson and Timothy Lear... ___________________________________________________________________ High Tech High Life: William Gibson and Timothy Leary in Conversation (1989) Author : prismatic Score : 105 points Date : 2022-02-19 05:48 UTC (17 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.mondo2000.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.mondo2000.com) | axydlbaaxr wrote: | What a blast from the past! Mondo2000...we had such glorious | hopes for the future.... | mindcrime wrote: | Had? | | I mean, yeah, OK, obviously things have gone off the rails in a | lot of ways. And a lot of our expectations didn't work out the | way we expected. | | The question is, is this situation recoverable? Maybe the | sentence above should end with the word "yet" as in | | "And a lot of our expectations didn't work out the way we | expected, yet". | | We don't have to lean into defeatism and give up. Maybe it's | just time to step back, think really hard and long, do some | strategizing, and figure out a way to get the train back on the | rails? | narag wrote: | _We don 't have to lean into defeatism and give up._ | | I think the problem is _we_. Was there a _we_ before? Maybe | but there is no _we_ anymore for sure. | | The Net used to be kind of a different world that escaped how | the offline world worked. But the old powers have crawled | back into. | mindcrime wrote: | True, if you interpret "we" as "the community of people on | the Internet" (who in the early days were mostly hackers, | academics, and technologists of various sorts), then that | interpretation is no longer valid. Now "The Internet" is | roughly synonymous with "everybody". | | But the group of people that made up the "old we" (to the | extent that such a thing ever existed) still exists. That's | the "we" I'm referring to now. So the question, to my mind, | is whether or not there is still a distinct "we" who had | grand visions of what the Internet and technology could do | for society (in a good way) and whether there are still | actions we could take to encourage development in a | positive direction. | | I _think_ the answer is "yes", but that may just be | wishful thinking. But I try to be an optimist. | narag wrote: | _But the group of people that made up the "old we" (to | the extent that such a thing ever existed) still exists._ | | I'm afraid that even if that's true, the us vs. them | mindset is polluting the air. | mark_l_watson wrote: | Nice. Two really interesting people. A new friend of mine | directed the movie "Timothy Leary's Dead", which coincidentally I | bought this morning before I saw this HN link. My Dad's | girlfriend also knew Leary and I plan on watching this movie with | her and my Dad. | | Also, I had forgotten about Mondo 2000 - nice blast from the | past. | | Also part 2: Gibson, if you ignore a few classic writers like | James Joyce, is my favorite author. I may be really wrong, but I | expect that the social structures in his cyber punk books (like | the Sprawl, Corporate Ecologies, etc.) may actually be our | future. | germinalphrase wrote: | Those social structures are certainly salient, but do - | sincerely - hope we see some positive alternative become | prominent in the public mind. | donorman wrote: | Hehe, I'm old enough to have read the sprawl trilogy in my youth, | good read indeed. I also remember seeing Gibson interviewed in | pretty much every single paper and magazine out there in the | begining of the Internet era because of he's writing regarding | Cyberspace. Internet went bigger than expected but VR did take a | lot more time than I initially expected. The start of a very | interesting non the least! :-) | mindcrime wrote: | On a semi-related note: I was watching some movie or TV show | recently, and there's a scene that goes approximately like this: | | Character A: "something, something, something, Doors of | Perception." | | Character B: "Okay, Timothy Leary." | | Character A: "Huxley." | | Character B: "What?" | | Character A: "Huxley wrote The Doors of Perception, not Timothy | Leary." | | The thing is, I can't remember now what that was from and it's | bugging the shit out of me. Any chance anybody here is familiar | with the work in question and could tell me what it was? | [deleted] | johndoughy wrote: | I think it's from Black Mirror: Bandersnatch: | | https://transcripts.thedealr.net/script.php/black-mirror-ban... | mindcrime wrote: | That sounds like it. Thanks! | | The funny thing is, while I have seen that, it was a long | time ago (right after Bandersnatch came out). But I have the | nagging notion that I saw this recently. | | I suppose either somebody else riffed on that scene, OR | (perhaps more likely) something I was doing led me to go back | and watch a brief clip from Bandersnatch on Youtube or | something, and it was in fact that very scene. Funny that I | can't recall the details now though. I just recall the "OK | Timothy Leary" and "it was Huxley, not Leary" thing. Weird. | | Edit: Aaaah... _maybe_ what I 'm remembering is this | relatively recent HN thread which actually mentioned that | scene. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29631782 | | That thread itself being a discussion of Huxley and The Doors | of Perception. | criddell wrote: | Thanks for posting this. I had no idea that Mondo 2000 was all | online now. I think about that publication often and now I can | check my memories. | | I was always fascinated reading about nootropics and smart drugs | but never had the opportunity to give any a try. Drinking a cup | of coffee is the closest I've been to that scene. It would be | interesting to talk to some people who were deep into that 30 | years ago and see what they think about it now. | EL_Loco wrote: | Ah, fond memories of reading Mondo 2000 and Boing Boing, and | there was also 2600 and a few smaller ones, and BBSs made you | feel like an early resident of the future sprawl. I'll just link | here to a cool comic that sometimes pops up on HN, and is pretty | good regarding the whole vibe of the period: | | https://www.electricsheepcomix.com/almostguy/ | mistrial9 wrote: | Mondo2000 - how decadence, ego and extreme parties led us to | forget the fear of totalitarian uses of technology, while said | uses became the Palantir darling of Peter Thiel's vast money club | of clubs. | | source: organizing committee for pre-Mondo, did not get busted in | that raid, you know which one I mean | mistrial9 wrote: | I am grateful for this interesting thread -- I did write that | knee-jerk bit above, out of some amount of anguish, I also had | fun party dreams of the future at that time. The original | artwork in pre-Mondo (not naming it here) was some of the best | I had seen in print, and I have seen a lot of print. "stay | curious" and I will try too.. | api wrote: | Different time. It wasn't a totalitarian zeitgeist. The 80s and | 90s had a more libertarian or liberal (less authoritarian left) | vibe. The art and music was darker and edgier on the surface | but the view of the future was optimistic. | | Today you have authoritarian populist nationalism on the right | and authoritarian technocracy on the left. The mood is | pessimistic and everyone is arguing about who should be forced | to think or do what. The music is trite and superficially happy | and everyone is seething with hate. | | Machines are tools. Technology follows the zeitgeist. | Everything is being bent toward totalitarianism and | surveillance because that is what we are doing with it. | e40 wrote: | _> The 80s and 90s had a more libertarian or liberal (less | authoritarian left) vibe._ | | Huh? The 80's were all Ronald Reagan. The 90's were Bill and | Hillary Clinton sparking the rise of Newt Gingrich and the | GOP we have today. Yes, Bill was a Dem, but he was very much | not a lefty. He got stuff done (the notorious Crime bill) | done because he was right of center. | | Please explain what you mean. I'm guessing I don't get it | from the words you used. | blacksmith_tb wrote: | I am betting that meant that the tech scene had a stronger | libertarian vibe then (a la John Perry Barlow, say). Of | course, some critics (I'm thinking of Curtis' | Hypernormalization[1]) would say that was more like a | retreat from reality. | | 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation | api wrote: | You can find counterexamples, but the big difference is how | people reacted. Almost everyone thought Waco was unjust and | excessive. Today many people (especially on the left) would | say they had it coming. Meanwhile the right now openly | talks about the need to regulate business more and Trump's | whole message was more about cracking down on others than | freedom for his base. | | Back then the left would have drawn the line at arbitrary | freezing of the accounts of the trucker protestors. Today | nobody cares. The right would never have tolerated January | 6th. Now half of them think maybe democracy is a bad idea | anyway. | | If you'd released an expose back then of Facebook and its | shadow profiles, people would have almost universally | freaked out and boycotted Facebook. Today nobody cares. | | Nobody would have gone for locked down devices and app | stores then. Look up the reaction to Microsoft's original | "trusted computing" initiative and contrast it with today's | acceptance of walled gardens. Nobody cares. | | Back then we built personal computers with the goal of | serving the user. Now the shift is toward thin clients to | get people into cloud silos to... uhh... serve the user in | a different sense... more like that old "to serve man" | Twilight Zone episode. | | The biggest difference I see today is general public | acceptance of technocracy, surveillance, and | authoritarianism. | morelisp wrote: | > Back then the left would have drawn the line at | arbitrary freezing of the accounts of the trucker | protestors. | | Back then, truckers wouldn't have been suspicious of a | basic public health program. Reagan & Clinton (and | similar conservative-to-third-way politics in other | countries) did a fine job putting a wedge between | liberals and labor. That the allegiances have changed | doesn't necessarily mean any part of the political | program has. | | (Waco is also not as clear-cut as you make it; it was, | let's say, bipartisanly popular at the time, then equally | unpopular 5 years later which seems to be what you | remember, and today I don't think anyone is thinking much | about it at all.) | e40 wrote: | You make really good points, thanks. | | I think the apathy is because we've been bombarded with | evil for so many years, and the rise of the quiet | minority (30+%), who have very different values than what | we saw every day on TV and in newspapers. Those people | previously had little to no voice, but because of | Twitter, Facebook, Fox News, etc, etc, they were able to | band together and elect a criminal and start to take | control of local and state elections, to remake the | progressive world that we all thought we lived in. | | Btw, even back 20 years I was ringing the alarm bells of | authoritarianism and surveillance, to my friends (most of | whom are way smarter than I am) and not a single one of | them gave any shits. I really don't understand it. | mistrial9 wrote: | this is interesting and I agree with some of it, however, | please "Nobody cares." is more drama than fact. I care | and so do you. Saying its opposite is dramatic, but maybe | not constructive. tough days to be optimistic,these days, | I agree with that. still making things here though! | VictorPath wrote: | > The 80s and 90s had a more libertarian or liberal (less | authoritarian left) vibe. | | From 1993 on, Louis Rossetto heavily pushed the idea in Wired | magazine that Silicon Valley was heavily libertarian[1]. I | had not been to the Bay much at the time and actually | believed this was true of the Valley. | | > authoritarian technocracy on the left | | Like who, the Kellogg's workers who were on strike? The GM | strike in Mexico? Even the left in what remains of non- | gentrified Oakland is different than the bubble of upper | middle class Bay FAANG liberals. | | [1] By libertarian I mean libertarian in the American sense, | which nowadays is right-libertarian. | mistrial9 wrote: | complicit with the "surveillance capitalism" model of | profiling and tracking every adult with disposable income, | and then some. That is in itself, enough to convict the | American political class, to my mind. As said more than | forty years ago in America and more true than ever, the | "two party" system is not really. | cheese_van wrote: | >The 80s and 90s had a more libertarian or liberal (less | authoritarian left) vibe. | | Looking back on it, it's hard to decipher. I explained to my | son that once, a movie usher asked me to put out my cigarette | at a midnight movie. This while the rest of the patrons were | smoking pot, which was so commonplace at midnight movies that | the authorities just ignored it. Those decades were a strange | battleground between intellectual freedom (and hedonism) | jousting with the establishment. This decade, I don't feel | that promise of wholly unbridled intellectual freedom, and | the excitement it caused. I suppose the establishment won. | Barrin92 wrote: | totalitarianism and authoritarianism should not be used | interchangeably, they're opposites. Totalitarianism is mass | mobilization and uninhibited violence, think Cultural | Revolution, authoritarianism is, to quote Gibson given that | we're in a thread about him, Singapore's 'Disneyland with the | death penalty'. Radical depolitization. | | People are more apathetic than hateful (today's 'riots' | hardly deserve the label by historical standards) and there | is more of an indifference than a pessimism. You're not told | what to think (or compelled to action), but rather told what | not to say (or how not to act), and otherwise left alone. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-02-19 23:00 UTC)