Patrick and all,
Standing! And please check your headers on Kent's posts frequently.
I do.
In retrospect, I find it terribly funny some of the posts contributed to
me in various ways. Most especially those that I have seen in the
past couple of days from Kent (Forged headers posting as me) and
those from Mark Measday (This thread). In any event, I do fail to
see any gain from it all other than some possible amusement...
Patrick Corliss wrote:
> And now will the real Jeff Williams please stand up?
>
> Some years ago, there used to be a TV program in England where a famous
> named person (eg author, bishop or footballer) would be shadowed by two
> doppelgangers. All three claimed to be the genuine persona. All were asked
> questions on air but the genuine celebrity was the only one who had to tell
> the truth. The other two could say whatever they wanted.
>
> The denouement came with a statement like "And now . . . Will the REAL Jeff
> Williams please stand up." After a bit of pretence (one or other started
> standing up) the real celebrity rose up. Most in the audience were usually
> surprised which it was.
>
> The show really was very entertaining.
>
> So is this the real Mark Measday talking? Or the real Patrick Corliss
> asking?
>
> Me or not me.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Mark Measday <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Monday, June 19, 2000 8:59 PM
> Subject: Re: [IFWP] Doubt, change management and DisINTA-mediation by INEG
> stakeholders: was: There's something dirty in the works
>
> > Kent,
> >
> > I'd be interested for comments on the following partial note, from all
> > those who are Jeff Williams, those passing through a Jeff Williams phase
> > and those still pretending not to be Jeff Williams. I apologise for
> > thinking aloud (again), sententiously and badly, but it is not only
> > something that will be allowed in my country as of November, but a
> > protected right for most readers of this email. It is partly in view of
> > the proposed meeting for INEG stakeholders in Yokohama next month (cf:
> > list emails from David Maher, Don Heath, Goberto Raetano and others), a
> > group in which Kent Crispin, myself and these others now find themselves
> > members, conceivably without having any conscious intention of becoming
> > so, sucked in by the need to fulfil the Jeff Williams role in his
> > absence, I hazard. I ask why we have to belong to this group, why these
> > people have been selected to represent our interests, and how a purely
> > imaginary constituency can come to so dominate the structure to the
> > detriment of worthier causes. And I also ask everyone, in the light of
> > Kent's quote from Mark Twain below, to also become Jeff, it is time.
> >
> > There is no planned entry in the 'Bavarian Journal of Primatology
> > 2000/4: : Examples of mimetic and other transferable behavioural
> > patterns on the Internet: ed. Jeffrey Williams.' The following note is
> > PURE hypothesis, written from the point of view of the Martian required
> > to discombobulate the Rosetta stone of IFWP and other archives, those
> > afraid of a Lysenko-style rewrite of history (which always and
> > unfailingly happens, as people fight against it), or those searching for
> > a purely semiotic and cultural understanding of the 'noise' as filtered
> > by those who filter, since they are still listening to the previous set
> > of instructions and don't have time for the new. (Who does? Isn't this a
> > normal human function?) However, there is absolutely nothing new here,
> > nothing that couldn't have been found in the equivalent of '50's William
> > Gibson (Marcuse?) or conceivably in some Egyptian hieroglyph. The aim is
> > to apply the generalizations to one particular case, to see how they
> > fit. And I think the answer is well, although how that implicates the
> > collusions of Yokohama, I don't yet know.
> >
> > Given the falsificability of email addresses, and indeed the underlying,
> > and ineradicable, problem of falsificability of identity, we are all
> > tempted towards the JW paradigm, and some succumb occasionally, as you
> > note you do yourself, Kent, to become him. This is the reason JW should
> > be defended at all costs, as indeed he may be you, or you may be he, at
> > any time. Attacking yourself makes little sense, even by the standards
> > of evolutionary psychology, but particularly at the individual level.
> > Pretence is a well-established social function, indeed many
> > non-scientists amongst the politically-inclined entrepreneurial classes
> > believe that a sufficiently well-protected pretence will become truth,
> > and the man who bestrides new groups with the effortless hauteur of a
> > modern Zarathustra may yet claim that truth as his own, most probably by
> > not being there when the Yokohama deal was done, and thus escaping with
> > the praise when the blame is distributed.
> >
> > I leave aside the question of the technical coherence of JW, as I
> > believe at least three writing styles can be detected; however, others
> > disagree. Whether this indicates whether he is three people pretending
> > to be one or one pretending to be three is moot, anyway. I only wish to
> > play Boswell to the genius of a Johnson, a Johnson attempting to take
> > on board the whole of human discourse with only a human mind, a Win16
> > browser and a dialup connection (this is to leave aside your and others'
> > suggestion that Jeff is in fact a team of trained professionals. Whilst
> > it is well-known that it takes hundreds of people and teamwork to
> > reliably track or replicate the acts of any one random individual, it
> > would seem bizarre for any agency or organization to create Jeff in such
> > a manner when he, as one of the early commentators put it, 'can do it
> > himself'.' This is not to say that Jeff is any specific discrete person,
> > merely that an able 6-16 year old can replicate him at much lesser cost
> > than organizational effort. (For any reading on the organizational
> > effect of Jeff Williams please refer to
> > http://www.josmarian.ch/oldindex.html, but, suffice to say, one Jeff
> > Williams will save millions in lobbying costs, assuming you have
> > convinced him to work for the other side) and your view of this will
> > depend on your view of (old, but still valid) supplyside economics and a
> > general view of social psychology within communications theory i.e.
> > whether optimisation in information flow is a social benefit or not, a
> > whole sub-politics of its own in which engineer hunter-producers
> > (stereotypical 'men'?) say yes and lawyer gatherer-consumers
> > (stereotypical 'women'?) say no. Taking a purely personal output
> > measure, that of unambiguous information provided in a timely manner,
> > one Jeff Williams provides accurate (approx 2/3), useful (approx 4/5)
> > well-researched (approx 3/7) digests of current affairs, at no cost for
> > those who want them (those who don't can always change channel or turn
> > the sound down). Compare this with the brave rapporteurs and
> > facilitators of conservatism, (and remember JW is that rare thing, a
> > conservative activist) whose existence can only be intuited by their
> > absence and whose opinions are intermediated (should that be
> > inta-mediated now?) by strange, guttural spokesmen of uncertain mien.
> > His social utility may be at odds with his social position, but the same
> > was true of larry Ellison or Bill gates at a certain point in time.
> >
> > In this Jeff is the New Man, the DigitalMensch of German science
> > fiction, a Thomas More (Thomas Mann?)grasping for reason between mammon
> > and governance, the sentiential axia between message and response
> > shortened to deal with the message queue and monitoring
> > responsibilities, his shortened sensitised neurones grasping for meaning
> > in the hubbub of debate and known falsity. Gone with the wind the
> > Central European obsession with accumulation, with gathering, with
> > restraint, specialisation, circumspection; and in with making sense of
> > the data in a way no structured system can, by immersion, by learning to
> > swim, by overt and haphazard dialogue. By unfiltered being. This is a
> > generational thing, the inter(a?)generational transfer of assets to the
> > new economy (which is where Jeff and I uncommonly share the view that
> > the trademark fraternity has signally failed to protect its members'
> > patrimony by attempting to reestablish the old rather than colonise the
> > new. Were Jeff the appropriate official and spokesman for that
> > community, their victory and inmstitutionalisation would have been total
> > rather than partial, virtual not only real, consummated rather than
> > concupiscient, as a man able to comprehend both sides of the debate
> > concurrently rather than just scream rape.
> >
> > I note that celebration of Jeff Williams is everywhere on the net, from
> > his acolyte and biographer William Walsh to the homage paid by friends
> > and admirers such as Jim Dixon, Bob Allisat, Sydney Greenstreet and
> > others, from his cordial relations with the power-centres of American
> > politics to the concern he shows for the needy and deprived in the third
> > world. Like Nabokov or Joyce, he has taken a medium and turned it to his
> > own ends. As with Flaubert's work, his apologists and detractors
> > endlessly pore over questions of the finesse of style, attempting to
> > discover profundity in Jeff's use of Esther Dyson as his Madame Bovary,
> > the exchanges with the angels of Baptista vaguely reminiscent of
> > Fred-Jung, or or his use of coarse-grained truth and ambiguity to make
> > us think again. The effortless ease with which he disposes of his
> > detractors is legion. They cease. One can only hope that he will
> > confront the cabals of Yokohama with the same dexterity. Whether he is a
> > creation of Kent Crispin, or whether Kent Crispin be seen as an
> > interlocutor for the oeuvre, is for future history to decide, but the
> > points raised are serious, and Kent is right to become him, sparingly
> > one hopes at the outset.
> >
> > All human systems travel through rise, decline and fall; their
> > enthusiastic apogee reached before the cold resentment of resource
> > reallocation, cutting, pruning and other measures designed to preserve
> > essential function. In this mode logic can be seen as the last preserve
> > of the buzzing sensuous confusion into which we are born; property, the
> > last preserve of the competitive desire to assimilate that confusion for
> > oneself. There is tribal function in the ritual exclusion of members for
> > being overly challenging or to maintain the status quo, although
> > behavioural studies can be interpreted. However, it would appear to be a
> > primatological first for tribe members to imitate outcasts, and I
> > thereby hazard (i) Jeff is not an outcast (ii) (behavioural) Jeff is the
> > future identity or personality many will base themselves on when they
> > become not-outcasts (and obviously there are many other Jeffs who could
> > be quoted) (iii) that human behaviour has changed little over the last
> > few thousand years except with respect to technical innovation. (i.e.
> > people are unhealthy as they use cars, all women in the apparently UK
> > want to have William the Fifth as a 'donor'father to their children
> > etc.)
> >
> > Indeed it seems likely that 'identity' and 'personality' are two of the
> > liberal bourgeois concepts destined to be subsumed in the digital now
> > Jeff inhabits, where individual self-conceptualisation has no truck with
> > relationship. Either the concept successfully grasps, or it fails. All
> > is mediated by ASCII character, there is no idea that Jeff 'does'
> > something mysterious or real e.g. being a stonemason, through which his
> > thought is mediated, and of which we can say 'Ah, Jeff he's a
> > stonemason/IBM/ISOC' he will say/do XYZ'. In any case the recourse to
> > identity through appeal to a larger group is a now-discredited strategy.
> > See Milt. Mueller's famous 'Huh? paraphrase of Cochetti's memo (you'll
> > have to search the archive for this). Jeff's claims to have done a
> > number of things are merely attributes of a capable and creative mind,
> > 'doing' or 'being' has lost credence in the wider social sphere anyway.
> > No-one 'does' things anymore, and it may be that the ability to create
> > (cf: Williams: I was an airforce pilot/POW etc) is more useful than the
> > reality. The great system invented by the Egyptians and Indians, and
> > perfected by the English in which rigorous self-hatred (and of those who
> > 'do' things) is used a a social motor within strict class and group
> > guidelines has been seen to be corrupting American discourse for years,
> > cf the murmurs of "'they don't know how to talk to each other anymore'
> > we will have to do something about it" emanating from concerned
> > partners. Only a Williams can break through the barriers of tribal
> > dislike with his painful honesty and disinterest. The smaller a social
> > gestalt, the more positive identification is, but with the decreasing
> > need of Genesis-type personal id for family inheritance matters (kith
> > and kin), the increasing advantages of being someone else (as Kent and
> > Bill lovingly testify below) in a large and impersonal net-society in
> > which one is increasingly identified by attribute rather than parentage
> > (big car/small car not 'a Smith-son', Cuao, ergo sum : rendered either
> > as 'cookie- therefore I am' or 'dev/modem/null') JW is probably one of
> > the most interesting creations (taking email as a literary rather than
> > performative phenomenon) in the period since 1997.
> >
> > Everyone will become like him, despite the fact that to praise him is
> > probably to bury him, the ultimate lay philosopher whose efforts to
> > classify phenomena within his personal teleology are evident to all, but
> > beyond the resources of those mired within the tradition of liberal
> > bourgeois 'politesse' where obligation to the other -employer, family,
> > tribe- circumscribes and controls meaningful discourse, reducing it
> > effectively to a discussion of pension rights and suchlike. But this is
> > the atomisation of individualism destroying the forces that caused
> > individualism to come to the fore, inauthenticated communication for
> > which there are no clear semantic clues and for which therefore the
> > receiver must provide his own semiotic code. This code can only be drawn
> > from wider presuppositions, Dallas, Texas (or 'Dallas, Scotland' as
> > Felix the local raconteur rather charmingly put it during a recent
> > Léléron cow-catching episode); Jeff, probably male; Williams, probably
> > WASP; bad spelling, def US national (Russians/Gambians/etc are all
> > trained to spell, the hermeneutics of slavish imitation persist); bad
> > grammar, probably educated/mildly dyslexic when concentrating; usually
> > reads several hundred emails a day, immense powers of concentration and
> > integration; and so on. Of course the deconstruction is entirely at the
> > behest of the reader, who may conclude that, as these are the clues one
> > would be expected to find, the reality is entirely opposite, and that
> > Kent's real name is Vlad Miloseviç, etc.
> >
> > Now this leads to a form of social and semiotic tautology. We don't know
> > who or what Jeff, Kent (or Don, Roberto, Kent, Sussex etc) are. They
> > have certain pointers, courtesy of SMTP, courtesy of stylistic analysis
> > and courtesy of collisions with accepted realities (e.g. I have met
> > Roberto Gaetano and know he is neither of Chinese nationality nor a
> > girl, so allegations of either will be fruitless, with me at least,
> > unless made in some metaphorical context, that JW is (foe example a
> > Slovene nationalist or Taliban may be proven to be the case. Students of
> > meme propagation within organisations may note the recent use of
> > paradoxical meme propagation by the (male) managers in the UN system to
> > forbid entrance to men. Classification by (notional) qualification is
> > replaced by classification by pudenda. This of course reinforces the
> > position of any existing male manager within the system, whilst codding
> > the 'women' (or castrati) into believing that their day of symbolic
> > supremacy has come. It hasn't, but, shhh!) We know that any given
> > individual may be put in, replaced or taken out at any time by the
> > relevant social forces/authorities/organisations, or more likely
> > reversed on the rebound. Cf emails from Don Heath/Mike Heltzer/Jeff
> > Williams. You only exist by existing, the unperceived is inexistent for
> > the observer, however, well-trained. They, doubtless, can make the same
> > deductions about us. In the same manner, those who live by silence,
> > subtlety or sadism in the shadows (and I do not wish to be
> > gender-specific here) assert their own identity by their unbeing, the
> > great strength of any bureaucrat. They have in common their silence on
> > the events in Guangdong in 1948, in Lewes in 1995, in Yokohama in 2000,
> > only a Jeff can tease these forth to the light.
> >
> > And herein lies the paradox. There are two types of email. One is the
> > type you send to a friend or known interlocutor, a reminder or souvenir,
> > recalling past relationship, based on that relationship and as stably
> > bound within the universe of discourse as that relationship, another is
> > one from a man called Jeff Williams (for example) which may well contain
> > ad hominem references to reproductive organs, slurs, slander and other
> > constructive discourse (what the Australians call getting down to the
> > nitty-gritty) and which indeed will move the discussion on quite fast.
> > The deconstructive tendency will be to trust the former and distrust the
> > latter. based on the normative presuppositions of pre-technical human
> > discourse (what Cro-magnon man, your dad and your teacher use) in which
> > alienation from the interstices of unthinking group cooperation is
> > incomplete and compliance to the social symbology is still at least
> > partial. (You could refer to yesterday's confusion in the 'Grand Place
> > as an example of this confusion) However, if one postulates at the
> > global level, the latter will get us into the future much faster than
> > the former tribal discourse. Jeff is your future and the future of your
> > children, if you want it. Jeff is the discovery that there are no
> > 'people' or authenticable 'individuals'. In not existing, he has
> > cleverly removed the foundations of your own existence. You had better
> > shore them up fast before the tide comes back in.
> >
> >
> > MM
> >
> >
> > Disclaimer: I have not been asked, forced, blackmailed or otherwise
> > induced into writing the above email by trademark attorneys,
> > representatives of any known organisation or any government
> > representatives whatsoever. The epistemology of inter(a)-group transfer
> > implies that no direct payment is solicited, or expected for the above,
> > although all methodology is ©copyright estate of Karl Popper and
> > contributions to LLoyds Bank a/c 008220602 . Should you receive this
> > email in error, please forward it to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Other
> > than standard copyright in ASCII code sequences, methodological chains
> > and the personages 'Kent Crispin', 'Roberto Gaetano' and appropriate
> > patents for 'Don Heath' (©copyright ISOC/MCI/Eisner) and encoded
> > paragraph structure, no specific rights inhere in this work. Let us
> > pray.
> >
> >
> >
> > Kent Crispin wrote:
> > >
> > > On Sun, Jun 18, 2000 at 06:52:02AM -0500, Carlos Vera wrote:
> > > > well there should be one way. What about electronic signature?
> > >
> > > You should be aware that the message from "Jeff Williams" is actually
> > > from me -- If you examine the headers of the mail message it states
> > > quite plainly that it is from "[EMAIL PROTECTED]". The crude forgery
> > > (anyone can change the "From: " header on an email) was sent partly as a
> > > joke, and partly as an example to remind us that "identity" on the
> > > Internet should not be taken for granted. [*]
> > >
> > > I don't know if Bill (if it was really Bill) was joking or not, but it
> > > is clearly absurd to accuse ICANN of "padding" an unverified (and
> > > unverifiable) attendence list -- the list has no formal value for good
> > > or ill, and is just presented as is for informational purposes, as a
> > > courtesy to participants. Besides, I haven't noticed any press releases
> > > from ICANN saying "Look everybody, we are OK: Bill Lovell engaged in
> > > electronic participation with us."
> > >
> > > As to your comment about electronic signatures: yes, there are
> > > techniques that could be used to better identify people. However:
> > > 1) deploying those techniques has a cost; 2) they are not easy for
> > > people to use; 3) it is not clear that there *should* be any
> > > identification requirements -- this is supposed to be open to general
> > > public participation from anyone who can connect to the Internet.
> > >
> > > [*]
> > > For those whose mail readers may not give them easy access to the
> > > headers, here are the headers of the message I sent as "Jeff Williams".
> > > Also, there may be some people who are not aware that "Jeff Williams" is
> > > a fabricated persona managed by a person or persons unknown. The fact
> > > that the persona is fabricated has been established beyond a reasonable
> > > doubt -- the internal inconsistencies alone are sufficient proof.
> > >
> > > The headers:
> > >
> > > > From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sun Jun 18 00:59:05 2000
> > > > Return-Path: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > > > Received: from ns1.vrx.net (ns1.vrx.net [204.138.71.254])
> > > > by songbird.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id AAA28846
> > > > for <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; Sun, 18 Jun 2000 00:59:04 -0700
> > > > Received: by ns1.vrx.net (Postfix)
> > > > id 33EF0F045; Sun, 18 Jun 2000 03:58:59 -0400 (EDT)
> > > > Delivered-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > > > Received: by ns1.vrx.net (Postfix, from userid 1074)
> > > > id C721BF100; Sun, 18 Jun 2000 03:58:57 -0400 (EDT)
> > > > Delivered-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > > > Received: from songbird.com (songbird.com [206.14.4.2])
> > > > by ns1.vrx.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9C366F045
> > > > for <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; Sun, 18 Jun 2000 03:58:54 -0400 (EDT)
> > > > Received: (from kent@localhost)
> > > > by songbird.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) id AAA28838
> > > > for [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Sun, 18 Jun 2000 00:58:49 -0700
> > > > Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > >
> > > --
> > > Kent Crispin "Do good, and you'll be
> > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] lonesome." -- Mark Twain
> >
Regards,
--
Jeffrey A. Williams
Spokesman INEGroup (Over 112k members strong!)
CEO/DIR. Internet Network Eng/SR. Java/CORBA Development Eng.
Information Network Eng. Group. INEG. INC.
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Contact Number: 972-447-1800 x1894 or 9236 fwd's to home ph#
Address: 5 East Kirkwood Blvd. Grapevine Texas 75208
