Please send as far and wide as possible. Thanks, Robert Sterling Editor, The Konformist http://www.konformist.com http://www.konformist.com/1999/cybercon.htm Cyberculture Counterconspiracy Intro "Unthinkable Complexity" by Kenn Thomas "The matrix has its roots in primitive arcade games," said the voice-over, "in early graphics programs and military experimentation with cranial jacks." On the Sony, a two-dimensional space war faded behind a forest of mathematically generated ferns, demonstrating the spacial possibilities of logarithmic spirals; cold blue military footage burned through, lab animals wired into test systems, helmets feeding into fire control circuits of tanks and war planes. "Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts…A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Line of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding…." --William Gibson, Neuromancer The durability of Gibson's description of the internet testifies to the writer's talent. He wrote it in 1983 and now, in 1999, it's only beginning to seem dated, even though consumer computer technology has evolved through many generations. More advanced military technology still awaits transfer down to the cyberpeonage. Steamshovel Press has telegraphed suggestions of it in reports on topics like the PROMIS backdoor variations (1) found on web browsers, and the super-surveillance ECHELON satellite system, portrayed but not named in the movie Enemy of the State (2). Gibson's elegant description, of course, has yet to catch up with William S. Burroughs' Interzone visions, Burroughs dead since 1997, and cohort Tim Leary, the true champion of the cyberculture, years gone now as well.(3) Their presences still beam, however, as Steamshovel Press readers jacked into the grid await further surprises from the developing technology. It came as no surprise that the Heaven's Gate webmasters were Steamshovel fans. The group's combination of UFO obsession and alienation from the mainstream culture fit the reader profile, albeit in a fatally exaggerated form (4). For the more typical reader, Steamshovel's pulp-paper presence began on the newsstands in 1992, although as a small zinelet it's history extends back to 1988. It circulated among the other bygone zines with names like Ganymedean Slime Mold, Popular Reality, Crash Collusion, Jim Keith's old Dharma Combat, and Greg Bishop's still current Excluded Middle, produced by bright minds, anarchists, fanboys, varieties of sex maniacs, religious cultists, and really good graphic artists and writers, already going nuts with the technology of cheap, easy paper reproduction. Those familiar with this history know that this creative frenzy of small publishers blossomed into the Factsheet Five phenomenon, and remains quite a contrast to the vapid media dross hardcopy on the magazine stands but rushed also to the new electronic playground. As that activity and energy enlivened the developing electronic technology, Steamshovel began to develop its web presence even as it became more of a newstand magazine. The Steamshovel Press web site resides at http://www.umsl.edu/~skthoma. The volumes of Cyberculture Counterconspiracy collect material posted to the web by Steamshovel Press over the past several years. This material has been removed from the web now to make the site less cumbersome, and to make these volumes unique. Appropriately enough, Cyberculture Counterconspiracy uses one of the new digital technologies for books, the laser book imprint. These web pages have been submitted to the digital system of a major distributor, where they remain on file until orders come in. Steamshovel may print copies one at a time but also can produce thousands of copies for bookstore distribution. At present, this process remains more expensive than regular printing and distribution, but it provides a degree of flexibility unavailable the old fashioned way. Steamshovel produces only what it needs to satisfy demand, and the book never goes out of print. The first volume of Cyberculture Counterconspiracy collects the most prominent feature of the Steamshovel web site, a column called "The Latest Word." Changed sometimes as frequently as every week, this column includes short informational features, interviews and editorials, by writers like Jim Keith, Len Bracken and Adam Gorightly, and others whose longer pieces often appear in the newsstand Steamshovel. It chronicles the Clinton conspiracy era, beginning with the White House report using Steamshovel material that led to the coining of the phrase "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy." It includes Peter Dale Scott's definitive analysis of the Lewinsky matter as a military intelligence operation. Some reports, like that on the murder of former White House intern Mary Caitlin Mahoney, include the relevant hyperlinks as inserts on the page. All pages appear as web print-outs, with the file extensions (which now return "404" errors) for the articles and information about when they were printed out for the volume. Other insights gathered here involve mind control, Wilhelm Reich, Czechoslovakian spy activity connected to Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, possible alien mathematics secretly coded into the daily New York Times, obits for Carlos Castaneda and Kerry Thornley (a long, revelatory interview accompanying the latter), remote viewing and much else. Volume two contains book, movie and electronic media reviews from the "Offline Illumination" column from the website and "Things Are Gonna Slide", a column, assembling parapolitical news items and theory. Both cover the same period of recent history as the first volume. "Offline Illumination" gives a capsule view of the best literature and electronic media productions of the counter-conspiracy culture. It is highlighted by the contributions of Rob Sterling, whose Konformist newsletter (www.konformist.com) has risen to the top of conspiracy news reporting on the web; and Acharya S who carries on a web discussion about religious conspiracy (www.truthbeknown.com). New essays by Sterling, Acharya, Greg Bishop (whose Excluded Middle zine now has a web presence at www.primenet.com/~exclmid/) and Richard Metzger (his Infinity Factory webcast has become a regularly watched program on the desktops of many conspiracy students) are absolutely unique to this second volume--never on the Steamshovel web page, never in the hard copy Steamshovel. Steamshovel takes great pride in having these writers as contributors and web allies. As dharma combatants in the cybersphere, their historical insights are unparalleled. The all-new section of volume two also highlights the talents of Kevin Belford, an artist whose work has adorned pages of the hardcopy magazine. Cyberculture Counterconspiracy includes two of his remarkable graphic presentations, "The Wounds of J. D. Tippit" and "The Manson Family As It Was." Steamshovel Web readers go to the "Things Are Gonna Slide" column for raw data about the conspiracy culture, as much as possible unfiltered by political, religious or personal agendas. The column's title comes from a Leonard Cohen song, "The Future", which ironically laments the passing of the pre-information age era: "Give me back the Berlin Wall/Give me Stalin and St. Paul/I've seen the future, brother/It is murder/Things Are Gonna Slide/Slide in All Directions/Won't Be Nothin'/Nothin' you can measure anymore…" Steamshovel shares both the sentiment and the irony of Cohen's intent (5). The info-abyss of cyberspace, was imagined early by Harry Truman's scientific adviser, Vannevar Bush, and Steamshovel also shares his observation that "Presumably man's spirit should be elevated if he can better review his shady past and analyze more completely and objectively." (6) It offers the two volumes of Cyberculture Counterconspiracy, and the continued work on the Steamshovel web page, in that spirit. Kenn Thomas July 4, 1999 Notes: 1. The story of the PROMIS software, stolen from the Inslaw company and sold illegally by the US to police agencies around the world with a secret built-in capability to spy on those agencies, is told best in The Octopus: Secret Government and the Death of Danny Casolaro (Feral House). Casolaro's biography reads like a cyberpunk novel, with protagonist Casolaro lost, and ultimately killed, while delving into the PROMIS cyber environs. 2. Conspiracy topics now proliferate in Hollywood. Oliver Stone used the interest to help create the JFK Assassination Materials Review Board, but by and large this interest has served little social good. X Files and Mel Gibson's Conspiracy Theory movie continued Steppin' Fetchit-type stereotypes of conspiracy students. Many actors, notably Will Smith, now use the label "conspiracy theorist" as part of their public image. That Smith's movie, Enemy of the State, did not contain the word "ECHELON" in any of its script speaks volume. The title of the movie refers to a phrase, "enemies of the state", usually applied to Stalinist ethnic resettlement programs, source of the civil war in the Russian republic of Chechnya. In December 1998, Chechen rebels beheaded three employees of the telecommunications firm Granger Telecom. Rumors circulated widely that the rebels caught the men installing an ECHELON satellite aerial. Oliver Stone tried to continue his filmic foray into conspiracy with a documentary television program entitled Oliver Stone's Declassified for the entertainment division of the ABC network. The program was dropped when Stone insisted on a segment detailing the theory that a missile downed TWA Flight 800 in 1996. Time Magazine (11/9/98) reported that pressure from "aviation-industry sources" caused ABC's news division to apply enough pressure to have the show canceled before it aired. Interesting, too, that the subject of Stone's JFK movie, Jim Garrison, felt that Kennedy was a victim of the aerospace industry. (See Maury Island UFO, IllumiNet Press, 1999.) 3. Perhaps Dr. Leary would have appreciated the irony that the FBI continued its smear against him by releasing on the internet selected documents from his time in prison, when he provided the Bureau with some information. Leary long acknowledged that he did this, just as he gave due credit to the CIA for helping usher in the psychedelic era. However, it became "news" once again in the Summer of 1999 when a website called Smoking Gun posted files documenting that time released to it through the Freedom of Information Act. Dr. Leary discusses it in his 1983 autobiography, Flashbacks, and it's discussed in the Leary/G. Gordon Liddy debate movie, Return Engagement. According to Leary, the only people harmed by anything he said were some scumbag lawyers who deserved it. The FBI make an effort to exaggerate this and turn it into a "snitch jacket" for the sake of ruining Leary's future credibility. In fact, while Leary was doing his "informing", several people organized a press conference, PILL (People Investigating Leary's Lies), to denounce it and the situation that had been forced upon him. Allen Ginsberg spoke at this conference. None of the conference organizers were compromised seriously by what Leary said and many remained his friends until his death. Leary knew everyone. If he had "snitched" anything of significance, this would be a much bigger deal than it is. The allegations had a strange afterlife, however. Walter Bowart, for instance, transformed them into an entirely imaginary scenario of Leary returning to his cell one night after a lobotomy, with blue streaks painted across the temples of his shaved head, now a total mind control slave. This came in a particularly ungracious obituary Bowart wrote for Dr. Tim, Leary's reward for one having given some lurid details about his intelligence community connections for Bowart's book, Operation Mind Control. Another author, Mark Reibling, in a 1994 book called Wedge: The Secret War Between the FBI and the CIA, tried to make the case for Leary having been an informant before prison, during his years in exile. I checked Reibling's government document sources and they did not match the details of Leary's biography. Reibling also tried to make the case that Bob Woodward's Deep Throat was actually Cord Meyer, ex-husband of famous Leary gal pal Mary Pinchot Meyer. The February 1999 issue of Flatland recounts my own petition for Leary's FOIPA file. The FBI is still doing its best to make sure that the full file is not released, only "summaries" to a chosen few in the media. The files posted on the web by Smoking Gun make every effort, by selection and interpretation, to put the worst possible spin on this episode in Leary's life. For instance, a statement Leary makes about his plans for public life after prison, in most contexts a heroic ambition for him considering the circumstances, has been placed before other testimony about one of those lawyers. This has been done "for clarity" -- to make it "clear" that Leary was simply finking for the sake of his own freedom. 4. Steamshovel was one of a small number of newspapers and magazines that ran ads paid for by the group containing rants that explained their philosophy. 5. Richard Belzer, whose show business career stretches back to the 1971 Groove Tube movie of 70s and forward to his role as Detective John Munch in the TV show Homicide: Life in the Streets, once interviewed Leonard Cohen for his old talk show, Hot Properties. He asked Cohen about his favorite band. "Foetus On Your Breath" came the response. Belzer didn't miss a beat with his follow up question about the name of the band's hit song. "My Gums Bleed For You", said Cohen. Belzer's book, UFOs, JFK and Elvis: Conspiracies You Don't Have To Be Crazy To Believe, came out in 1999. 6. The essay, "As We May Think," was written at around the time of the Roswell crash and Vannevar Bush's signature can be found on the notorious MJ12 documents. Bush helped frame the developing technology, but his 1947 description of personal computers remains uncanny, especially in its acknowledgement that it is based on projections about the then current technology, as if he has an awareness of an alien technology that he' s trying to match to the technology he is familiar with. Bush says: "Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and to coin one at random, 'memex' will do. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory. It consists of a desk, and while it can presumably be operated from a distance, it is primarily the piece of furniture at which he works. On the top are slanting translucent screens, on which material can be projected for convenient reading. There is a keyboard, and sets of buttons and levers. Otherwise it looks like an ordinary desk. In one end is the stored material. The matter of bulk is well taken care of by improved microfilm. Only a small part of the interior of the memex is devoted to storage, the rest to mechanism. Yet if the user inserted 5000 pages of material a day it would take him hundreds of years to fill the repository, so he can be profligate and enter material freely. Most of the memex contents are purchased on microfilm ready for insertion. Books of all sorts, pictures, current periodicals, newspapers, are thus obtained and dropped into place. Business correspondence takes the same path. And there is provision for direct entry. On the top of the memex is a transparent platen. On this are placed longhand notes, photographs, memoranda, all sort of things. When one is in place, the depression of a lever causes it to be photographed onto the next blank space in a section of the memex film, dry photography being employed. There is, of course, provision for consultation of the record by the usual scheme of indexing. If the user wishes to consult a certain book, he taps its code on the keyboard, and the title page of the book promptly appears before him, projected onto one of his viewing positions. Frequently-used codes are mnemonic, so that he seldom consults his code book; but when he does, a single tap of a key projects it for his use. Moreover, he has supplemental levers. On deflecting one of these levers to the right he runs through the book before him, each page in turn being projected at a speed which just allows a recognizing glance at each. If he deflects it further to the right, he steps through the book 10 pages at a time; still further at 100 pages at a time. Deflection to the left gives him the same control backwards. A special button transfers him immediately to the first page of the index. Any given book of his library can thus be called up and consulted with far greater facility than if it were taken from a shelf. As he has several projection positions, he can leave one item in position while he calls up another. He can add marginal notes and comments, taking advantage of one possible type of dry photography, and it could even be arranged so that he can do this by a stylus scheme, such as is now employed in the telautograph seen in railroad waiting rooms, just as though he had the physical page before him. All this is conventional, except for the projection forward of present-day mechanisms and gadgetry." If you are interested in a free subscription to The Konformist Newswire, please visit http://www.eGroups.com/list/konformist/ and sign up. Or, e-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the subject: "I NEED 2 KONFORM!!!" (Okay, you can use something else, but it's a kool catch phrase.) 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