from:
ROBERT ANTON WILSON
Paradigm Shift Interview by Philip H. Farber
http://www.bestweb.net/~kali93/raw.htm
We think many of our readers are already familiar with the work of
Robert Anton Wilson. If you're not -- hoo boy! -- we are a little
envious of you, because you've got the chance to discover for the first
time an amazing collection of books including Illuminatus! (with Robert
Shea), The Earth Will Shake, The Widow's Son, Prometheus Rising, Cosmic
Trigger, Quantum Psychology, and a bunch more. Wilson's novels and
non-fiction are guaranteed to blow the cobwebs from your neurons, rattle
your cage, yank your chain, and open your eyes.
Paradigm Shift recently had the pleasure of conducting the following
interview with Dr. Wilson:
PHF: What is it that you most like to do with your time these days?
Robert Anton Wilson: I like to get stoned and surf the Web. I find all
sorts of wonderful wonders, both in text and art. This hobby occupies a
few hours a night, three or four nights a week. Otherwise, I enjoy most
of what I do but feel more pressure about it. I look after my wife
Arlen, who is recovering from a stroke; I shop and cook and houseclean
etc.; and I keep working on an encyclopedia of conspiracy theories for
Harper Collins. All that has its own rewards, but stoned Websurfing is
just pure play... and often educational, too.
PHF: Heh heh That's a common pastime around here, too. Do you think
that the hyperlinked nature of the web encourages a different kind of
thinking? If so, does surfing stoned enhance that?
RAW: I kind of suspect that hyperlinking encourages holistic or at least
nonlinear perception, but I had a lot of experience with that before the
Web. Most of my favorite 20th century writers --especially Joyce, Pound,
Williams, Burroughs -- seem to have a hyperlinked style. McLuhan
compared them to the front page of the New York Times and Kenner
compared them to film montage. It's all blended in my head --nonlinear
page make-up in journalism, montage in film, collage in painting, Joyce,
Pound, Williams, Burroughs, now the Web -- and being stoned certainly
helps you groove with that kind of "cubist" sensibility. In fact, stoned
dial surfing on TV makes for much the same effect. (I once thought I
invented dial surfing but so many others invented it at about the same
time I don't think we'll ever know who was first...)
All that said, websurfing remains the most fun, and probably the most
educational.
PHF: What are some of your favorite sites to surf stoned?
RAW: Well, I'd rather turn that around and ask you and your readers the
same question. I'm working up a list of The 10 Best Sites To Visit While
Stoned, which I'll add to my own web site when it's finished, and I'm
still looking for more leads...Just tack them on at the end of this
interview and I'll explore all the ones that are new to me.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Please send submissions for the Best Sites To Visit While
Stoned to [EMAIL PROTECTED], and we will forward suggestions to Dr. Wilson.
PHF: Okay... I'm sure we have enough stoned people surfing these pages.
Perhaps we can set up a form to submit URLs that can accompany this
interview.
RAW: I hope so. By the way, not to be too coy, a few of my favorite web
sites, which I have bookmarked and don't keep the URLs for, are the
Unofficial George Carlin site, the Monty Python sites, the SubGenius
site, the Discordian site and the Republic of Texas site.
PHF: Anyway... From what you see in your virtual travels, do you think
people are generally using the web with intelligence, or has it become a
wasteland to rival prime time television?
RAW: I don't know what "people"are doing with the Web. Since most people
seem to me to be moderately retarded, I assume they're not using much of
what is available to them. However, the brightest people I know are
using the Web very creatively and all seem to be getting brighter...or
at least better informed.
I assume the brightest people use TV that way, too, and they have used
books that way for 500 years now.
PHF: Our webzenmaster, John Hoke, asks, "Do you think the web is a
conspiracy to keep all the other conspiracies out in the open?"
RAW: Well, that's certainly an amusing way of looking at it. In general,
I regard the Web as the closest approximation yet achieved to the ideal
of a free marketplace of ideas. The Marxist criticism of democracy
("freedom of the press belongs only to those who own the press") has
always been uncomfortably close to the truth. But with the Web (and
newsgroups, chat rooms etc.) more people have more freedom of the press
or freedom of speech than ever before. I believe that is the most
positive development in this generation.
It's not just the conspiracy pages that show a much greater diversity of
opinion than the general media. Diversity is all over the net. Everybody
who can save up enough money to get a computer can send their own
version of reality to the world at large. "Just what I always wanted,"
Tom Jefferson
