March 20Th Was Also Ported to OS/2 [Dec 4], Covered Everyday Californian MVS, VM, PC-DOS [Aug 12], and Concerns Such As Virtual Reality Amigaos [July 23]

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

March 20Th Was Also Ported to OS/2 [Dec 4], Covered Everyday Californian MVS, VM, PC-DOS [Aug 12], and Concerns Such As Virtual Reality Amigaos [July 23] EXEC 2 on System/370 [June published in California during 30], but its popularity meant it the 1980's and 1990's which March 20th was also ported to OS/2 [Dec 4], covered everyday Californian MVS, VM, PC-DOS [Aug 12], and concerns such as virtual reality AmigaOS [July 23]. (VR) and smart drugs. It included interviews with Debbie Ralph Roy Barclay In 1995 Cowlishaw created Harry [July 23], Frank Zappa, Born: March 20, NetRexx, the first language other Stephen Wolfram [June 23], than Java [May 23] to compile Genesis P-Orridge [Feb 18], Soap Lake, Washington and run on the JVM. 1942; William Burroughs [Jan 28], and Died: July 10, 2009 more. In retrospect, it was a According to J. F. Doherty, somewhat more anarchic and AT&T’s former director of Presidential subversive precursor to Wired security, Barclay should be [Jan 2]. credited with inventing phone DICTION phreaking and creating the first “little blue box” [Oct ??]. Spring 1984 Barclay's phreaking career In 1984, Roderick P. Hart began when he was a first year published "The Language of the electrical engineering student at Modern Presidency" in the Washington State. He was journal "Presidential Studies browsing in the library one day Quarterly" , and subsequently when he came across Breen and the book “Verbal Style and the Dahlbaum’s article “Signaling Presidency: A Computer-Based Systems for the Control of Analysis”. Telephone Switching” in the Bell Hart had used his DICTION System Technical Journal [May software to analyze the language 17]. It motivated him to find out of 266 speeches (38 for each of more about the phone system, the seven post-war Presidents) via telephone manuals and in terms of six categories: discarded equipment, and activity (words that imply eventually led to his building the movement, change); positivity The cover of "High Frontiers" first blue box in a single (optimistic language); rigidity #1. Online at weekend. (firm beliefs); realism (practical https://archive.org/details/mo focus); wordiness (lots of Soon he was able to make free ndohistory calls to England, but Barclay adjectives); and patriotism (traditions and values). noted that, “I didn’t know The magazine was born at the anybody in England to call.” DICTION decided that Nixon was Spring equinox as High Barclay also said that the choice the least wordy, and Carter the Frontiers, edited by R. U. Sirius of blue for his boxes wasn’t a most verbose. Nixon was also (aka Ken Goffman), and later conscious decision; it was the most realistic, and Carter the “Queen Mu” / “Alison simply a consequence of the most deluded. Wonderland” (aka Alison Bailey Kennedy). standard blue metallic color DICTION began its life on a used for hardware. mainframe, but eventually The magazine transmutated into moved to the PC, and became a Reality Hackers in 1988 to better general tool for analyzing reflect its drugs and computing REXX Begins language patterns. The current themes, and St. Jude (aka Judith version (7.0) can search a Milhon) apparated to help with March 20, 1979 passage for five general features editing. as well as thirty-five sub- Rexx (REstructured eXtended features. Aside from its use in The stars were obviously in eXecutor) is a scripting and politics, it has been applied to alignment that year since Boing macro language, somewhat speaking styles in education, Boing [Jan 21] also debuted, reminiscent of PL/I [June 25], diplomacy, religion, and stand- sharing many of the same which became very popular in up comedy. interests, and contributors. the 1980's for generating reports. Rexx can be considered In 1989, Reality Hackers reached a precursor to languages like for a new plane of existence as Perl [Dec 18], PHP [June 8], and Mondo 2000 Mondo 2000, perhaps to reflect Python [Jan 31]. the magazine's move away from March 20, 1984 techno-utopianism. R. U. Sirius Rexx was developed at IBM by once said that he'd rather watch Mike Cowlishaw to replace the Mondo 2000 was a glossy "Ren and Stimpy" on caffeine older IBM languages EXEC and cyberculture magazine 1 than write about VR and smart Charlie Athanas was brought in Despite all this, the machine drugs another time. for issues 9-14. He upgraded to a wasn't a big seller, perhaps Mac Plus, moved from MacPaint because of its high price R.U. Sirius, Queen Mu, and to FullPaint, and started using a ($7,499). which was soon assorted kooks ran the magazine graphics tablet and stylus. slashed to as low as $1,999. from Kennedy’s home in the North Berkeley Hills. The Saenz later developed Alternatively, the real "interest 'Mondo House' was legendary ComicWorks (1986), the first PC killer" might have been its for its parties, with guests software for creating comics. He appearance in the movie bomb including the likes of Timothy also drew the comic book “Iron “Batman & Robin” (1997). Alfred Leary, John Perry Barlow [Oct Man: Crash” (1988), the first magically uses a TAM to burn 3], Jaron Lanier [May 3], and computer-created graphic novel, data onto a CD, a capability the William Gibson [Sept 3]. and 64 pages long. real machine didn't have. For another Apple appearance in that film, see [March 7]. Shatter TAM Nevertheless, the TAM announced Apple’s move March 20 ??, 1985 March 20, 1997 towards more stylish-looking computers, and was one of Jony Shatter was the first Apple released the limited- Ive’s [Feb 27] first projects. commercially published comic edition Twentieth Anniversary book where all the artwork was Macintosh (TAM) to After Steve Jobs' return to Apple drawn directly on a computer commemorate the company’s [Sept 16], he scrapped the TAM rather than being scanned from 20th birthday [April 1]. which was hardly a surprise inked pages. since he had previously said that “Limited” meant around 12,000 he hated it. Shatter's artist, Mike Saenz, units, which has made the TAM employed MacPaint [?? 1951] on something of a collector’s item. an Apple Mac [Jan 24] using a standard mouse. Each drawing Barron’s Burning was limited by the machine's 72ppi monochrome screen that March 20, 2000 could display just 512×342 Barron’s, a respected US pixels. It meant that only 2/3 of financial journal, ran a cover a comic page could be worked story by Jack Willoughby on at a time. entitled “Burning Up; Warning: The artwork was printed on a Internet Companies are Running dot-matrix ImageWriter [?? Out of Cash – Fast”. He reported: 1983] for the first few months “It’s no secret that most Internet until Apple donated a companies continue to be LaserWriter [March 1]. Adobe money-burners. Of the PostScript fonts were then used companies in the Pegasus for the text, and the printed survey, 74% had negative cash graphics became much less flows. For many, there seems to be little realistic hope of profits pixelated. A TAM. Photo by Morn. CC BY- in the near term.” The output was colored by SA 3.0. Saenz, and then photographed This article came at the so it could be mass printed using The machine was a showcase of beginning of the dot-com crash traditional page layout and color Apple's cutting edge technology [March 10], and was probably a separation techniques. and design kudos. It was the first factor in its acceleration. The to feature a track pad, the first text of the article is online at The first shattering episode of with a flat screen (12.1-inches http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~ad Shatter appeared in the March and in color), the first PowerPC amodar/New_Home_Page/articl 1985 issue of the UK computer desktop not to be beige (it es/cashburn.htm magazine Big K, which is online dressed in metal and leather at: instead), and the first to feature https://archive.org/details/12- a vertical CD drive. It had big-k-magazine. The story, by television and FM radio tuners, Peter B. Gillis, concerns a 1980's and a Bose sound system with a style cyberpunk dystopia. sub-woofer. Shatter ran for 14 issues, Each TAM was delivered to its finishing in April 1988, but discerning customer by limo, Saenz left after the third issue, accompanied by a Apple staff and the artwork reverted to the member in a tuxedo. traditional approach until 2 .
Recommended publications
  • Paradise Lost , Book III, Line 18
    _Paradise Lost_, book III, line 18 %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% ++++++++++Hacker's Encyclopedia++++++++ ===========by Logik Bomb (FOA)======== <http://www.xmission.com/~ryder/hack.html> ---------------(1997- Revised Second Edition)-------- ##################V2.5################## %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% "[W]atch where you go once you have entered here, and to whom you turn! Do not be misled by that wide and easy passage!" And my Guide [said] to him: "That is not your concern; it is his fate to enter every door. This has been willed where what is willed must be, and is not yours to question. Say no more." -Dante Alighieri _The Inferno_, 1321 Translated by John Ciardi Acknowledgments ---------------------------- Dedicated to all those who disseminate information, forbidden or otherwise. Also, I should note that a few of these entries are taken from "A Complete List of Hacker Slang and Other Things," Version 1C, by Casual, Bloodwing and Crusader; this doc started out as an unofficial update. However, I've updated, altered, expanded, re-written and otherwise torn apart the original document, so I'd be surprised if you could find any vestiges of the original file left. I think the list is very informative; it came out in 1990, though, which makes it somewhat outdated. I also got a lot of information from the works listed in my bibliography, (it's at the end, after all the quotes) as well as many miscellaneous back issues of such e-zines as _Cheap Truth _, _40Hex_, the _LOD/H Technical Journals_ and _Phrack Magazine_; and print magazines such as _Internet Underground_, _Macworld_, _Mondo 2000_, _Newsweek_, _2600: The Hacker Quarterly_, _U.S. News & World Report_, _Time_, and _Wired_; in addition to various people I've consulted.
    [Show full text]
  • 2. Mondo 2000'S New Media Cool, 1989-1993
    UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) The web as exception: The rise of new media publishing cultures Stevenson, M.P. Publication date 2013 Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Stevenson, M. P. (2013). The web as exception: The rise of new media publishing cultures. General rights It is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (https://dare.uva.nl) Download date:02 Oct 2021 2. Mondo 2000’s new media cool, 1989-1993 To understand how it was possible for the web to be articulated as an exceptional medium when it surfaced in the 1990s - that is, as a medium that would displace its mass and mainstream predecessors while producing web-native culture - one must see the historical and conceptual ties between web exceptionalism and cyberculture.
    [Show full text]
  • DEAD CHANNEL SURFING: Cyberpunk and Industrial Music
    DEAD CHANNEL SURFING: Cyberpunk and industrial music In the early 1980s from out of Vancouver, home of cyberpunk writer William Gibson and science fiction film-maker David Cronenberg, came a series of pioneering bands with a similar style and outlook. The popular synth-pop band Images in Vogue, after touring with Duran Duran and Roxy Music, split into several influential factions. Don Gordon went on to found Numb, Kevin Crompton to found Skinny Puppy, and Ric Arboit to form Nettwerk Records, which would later release Skinny Puppy, Severed Heads, Moev, Delerium and more. Controversial band Numb ended up receiving less attention than the seminal Skinny Puppy. Kevin Crompton (now called Cevin Key) joined forces with Kevin Ogilvie (Nivek Ogre) and began their career by playing in art galleries. After their friend Bill Leeb quit citing ‘creative freedom’ disputes, they embarked on a new style along with the help of newly recruited Dwayne Goettel. Leeb would go on to found Front Line Assembly with Rhys Fulber in 1986. The style of music created by these bands, as well as many similar others, has since been dubbed ‘cyberpunk’ by some journalists. Cyberpunk represents an interesting coupling of concepts. It can be dissected, as Istvan Csiscery-Ronay has shown, into its two distinct parts, ‘cyber’ and ‘punk’. Cyber refers to cybernet- ics, the study of information and control in man and machine, which was created by U.S. American mathematician Norbert Wiener fifty years ago. Wiener fabricated the word from the Greek kyber- netes, meaning ‘governor’, ‘steersman’ or ‘pilot’ (Leary, 1994: 66). The second concept, punk, in the sense commonly used since 1976, is a style of music incorporating do-it-yourself (d.i.y) techniques, centred on independence and touting anarchist attitudes.
    [Show full text]
  • Colonizing Virtual Reality
    Colonizing Virtual Reality http://eserver.org/cultronix/chesher/ Colonizing Virtual Reality Construction of the Discourse of Virtual Reality, 1984-1992 Chris Chesher Introduction New technologies do not appear from nowhere as a mystical spark of inspiration from the mind of one individual. Nor are they inevitably accepted for their self-evident benefits. A technology emerges through a process involving broader cultural, linguistic, institutional and technological contexts. One clear illustration of this process can be drawn with the appearance of "virtual reality" in 1989, and the subsequent popularization of the idea through the media. On June 7, 1989 the computer-aided design software company Autodesk and the eclectic computer company VPL announced a new technology called "virtual reality."1 In marketing this new technology (which represented a major shift in thinking about the nature of computers), the developers and promoters drew on a range of tropes: VR is shared and objectively present like the physical world, composable like a work of art, and as unlimited and harmless as a dream. When VR becomes widely available, around the turn of the century, it will not be seen as a medium used within physical reality, but rather as an additional reality. VR opens up a new continent of ideas and possibilities. At Texpo 89 we set foot on the shore of this continent for the first time. --VPL Research at Texpo 89, in Rheingold, p.154. The above quote draws several analogies to introduce Virtual Reality. The statements do not describe the nature or features of an actual product--they introduce the new idea by comparison to familiar, comfortable cultural icons.
    [Show full text]
  • The Emic Sociology of New Edge Celebrating Augmentation And
    New edge : technology and spirituality in the San Francisco Bay Area Zandbergen, A.D. Citation Zandbergen, A. D. (2011, May 25). New edge : technology and spirituality in the San Francisco Bay Area. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/1887/17671 Version: Not Applicable (or Unknown) Licence agreement concerning inclusion of doctoral License: thesis in the Institutional Repository of the University of Leiden Downloaded from: https://hdl.handle.net/1887/17671 Note: To cite this publication please use the final published version (if applicable). Chapter One: The Emic Sociology of New Edge Celebrating Augmentation and Dissociation In the first editorial of the magazine Mondo 2000, founded in 1989 by Ken Goffman (1952) and Allison Kennedy in Berkeley, the editors describe the magazine as "New Edge, not New Age". As Goffman told me in an interview, with the term ‘New Edge’ he wanted to articulate a simultaneous embrace and rejection of New Age.21 Informed by the understanding that New Age is largely about the rejection of high-tech, the term New Edge expressed the dedication of the magazine creators and editors to explore New Age spirituality via ‘edgy’ technoscientific concepts and products. In this first chapter, I seek to understand how 'technology' and 'New Age spirituality' are made relevant to each other from the perspective of New Edge. What is it about 'New Age spirituality' that invites New Edgers to relate it to 'technology', and what is it about 'technology' that New Edgers deem related to 'spirituality'? And what kinds of 'technology' and what kinds of 'spirituality' are thereby related? Without seeking to answer this question in an all-encompassing way, in this chapter I focus in particular on the gnostic epistemology of New Age and the way this gnosticism is made to correlate with high-tech.
    [Show full text]
  • CHAPTER FIVE the Virtual Body in Cyberspace
    116 CHAPTER FIVE The Virtual Body in Cyberspace This chapter speculates about the body on the electronic frontier. In one sense, this frontier is an imaginary construction that identifies a horizon of contemporary cultural thought. But in another sense it is a real space on the fringe of mainstream culture: the "electronic frontier" names the space of information exchange that already exists in the flow of databases, telephone and fiber-optic networks, computer memory, and other parts of electronic networking services.1 The frontier metaphor suggests the possibility of a vast, unexplored territory. Computer enthusiasts, also known as hackers, populate frontier villages; advance scouts/pilgrims include the by now infamous computer viruses, worms, and Trojan horses that were designed very simply to "map" the network into which they were released. In elaborating the Western frontier metaphor, John Perry Barlow explains that in the new small towns, "Main Street is a central minicomputer.... Town Meetings are continuous and discussions range on everything from sexual kinks to depreciation schedules. "2 In a more material sense, the electronic frontier includes workstations, file servers, networks, and bulletin boards, as well as the code of application programs, information services such as Prodigy and CompuServe, and online databases.3 This frontier functions as the infrastructure of the computer/information industry and, as such, structures the further development and dissemination of computer technologies and services. One of the most publicized computer applications of the last decade has been the construction of "virtual environments," now more widely known as "virtual reality."4 Since 1987, virtual reality (VR) has further evolved into an industry in itself; it is also at the heart of an emergent (sub)culture that includes computer-generated realities, science fiction, fictional sciences, and powerfully evocative new visualization technol- 117 ogies.5 My guiding question for this chapter concerns the role of the body in this formation.
    [Show full text]
  • Cyberpunk - Terminal Chic ?
    Cyberpunk - Terminal Chic ? Nathan Cobb 24 November 1992 It was nearly midnight deep inside Venus de Milo, a dark and sweaty Boston dance emporium. The Shamen, a British musical duo augmented by an assortment of digital gewgaws, was unleashing a storm of high-energy technopop that was cyberpunk through and through. "We can see tomorrow in each other's eyes", they sang at one point as the bouncing crowd raised its collective fist, presumably in the direction of cyberspace. But what was most interesting about the 800 or so raving souls in attendance was that they didn't look like they'd stumbled in from the set of Blade Runner. Instead, they were merely members of the Lansdowne Street night shift : postpunks, Eurokids, college students, young professionals, twentynothings, geeks, nerds, rastas, slackers and even a few bodybuilders in tank tops who appeared to have taken a wrong turn coming off the Tobin Bridge. Considerably more beer was chugged than the high-nutrient "smart" drinks that are touted as the cyberpunk libation du jour. So you are forgiven for wondering if cyberpunk is an authentic subculture or a media buzzword. Actually, it's both. Forget for a moment that it was born as a word to describe a dark, morbid, near-future science-fiction movement of the 1980's. "Cyberpunk" is now more commonly a handy term for combining the related cadres of techno- bohemians-primarily hackers, crackers and phreaks - who populate the computer underground. But the word is also used to describe the trappings of this cantankerous, decentralized, and antiestablishment subset that have surfaced in popular culture.
    [Show full text]
  • A Cyberpunk Timeline
    A Cyberpunk Timeline Last Update: May 2007 1926 Metropolis released. 1928 Early use of the word "punk" to signify a criminal 1938 Dave and Lucile Packard move into a house at 36 Addison Avenue, Palo Alto, California. Bill Hewlett rents cottage behind the house and Bill and Dave begin part time work in the garage with $538 in working capital. The company name is decided with a coin toss. The new partnership is known as Hewlett Packard. (June) 1948 The word "cybernetics" coined by Norbert Wiener 1955 The Naked Lunch published 1956 The Stars My Destination (aka Tiger! Tiger!) published 1960 The word "cyborg" coined by Manfred Clynes 1964 Nippon Apattchi-zoku [The Japanese Apache] by Sakyo Komatsu published 1965 MIT researcher Lawrence G. Roberts & Thomas Merrill connected A TX-2 computer in Massachusetts to the Q-32 in Palo Alto, California with a low speed dial-up telephone line creating the first (however small) wide-area computer network ever built. (Jan.) 1966 The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress published 1967 Velvet Underground releases White Light/White Heat 1968 Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep published Lawrence Roberts and the DARPA funded community refine the overall structure and specifications for the ARPANET, and bring it live. The Internet is born. (Aug.) 1969 Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and colleagues at Bell Labs create the Unix operating system on a DEC-PDP-7 microcomputer. (June) 1970 The Stooges release Funhouse ... From the Rise of Dr. Adder to the Fall of Johnny Mnemonic ... 1972 Pong debuts K.W. Jeter completes Dr. Adder
    [Show full text]
  • The Web As Exception: the Rise of New Media Publishing Cultures
    UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) The web as exception: The rise of new media publishing cultures Stevenson, M.P. Publication date 2013 Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Stevenson, M. P. (2013). The web as exception: The rise of new media publishing cultures. General rights It is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (https://dare.uva.nl) Download date:28 Sep 2021 Works cited Andrews, Robert. 2006. “9/11: Birth of the Blog.” Wired. http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/ news/2006/09/71753. Ankerson, Megan Sapnar. 2010. “Web Industries, Economies, Aesthetics: Mapping the Look of the Web in the Dot-com Era.” In Niels Brügger, ed. Web History. New York, Peter Lang: 173-194. Anuff, Joey. 1995. “How to Read Wired Magazine.” Suck, October 6.
    [Show full text]
  • Cyberculture Evolution
    Cyberculture Evolution Jon Lebkowsky & R.U. Sirius 1996 Two of the principal fathers of technocluture, electronic media activist Jon Lebkowsky and cyber-theoretician R.U. Sirius, have known each other almost from the virtual beginning. Lebkowsky, co-creator of the Austin- based subculture media system Fringeware, Inc., met the co-founder and editor of Mondo 2000 -- the now- defunct slick magazine that juxtaposed computer culture with drugs, sex, and graphic art -- back in the early days of the WELL (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link), one of the first online communities. The two independent thinkers together created the late online Mondo 2000 conference on the WELL, which Lebkowsky adds "had its 15 minutes as the white-hot, way-kool core of cyberculture". Currently, on Thursday nights on Hotwired, Lebkowsky hosts the Electronic Frontiers Forum (EFF), a kind of an Internet think tank to which Net activists (and the online public) are invited to discuss the ramifications of politics both in and on the wired world. He's also working with EFF-Austin and EFF-Houston to organize a cyber rights conference slated for fall. Though Sirius left Mondo 2000 shortly before its collapse in 1995, he remains a ubiquitous Internet presence -- a search for his name turns up 30,000 matches at URLs all over the world. Sirius pens a regular column for Japan Esquire and is a contributing editor at a wide range of publications from Wired to the zine bOING bOING . His latest book, Cyberpunk Handbook: The Real Cyberpunk Fake Book (Random House, 1995), was co- authored with ex-Mondo colleague St.
    [Show full text]
  • Cyberpunk and Cyberculture: Science Fiction and the Work of William Gibson
    Cyberpunk and Cyberculture: Science Fiction and the Work of William Gibson DANI CAVALLARO THE ATHLONE PRESS CYBERPUNK AND CYBERCULTURE This page intentionally left blank CYBERPUNK AND CYBERCULTURE SCIENCE FICTION AND THE WORK OF WILLIAM GIBSON DANI CAVALLARO THE ATHLONE PRESS London & New Brunswick NJ First published in 2000 by THE ATHLONE PRESS 1 Park Drive, London NW11 7SG and New Brunswick, New Jersey © Dani Cavallaro 2000 Dani Cavallaro has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998 to be identified as the author of this work British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 485 00412 7 HB 0 485 00607 3 PB Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested Distributed in the United States, Canada and South America by Transaction Publishers 390 Campus Drive Somerset, New Jersey 08873 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk Printed in Great Britain by Athenaeum Press Ltd, Gateshead To Paddy, with love This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS Preface ix A brief guide to the book xvii Introduction: Science fiction and cyberpunk 1 1 Cyberpunk and virtual technologies 23 2 Cyberpunk, technology and mythology 41 Technology and mythology:
    [Show full text]
  • Oink, Mnemotechnics and the Private Bittorrent Architecture
    Digital desire and recorded music: OiNK, mnemotechnics and the private BitTorrent architecture Andrew Sockanathan PhD Thesis Goldsmiths College Centre for Cultural Studies 1 I declare that the work presented in this thesis is my own ___________________ Andrew Sockanathan 2 Abstract This thesis centres on the P2P internet protocol BitTorrent, music filesharing, and nascent forms of collective action developing through private BitTorrent communities. The focus is on one of these communities, a music filesharing website called ‘OiNK’. Founded in 2005, it was the first of its kind to garner membership in the hundreds of thousands, was emblematic of user-led movements to improve the quality, efficiency and availability of digital media online, and was very publically shut down in 2007. Making critical use of Simondon’s notion of ‘individuation’, two interrelated techno- historical impulses are identified as central to the ‘in-formation’ of both BitTorrent and OiNK. Firstly, through research into the development of the global music industry’s ‘productive circuit’ of manufacturing, distribution, retail and radio, it is shown how consumers were gradually excluded from having a say in how, what and where they could consume. Secondly, a history of ‘OiNK-style’ filesharing is gleaned, not from P2P, but from research into small, decentralised ‘online’ communities that emerged throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s, where enthusiasts learned how to use software and hardware to manage the storage, reproduction, uploading and sharing of information. This thesis shows how BitTorrent exposed these previously exclusive practices to masses of consumers who were dissatisfied with both retail/broadcasting and public P2P, through the new possibility of private BitTorrent communities.
    [Show full text]