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Subscribe to Gonzo Weekly http://eepurl.com/r-VTD Subscribe to Gonzo Daily http://eepurl.com/OvPez Gonzo Facebook Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/287744711294595/ Gonzo Weekly on Twitter https://twitter.com/gonzoweekly Gonzo Multimedia (UK) http://www.gonzomultimedia.co.uk/ Gonzo Multimedia (USA) http://www.gonzomultimedia.com/ Gonzo Daily Blog https://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/ LEST WE FORGET John Brodie Good Dave McMann Mick Farren 3 amazement to me. But this is something I have noticed before in my long and chequered career as a magazine publisher, which has been continuing – man and boy – for just over half a century now. Magazines do tend to take on a life of their own; it is something to do with the synergy which results when a bunch of people from disparate backgrounds, with disparate life experiences, and disparate motivations, all come together to work on a specific project. I am reminded of a book by my favourite author Robert Heinlein. ‘The Moon is a Harsh Mistress’, which was Dear friends, first published in 1966, although its original serialisation took place a year Welcome to another issue of this earlier, tells a stylised story of a singular little publication. revolution on the moon. Based very much on the original 1776 American Each issue, I never really know what’s War of Independence, but with various going to be in it, and the fact that every anarchist and libertarian ideas thrown other Friday we have managed to put in for good measure, one of the most together 120 pages of mildly subversive intriguing characters in the book is gubbins never ceases to be a thing of 4 Magazines do tend to take on a life of their own ‘Mike’. Mike is particularly intriguing, and so adopted a culture of ‘make do because he is a computer. Self‐aware and mend’ as much as was humanly computers are nothing new within the possible. So, successive generations of annals of science fiction, but the technicians added more and more interesting thing about the story given terminals, add ons, and peripherals, for ‘Mike’ in this book is that this self‐ often homemade, to the original spec of awareness totally accidentally. the computer until it bore no relation to that which its original designers had Originally, this computer was a fairly intended. normal computer by the standards of the age (here, we should remind you Somehow, Heinlein postulates, adding that the age described in the book is an all the stuff onto the computer allowed uncertain future for us, and an even it to develop the digital equivalent of more speculative future for Heinlein, ‘neural pathways’ and become not only who was writing fifty five years ago. But self‐aware but to develop a personality to continue... and even a sense of humour. The scenario given for the different I was reminded of this, thirty plus years lunar colonies in this imaginary timeline ago, when I read ‘The Hacker implies that they were not only penal Crackdown’ by Bruce Stirling, which colonies (to a certain extent, at least), remains one of my favourite books to but that they were treated as this day. It tells about the early – pre‐ ubermensch by the ruling elite on Earth, internet – days of cyber‐society, when 5 distance telephone switching system things really were more like the Wild crashed. West than the relatively civilised (note that I say the word ‘relatively’) society This was a strange, dire, huge that we know online today. The great‐ event. Sixty thousand people lost their granddaddies of the hacktivists known telephone service completely. During today as ‘Anonymous’ were the ‘Phone the nine long hours of frantic effort that Phreaks’, who not only worked out how it took to restore service, some seventy to subvert the world’s telephone million telephone calls went systems so they could make telephone uncompleted. calls for free, but also spent so much time studying the great pan‐continental Losses of service, known as "outages" in telephone systems of North America the telco trade, are a known and that they ended up knowing more accepted hazard of the telephone about telecommunications than the business.Hurricanes hit, and phone technicians who were supposed to be cables get snapped by the thousands. looking after the megasystem. Earthquakes wrench through buried fiber‐optic lines. Switching stations It’s been a long time since I read it, but catch fire and burn to the ground.These if you are interested you can get it for things do happen. There are free on Project Gutenberg. contingency plans for them, and It tells the story of events between decades of experience in dealing with 1987 and 1990, one of the most socially them.But the Crash of January 15 was important being this: unprecedented. “On January 15, 1990, AT&T's long‐ 6 It was unbelievably huge, and it were not widely and thoroughly aired occurred for no apparent physical and explained. The root cause of the reason. crash remained obscure, surrounded by The crash started on a Monday rumor and fear.” afternoon in a single switching‐station I’m sure that you can guess where I’m in Manhattan. But, unlike any merely going with this. There have been several physical damage, it spread and spread. times in my life when I have read a book Station after station across America (both fiction and non‐fiction) at a collapsed in a chain reaction, until fully particular time which caused it to affect half of AT&T's network had gone my thinking and even my world view. haywire and the remaining half was One of these times is when I read Arthur hard‐put to handle the overflow. C. Clarke’s ‘The City and the Stars’ Within nine hours, AT&T software whilst sitting, smoking a suspiciously engineers more or less understood long cigarette, on the shores of Loch what had caused the crash. Replicating Ness. This sent me off on one the problem exactly, poring over psychogeographical tangent, which was software line by line, took them a to remain with me for several years. I couple of weeks. But because it was no longer believe that ‘Nessie’ is some hard to understand technically, the full sort of ‘Colonial Hydroid’, but it was an truth of the matter and its implications interesting exercise in examining my 7 internal logic. these days is predicted with artificial Reading Bruce Stirling’s book very soon intelligence and called the after reading ‘The Moon is a Harsh ‘Technological Singularity’. Mistress’ made me wonder whether And then I read that both Abbie something similar to ‘Mike’ had Hoffman and Jerry Rubin were involved happened to this enormous trans‐ in the early battles against the continental telephone system. Bruce telephonic establishment, and I fell Stirling described how the AT&T head over heels in love with this book. telephone systems and its attendant network of computers had expanded in “During the Vietnam War, there was a the ways that the original designers of federal surtax imposed on telephone the system could not have foreseen, service; Hoffman and his cohorts could, with all sorts of unlikely, and often and did, argue that in systematically unauthorised, other things having been stealing phone service they were bolted on over the years. engaging in civil disobedience: virtuously denying tax funds to an illegal As 1991 continued, there were strings and immoral war. of successive AT&T breakdowns across the country, and the more that Bruce Stirling described what had gone on, But this thin veil of decency was soon only a year or two before when I first dropped entirely. read it, the more I was convinced that Ripping‐off the System found its own the telephone network was something justification in deep alienation and a that was likely to develop self‐ basic outlaw contempt for conventional awareness in a scenario similar to what 8 bourgeois values. Ingenious, vaguely Robert Heinlein, Bruce Stirling, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Smith, politicized varieties of rip‐off, which The Cure, Janet Jackson, Eminem, Phil Collins, Gene Gallagher, Sonny Starkey, Rod Stewart, Focus, Richard Freeman, Friday might be described as "anarchy by Night Progressive, Canterbury sans Frontieres, The Merrell Fankhauser Show, Mack Maloney's Mystery Hour, Dan Andrei convenience," became very popular in Aldea, Ibert Norman Benedict "Norm" Amadio, Sean Reinert, Joseph "Joe" Payne, Antonia Apodaca, William Reed Mullin, Yippie circles, and because rip‐off was Lucien Barbarin, Robert Castle Schoen, Nils Olaus Lennart Karl so useful, it was to survive the Yippie Magnell (aka Ola Magnell), Andrew Brough, Buddy Cage, Ljiljana Petrović, Kofi Boakye Yiadom, Ivan Král, Andrew movement itself.” James Dalrymple Gill, Diego Farias, Harold Beane, Abdel Aziz El Mubarakm, Lyle David Mays, Joseph Shabalala, Rick Wakeman, The Fall, Venom, Paice, Ashton & Lord, Michael I don’t think that I still believe in self‐ Bruce, Doug Harr, Tears for Fears, PAART, Alan Dearling, Kim aware telephone systems, although I’m Thompsett, Meniscus Hump Records, Harvey Summers, James Wright, Ministry of Echology, Caedmon, Kev Rowland, Teloch not 100% sure that I don’t either. But as Vovin, Grave Gnosis, Intergrity, Krieg, Oyton Ersan, Paradise Lost, Refuge, Tony Klinger, Digitiser, Mr Biffo, C.J. Stone, I said at the beginning of this editorial, I Brexit, Infinity Forms Of Yellow Remember, Hawkwind, Martin Griffin, Jonathan Downes, The Wild Colonial Boy, Martin have seen every magazine that I’ve ever Springett, John Higgs, The Future Starts Here: Adventures in the worked on develop its own ‘personality’ Twenty-First Century and go off in tangents that the original founding editor would never have imagined.