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REMINGTON LAUNCHES GHOSTWRITER HARTFORD, CT — Shortly after buying his greatest clarity in the United States . Remington Model 1 typewriter, Mark Twain This form is the first, but not the last.” dashed a letter off to his brother in 1875. In Although the grandiloquence of this text his note, he seems equal parts addled and speaks of a bygone time, it nevertheless pro- Martin, Truth, Power, Self ; Michael Mass- satisfied with his new purchase: poses an understanding of media which clas- ing, A New Horizon for the News and The “I am trying to get the hang of this new sic Marxist media critique failed to fully rec- News About the Internet, No 14 and 15, vol- fangled writing machine, but am not making ognize. Dallas W. Smythe takes up the story, ume 1.1, NYRB; Anna McCarthy, Stanley a shining success of it. [ . ] I believe it pointing out that the only time we’re not Milgram, Allen Funt & Me; Patricia Mellen- will print faster than I can write. One may productive is when we’re asleep, because our camp, Video Politics: Guerrilla TV, Ant Farm, lean back in his chair & work it. It piles an waking time is itself sold as a commodity Eternal Frame; Laurie Ouellette,“Take Re- awful stack of words on one page. It don’t to advertisers. Audience production is the sponsibility for Yourself”: Judge Judy and muss things or scatter ink blots around. Of material connection between advertisers and the Neo-liberal Citizen; Susan Murry & Lau- course it saves paper.” content providers — audiences are as much rie Ouellette (eds.), Reality TV: Remaking Knowing they had a notable writer for a commodities as TV sets and cars. The differ- Television Culture; Mark Poster, The Mode customer, Remington’s salespeople contacted ence is that you can’t sell a car to a TV set of Information: Poststructuralism and So- Twain to see if he’d vouch publicly for their but you can sell an audience to an audience. cial Context; Felicity D. Scott, Living Arc- Remington Model 2, which he’d purchased The end product of the media machine, hive 7: Ant Farm; Allegorical Time Warp: as soon as it was released. In a typed note of therefore, is not the passive consumer liv- The Media Fallout of July 21, 1969; Richard all caps he declined, signing off not as Twain, ing in a relationship of “bad faith” with the Serra, Television Delivers People; Michael PRIOR but with his given name, Samuel Clemens: products they consume, because in the post- Shamberg, Guerrilla Television; Dallas W. “Please do not use my name in any way. mass media world there is no endpoint, as Smythe, On the Audience Commodity; Ted TEMPORAL Please do not even divulge the fact that I the producer-consumer feeds back produc- Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture; own a machine. I have entirely stopped using tion in the form of content in the form of Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics: or, Control and the Type-Writer, for the reason that I never participation. The spectacle doesn’t alien- Communication in the Animal and Machine LOGIC, could write a letter with it to anybody with- ate us from the real and make us passive; it and God and Golem, Inc. out receiving a request by return mail that unremittingly seeks to involve us, requiring TIRED I would not only describe the machine but us to test ourselves, measure ourselves, re- state what progress I had made in the use of tain visibility as a self-performing commod- PORT AUTHORITY — “Take the statement it, etc., etc. I don’t like to write letters, so ity. This excitation is fed back through the ‘I am tired,’ for example. While its meaning I don’t want people to know that I own this system and comes out as the narrative of the does not change, it is sometimes true and curiosity breeding little joker. Yours truly, hard-working, self-reliant, independent, effi- sometimes less so, and a person acts differ- Saml. L. Clemens.” cient, networked individual. ently depending on the extent of tiredness — It’s easy to speculate as to why Twain HEY For optimists, the shift to self-perform- going to bed versus going on a hike.” might’ve signed his note as Clemens. He ance — the demand to be as visible as pos- This example of Temporal Logic is bor- routinely signed “Sam” to friends and used sible — affords new opportunities for free- rowed from last Sunday’s New York Times Clemens both in business and for personal MANHATTAN dom, as new technological devices give ac- obituary of computer scientist / philosopher notes. Perhaps he didn’t want his more fa- cess to more information and to new modes Amir Pneuli. Temporal Logic is a formal mous pen name used in any way with Rem- One five three five / For your information of social interaction. In this reading, we are system of logical reasoning used to evaluate ington’s products, so he refused to even sign battalion one is requesting Hazmat / One caught in a virtuous feedback loop in which statements whose truth changes over time. it. But it also seems at least a little bit pos- five three seven / Ten four / Battalion one desire can be expressed and fulfilled, and in Dr. Pneuli did not invent this branch of sible that when he wrote as Twain, Clemens / Five people on the boat / Hazmat battal- which technology will ultimately take care logic, but he was the first to apply it to the THE FIRST/LAST NEWSPAPER felt he had a kind of creativePORT power AUTHORITY, he did ion 641 / 8th Thank Avenue, you New Manhattan York City, / Ten NY calling 10036 21 NOVEMBERmuch fussed 2009 over pussy, began dying in 1765. of the inequalities in the world. But we’ve 0 ÷ 0 → 0 operation of computer systems, with his fun- not possess as Clemens alone, but that when Hazmat battalion / Go ahead Manhattan / These first last words were printed as The heard all this before. Every technological in- damental 1977 paper, “The Temporal Logic he wrote with the Remington it had a kind Can you confirm with the first battalion if Pennsylvania Journal, suffering from a ter- novation comes with the promise of greater CHICAGO — If you’ve read newspapers reg- of Programs.” of power over him, and even over Twain, the Ellis Island ferry is docked on the Man- minal British Stamp Act, designed the front personal freedom and social equality. The ularly for the past two decades, probably you Before Dr. Pneuli, self-taught Oxford pro- that made them both uncomfortable, even hattan side / I was unable to contact a rep- page like a tombstone, “EXPIRING: In Hopes chemical technology of drugs turned the hip- encountered higher mathematics once: when fessor Arthur Norman Prior rigorously artic- anxious. “Mark Twain” started out not as resentative from the New Jersey police / Ten of a Resurrection to Life again . ” The pies on to a communal future that ended in Andrew Wiles proved Fermat’s Last Theo- ulated Temporal Logic and gave the subject a given name but as a sailor’s pseudonym. four / Hazmat battalion was unable to reach editors knew that death, even if it was their ruins. The technologies of community radio rem in 1994. Maybe you paid enough at- its name. Of course, the multi-part prob- Before that it was a sailor’s call — “mark anyone on the Jersey side / Ten four / First own, was a hot commodity. stations and video collectives sporting Por- tention to notice when the Poincar´eConjec- lem of truth as it varies over time sits at the twain!” — meaning the river’s depth was two battalion / We are in touch with the New The anxiety over our newspapers’s own tapaks and satellite dishes promised a future ture was confirmed in 2006. If you haven’t root of the basic philosophical problems of fathoms (12 feet) deep, and the boat could Jersey side / We are going to let everyone extinction leaves us in a rhetorical editorial where, once again, technology would help to encountered anything else on math, it’s not determinism and free will. However, Prior’s navigate its passage safely. When Clemens off the boat / Hazmat battalion / Ten four tailspin, asking impulsive questions that don’t build a cozy global village. And the dream your fault — zero divided by anything is still Temporal Logic specifically distills the fun- selected Mark Twain, he selected not only / Negative for Jersey authorities / We are welcome answers and feeling like monkeys was revived yet again when Howard Rhein- zero. Why isn’t there popular-press coverage damental concepts of a truth which is nego- the name of a storyteller but the sign of a letting people off the boat / Battalion one making faces in the vacuum. Questioning gold announced the “virtual community,” a of mathematics? tiated over time into a mathematically rig- technician, who, with this piece of informa- / Hazmat one / Hey Manhattan / Subway the newspapers’s mortality quickly becomes new “Jeffersonian democracy” of cybernetic BECAUSE IT’S TOO OBSCURE. An un- orous logical language whose formality and tion, could signal the crew that the ship was near the Atlantic wall / Unknown / They about our sense of civil geography and home- free expression. spoken premise here is that the press doesn’t abstraction allows it to address an infinitely in control and could be guided safely down say they have a unit on the scene / ten four ostasis. We are always the observer and the So we come to the stage where, to be part cover obscure things.