IGNAL /NFORMATION VIRUSES Page 50 Z-V/NDERGROUND CASSETTE CULTURE page 110 •!!^/fEROX AND MAIL ART Pages 42 & 84 bUNTERESPIONAGE TOOLS Page 61 YPERCARD SOFTWARE Pagel02 NTELLIGENCE DRUGS page 56 ^^iOLE EARTHI DEPARTMENTS/REVIEWS LANGUAGE 13 Chinese Word Processors 91 A Writer's Time AUDIO MUSIC 19 Go Public! 109 Digital Samplers n Computers & Music n The Complete Manual of Pirate Radio 112 Cheapest Synthesizers 23 Tele-Recorder 150 n Cheapest Transcriber 113 Portable Studio n Composer/Performer n Panasonic Answering Machine 114 Homegrown Music 27 The Radio Papers n Uncle Van's Chord Book 29 Pacific Radio Archive 115 How to Build a Small Budget Recording • New Dimensions Radio Studio From Scratch VISUALS n Modern Recording Techniques 38 Cricket Draw/Adobe Illustrator 116 The Art of Electronic Music n CODA 39 Verbum n Boeing Graph 117 The Absolute Sound D Jam Session/Studio Session 40 Suterisms D MIX Bookshelf n The Anatomy of the Image Maps 41 Visual Anthropology n Instant Litter FILM AND VIDEO 45 Up To Your Ass in Alligators/Work Hard 121 Off-Hollywood D Canyon Cinema and You Shall Be Rewarded n Target Video D Canon PC-20 Personal Copier 122 Working With Video n Television Production Handbook n Deep Dish TV INFORMATION CULTURE 123 Sony Camcorder n The Bare Bones 59 High Frontiers a Reality Hackers Camera Course n Video Goals 60 Megabrain n The Three-Pound Universe BODY ART 69 Fund for Open Information and Accountability n Stockwell Reading List 124 Tattoo n The Tattoo Historian 125 The Decorated Body COMMUNICATIONS n Obsolete Body Suspensions 76 Share-Right n How to Look It Up Online GATE FIVE ROAD 80 Information Highways 134 Backscatter 81 The Media Lab 138 Gossip 87 Fax 140 Reader Services n Adopt a Library 97 Build Your Own IBM Compatible n Cheap IBM Clones 141 Masthead n Financial Report 101 The Tomorrow Makers 142 Unclassifieds n The River That Flows Uphill 144 Thank You 145 Hohday Gift Order Whole Earth Review D Issue Na 57 O December 1, 1987 (ISSN 0749-5056) (USPS 077-150). Published quarterly by POINT, a California nonprofit corporation. Editorial office: 27 Gate Five Road, Sausalito, CA 94965:415/332-1716. Subscriptions $20 per year; single copies $5. Inquire for first class and international air rates. Second-class postage paid at Sausalito, California, and at additional mailing offices. Claims for missing issues will not be honored later than six months after publication. Back issues are available on microfilm and as xerographic reprints from University Microfilms International, Serials Bid Coordinator, 300 Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106. Whole Earth Review is indexed by Access: The Supplementary Index to Periodicals, Alternative Press Index, Magazine Index, Consumers Index, and Humanities Index. Copyright © 1987 by POINT. All rights reserved. Subscription circulation: 20,310. Newsstand circulation: 29,130. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Whole Earth Review, Box 15187, Santa Ana, CA 92705. Number 57 FEATURES Winter 1987 Introduction: 73 Computers and Nonprofits Information Takeover Easing the transition by Kevin Kelly by Steve Johnson I Want To Xerox My Dreams 11 Tlie Bulletin Board Proletariat by Jeanne Carstensen by Kevin Kelly Untranslatable Words Virtual Communities by Howard Rheingold The computer network as electronic watering hole by Howard Rheingold 14 Bio-Acoustics Habitat ambience and ecological balance by Bernard L. Krause, Ph.D. 16 Tools for Environmental Recordin; by Bernard L. Krause, Ph.D. 20 The Art of the Interview by Lloyd Kahn Look Ma, No Computer by Sallie Tisdale 24 No More Pissy Rock Stations Leaking Down On Our Heads 92 One Highly Evolved (But Cheap!) Community radio via satellite Personal Computer Toolbox by Lorenzo Milam by Art Kleiner Live Radio Art 98 If Software Companies Ran the Country ... by Bonnie Barnett by Jay Kinney 30 Sketchy Ideas 102 Whole Earth Hyperlog by Bill Ritchey Beginning a communication medium called Stackware 34 Visual Thinking by Kevin Kelly by Howard Rheingold 36 Fractals and Such 104 Bettered by the Borrower Shamelessly psychedelic The ethics of musical debt, computer graphics by John Oswald by Robert Horvitz 110 Cassette Culture 42 Xerox Art Home-recorded music by Tom Patrick thrives in the underground 46 'Zines: Your Right To Rave by JonPareles by Jeanne Carstensen 111 Cassette Activism 48 Information as an Artist's Material by David Ciaffardini by Judy Malloy 118 Virtual Reality 50 Memetics Computers encourage The science of information viruses substitution of by H Keith Hensen symbols for the world by Yaakov Garb 56 May You Never Sleep Intelligence-enhancing drugs 126 Dreamwork by R. U. Sirius by Howard Rheingold 61 An Intelligent Guide to Intelligence 128 Interactive Literature (of the espionage variety) by David Shaw by Robert Horvitz 130 Sharing the Uncertainty 70 H-Bomb Ti-uck Watch Health in the Information Age by Nathaniel Batchelder by Tom Ferguson, M.D. INFORMATION TAKEOVER KITIXKLIIY "Ihe pnilitcralion and .:on\ei)|>enc« ideas become the voin of the realm, government and Ihe militarv-indus- at rommunication channels i» a tech­ and ideas can be multiplied and trial complex are amazed, contused, nical Kvolution. It'b also a political spread to the masses in the miracu­ and anxious because thev lan no revolution." lous way of tishes and loaves, then lunger lontrtil the course of inluriiia- paradoxes reign, and paradoxical will tion an) more than the little gov lan. Thaf s btcivart Brand's explanation of be the politics. The iii\.ui( has its own li!c. Ihe po- the sustained lervor intubing a loose Ittiial n-v ision begun by a comiiiuni- undeiground ot social visionarieb, ar- Almost every claim about Ihe inlor- latuiii undergniund like computer tists and maverick barkers. As our ination revolution is sleadfasll\ true. nelwoiks (see "Ihe Bulletin Kn.iul »ociet\ shifts from one governed by Small computris inevitably combine I'nilftarijt, p. 7") is to M kiio-\ I- materials to one regulated by infor­ into oppnessivv big bmlhers; small edge the htandint; ol Ihis olher Ihini; mation, those who contnil informa­ computers inevitably empower in­ now living ainoni; us the ciiiuit of tion have political power. Rut con- dividuals. Global communications inliiimation IrollinK information is a slippery make the wiirld smaller; global inloi^ thing. Ihe technologies uf camera, mation makes the universe bigger. Charting the current is partiall) what copier, computer dismantle the time- Art is btunted by machine; artists are Jeanne Carstensen (managing editor honnred notions ot ownenhip. When liberated b) machines. I'he paperless ol Ihe f ssi-n/ii./ Whoh I mil' Ciilalnf;) office in the baik woods generates and I have done in ihis issue. We've more tree-led paper than ever. All used the most veP'atile te<.hn»logt wc true. All contributing to a fluctuating have to date, paper and ink \ou II reality. notice gaps in our crude survev. The bugaboos about copvright and When (he cuircnt comes vour wav, who owns ideas (see ' Betteivd by the send a signal back with what we've Kormwer," p. 1II4I is one example ot missed. this oscillating signal. Being first New Vork publishing doesn't see with an ideji doesn't guarantee power. anvthing of this invisible uprising. Neither does being the laigest. Big We st-nl a couple uf proposals to l*ublisher's Kciw, and gut back a shrug. We're sitting on Ihive times the I amount we couM fit into 144 pages, l^rhaps il s time we slapped it all into a lOugh, home-brewed, reader^ WANT TO written, sell-published, lunky, oi-er- si/e (.Jtalog. Again. XEROX MY Krhaps we are whistling in Ihe daik. If the task of pnnidiiig at i ess to a knowledge econuim strikes you as DREAAAS necessarv, write us. It's a new sfiLiel\ ot thf sonsos, a trre piiem ol lonlu-iiiin and all posiibili- Iv. I ars, liini;ues, eves, lingers, mist-s, hijins- (lur senstir\ ninite is strelihing into spair V\e re heaiin); miirr, see­ ing more. s,i\ iPt; iniiiv, tn more peo­ ple — >as!ri - across airtva\es. nireft the not of signaU (hat assault us wrrv and V reens. day'' \cw skills must bo learned and the ever-evolving context in which we Inmrnidtiiin travels so last that spare communiLale must be n'cviiluaied al- b (ibMileto, as Mi I uhan piiitiied out. musi dail^ We 'are' wheivwr iiui sensory extcn- sionti in awake - the London slock I'm a little afraid ot mv ow ii culture's discovers new surtaces. New contain- market, the war in the Btrsian C>ulf, love ^fiair with (ommiinications tech- en. \ew skin. It's bv 'pi iv ing" that the persnn nef>A fo us in bed. The trick nnlogy. The mediuin, atler all, is not artists ,ind other innovdlbis eventujily It not til lot>c oneself in the wires, not (he whole message. It's what we sav, oux the R.'al language > out ul media, to ^kip awai on the perpetually nill- and how well. It's Ihe soul we bring so thai 'nc-d:,i keep cm working on a iiig ai!wavcb. To alwavs ioel Ihe warm to our machines that will ihange ihe human stale. breath stretihipi; out lu vou tmm world. An old lesson'* Sif ^ik- Nil IS .ihou*. expinrition' in arrois the pillow the lonimii-ni- aliiins giasnoot' usen But there is much fun to be had in try to pertect ihei' unJ"istanding fat iiom making communiraliun ea- this I burning of Ihe senses. 1 want ot (heir tools, and s>i no! be used sieii the new media of the "informa­ t(i Xenix my dreams.