1 Disinformation® Editorial Master List Alex Burns ([email protected]), 1999—2002 Comment (21st November 2007) I first heard of the US-based subculture site Disinformation® when RU Sirius profiled Richard Metzger for a 1997 issue of Australia’s 21C Magazine. When 21C ceased publication in 1998 Metzger suggested I write for Disinfo. I became the site’s editor in November 1999 when Metzger began pre-production and shooting the Disinfo Nation television series for the United Kingdom’s Channel 4. “The Internet can be like a black hole,” he warned me in an email. For the next several years Disinfo ran a popular ‘webzine’ with dossier profiles of forbidden knowledge, current socio-political issues and subcultural icons. Publisher Gary Baddeley and I worked with a variety of writers including Sara Aronson, Nick Mamatas and Preston Peet. But by 2002 the dotcom bubble had burst, the pre-millennial tension had ebbed, the September 11 terrorist attacks had occurred, and I was fast approaching editorial burnout. Disinfo’s Russ Kick took over editing the site before establishing his influential Alternewswire and Memory Hole projects. When I returned to the editorial helm, we soon had a new site version and a “day’s best links” format. In 2007 we launched a user-driven version that enabled fresh fever from the skies. During the ‘classic’ era Disinformation attracted both praise and criticism—often from the same person. Our fans understood that Metzger and I both drew on diverse sources for Disinformation’s editorial philosophy such as Jello Biafra’s injunctive to “become the media”, Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman’s propaganda model in their book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988), Paul Feyerabend’s “anything goes” approach in Against Method: Outline of an Anarchist Theory of Knowledge (1975), and most importantly, our knowledge of and direct personal experience with subcultures and practices. Our critics attacked our brand and stance. Ultimately, some critics felt that Google’s dominance in search made Disinformation obsolete because we could never cover everything in enough depth. I felt Google like any tool augmented yet did not necessarily replace this ‘meta’ stance. The following is an excerpt from the daily file I used to edit Disinformation throughout the 1999—2002 period, minus project tracking lists for contributors and about 75 pages of unused hyperlinks. It was an early Google and pre-Wikipedia attempt to map out topics for Disinformation’s future dossiers, aligned with Disinformation’s section categories at the time. I started brainstorming this list with the explorers I had at hand—Mondo 2000, 21C, Austin’s FringeWare store, Brian King & Stuart Swezey’s Amok Fourth Dispatch (1990) and Fifth Dispatch (1999), Adam Parfrey’s Apocalypse Culture (1990), Russ Kick’s Psychotropedia (2002), V. Vale’s Re/Search volumes—and went from there. I don’t claim credit or originality for the material below: you should check out these sources and others for more reliable and in- depth guide-maps to Chapel Perilous. The list is an artefact from a creative, experiential process. The critics were right in one sense: I found on a daily basis that my strategic execution didn’t always match the vision and intent. What I did find was unexpected: domain/taxonomy mapping and site editing processes can lead to self-change if approached with the right understanding and practice. Again, this insight isn’t new or original: it’s in the work of Douglas Engelbart, Sherry Turkle, Pattie Maes, J.C.R. Licklider, Howard Rheingold, Umberto Eco, Robert Anton Wilson, Greg Egan, Neal Stephenson and many others. For its attuned readers, Disinformation’s really scary secret was how they used it for Timothy Leary’s “intelligence increase”, P.R. Sarkar’s “alchemical ontological transformation”, or whatever metaphor you choose for self-realisation. 2 Disinformation Competitor Intelligence Resources: AC= Academic AR = Art B = Business C= Conspiracy F= Film G = General Culture I = Internet L = Literary M = Media ME = Men’s Interest MU = Music N = News SC = Science SF = Science Fiction SP = Spirituality SU = Subculture V = Video Z = Zine ABC Futures Exchange (http://www.abc.net.au/futures/) N AK Press (http://www.akpress.com) N Alt.Culture Pages (http://www.altculture.com) C Alt Lit (http://www.altlit.com) L Alt X (http://www.altx.com) A Amarillo Globe-News (http://www.amarillonet.com/) N Amazon (http://www.amazon.com) M American Broadcasting Network (http://www.abcnews.com) N American Journalism Review (http://www.Ajr.org) M AMOK Books (http://www.komabookstore.com) C Anders Sandberg: Trans-Humanism Network (http://www.aleph.se) C Artbyte (http://www.artbyte.com) AR Art Bell Radio Show (http://www.artbell.com) C Art-Asia Pacific (http://www.artasiapacific.com) AR Art News (http://www.artnewsonline.com) AR Asimov’s Science Fiction (http://www.asimovs.com) SF Atlantic Monthly (http://www.thealtantic.com) N Australian Broadcasting Corporation (http://www.abc.net.au) N Barnes & Noble (http://www.bn.com) M BBC Online (http://www.bbc.company.uk) M Bill Cooper (http://williamcooper.net) C BioMedNet (http://www.biomednet.com) N Bitch Magazine (http://www.bitchmagazine.com) SU Bizzare Magazine (http://www.bizzaremag.com) C Blather (http://www.blather.net) C Bleeding Music (http://www.bleedingmusic.com) MU Bloomberg Television (http://www.bloomberg.com) M Brain Sushi (http://www.brainsushi.com) SU Brill’s Content (http://www.brillscontent.com) M Business 2.0 (http://www.business2.com) B Cairo Times (http://www.cairotimes.com) N Carpe Noctem (http://www.carpenoctem.com) SU Celeb Sites (http://www.celebsites.com) M Channel Seek (http://channelseek.com) M 3 Chicken Out Of Hell (http://www.seattlesquare.com/pandemonium/featurestext/COOHArchives.htm) SU Cinescape (http://www.cinescape.com) M Civilization (http://www.civmag.com) M Channel 4 (http://www.channel4.com) M CNN (http://www.cnn.com) M Conspiracy Digest (http://www.conspiracydigest.com/) C Conspiracy Nation (http://www.shout.net/~bigred/cn0.html) C Conspiracy Planet (http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/) C Conspire! (http://www.conspire.com) C Counterpunch (http://www.counterpunch.com) C Courier Press (http://www.courierpress.com) N Court TV (http://www.courttv.com) N Creation (http://www.creationent.com) C Cult Times (http://www.visimag.com/culttimes) F Cyberspace ORBIT (http://members.aol.com/phikent/orbit/orbit.html) C Darkside Of The Web (http://www.darklinks.com) C Dawn: Pakistani Herald (http://www.dawn.com) N Dazed & Confused (http://www.confused.co.uk) N Deseret News (http://www.deseretnews.com) N Dimension 5 (http://www.dimensionfive.org) N Discover (http://www.discover.com) SC Don Webb’s Letters To The Fringe (http://cyberpsychos.netonecom.net/fringe/) C Empire (http://www.empireonline.co.uk) F Engage Media (http://www.engage.com/engagemedia/) N E-News (http://www.enews.com) N EPNWorld (http://www.epnworld.com) N Esoterra (http://www. sexynexus.com/esoterra) C Essential Media (http://www.essentialmedia.com/) C Exit (http://www.exit.org) C Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (http://www.fair.org) C Fast Company (http://www.fastcompany.com) B Feed News (http://www.feed.com) N Feed Magazine (http://www.feedmag.com) L Feminist Majority Foundation Online (http://www.feminist.org) N Feral House (http://www.feralhouse.com) C Flak Magazine (http://www.flakmag.com) C Flatlands (http://www2.flatlandbooks.com/flatland/) C Flux Europa (http://www.fluxeuropa.com) N Forbes (http://www.forbes.com) B Fortean Times (http://www.forteantimes.com) C Fox News (http://www.foxnews.com) N FringeWare Review (http://www.fringeware.com) C Free World Alliance (http://www.freeworldalliance.com) C Fresh Meat (http://www.freshmeat.com) Z Front Wheel Drive (http://frontwheeldrive.com) C Fusion Anomaly (http://www.dromo.com/fusionanomaly/nodebase.html) SP Getting It (http://www.gettingit.com) N Global Business Network (http://www.gbn.org) B Gnosis Magazine (http://www.lumen.org) SP Gray Areas Magazine (http://www.grayarea.com/) C Gurdjieff International Review (http://www.gurdjieff.org) C Im-Ur (http://www.im-ur.com) I International Paleo-psychology Project (http://www.paleopsych.org) N International Psychohistory Association (http://www.psychohistory.com) N Ironminds (http://www.ironminds.com) N ITN World News (http://www.itn.co.uk) N 4 JFK Lancer Productions (http://www.jfklancer.com) C Jim Romenesko's Media News (http://www.poynter.org/medianews) N Jinx Magazine (http://www.jinxmagazine.com) SC John Brockman’s The Edge (http://www.edge.org) N Journal Of Psychohistory (http://www.psychohistory.com) A Journal Of Pan-Dimensional Literature (http://www.newpara.com/) C Judge Cal’s High Weirdness (http://www.judgecal.com) C Juxtapoz (http://www.juxtapoz.com) N Ken Wilber Online (http://wilber.shambhala.com/index.cfm) SP Kennedy Assassination Research (http://www.nara.gov/nara/jfk/jfk.html) C La Spirale (http://www.laspirale.org/) SU Loaded (http://www.uploaded.com) ME Levity (http://www.levity.com) N Lobster (http://www.knowledge.co.uk/xxx/lobster/) C Locus (http://www.locusmag.com) SF Los Angeles Times (http://www.latimes.com) N Manga (http://www.manga2000.com) V Max More (http://www.maxmore.com) N M/C Reviews (http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/) A MediaLook (http://www.looksmartradio.com/media.html) M Media Central (http://www.mediacentral.com) C Media Guru (http://www.mediaguru.org) C Meme Central (http://www.memecentral.com) N Men In Black (http://www.meninblack.com) C MetroActive (http://www.metroactive.com) N Miami Herald (http://www.herald.com)