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SURFPUNK Technical Journal 026
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 93 17:01:23 PST
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From: cocot@osc.versant.com (grne guvf pneq va unys gb eryrnfr lbhe serr fnzcyr)
To: surfpunk@osc.versant.com (SURFPUNK Technical Journal)
Subject: [surfpunk-0026] RANT: talkin bout SnowCrash
Keywords: surfpunk, Snow Crash, Dreamtime, Senoi
| All our songs are original. Just ask
| Paul Simon -- he wrote most of them.
| -- The Coolies
Is this a first? A piece of original writing for SURFPUNK.
| "...This Snow Crash thing - is it a
| virus, a drug, or a religion?" Juanita
| shrugs. "What's the difference?"
I fixed one serious bug in the rant ... hope mnq dont mind. strick
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Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 23:45:39 -0800
From: Jamie Walker <mnq@well.sf.ca.us>
To: surfpunk@osc.versant.com
Subject: talkin bout SnowCrash
Kind of a review... well, sorta comments really .... nah, mostly
mind-babbles, y'know... well, some stuff about _Snow Crash_,
by Neal Stephenson and a bit of Gibsons' _Mona Lisa Overdrive_
This cyberspace, it calls, it's so attractive. I don't even
program, I can only imagine what it's like for those who play MUD,
or work with virtual reality, or hack all night. My taste of it is
online, communicating with people in chat and posts. That's world
enough for me, a feeling there. And it's like relating with people while
on drugs, or on a journey, or whatever high you're onIwhen you get
back to this world, the relationship often doesn't hold.
So what is this cyberspace, where is it?
It's this place where anything can happen, where you can be
anything. It's possibilities. It's Mind. It's the pleasure of
existing in pure Mind...
When you're online it doesn't matter what kind of body you have,
what physical/emotional capabilities or incapabilities. You connect,
or don't, solely on mind. And maybe on how mind translates through
keyboard, headstick, or whatever physical means you use to interact
with your computer. But still, I would think, it's the closest we have in
this physical world to that connection.
I begin to wonder, is it the same place as the Australian Dreamtime?
the place where the Senoi have their dreams? In Gibson's Mona Lisa
Overdrive, this planet's cyberspace meets and merges with that of
another planet, or was it another reality?
As our machines become more sophisticated, and we are able to
experience the cyberspace described in _MLO_ and _Snow Crash_ ...
maybe we will meet Dreamtime people and native American myth people
and all those powers that are always under the surface that we see. In
Snow Crash .. .we *do * meet them there ... the Loa. and other stuff I
couldn't follow ... hmm ... have to read it again.
Maybe this is what is goin to save us...bring us back to true spiritual
roots which our linear material-based culture has ripped us away from,
and has methodically ripped every people it has encountered away from.
Haha to you, western civilization, the circle is about to close, you will
meet the thing you have been running away from in the cyberworld you are
creating, and we can be one again.
Ah, but I rant.
So what about _Snow Crash_? I loved it. Great story. Great writing.
And this thing about cyberspace. It just gave me another picture of it,
added to my understanding of it. Just by the description, the story of
good ol' Hiro Protaganist flipping in and out, and sometimes operating
in both places at the same time.
And the usual cyberpunk stuff, where the world of the future is
disintegrating, and you have to be fast and tough and techno-savvy to
survive. I'd probly get killed off in ten minutes, if I was really there.
But in this book, I was Y.T., and I was fast, and I could survive and enjoy.
Somehow I could see our world of the present like that.
The desperation of it. I used to hate it, the disintegration, the
destruction of nature. Fled to the woods, Oregon, for many years
to escape it. But now I'm resigned, I've come back to watch the fun,
hug people while I can before it all goes down. (Because...well, folks...
I think we're blowing it, I think our planet's going down. That's what I
see.)
And ol' _Snow Crash_ just helps me to accept it, to love it while
it does. Gives me that feeling. On the edge.
--------------------------------------------------
why yes, I do live in East Palo Alto ...
mnq@well.sf.ca.us
--------------------------------------------------
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The SURFPUNK Technical Journal is a dangerous multinational hacker zine
originating near BARRNET in the fashionable western arm of the northern
California matrix. Quantum Californians appear in one of two states,
spin surf or spin punk. Undetected, we are both, or might be neither.
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to <surfpunk-request@osc.versant.com>. MIME encouraged.
Xanalogical archive access soon. We've got esprit up to here.
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