Are you serious? Hello. Hello. Thanks, and, welcome.
Thank you. Good to be here.
It is a delight.
As I sometimes do, I'll try not to fanboy too hard, but as I told you,
I grew up,
on a lot of your publications.
And,
I guess in in some form or fashion, you know, you could say I was radicalized.
Alright. By Mondo February, which is an incredibly cool publication.
Oh, I hope that doesn't get me into trouble. We're radicalized. No. No. No. I'm still here. I'm not I'm not I haven't gotten that that bad. But,
but I say that tongue in cheek, but only to say, you know, I I
I got
gosh. I got started on a VIC 20 and a 300 baud modem and Fido Net, you know, for those who are listening and watching it. It dates me. Good times. But it was an amazing time. And so it is a genuine pleasure to speak with you,
about your experience, what you
saw, what you see, what you foresee,
and that's really what I'd love to get into today.
Those who are not familiar didn't have the good fortune to be around,
during the publication of some of those early
would you call them zines, I guess? Or were they?
Maybe the
one was a zine, two were a zine, then Manta 2,000 sort of became an official
magazine, I guess. Time. Yeah. Yeah. I wish I'd I wish I'd kept mine. You know, they were glossy, and it was it was amazing to hold, which, there aren't that many of anymore. But, Yeah. I mean, I have I have to scare them up when people ask me to look at them. Yeah. You know? But I do have them all,
one place or another.
Yeah. It's it's it's something that absolutely, needs to be preserved. And for those who aren't familiar, we'll have notes.
We'll have links in the show notes so they can get a sense of some of these publications. But
where I'd like to start are you is, you know, in in Mondo February heyday
and and certainly I I would imagine before you saw the Internet as a tool for individual freedom,
for systems that perhaps the term was not decentralized back then, but but, you know, broke up and took back some of the power. So my question is, as a bit of a retrospective,
what core beliefs about user empowerment, you know, sort of drove that vision
or individualism
drove that vision? And and which do you see still hold up today?
Okay.
I mean,
there was the, famous John Gilmore
quote,
that the Internet
views censorship as damage and roots around it. Absolutely.
So it was viewed as an utterly
out of control
space in which,
it would be difficult
to, set up roadblocks,
I mean, including
roadblocks
related to commerce.
So so the I mean, the original idea
was that
everything
on the Internet can be easily copied and can be shared with anybody else
on the Internet.
Therefore,
it
won't be controlled and it won't be monetized.
And and the original culture of the Internet,
this basically disallowed
commerce, you know, other than small scale kind of Craigslist
sort of,
sort of things.
You know, you go on your, BBS,
go on the well or whatever and offer something for sale, but, you don't
you don't, market Coca Cola on there or,
you know,
books,
you know,
gathered up by Amazon and that sort of thing.
And this was mid eighties, late eighties. Right? Yeah. Late eighties. Into the into the early nineties. I mean, up until the web, really.
I mean, the the web is what
made the commercialization,
plausible.
You know, it is a gathering of images
and context
and
websites that, would draw people
to them and so So that original ideal
and and the idea
was you know, he asked about,
individual empowerment
and,
decentralization.
And the idea was that every individual
would be a
media a media deity, a broadcasting
system once it, you know, got into,
being able to share,
video. And
everybody would have a website and have text and make that available. And,
for the most part, people didn't
dream too much about what Jaron Lanier has
labeled siren servers,
that there would be,
these
attractive,
well built,
apps like Facebook that would suck everybody in,
to
a space,
controlled
by, the masters of that space and and by the needs for,
investment capital and and that kind of thing.
So
I I don't think it up to a point, you know, maybe some people predicted that
this would be what would eventually occur, certainly that commerce
would occur. But the form that it took, I don't think there were a lot of people
imagining that. And,
initially, I mean, there was this kind of idealistic
social media
idea. I mean, that, Wired,
started something called Electric Minds,
that was run by that was run by Howard Rheingold and,
Justin Hall and and, you know,
cyber techno idealist.
And I'm sure they imagined that they would sell ads,
to keep it going, but, that,
I don't think they imagined anything on on the scale
of
what occurred with,
Facebook and Twitter and
all those behemoths that
emerged
eventually,
out of all that. So, you know, that that was the early idea. And what, I mean, for you personally, what sparked your
decades long pursuit
of drawing my hearts and minds, you know, to to what the Internet
made possible,
or online, I guess, as it were, pre Internet?
Yeah.
In the seventies,
I,
was,
converted,
sort of to
a
transhumanist
kind of vision by Robert Anton Wilson and Timothy Leary,
two,
two psychedelic
pranksters.
Tim was mostly known during the nineteen sixties, but,
became a
techno
enthusiast in the nineteen seventies and actually
spoke to a, libertarian convention in, like, 1979
and told them, you know, the Internet was going to,
make your dreams come true about, having,
you know, complete
liberty,
in terms of communication,
possibly commerce,
and that sort of thing.
So, those two,
jokers,
kinda kind of got me going.
But
in some ways, my openness
to
techno
optimism
really goes all the way back to,
being a high school student in the late nineteen sixties.
And there was,
I mean, there were two streams
in counterculture in the nineteen sixties. One of it was
get the hell out of here, back to the woods,
get rid of your TVs,
Don't get involved with computers. You know, IBM is is the enemy.
And then there was this other aspect,
that,
the machines of loving grace,
poem by the hippie poet,
Richard Bratigan,
that,
the
cybernetics
would deliver
a kind of utopia,
the kind of utopia
longed for by hippies who didn't wanna get jobs. You know?
So that so that we could, root around,
the whole
drag,
you know, the tiresome
drag of adulthood
and, you know, move into a
a groovy
a groovy world. So, you know, I carried those
hopes with me, you know, all the way into
the nineteen nineties with Mondo February,
you know, with
an increasing
sort of post punk
streak of doubt and nihilism kind of mixed in there,
you know,
the feeling of, being assaulted by,
the Reagan
era,
and, the,
war on drugs particularly,
which I will point out probably damaged,
more lives than anything we've seen so far,
from the new administration,
although they've got plenty of time to work on it. But,
yeah.
So, yeah, I mean, this is a
tremendous
mix of emotions and thoughts that have followed me
all the way through
the decade of the What if that thank you for that, are you?
I'll come back to this, but but Yeah. At this moment, you know, as we kinda come off of that part of the conversation,
what if that spark remains? I mean, what is your read? What is your take on
what remains of that original,
animating vision?
I'm I'm fairly,
dystopian dystopian
at this particular moment.
But, you know, I always keep my net out for,
something
different
occurring.
I have enthusiasm
for
the enthusiasm
about AI.
You know, I am not really that enthusiastic
about it.
I'm not, you know, I am not
convinced that large language models, you know, are
bringing us to a singularity
or,
some place where
cybernetics,
will deliver the so called machines of love and grace.
You know, I'm also increasingly skeptical
about,
whether
even if we could deliver good and plenty for all,
the,
human
kindness
does not exist to want that to happen,
that,
there are enough people who
want bad things to happen to a lot of people,
to drive
anything utopian
into a ditch.
Maybe.
But, I mean, that's that's
where I go in terms of hope.
Really just kind of the the the wilder
possibilities
are are the things that,
give me even a a smidgen
of hope. I'm doing a thing right now. I'm doing a
performance, and I have an album.
And I call the performance,
come to the Gulf Of Deliria.
And, you know, as
my impulse,
as we shifted
into,
the new situation
with, Trump and so
my impulse was to
be kind of a grounded person who,
will be a nanny and lecture people about truth and justice and,
the difference between
fact
and fantasy and all that. And at some point, I just tell you, fuck it. I'm gonna ride the delirium.
And and that's kind of where where where I am with that right now.
Look for the bright spots and and and ride them. I love it.
Yeah. So you you mentioned and you have called out certainly,
not just today, but but, generally, companies like Google and Facebook for consolidating the Internet.
When would you say
not to put words in your mouth, but, you know, assuming you saw a change at some point, what early signs of that shift
did you notice? And,
you know, perhaps for those who aren't deep in the technology, they're end users, so to speak. They're, you know, individuals going about their daily lives and using these
tools. How has it changed the balance of power between users and
platforms?
Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, there was,
the
the stock
market, the the big rush of the late nineteen nineties.
You know, and you could see that all these,
companies that were
coming online were getting
big
investment capital. They were they were getting,
I can't remember the word for it, but they, you know, they were,
going public. That's that's a problem I was looking at. At. Right. And so, they were taking on a responsibility
to make big money.
So you could see
that
right around that time, the late nineties, that the thing was
going
to
shift,
towards
competition.
The terms at that time was capturing eyeballs.
That was that was the idea.
So you could see that competition was going to,
put more power into the hands
of the,
host, the sites,
and less into the hands of the participants and and
and, so the the people
using the site. And and and, more people would be
there'll be a tremendous pressure
on these organisms. You know, I think Yahoo was one of the early ones to,
capture people
and keep them engaged and keep them on your site and start giving them stuff that would keep them there.
Start punishing people for linking out or or making it more difficult for people to link out and to just move, you know, freely
around,
you know, finding ways to discourage that. So you could start to see that
in the, late nineties.
And, I mean, there's been complexity
all along. I mean, during the
so called Arab Spring, even Facebook could still seem heroic,
you
know, as a way for, people
in,
some of those countries to,
spread the word about the rebellions, the that they were have having and so
So there but but, I mean, there was a lot of complexity there.
And then, I mean,
basically,
you know, a lot of discoveries
of kind of sleaze
going on in Facebook. Yeah. I'm a little bit,
wobbly on the details at the of this point, you know, that bringing in
companies to,
analyze data and to push people in
various,
directions,
you know,
Russian server farms and all that kind of stuff. I mean, that was that was real. So, I mean, that,
you know, it there was a decay,
I think. I I think,
Corey Doctorow, when he came up with the term enshidification,
I think decay was one of the words that he used. There was a kind of decay,
and I think
that started becoming more extreme, like,
probably in
during this century, during this,
millennium.
Yeah. DRM and and the like. And, certainly, you know, Corey, as you note, has got some great insights there.
And and, you know, we fast forward to today, and it's obviously a big topic of conversation that,
as you noted, what was
incremental is now in effect
total surveillance,
of these platforms,
be it government driven or company driven or a combination of both.
AI compounds a lot of that.
What's your what's your read, if you if you have one, are you on
what should could be done
technologically,
culturally,
or otherwise
to restore user control
and get us back in line with the Internet's original ethos? Are there steps we can take? Not to say there's a silver bullet, but
any thoughts on where we should be headed?
I mean, I've heard of people
making projects, you know, to create,
new social media platforms that they hope will attract people,
that will, you know, within their architecture will,
protect people,
better.
You know? I mean, the the Firefox people seem to want to do that, but then again, they dialed that back a little bit recently. Absolutely. I can't remember the details. They did something that was kinda not consistent with,
their their claims.
You know, I mean, Kevin Kelly, you know, who is the original editor of Wired,
was always saying privacy,
forget about it.
You know? Forget about privacy. And, you know, that may be
a direction
for relative
liberation as just to forget about
privacy
and then work
with that and work around it,
and still
struggle to have your own voice
and maybe to create
spaces
outside of these,
controlled siren servers.
You know,
and it it becomes widespread enough that people
want to do that.
I mean, the thing about surveillance is nobody's even
pretty much nobody's objecting to it now. You know? I mean, that's pretty much the
the vibe around
surveillance. I mean, if you remember,
I can't remember the guy's name, the guy who went to Russia who revealed the, NSA.
Oh, Snowden. Snowden. Right. If you remember that, and it was like, oh my god. You know? Isn't this terrible?
The NSA is is spying on us and all that. And, you know, now,
the guy who was,
advocating for the spying is, you know, like a hero on MSNBC
because he's opposed to, you know, the extreme right and all that. And so a lot of people have just said, you know, forget
forget
surveillance.
You know? People people who are making surveillance
apps are bragging about it
everywhere and anywhere without anybody objecting to it. I mean, a lot of them are are created and sold by Israel.
So, I mean, that attracts
activists to,
say, look at these bastards who are making surveillance technology.
But in general, it's just, you know,
nobody is really
trying to
nobody's bothering with it. It's it's like the
the the song is over. It's, you know,
Everybody's gonna be seen
by everybody.
Well and and I wonder and, I mean, I
I I mean, the problem is not everybody, though. It's they're seen by companies and
they're powerful,
and they're not necessarily
seen by everybody unless,
there are people who have a lot of will to,
to wanna look at what everybody's doing, in which case I some people can do that. Some hacker types can do that. I think of the term,
surveillance, which is to Yeah. To surveil the surveillers.
Yeah.
And not enough of that, for sure. I mean, that was one of the principles of cyberpunk
and, Wiki
WikiLeaks
and all
that, was privacy
for
the the weak
and the individual
and,
no privacy for the powerful and,
you know,
yeah, the wealthy, powerful, etcetera.
Where where if at all, I mean, you've operated under a a NIM, a pseudonym for all these years.
Someone looks hard enough, they're gonna find your name. Oh, yeah.
But talk to me a bit, are you, about
what that choice was like when you started
and did it have anything to do with
they're going to find me, they're going to know me, they're going to discover things about me, so I'll just operate
under a pseudonym, or was it something entirely different?
It was just playful, really.
You know, and I've I mean, I've always loved
Wavy Gravy and Jill Biafra
and Alice Cooper and people with
get their you know,
get fun names for themselves. And,
you know, I've been reading Robert Anton Wilson about the
he wrote about the serious mystery that, people from the
Dogon,
Dogon
tribe had
mapped out the Sirius star system without any telescopes
and all all that.
So I use the name r period u period s I r I u s.
I like to call it as an open invitation to alien contact.
But, mainly, it was I mean, it was a a quippy a quippy name. You know, I'd gone from being a yippee to being a quippy.
And, you know,
you know,
a a challenge to, people who wanna take anything too seriously.
So, you know, so Verner Vinge, True Names. It wasn't,
it was more more of a good time, which is great. Yeah. Well, you know, on that land or rather down that sort of path,
your work blends what I believe you you call, correct me, are you anarchic optimism?
Did that I think I think that got in the mix there somewhere.
I I might have used that frame phrase at some point.
I I think I think I'd I'd
think of Terence McKenna maybe using that.
Okay. Maybe I misattributed.
But I think a general sort of distrust of authority. You had some you had you you took at least one run-in the Libertarian Party for office. Is that Yeah. No. Yeah. I made my own thing. I called it the Revolution Party. I called it a mix of
liberalism
and libertarianism,
although it was really more a mix of leftism and libertarianism. I was just going along with the the general usage at that time that people were Classical liberal press.
Yeah. But,
also, friendly friendly welfare,
you know,
anti corporate,
but also,
maximum individual freedom. And how do we somehow
make those things happen
together, which is complex. You know? And
on Facebook, I think I still
describe
my
self as
a left
slash
libertarian
and then in parenthesis,
impossible.
Well and in fact, that that that is really that goes to sort of the heart of my question is, obviously,
we all evolve over time, our views,
our beliefs perhaps,
that we hold most dear may hold true, but will evolve and change.
What is it the core of your take, your perspective
on
what technology can do to empower individuals? You know, what's what's sort of the,
the core of of those beliefs that you hold, if you could unpack that a bit for us? I think that
there is an intrinsic
value,
for human beings
in being connected
not only with friends and family like you can do over Facebook, but being connected to the overall,
zeitgeist, the everything
everywhere all at once situation.
There's some intrinsic
value
in there.
There's some way
even though,
the power
of surveillance,
falls largely into the hands of the rich and powerful,
there's something
intrinsically
potentially valuable
in having a big view
of,
the human species and what's going on with human minds
out there
even when it's disturbing
and and disgusting.
You know? I mean, you know, in the early days of techno culture, cyber culture, manda February,
psychedelic,
optimism and idealism,
You know,
John Perry Barlow,
you know,
talking about the global mind,
that we would get together in a global mind and that, you know, this would be a happy space for people
sharing minds. And,
you know, what we discovered that to,
to turn,
to John Paul Sartre,
hell is other people's tweets. You know, we discovered that
other people's minds are are not
something we, necessarily
want to be engaged in. There's a lot of trolling. There's a lot of,
the grotesque.
There's a lot of, four chance
style,
overgrown adolescent fucking around just for the just for the hell of it. I mean, early on, I was like,
I think I might have,
nominated 4chan for a Webby because I thought it was just wild and amazing,
that, this irreverent
crazy thing was going on online. And, I mean, one of the things that came out of,
four Chan, people forget, was anonymous.
Anonymous,
you know, kind of
took down,
what's the Tom Cruise
organization
again? Oh, Scientology.
They kinda took down Scientology
several notches.
You know? And the Scientology never quite,
so people forget because,
the,
alright, also
ended up coming out of, four Chan,
but people forget that. So, I mean,
I'm drifting a little bit from where I was originally
going. But, No. But I think, you know, to the point of anarchic optimism,
classic liberalism mixed with libertarianism,
that freedom, that unhindered freedom.
Yeah. And I'm I'm not sure where it's all going. I know, like, you do Bitcoin stuff, and,
it's been one of the
ideals within counterculture
that there should be
alternate or alternative currency,
you know, currency that was, you know,
actually structurally
different
from the,
controlled,
you know,
main
mainline
currency. Hippies and,
kind of,
green
lefty types in Ithaca did Ithaca bucks or Ithaca dollars or whatever. And I know there have been all these experiments with alternative currency.
So when the,
Cypherpunks
came along
and, they started talking about the possibilities of cryptocurrency,
I was very
interested in the idea of a
uncontrolled
area
of
exchange,
even though the impulse
was more towards the anarcho
capitalist
vibe, which
is not my thing.
I mean, my
coauthor
on many of
my books and senior editor at two thousand Saint Jude
Milhau,
who was part of the Cypherpunks.
She was kind of a more of a left libertarian,
and she was excited and engaged with
the the Cypherpunks
and and the
potential for cryptocurrency.
So, I mean, I follow these things with
great great interest grave interest great interest, a mix of,
you know, fear and loathing and excitement.
And,
I mean, it's one of those, roll of the dice things that we don't know
where it's it's going to land
land ultimately.
So I'm very,
very intrigued.
I participate only very lightly
in it, but I'm, very intrigued
by by the whole thing. And I and I if I'm gonna promote my song,
I'm against NFTs,
which
Fantastic. It's actually there. So I'm against I'm against NFTs. It doesn't matter much to me, so it's ambiguous.
But it ends with,
get your money worth nothing and your clicks for free. So Oh.
Love that reference. We'll see where it ends up going. I won't mention the name of the band that you're giving homage to because you never know what YouTube will do with it. Right? But I get the I get the reference. It's fantastic.
What what would you say? And I I don't wanna ask you, are you, to speak on behalf of of St. Jude who,
I will also make sure to to link to, but
either sort of in your conversations with her or in your own
discovery early on,
what were the characteristics as you remember them
of that ideal
alternative
currency,
and how close it, if at all, have we gotten, do you think, with with Bitcoin?
If you have a if you have a perspective on that.
Yeah. I mean, I think I think it was an anarchist
vision, whether you're left anarchist or right anarchist. You
fight that out once you've made the,
made made governing very
difficult,
having a
dominant currency very difficult and so So,
I mean, the vision was in some ways pretty simple.
It was
out of control,
making currency
out of control.
I don't think there's
much to say
beyond that. I mean, there was a crypto anarchist
manifesto
by Tim May that
Sure.
Laid down the idea that,
it would cut down the,
fences
between
exchange,
the, you know, between
the you know?
And, I mean, he admitted that, it would make possible,
you know, difficult and dangerous underground
exchanges, you know, hiring hitmen and and
stuff like that.
And I think the idea was that stuff goes on anyway, but that it could be broadly
liberating.
So I think that's what the what the vision was at the at the time. I
I can't really
credit
much complexity
to the idea.
I mean, I did it you know, clearly,
cryptocurrency
did not
turn out to be a completely private
means of exchange.
It turned out to be discoverable,
and to a degree
controllable
by
states and
tax people
and,
people who
might not like dissidents of various sorts and,
all that nation states. I mean, it just didn't
happen the way the original,
you know, crypto anarchists
imagined,
which, I mean,
kinda seems like the story of everything.
And It is definitely an experiment still underway.
Yeah. Absolutely.
Yeah.
What is your take zooming out? Are you on
the ability for,
for individuals to harness these technologies for good? And I'll just pick AI as an example.
You know, do you think it is
destined to to end up in corporate control, or do you see glimmers of of lighter hope for for individuals to harness it to take back more power, to take back more
independence?
Yeah. I mean, I,
write for MindPlex
dot ai, which is, run by Ben Ben Gertzel,
who,
is
working
on
AI and AGI.
And,
his project along with SingularityNET
is beneficial
AI with a very
clear focus
on,
making sure
that it's
a beneficial
project, not a top down
ownership
project.
And what would define that in your view? And I don't assume that they're hard and fast rules, but what separates Beneficial
AI, say, from
what companies like OpenAI and others are doing?
You know, I'm not I'm not that sure. I mean, that's that's kind
of that's kind of work for,
Ben and and people like that to,
to work with.
You know, I I am told by my friend Dan Kottke that the
OpenAI
guy,
has reasonably good intentions,
maybe compared to
Meta and,
GROC.
So there are
levels
of,
good and evil,
potentially going there. At play there.
Yeah.
I mean,
I think for for people to
have their own
system to,
to be able to have something that they manage themselves
that, nobody,
from an outside
company can interfere with and prevent them from
using in the way that they
wish to use it, which brings us back in some ways to the cyber cypherpunk,
sort of sort of anarchic
view.
But then, you know, then there's the question of mitigating against
somebody
using all that power in a in a destructive way. So so, I mean, there's a lot
of complexity,
also
there.
You know, I think,
you know, in terms of AGI,
you know, if if people are going to be taking these things under the skin, are they gonna be taking these things
inside of themselves?
They don't wanna have, you
know,
Apple setting
limits on
what they can
think and, you know,
physically towards purchasing
things.
You know? There is. I I don't know where you that. If you,
have followed Black Mirror, the Oh, yeah. Writings and now the show Yeah. Yeah. The current season, I have to I have to confess I tapped out. It is
darker than I'm prepared to watch at this point, but without giving away too many spoilers. So if you're if you're starting the thirtieth season spoiler alert,
they deal with or they tackle the issue
of a brain implant
that turns into a subscription service.
And
that that
And the couple keeps going back to their
doctor, and they keep on it was a perfect unshitification
model where they just keep getting charged more
money to upgrade.
And then if you didn't upgrade,
what would really happen to you wasn't just that there was a nice level above you, but at your your level would be really being downgraded.
Very much a kind
of, model of,
discourse.
It's a it's a great season. I mean, you know, if you're if you're if you're ready to,
take in take in really dark terrain. Emotional well is deep enough that you feel you can Yeah. Yeah. You know, I and I are still trying to get through it.
Yeah. Yeah. No. I enjoyed it thoroughly. And I think, you know, but I mean, I think to to to to the point,
it is,
it is a cautionary tale. And and Yeah. Perhaps perhaps, and I'm suddenly forgetting the the writer's name, he takes it to an extreme but for purpose.
If we shift then, you know, I think to what
is the bulk of of your work in your career are you I mean, you foresaw
the Internet's potential ahead of many,
and you've spent your career in the creative,
arts, generally speaking. I mean,
let's go there for a minute. And I know
from my own experience in the entertainment industry and from friends and colleagues who are building
businesses in this area, you know, there's a lot of hope, a lot of potential with regard to
what,
emerging technologies can do to empower artists, writers, creators
to sort of reclaim
their work.
I'd love to get your take on where you see
the wind blowing with regard
to the Internet today
and and what artists, writers, creators can do to
to get back some control
and to, have a little more agency. Well, it's a
it's a good question. That's for sure.
I mean, you you can you can try to stay off. If you're doing music, you can try to stay off Spotify, and,
Bandcamp is a pretty good app
still so far. Develop new develop your own develop your own app. Put your
put your work on a discreet
app.
You know? I mean, it used to be a website,
and, you know, that's a cool thing too. But, I mean, I think maybe the thing to do is is to put your stuff on a discreet
app and to maybe put it on
a a physical
product that,
people can get a hold of, you know, back to,
back to physical
things.
And, you know, it got many in excuse me. Are you are you seeing many in your circles,
do that? I know you're on the West Coast, and you hang out with a lot of super interesting people,
making
art.
What what what are you sort of picking up in terms of of those that are maybe early in their career or
or perhaps have the freedom to not care and can kind of do whatever they want? Yeah. I mean, there's two extremes. I think I think there's a a desire for,
a live,
gathering
again,
for, stuff that you can bring
to, you know, the the
post digital potlatch.
Yeah. I mean, you you organize
something wonderful like a dork bot in San Francisco. You organize it digitally,
but then the people What is that? Could you could you tell me more about that? Kind of a gathering,
that,
happens in San Francisco,
maybe about once a month or even less that,
tend to bring the old cyber tribes
together,
and, people come and make, presentations.
And,
it's certainly organized online,
but the final result is
people,
getting together in physical space. I think the,
the combination
of using digital space and using physical space,
using digital product and using physical product and how you can integrate those things,
That's kind of an up and coming thing. But, also,
my feeling
from a creative perspective,
and I know many people who don't feel this way,
is, you know, use
use AI.
You know,
use the Ella large language models and, you know, the the
music
generating apps and the visual generating apps and
make them your own. Do something
interesting
with them.
And,
I wrote a piece for MindPlex
quite a while back,
when,
a lot of the controversy about,
AI use
in
the visual
and,
musical
and textual
creative arts,
were being discussed.
And I did contextualize
it within,
what was one of Mondo two thousand's
favorite things,
which was fair use and appropriation.
And
there's a whole discussion
about,
whether,
these very big profit
driven companies,
how we relate to,
their use
of fair use and appropriation,
and then our use of what they're doing,
for our own use. And
what I wanted to do was
to, put
not a position of advocacy, but a position
of,
looking at the
wild complexity
of the whole thing.
And, it's actually a two part series. One of,
it was going on during the writers' strike. So there was that also
going on. The writers wanted to,
make sure that the large language
models were not taking away
their jobs,
which maybe they were in our, and maybe they aren't.
But,
I wanted to, delve into the complications
around that. Now I'll send you links to those articles that you Terrific. That you can share. Yeah. I think, I mean, you raised to me, I was I'm reminded of Laurie Anderson, you know, the avant garde artist who I think when,
streaming
the streaming debate ignited
in Right. You know, the early two thousands, mid two thousands perhaps,
that I'm reminded that, you know, she,
if I recall correctly, was talking about sort of using some of these new tools as part of her art. And so what I hear you saying is that,
you know, to as opposed to being, as I understand, some are,
offended and afraid of
AI and other tools, but you're saying embrace it and turn them into instruments or or tools of art.
Absolutely. I mean, if if Mazda 2,000 had one message, it was be like Laurie Anderson. But,
I mean Outstanding if I if well, I missed that, and so I'm glad that That's a high point of, creative brilliance right there. Indeed. Yeah. Indeed.
Yeah. I I jest up to a point, but,
yes.
You know, use the
tools as creatively
as,
as as possible to make the the kind of statements that, you want to you want to make.
So any other takes are you on
empowerment, you know, user empowerment? And I I I think back as best I could and I looked up some archives, you know, I was reminded of some of my favorite articles that you wrote, in Mondo and Beyond
and just that unbridled
sense of possibility.
Right.
What if anything, you know, where did you find that today? You you know, we've talked about AI, LMS. I mean, are there other areas,
you know, be it VR, AR,
you know, what gives you or ignites that that same sense perhaps that that many of us had in
the eighties and nineties?
I mean, I remember the
Mondo
editorial or it might have been the reality hackers' editorial that, hackers is the new Prometheus.
You know, that,
you take the tools from the power pole
and,
from the gods and, you,
use them for,
liberation
of the people or just for your for your for your own personal
use. I mean,
I mean, certainly,
you know,
access
to,
potential intelligence increase.
Chemicals and nutrients
seem to be a
field that people are becoming once again more interested in. Biohacking.
Yeah.
The, the,
liberation
that seems to be occurring within society
of,
availability
of,
psychedelics
as cause cognitive enhancers.
The, system is being very cautious about
LSD, which, is a at a microdose level is an excellent
cognitive enhancer, but there's, you know, psilocybin.
There there are other
routes to, cognitive enhancement.
So there's
there's that. So on an individual
level, you know, you can you can find
enhancers.
You know, I mean, you can get onto the dark net, but you can also just find things that are
that are completely legit and are completely out there. You have to protect yourself against scams and rip offs,
when you're pursuing
enhancement
kind of things.
But,
there's a lot of stuff out there,
for,
the individual
and for groups.
I think that,
Timothy Leary at the end of his life,
emphasized
teamwork,
the idea of getting together in small teams,
and you protect your team against
outside
rip offs and, you know, scams and,
sleaze, but,
but that you do your work
with people.
So it's not just a liberation
of the individual,
but it's the,
formation
of,
small groups, little tribes.
Man,
he did this during his process of dying,
to have a group
around you and to work
as a team around,
his needs and around, what can be
broadcast
out into the world by having
by having a team.
And,
that's another kind of self enhancement
is the potential for,
people taking a friendship more
seriously.
Very poignant today. Yeah. And as,
the trolling world gets more difficult,
meaning
leaning into friendship,
can be a a good thing to,
start doing.
And a great reminder as many of us, myself included, spend too much time staring at screens and not enough time touching grass and and hugging friends. Yeah. All that stuff. Yeah. So I'd love to wrap up here. Are you what, what should we look for next from you? I know you mentioned recently you had an event,
on the Best Coast.
And,
anything anything else that we should be looking out for? New album?
I mean, yeah, the event might be over by the by the time people see this. But if it's not, it's at Gray Area in San Francisco
on June 7. It's
titled, come to the Gulf of Deliria at Gray Area.
And,
among our guests are Mark Pauline from Survival
Research Labs,
the guy who, did the
wild fire breathing,
robots out on the streets of San Francisco and all that kind of stuff.
I don't think he can do that anymore, but, I think he'll probably do Something about permits, maybe? Yeah. We were gonna try to get, he has an indoor machine, but, apparently, it's not gonna fit through the door. So
that's not gonna happen. We're gonna have Rudy Rucker,
the cyberpunk science fiction writer there,
and a lot of
riders.
But the music will still be out there.
The Smarter Kings of Deliria by Are You Serious and Friends.
That's p h r I e n d z. Yes.
I'll be, continuing to, write columns from mindplex.ai.
So,
that stuff will be out there. I'm doing
a, book about the history of Mondo 2000
with,
Shera Chess,
who is a
a, teacher,
a professor
in
media
and culture
studies at the University of Georgia.
So a combination
of my wild takes
with her more grounded,
academic
and,
you know, fact based
materials.
So that will be available next year.
Fantastic. We are doing them that
for Strange Attractor Press. Great day. And they're a subsidiary
of
MIT
Press, so that should be all
widely
available.
So that's a big, big project that we're doing right now.
So people should,
look out for that.
I'm excited for it. I will keep my eyes peeled and keep the, or rather have all those links in included in the show notes. Ari, it's been a pleasure. Real pleasure. I appreciate you taking the time and, getting a shake. On. Yeah. I should've worn my dentures, but,
I'm not I'm not ashamed. You know? You're great. You're a great man. Thanks so much. I look thinner without them. So
Yeah. Maybe I look thinner I look thinner without hair. That'll be my honor. That's it. Alright.
Thanks so much, Ari. Take care. You as well. Bye bye.