Subject: Majordomo file: file '2.09/departments/introduction'
Reply-To: info-rama@wired.com
Status: R

--

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
=-=-=-=-=Copyright 1993,4 Wired Ventures Ltd.  All Rights Reserved=-=-=-=-=
-=-=For complete copyright information, please see the end of this file=-=-
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

WIRED 2.09
Introduction
************ 

"What happens when you combine media voyeurism, technological exhibitionism, 
and strategic simulations? News flash: in the 21st century army you get the 
cyber-deterrent."

 - James Der Derian

                                   * * *


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=WIRED Online Copyright Notice=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

         Copyright 1993,4 Ventures USA Ltd.  All rights reserved.

  This article may be redistributed provided that the article and this 
  notice remain intact. This article may not under any circumstances
  be resold or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior 
  written permission from Wired Ventures, Ltd.

  If you have any questions about these terms, or would like information
  about licensing materials from WIRED Online, please contact us via 
  telephone (+1 (415) 904 0660) or email (info@wired.com).

       WIRED and WIRED Online are trademarks of Wired Ventures, Ltd.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Subject: Majordomo file: file '2.09/departments/tired-wired'
Reply-To: info-rama@wired.com
Status: R

--

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
=-=-=-=-=Copyright 1993,4 Wired Ventures Ltd.  All Rights Reserved=-=-=-=-=
-=-=For complete copyright information, please see the end of this file=-=-
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

WIRED 2.09
TIRED / WIRED
************* 

                             TIRED        WIRED

                           Clinton        Duckman
                         Free O.J.        O.J.-free
                 Universal Service        Universal Access
                          Cable TV        Cable Modems
                     Melrose Place        Models, Inc.
                            @times        Time on AOL
                         Manhattan        Sim City
                Hunter S. Thompson        William T. Vollman
                 Trade show booths        Mosaic home pages
                          Football        Soccer
                       Frame relay        SMDS
              David Spade for AT&T        Bob Ross for MTV
           Government intervention        Currency Markets
                           Ray Gun        SnowBoarder
                       Celebrities        Communities

                                   * * *


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=WIRED Online Copyright Notice=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

         Copyright 1993,4 Ventures USA Ltd.  All rights reserved.

  This article may be redistributed provided that the article and this 
  notice remain intact. This article may not under any circumstances
  be resold or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior 
  written permission from Wired Ventures, Ltd.

  If you have any questions about these terms, or would like information
  about licensing materials from WIRED Online, please contact us via 
  telephone (+1 (415) 904 0660) or email (info@wired.com).

       WIRED and WIRED Online are trademarks of Wired Ventures, Ltd.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Subject: Majordomo file: file '2.09/departments/top.10'
Reply-To: info-rama@wired.com
Status: R

--

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
=-=-=-=-=Copyright 1993,4 Wired Ventures Ltd.  All Rights Reserved=-=-=-=-=
-=-=For complete copyright information, please see the end of this file=-=-
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

WIRED 2.09
WIRED TOP 10
************ 

1. Martian Popping Thing - Rubber alien whose eyes, ears, and mouth
bug out when you squeeze its belly.


2. The Fighting Nun - Forget the singing nun, this puppet throws a
holy left hook.

3. Deluxe Rubber Chicken - Comes with explanation of how the chicken
joke originated during the French Revolution. Seriously!

4. Tube of Gloom - Sound tube that moans and groans when you tilt it.

5. Rubber Eyeballs - Complete with optic nerves. They look great in
Jell-O.

6. Magic 8 Ball - Why bother with high-priced prediction machinery? Do
it yourself.

7. Popping Potato Gun - Shoot nutritious spuds at your co-workers.

8. Red-Eyed Gecko - 10 1/2 inches of rubber reptile fun.

9. Australian Frilled Lizard - Not quite as popular as the
above-mentioned gecko, it still makes for a heck of a "monitor"
lizard.

10. Tiny Treasures Assortment - Like raiding a gumball machine.
Hundreds of tiny toys, animals, and plastic bugs.

                                   * * *

Source: Archie McPhee catalog of toys, novelties, and pop culture junk. 
Info: +1 (206) 782 5737, mcphee@halcyon .com.


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=WIRED Online Copyright Notice=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

         Copyright 1993,4 Ventures USA Ltd.  All rights reserved.

  This article may be redistributed provided that the article and this 
  notice remain intact. This article may not under any circumstances
  be resold or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior 
  written permission from Wired Ventures, Ltd.

  If you have any questions about these terms, or would like information
  about licensing materials from WIRED Online, please contact us via 
  telephone (+1 (415) 904 0660) or email (info@wired.com).

       WIRED and WIRED Online are trademarks of Wired Ventures, Ltd.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Subject: Majordomo file: file '2.09/features/fan.four'
Reply-To: info-rama@wired.com
Status: R

--

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
=-=-=-=-=Copyright 1993,4 Wired Ventures Ltd.  All Rights Reserved=-=-=-=-=
-=-=For complete copyright information, please see the end of this file=-=-
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

WIRED 2.09
The Fantastic Four Movie You'll Never See
***************************************** 

It's in the can. It has very nice special effects. You'll never see it.

By Sheila Muto


When The Thing roared "It's clobberin' time!" comic-book readers knew that 
The Fantastic Four - superheroes Mr. Fantastic, The Thing, The Invisible 
Girl, and The Human Torch - would pulverize whatever evil menace threatened 
humankind. But "clobberin' time" came for Roger Corman's movie version of 
the Marvel Comics classic before it even hit the big screen.

Budgeted at a paltry US$2 million, the special effects-laden film was set to 
premiere this year. Charity events tied to openings were scheduled. Trailers 
appeared in movie theaters. And along with director Oley Sassone, the actors 
embarked on a promotional tour for the film.

But The Fantastic Four disintegrated before film critics could whip out 
their notebooks.

German producer Bernd Eichinger and his Neue Constantin Films, which 
purchased the movie rights from Marvel, sublicensed the rights to producer 
and B-movie king Corman in 1992. Shortly after the film was completed, 
Eichinger paid Corman $1 million to repossess the rights.

The $2 million version was shelved so that 20th Century Fox and Home Alone 
director Chris Columbus could make a flashier $50 million-plus version with 
celebrity actors.

"They showed a total disregard for the people involved," said director 
Sassone. "We had a good film, for what we had to work with."

Since Corman's film was nixed (though bootlegged copies are sure to 
surface), here's a peek at the superhero movie's special effects, created by 
Mr. Film, a Southern California-based film production company considered a 
pioneer in computer animation.

The film's technically challenging scenes include one in which Johnny Storm 
transforms into The Human Torch and prevents Doctor Doom's deadly laser beam 
from destroying New York. To make it, the actor stepped into a full body 
suit complete with motion sensors - the same type used to track a player's 
movements in a virtual reality game. The sensors transferred the actor's 
movements to a computer-generated representation of a man ablaze.

Audiences may miss the flashy graphics, but they'll also be spared an 
insipid movie with sappy dialogue and an irritating Invisible Girl character 
whose role consists of sewing uniforms and making goo-goo eyes at Mr. 
Fantastic.

Flaws aside, Chris Walker, president of Mr. Film, still hopes that 
moviegoers will someday see and hear Johnny Storm utter the words, "Flame 
on," even if it's not his film. Says Walker: "The fans deserve it."

                                   * * *


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=WIRED Online Copyright Notice=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

         Copyright 1993,4 Ventures USA Ltd.  All rights reserved.

  This article may be redistributed provided that the article and this 
  notice remain intact. This article may not under any circumstances
  be resold or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior 
  written permission from Wired Ventures, Ltd.

  If you have any questions about these terms, or would like information
  about licensing materials from WIRED Online, please contact us via 
  telephone (+1 (415) 904 0660) or email (info@wired.com).

       WIRED and WIRED Online are trademarks of Wired Ventures, Ltd.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Subject: Majordomo file: file '2.09/departments/jargon.watch'
Reply-To: info-rama@wired.com
Status: R

--

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
=-=-=-=-=Copyright 1993,4 Wired Ventures Ltd.  All Rights Reserved=-=-=-=-=
-=-=For complete copyright information, please see the end of this file=-=-
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

WIRED 2.09
Jargon Watch
************ 

Bitnik - One who uses a coin-operated computer terminal installed in a 
coffee house to log into cyberspace.

Cybrarian - One who makes a living doing online research and information 
retrieval. Also known as a "data surfer" or a "super searcher."

Delurking - Coming out of online "lurking mode," usually motivated by an 
irresistible need to flame about something. "I just had to delurk and add my 
two cents to that conversation about the Singapore caning."

Designosaurs - A species, nearing extinction, of designers who refuse to use 
computers.

E-purse (for "electronic purse") - An electronic monetary transaction card 
being proposed by several government agencies.

Glueware - The trend of tying software applications to physical networks 
through the AT&T system. Used in reference to a deal AT&T and Novell have 
struck to adapt Novell local area networking software to communicate over 
AT&T's long-distance network. Intel and Microsoft are considering similar 
arrangements, according to The Wall Street Journal.

NRN (or "No Response Necessary") - A proposed e-mail convention to prevent 
endless back-and-forth acknowledgments: "Thanks for the info." "You're 
welcome ... hope it helps." "I hope so too. Thanks." By putting NRN at the 
bottom of your mail, you absolve the receiver from having to reply, thus 
saving precious e-mail time.

Time Porn - Popular entertainment, such as TV shows like Cheers, Seinfeld, 
and Mad About You, where people never seem to have anything to do except 
hang out. They tease us with the forbidden leisure time we all covet but 
can't have. Used in an article by Colin McEnroe in the Hartford Courant.

Webmaster - The name given to the person in charge of administrating a World 
Wide Web site.


 - Gareth Branwyn

Tip o' the prop beanie to: Robert Lauriston, Ann Okerson, Philippe Scoffie, 
Drue Miller, Jules Marshall, Kristin Spence, Jim Leftwich.

                                   * * *


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=WIRED Online Copyright Notice=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

         Copyright 1993,4 Ventures USA Ltd.  All rights reserved.

  This article may be redistributed provided that the article and this 
  notice remain intact. This article may not under any circumstances
  be resold or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior 
  written permission from Wired Ventures, Ltd.

  If you have any questions about these terms, or would like information
  about licensing materials from WIRED Online, please contact us via 
  telephone (+1 (415) 904 0660) or email (info@wired.com).

       WIRED and WIRED Online are trademarks of Wired Ventures, Ltd.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Subject: Majordomo file: file '2.09/departments/hype.list'
Reply-To: info-rama@wired.com
Status: R

--

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
=-=-=-=-=Copyright 1993,4 Wired Ventures Ltd.  All Rights Reserved=-=-=-=-=
-=-=For complete copyright information, please see the end of this file=-=-
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

WIRED 2.09
Hype List
********* 

1. Net backlash (now: 1, was: 2, months: 2)

It was bound to happen: too many businesses joined the Internet for no 
reason other than fear of looking technologically backward, and now all they 
have to show for it is a loss in productivity as employees spend hours 
reading alt.sex.stories, playing MUDs, and searching for mythical 
net.treasures. Internet domains were snapped up like Florida swampland - 
sight unseen and out of fear of missing the "opportunity of a lifetime." 
While a mass exodus won't occur, a reexamination of the Net and its uses is 
sure to.


2. Commercial parallel processing (now: 2, was: 3, months: 2)

The parallel processing community (and supercomputing in general) has always 
imagined itself unsullied by market forces in its devotion to the frontiers 
of science. Two factors are changing this: government funds - long the 
lifeblood of supercomputers - are drying up, and corporations are 
discovering that they need more horsepower for their growing databases. 
While not glamorous, database servers are crucial for keeping track of 
everything from airline reservations to credit card bills; as these 
databases push the terabyte mark, conventional servers are becoming 
painfully slow. Supercomputer manufacturers are now grudgingly entering the 
field - and the real world.


                      Position     Last Month     On list

Net Backlash             1             2             2
Parallel Processing      2             3             2
Cracker Wars             3             -             -
PCI Bus                  4             -             -
DSP                      5             -             -


3. Cracker wars (now: 3, was: -, months: - )

Wherever crackers hang out, from IRC to MindVox, conversation has turned 
from the intricacies of LMOS to flame wars about the older generation of 
crackers (now in their 20s). The old guard - the Legion of Doom and Masters 
of Deception - is accused of living off its reputation and of being afraid 
to hack. The computer underground has always been a meritocracy: it's time 
for the new generation of crackers to stop arguing and start pulling off 
some Herculean hacks.


4. Peripheral Component Interconnect bus (now: 4, was: -, months: -)

It has become popular to characterize Intel as behind the technology curve, 
but this ignores the PCI bus, which is rapidly becoming a standard. The 
specifications are flexible enough to support the high speeds necessary for 
multimedia applications and are processor-independent. Even Apple's next 
generation of computers will use PCI rather than the NuBus standard, leading 
some pundits to predict a future of interchangeable (and therefore cheap) 
peripherals. Don't believe it.


5. Digital Signal Processors (now: 5, was: -, months: -)

DSPs are well suited for applications requiring video compression and 
advanced sound. The price of DSPs is finally low enough that they are being 
included in many new PCs, and vendors are trying to convince us that this is 
revolutionary. It isn't. NeXT included DSPs in its computers from the start, 
and it wasn't enough to save the company. The real revolution will come in a 
few more years, when DSPs are cheap enough to be used in consumer 
electronics, allowing for a whole new class of interactive pocket devices.


(What's got your hype-detector flashing? Send your vote to 
hype-list@wired.com.)

                                   * * *

 - Steve G. Steinberg


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=WIRED Online Copyright Notice=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

         Copyright 1993,4 Ventures USA Ltd.  All rights reserved.

  This article may be redistributed provided that the article and this 
  notice remain intact. This article may not under any circumstances
  be resold or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior 
  written permission from Wired Ventures, Ltd.

  If you have any questions about these terms, or would like information
  about licensing materials from WIRED Online, please contact us via 
  telephone (+1 (415) 904 0660) or email (info@wired.com).

       WIRED and WIRED Online are trademarks of Wired Ventures, Ltd.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Subject: Majordomo file: file '2.09/departments/reality.check'
Reply-To: info-rama@wired.com
Status: R

--

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
=-=-=-=-=Copyright 1993,4 Wired Ventures Ltd.  All Rights Reserved=-=-=-=-=
-=-=For complete copyright information, please see the end of this file=-=-
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

WIRED 2.09
Reality Check
************* 

You've heard the hype. We asked the experts. Here's the real timetable.

The Future of Transportation
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
According to the US Department of Transportation, US citizens traveled a 
total of 2.24 trillion vehicle miles in 1992. A 1993 US Bureau of the Census 
report reveals that less than 1 percent of Americans ride bicycles to work, 
while 88 percent continue to commute by car. Since the invention of the 
wheel, engineers have been incessantly updating methods of shuttling humans 
and cargo from point A to point B. Where do we go from here? WIRED asked 
five experts to consider the future of transportation and to predict how 
long it will take us to get there. - David Pescovitz


                Deen     Klimisch     Rifkin     Shladover     Welch
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Magnetic        2010       2010        2015        Never       2050
Levitation
Trains in US
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Automated       2030       2025        2010        2010        2010
highway systems
in US cities
--------------------------------------------------------------------
More than 50%   2025     Unlikely      2010        2050        2050
Electric cars
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Robotic         2000       2025        1994       1996-99      1996
Road Workers
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Jetpacks        2050       2000      Unlikely      Never       2020
--------------------------------------------------------------------


Automated Highway Systems in US Cities

Placing your car on autopilot may be the solution to highway gridlock. Deen, 
Klimisch, and Rifkin quote the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency 
Act of 1991, which aims for a test of such a system by 1997. The others 
polled agree that we will see a full-fledged experiment around the turn of 
the century and predict that deployment will follow. However, Welch says 
mainstream use will be impractical, as the necessary technology will jack up 
car prices by thousands of dollars.


More than 50% Electric Cars on US Roads

A large deployment of electric cars will happen only if a battery is 
developed that doesn't need frequent trips to a central recharging station, 
according to Deen and Welch. Research leading to more electric cars will 
occur "because of regulatory pushes, not because of desirability to the 
consumer," Shladover says. Klimisch thinks electric cars will be practical 
only for city use. Welch thinks battery cars are not needed for drastic 
environmental improvement because "air standards could be reached today by 
getting older cars off the road."


Commercially Viable Magnetic Levitation Trains in US

Since the '60s, different countries have been working on systems that 
magnetically levitate and move trains. Klimisch thinks mag-lev could be 
commercially viable if superconductors that operate at room temperature are 
developed. However, Welch and Deen agree that mag-lev trains don't have 
enough of an advantage over high-speed, steel-wheel trains to justify the 
funding they'd require. "We won't have mag-lev trains," says Deen, "until 
some government somewhere decides it wants to make it happen," which he 
estimates could occur by 2010.


Robotic Road Workers

Welch thinks the technology used in "smart pig" robots to repair pipelines 
could be altered to find and repair cracks in asphalt. According to Deen, an 
automated pothole-patching machine that "sees" road cracks and fills them 
was developed in 1992 by the Strategic Highway Research Program. Rifkin 
agrees that some of the technology is available but is confident that "in 
the near term," human labor will not be replaced. "Instead, robotics 
technology will be used as a tool by workers to increase efficiency and 
productivity," he says.


Jetpacks

The jetpack made famous by The Jetsons and developed for real battlefield 
use probably will be found in high-tech toy chests instead of garages - 
because of high cost and low safety - according to Klimisch. Costs are 
simply too high for personal use, according to Deen. Rifkin also cites 
"unknown market demand" as a barrier. Shladover thinks jetpacks will not 
become popular unless "nuclear fusion makes energy so cheap that this 
technology becomes viable."


Reality Checkers:

Thomas B. Deen: executive director, Transportation Research Board
Richard L. Klimisch: PhD, vice president-engineering, American Automobile 
Manufacturers Association

Noah Rifkin: director of technology deployment, United States Department of 
Transportation*

Steven E. Shladover: acting director, California Partners for Advanced 
Transit and Highways

Rupert Welch: editor, Inside DOT & Transportation Week


*his views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the 
department.

                                   * * *


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=WIRED Online Copyright Notice=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

         Copyright 1993,4 Ventures USA Ltd.  All rights reserved.

  This article may be redistributed provided that the article and this 
  notice remain intact. This article may not under any circumstances
  be resold or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior 
  written permission from Wired Ventures, Ltd.

  If you have any questions about these terms, or would like information
  about licensing materials from WIRED Online, please contact us via 
  telephone (+1 (415) 904 0660) or email (info@wired.com).

       WIRED and WIRED Online are trademarks of Wired Ventures, Ltd.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Subject: Majordomo file: file '2.09/features/tilden'
Reply-To: info-rama@wired.com
Status: R

--

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
=-=-=-=-=Copyright 1993,4 Wired Ventures Ltd.  All Rights Reserved=-=-=-=-=
-=-=For complete copyright information, please see the end of this file=-=-
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

WIRED 2.09
Chaotic Robotics
**************** 

If you thought robots with brains were tweaky, how about robots without 
brains? Mark Tilden is building them.

By Fred Hapgood


The story of robotics over the past four decades is one of complicated 
machines that don't work - or, anyway, not for long. Canadian roboticist 
Mark Tilden (currently at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico) has 
been trying a different idea: building very simple machines that work 
continuously, for decades. Tilden creates small, elegant 'bots by scavenging 
parts from the jetsam of consumer life: dead calculators, motors from 
defunct camcorders, discarded toys, and reprogrammed digital chips from 
singing birthday cards. WIRED caught up with Tilden at his Third World Robot 
Games in Toronto, where, Tilden says, humans act as reproductive agents for 
robots.


WIRED: Have you been involved with robots for long?

Mark Tilden: Since always. I built my first robot doll out of wood scraps at 
the age of 3 and progressed from there to a Meccano suit of armor for the 
family cat at the age of 6. I've been building devices ever since.

WIRED: In the '50s and '60s there was much expectation about robots.

The real history of robotics started in 1939 when a 19-year-old Isaac Asimov 
invented the idea of the positronic brain. When the computer came along, 
people assumed robotics was a self-fulfilling prophesy. This made the 
domestic robot seem just a breath away. After all, it was what everybody 
understood and wanted from technology: something that they could kick to 
make life easier.

WIRED: But that didn't happen.

People thought, and for the most part still think, that robots can't exist 
unless a brain exists first. But artificial intelligence was not yielding 
the promised results, so people gave up.

WIRED: So where were you in all of this?

Like everyone else, I just assumed that making a robot involved creating a 
mind. In 1982 I tried to build myself a robot butler with a built-in vacuum 
cleaner. I used a 68000, 4 megs of memory. Completely conventional 
techniques. Spent months on the damn thing. I just got more and more 
frustrated. I used the Asimovian Robotic Rules (protect humans, obey humans, 
then look after yourself), but this made the robot so incredibly paranoid 
about anything in its environment that the most it could do was move away 
from you when you got close to it. It was pathetic. I'd come home in the 
middle of the day and the damn thing would be going clunk-clunk-clunk in the 
corner, hiding from my cat. Similar stories have occurred in pretty much 
every college and university around the world, from Japan to Moscow. No 
matter how big the computer, simple general problems made them fall on their 
mechanical butts.

Things changed for me in October of 1989, when I saw a talk by Rod Brooks of 
MIT. He basically told me everything I needed to know: Forget the brain, 
let's just build something with a simple stimulus-response ability. I went 
home that night thinking about how minimalist you could actually make this 
technology. Brooks suggested making a creature without any memory for its 
brain. But could you make a creature without a brain at all? That's what 
happened.

WIRED: So you don't use any computers in your robots?

That's right.

WIRED: No processing whatsoever?

Not even simulations. A lot of people have trouble with this. Computers have 
made such an impact that it's hard to think of any technology - let alone 
robotics - without them. The trouble with processors is that you're never 
finished. There's always something you can do to improve the software, 
there's always something you want to add on. One thing about not using 
computers is that you can finish a robot and move on to the next generation 
without getting hung up on the limitations of an old design.

WIRED: So where does the intelligence come from?

>From the world. From the machines themselves. Simple machines have three 
advantages: accessibility, confidence growth, and emergent properties - 
"accessibility," as the parts and tools are ubiquitous and cheap; 
"confidence growth," as the builders find that the devices can be built in a 
very short period of time, sometimes hours; "emergent properties," as these 
things often exhibit behavior that was not designed or predicted even though 
the mechanism seems simple. That's one source of intelligence.

WIRED: Most of your robots seem to use solar power. Where did that idea come 
from?

>From my convictions on robotic eugenics. Robots cannot reproduce themselves 
easily, nor would we want them to. So if you want a colony of robots to do 
an acceptable job, you must extend their lifetime to many years. That means 
solar power. Solar power also implies micropower analog control systems, 
which implies slow movement, which extends the mechanical operating lifetime 
by exponents, etc., etc.

WIRED: What do your robots do?

First of all they survive. They're survivor automata. I have three guiding 
principles:

 1) A robot must protect its existence at all costs;

 2) A robot must obtain and maintain access to a power source;

 3) A robot must continually search for better power sources.

Otherwise known as:

 1) Protect thine ass;

 2) Feed thine ass;

 3) Look for better real estate.

This makes a wild robot, a feral machine that is already useful for some 
purposes. Other functions require domesticated robots - wild robots that 
have been bribed, tricked, or evolved into household roles. But the wild 
robot has to come first.

WIRED: What sort of practical consequences do you see for these machines?

They may lead to the brains of artificial intelligence dreams, but I think 
they will be best put toward patching up the damage between humankind and 
the environment, replacing the work of damaging chemicals worldwide. That's 
my goal, anyway. I see them as the components of a programmable ecology. 
They'll replant forests, hunt cockroaches, monitor poachers, cut your grass, 
clean your pool, polish your floors - all invisibly, dependably, for years.

WIRED: No human droids?

Why would I want to build a person when I can explore unorthodox alien 
intelligences from the ground up? To borrow from author David Brin, what I 
like to think I'm doing is proctoring a silicon species into sentience, but 
with full control over the specs. Not plant. Not animal. Something else. Why 
wait for the stars when we can build new minds here? Already, they're more 
surprising than I'd expected. I'm hoping they'll be stranger than we can 
imagine.

                                   * * *

Fred Hapgood (fhapgood@world.std.com) most recently authored Up the Infinite 
Corridor, MIT and the Technical Imagination (1994, Addison Wesley).

                                   * * *


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=WIRED Online Copyright Notice=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

         Copyright 1993,4 Ventures USA Ltd.  All rights reserved.

  This article may be redistributed provided that the article and this 
  notice remain intact. This article may not under any circumstances
  be resold or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior 
  written permission from Wired Ventures, Ltd.

  If you have any questions about these terms, or would like information
  about licensing materials from WIRED Online, please contact us via 
  telephone (+1 (415) 904 0660) or email (info@wired.com).

       WIRED and WIRED Online are trademarks of Wired Ventures, Ltd.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Subject: Majordomo file: file '2.09/departments/negroponte'
Reply-To: info-rama@wired.com
Status: R

--

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
=-=-=-=-=Copyright 1993,4 Wired Ventures Ltd.  All Rights Reserved=-=-=-=-=
-=-=For complete copyright information, please see the end of this file=-=-
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

WIRED 2.09
Negroponte
********** 

Why Europe Is So Unwired
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 

Message 15:
Date: 9.1.94
From: Nicholas Negroponte <nicholas@media.mit.edu>
To: Louis Rossetto <lr@wired.com>
Subject: 

Do you realize that in France the first six letters of a keyboard don't 
spell QWERTY but AZERTY? In March of this year, when French Culture Minister 
Jacques Toubon announced the decision to rid the French language of foreign 
(read: English) words by making it illegal (a US$3,500 fine) to use such 
words in company names and slogans, I was sadly reminded of a 1972 job I 
conducted for the Shah of Iran. My task was to provide a color word 
processor - the Shah wished to see Farsi texts in which color depicted the 
age of a word. His desire was to understand his language rather than purge 
it. I suppose, by contrast, Minister "James Allgood" plans to change all 
stop signs to "Arret."

Given this backdrop of nonsense at the highest level of government, is it 
much of a surprise that Europe is such a weak player in the computer and 
telecommunications industry? Of all fields, this industry is truly global 
and borderless. And as with air-traffic control, English is the lingua 
franca. Bits don't wait in customs; they flow freely across borders. Just 
try stopping them.

WIRED's first World Wide Web page, for example, was developed in Singapore - 
a place whose support for freedom of the press is dubious, a place William 
Gibson referred to as "Disneyland with the Death Penalty" (WIRED 1.4, page 
51).

Many artistic, industrial, and intellectual movements are driven by 
distinctly national and ethnic forces. The digital revolution is not one of 
them. Its ethos is generational and young. The demographics of computing are 
much closer to rock music than theater. French rock star Johnny Halliday is 
allowed to sing in English, after all.

If Europe wishes to remain at the vanguard of culture, it must step off its 
high horse and look more imaginatively at the future. Maybe it is time to 
discontinue ministries of culture.


Being Wise Not Smart

Jacques Attali - special advisor for the last 12 years, since he was 38, to 
the president of the French Republic - whom Mitterand referred to as his 
"personal computer," has written 17 books on everything from Europe to the 
history of time. So why didn't such a smart interface agent move into the 
digital generation? Because like most places in Europe, France is a top-down 
society, where a job is a place one occupies and protects. It is not a 
process of building, creating, and dreaming. Incentives for young 
entrepreneurs are almost nonexistent. Compared to their US counterparts, 
French young people are just not taken seriously.

Double-breasted wisdom reduces risk. A generally aging population enjoys 
stability and places confidence most easily in those who have had 
considerable and tested experience. Ballet dancers, downhill skiers, and 
mathematicians may peak at thirtysomething; CEOs and national leaders, by 
contrast, are groomed by the passage of time. The word "leader" presumes 
age, despite Alexander the Great, who at his death was six years younger 
than Bill Gates is today.

I happened to be in Paris in May 1968, when students my age took to the 
streets. I asked myself, Why are we, in the United States, so complacent and 
docile? Fourteen years later, I found myself working directly for the Elysee 
Palace. And, guess what? Many of the people orbiting Mitterand were the same 
people who had hurled paving stones through the tear gas in 1968.


Venture Void

When people ask me why so many new ideas in my field come from the United 
States, I talk about the respect we give to young people and to our 
heterogeneous culture. The real difference is our venture capital system, 
which is almost totally absent in Japan and Europe - where accountants 
intermix venture money with large leveraged buyouts. Therefore, the 
statistics do not show the real difference between them and the United 
States, where venture capital firms spent US$3.07 billion in 1993. The 
result is many fewer young European and Japanese companies that combine the 
genius of the hacker with the drive of the entrepreneur. This is 
particularly important when the entry cost is nontrivial and distribution 
determines the difference between success and failure.

New ideas are not just about capital. They are also about risk and the 
willingness to take it. The flip side of venture capital is the risk young 
people are frequently willing to take with something even bigger. I have 
seen marriages fail, people work themselves to death (literally), and an 
obsession for success that overshadows every other human dimension. Good or 
bad, such obsessive commitment is a key part of many new ventures. The 
currency of achievement is often not money but personal fulfillment and 
passion, something too easily thwarted by the bureaucracies of a 
homogeneous, old society.


The Nail That Sticks Up Highest

I was once asked by a former Japanese minister of education what I would do 
if I could do just one thing to improve the grammar-school system of that 
country. My reply: "Abolish uniforms."

While Europe has less obvious uniforms, educational freedom is still 
limited. Only England respects and even cultivates idiosyncrasy. The result 
of this lack of educational freedom is less playfulness and an infrequent 
convergence of intellectual cultures, which is where computer ideas have 
traditionally come from. One of MIT's most significant computer forces 
during the early '60s came from its model railroad club. Another came from 
the Science Fiction Society. Multimedia has disparate roots in storytelling, 
drama, music, and cinematography.

The point is that new ideas do not necessarily live within the borders of 
existing intellectual domains. In fact, they are most often at the edges and 
in curious intersections. This means that institutions like universities and 
PTTs have to embrace some very anti-establishment ideas. Europe's dominantly 
state-run universities and PTTs just don't do that very well. They run a 
close first and second for knocking down new ideas. The European Union is 
now faced with a global information infrastructure in which it just may not 
be a playeur.

Next Issue: Human Interface: Sensor Deprived

                                   * * *


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=WIRED Online Copyright Notice=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

         Copyright 1993,4 Ventures USA Ltd.  All rights reserved.

  This article may be redistributed provided that the article and this 
  notice remain intact. This article may not under any circumstances
  be resold or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior 
  written permission from Wired Ventures, Ltd.

  If you have any questions about these terms, or would like information
  about licensing materials from WIRED Online, please contact us via 
  telephone (+1 (415) 904 0660) or email (info@wired.com).

       WIRED and WIRED Online are trademarks of Wired Ventures, Ltd.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Subject: Majordomo file: file '2.09/features/universal.access'
Reply-To: info-rama@wired.com
Status: R

--

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
=-=-=-=-=Copyright 1993,4 Wired Ventures Ltd.  All Rights Reserved=-=-=-=-=
-=-=For complete copyright information, please see the end of this file=-=-
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

WIRED 2.09
Universal Service (An Idea Whose Time Is Past)
********************************************** 

Politicians love to give it lip service, but universal service is a 1930s 
solution to a 21st century problem. The problem is an excess (not shortage) 
of bandwidth, and the solution is called Open Access.

By John Browning


This is the story of the noblest idea in the history of technology: 
universal telecommunications service. Universal service brought America into 
the information age. It put telephones into every American home (well, about 
94 percent of them) and wove telephone lines through the fabric of American 
life. It set the Andrews Sisters to singing "Pennsylvania 6-5000," provided 
a generation of teenagers with their own private space to create their own 
private culture, and set Prince Albert free from the can. Today, when 
telephone, television, and printing press are poised to merge into something 
new, digital, and as-yet-undreamt-of, it is tempting to hark back to the 
original ideas of universal service. The hope is that these ideas will help 
to weave new networking technology into American life as seamlessly as the 
telephone.

Sadly, they won't.

Universal service turns on its head the usual way of setting prices. Instead 
of starting from costs, universal service starts from a calculation of how 
much a customer should ideally have to pay - "affordability," in the 
legislative jargon. The goal is to maximize social benefit - rather than 
profit. If the cost of a service is higher than its "affordable" price, then 
the deficit is made up by charging higher prices on some other, less worthy 
service. So when the US Congress recently decided to provide a service for 
deaf telephone users that would translate speech into type on a terminal, 
and vice versa, it opted neither to charge the deaf for the service nor to 
raise taxes to pay for it. Instead lawmakers tacked the cost of the service 
onto the price of long-distance telephone service. When AT&T was a monopoly, 
such accounting jiggery-pokery was relatively easy to administer. So long as 
the network as a whole made a profit, the prices of individual services 
could be set wherever AT&T and its regulators thought best. But today things 
are different.

Universal service was made a guiding principle of American telecom 
regulation in 1934. While the spirit of universal service - the idea that 
everybody should be able to speak as freely in the ether as they do in the 
air - is noble, its substance has grown woefully dated. In 1934, legislators 
assumed that telecommunications was a monopoly; today it is (or rather, 
should be) a competitive business. In 1934, only one kind of service was 
delivered, through one kind of telephone (the plain, black kind); today 
voice, video, and data are carried over wires, fiber optics, and airwaves. 
And in 1934, technology required that all of the intelligence needed to run 
the network was held in the switches at the network's core; today that 
intelligence is fast migrating to computers on the network's periphery - and 
many of those computers are owned by customers rather than service 
providers.

For these reasons and more, a return to the traditions of universal service 
- to services defined by government mandate, often made cheap by 
cross-subsidy - may bring back more of the past than even its staunchest 
supporters would like: equality, yes, but also fewer choices, fewer and 
bigger companies, and fewer opportunities for innovation. It could, in fact, 
derail the entire information economy.

This leaves politicians in a bind. The fact is, legislators have included 
universal-service regulation in every bill promoting the information 
superhighway. (See box, page xxx.) Unfortunately, universal service is 
profoundly incompatible with another major item on politicians' reform genda: the introduction of competition into telecom markets. In trying to 
mix the two there is a risk that reformers will inadvertently capture the 
worst of both worlds: anemic markets regulated more for the benefit of 
entrenched business interests than that of the general public.

Even as they promote universal service, politicians are hedging their bets - 
saying that they must redefine universal service as well as reemphasize it. 
The hard truth, however, is that it is time to bury universal service - to 
bury it slowly, gently, and with great care to preserve both its spirit and 
its many achievements.

But to bury it nonetheless.

New technologies and new networks require a shift toward regulation based 
not on universal service but on open access. The distinction is subtle, but 
crucial. Mandating universal service requires regulators to decide what 
services people should have and what prices they should pay. Regulation 
focused on open access, on the other hand, protects people's abilities to 
decide for themselves.

Open access regulation is not deregulation. On the contrary, it requires the 
government to intervene vigorously - particularly to ensure that small, new 
competitors get to use the existing telecom infrastructure on the same terms 
as the entrenched (soon-to-be former) monopolies that built it. This is both 
more difficult and more politically thankless than throwing subsidies at 
popular services. To see why it is necessary, start by looking at the 
regulatory options for networks from a politician's point of view. Then 
examine today's regulatory machinery to see why universal service and 
competition don't mix.


Making the world safe for technology

Led by Vice President Al "Information Highway" Gore, politicians have spent 
much of 1994 painting a rosy picture for the American public of how new 
networks would transform education, health, democracy, and life as we know 
it. The public is enthralled. Although only about 15 percent have even the 
minimum requirement for network participation - a computer with a modem - 
everybody seems to want to get wired.

Politicians now have three options to satisfy the expectations they have 
created:

Expand network subsidies. As much as politicians would like to claim credit 
for building the Internet, today's networks receive relatively little 
federal money. The Internet gets about US$11 million a year to subsidize 
long-distance data-transmission capacity run by the National Science 
Foundation (the NSFNet). The Commerce Department is offering $26 million 
this fiscal year for experiments in community-oriented networking. The High 
Performance Computing Act provides subsidies for the development of new 
network technologies. But all are peanuts compared to the federal billions 
spent on the object of Gore's favorite metaphor: highways.

Mandate service. With a bit of tweaking, the regulatory machinery created to 
require universal service for basic telephone service could be used to 
require cable and telephone companies to offer advanced services - digital 
lines, Internet connections, videophones, and the like - at rates regulated 
to guarantee their affordability for both rich and poor (at subsidized 
rates, of course). Various groups, notably the Electronic Frontier 
Foundation in its Open Platform initiative, propose in one way or another to 
use the government's regulatory power to push the pace of network change.

Promote competition. In long-distance telephone services, competition 
managed to boost the quality and variety of services even as it reduced 
prices. Most politicians and regulators are now convinced that it can do the 
same in local telephone service, cable television, and emerging new network 
services. So reformers are trying to set the stage to enable it to do so, by 
removing restrictions that prevent regulated local-telephone and 
cable-television companies from competing with firms in unregulated markets, 
and vice versa.

Congress prefers to fudge the choice. All of the telecom-reform legislation 
surfacing in 1994 contains a mixture of subsidies, service regulation, and 
competition. The same combination will probably recur in any future 
legislation, because each satisfies different and opposing interest groups. 
Subsidies and service regulations satisfy public-interest groups who believe 
big companies are too self-interested andignorant to fulfill the promise of 
networks without strong leadership from a visionary government. Competition 
satisfies big companies who, on the contrary, argue that they will satisfy 
everybody's greatest networking fantasy as soon as they are released from 
meddlesome, restrictive government regulation.

Unfortunately, competition and subsidized, regulated network services are 
profoundly incompatible, and universal service stands at the heart of the 
contradictions. To introduce competition without a complete overhaul of the 
universal-service funding mechanism would simply bankrupt those providing 
it. By trying not to disappoint anybody, politicians may yet disappoint 
everybody.


Give me TCP/IP or give me death

Today it is local telephone monopolies that provide the services mandated 
under the name of universal service - a party line in 1934, touch-tone phone 
service today. Prices for universal services are set at or below the cost of 
the service, and thus the services are cross-subsidized from inflated rates 
charged to some of the local-telephone monopoly's other customers, typically 
business.

Universal-service obligations are a burden for the local telephone companies 
who now bear them, but they are also the bedrock of their monopolies. The 
introduction of competition blows apart this system of cross-subsidies. 
Competitors nab the overcharged customers, leaving the ex-monopoly with 
those customers on whom it cannot make a profit. Kaboom: the network 
collapses onto the heads of those who have no other service or provider to 
turn to. Since the break-up of AT&T in 1984, and the beginnings of 
competition in long-distance markets, the threat of just such a service 
meltdown has been local-telephone monopolists' most effective lobbying 
weapon against competition.

Now that politicians are bent on creating competition in local telephone 
service, they propose to put universal service on a new footing. Although 
the details and exact timing are to be worked out by the FCC, the 
Congressional consensus is that instead of internal cross-subsidies, from 
one part of the monopolist's network to another, everybody offering network 
services should pay into a single fund. The government will take money from 
this fund to subsidize "essential" services. At the same time, a regulatory 
task force will examine ways of redefining "essential" services, asking the 
question of what constitutes an acceptable minimum of service on the new 
networks. A touch-tone telephone? A digital telephone line? A TCP/IP 
connection? Or what?

That universal-service fund will contain a lot of money. Estimates of 
today's universal-service cross-subsidies run as high as $20 billion a year. 
That money will provide a lot of network-shaping power for the politicians 
and bureaucrats who control it.

Four simple questions bedevil the proposed universal-service fund.

Who gets subsidized? Today's recipients are mostly the poor - in California, 
low-income customers can get "lifeline" telephone service at $4.18 a month - 
and residents of rural communities, who get telephone service at the same 
rates as urban householders. Not surprisingly, though, there is no shortage 
of candidates thought to be deserving of a subsidy or two should politicians 
decide to broaden the scope of the fund. Hospitals, for example, rank 
alongside schools and libraries on many people's (including Al Gore's) list 
of causes deserving cut-rate network access. Yet a study by the consulting 
firm Arthur D. Little estimates that as health care providers change their 
practices to make more intelligent use of the capabilities of advanced 
networks, the eventual savings will total as much as $36 billion a year. 
Surely hospitals do not really need a subsidy to inspire them to save 
themselves money.

 How to monitor the subsidies? Universal-service subsidies are a perennial 
nightmare for the FCC, which already administers several funds to transfer 
money from providers of long-distance telephone services, and others, to 
those providing "essential" services. First, the funds always seem to 
require more money than expected. The Universal Service Fund - which, 
confusingly, is only one of several funds to provide the subsidies involved 
in universal service - transfers money from long-distance telephone 
companies to local telephone companies that have "high-cost" networks. 
Originally budgeted at under $400 million a year, the fund has in recent 
years been growing at about five times the rate of local-telephone costs. 
Worse, the FCC cannot be confident that the funds are all being put to their 
intended use. Even with the best of will, it is nearly impossible to say how 
much of the costs of a single switch are accounted for by subsidized 
essential services and how much by the other services delivered over its 
wires - and, as the FCC well knows, big companies have every incentive to 
exaggerate the costs eligible for subsidy.

What services to mandate? Today, as traditionally, the basic telephone 
services mandated as "universal" are at the trailing edge of the technology. 
But as excitement mounts over the world-changing potential of new network 
technologies, more and more proposals would have government require 
companies to provide services at the forefront of technology in order to 
accelerate the pace of change. However well-intentioned, the problems with 
such proposals are obvious. Nobody really knows what essential "basic" 
services for an advanced network might be. Gore and other advocates of 
universal service say they will not allow the creation of have-nots, but 
they do not define what a have-not might be. Someone without a telephone? 
(Even with flat-rate "lifeline" services available at $4.18 a month, some 4 
percent of Californians don't have telephones.) Someone without a 
television? Someone without a SLIP connection to the Internet? Worse, to 
define have-nots, policy makers would also have to define haves, which 
pushes them into the business of picking technological standards - and, 
hence, winners. It is one thing for the market to choose Windows and DOS as 
the most popular technology, and entirely another for the government to 
mandate it so.

Who pays? If somebody is to get network service at or below cost, somebody 
else has to pay above the odds. So to encourage one group's use is to 
discourage another's - and the greater the encouragements, the greater the 
corresponding discouragements. History shows that the discouragements can 
become very large indeed as politicians and regulators try to bend the 
market to make it more "fair." By 1980 universal service cross-subsidies 
accounted for more than three-fourths of the fees that AT&T charged 
customers using its switches for long-distance calls (as Peter Westerway 
points out in his book, Electronic Highways).

One problem here is that universal-service charges may discriminate against 
small firms in emerging markets; charges that seem a pittance to a big firm 
in an established market can break the back of a small firm in a new and 
emerging market. Given that schools, libraries, hospitals, and homes are all 
on most people's list of worthy causes meriting special network treatment, 
pretty much the only pockets left to reach into belong to business.

But overcharging business to subsidize others can create a variety of 
problems. Higher prices may put network services beyond the reach of some 
business customers - particularly small businesses, who in theory could reap 
some of the greatest benefits from the free flow of information created by 
networks. They might discourage risky, innovative network services for which 
markets are not yet proven - tilting the balance further in favor of 
entertainment and other big, well-established markets. And higher prices 
discourage investment in the networks that businesses are now building for 
themselves, which, like the Internet, are becoming a key part of information 
highways.

Why tax the people who are building and using advanced services in favor of 
the big-company wannabes? For universal service is effectively a subsidy for 
the status quo - taxing new and innovative services and handing the money to 
existing providers of existing services. Colleen Boothby, now a 
telecommunications lawyer with Levine, Lagapa & Block in Washington, DC, but 
for many years a regulator at the FCC, makes an analogy to that capitalist 
archetype, the better mousetrap. "If you build a better mousetrap, people 
beat a path to your door; but what these cross-subsidy regulations do is to 
force anyone wanting to buy one of the new mousetraps to pay for some old 
mousetraps too."

Worse still, the introduction of competition to telecom markets thrusts the 
search for answers to these vexed questions into the realm of 
special-interest politics. When AT&T was a monopoly, fiddling with rates on 
individual services - to make the socially desirable ones cheap and others 
expensive - was a zero-sum game. So long as AT&T made a reasonable total 
profit at the end of the day, it was not much bothered about the details of 
individual services. Many of the companies introducing new technologies into 
competitive markets, however, care very much about individual services 
because that is all that they do. Internet providers, operators of wireless 
data networks or cellular telephone services - and their lobbyists - will 
all argue vehemently, and with honest conviction, that their service is 
crucial for fulfilling networks' potential to change the world. Brokered 
compromises to lobbyists' battles are unlikely to prove the best foundation 
on which to build the future. Indeed, the arguments could make 
decision-making so slow as to render the universal service system 
unworkable.


Universal excess

The fact that universal service is difficult to administer is not by itself 
a compelling argument for burying it - even slowly and with great respect. 
But many of the same changes that complicate the practice of universal 
service also undermine its moral foundation. Since the Post Roads Act of 
1866 - which in return for the right to string wires along public roads 
required telegraph operators to carry, without discrimination, the messages 
of anybody who wanted to use those wires - America's government has based 
its regulation of electronic media on the assumption of shortage. The Post 
Roads Act was in large part inspired by a nearly successful attempt by 
telegraph operators to put the fledgling Associated Press out of business by 
refusing to carry its messages, which competed with their own news services. 
To prevent other such abuses of power, the regulation of radio, television, 
and telephones has been based on the idea that those scarce resources must 
be regulated for the public good. Technology and competition, however, now 
promise to turn shortage to glut.

Yet, all of the proposals to bring competition to network markets are 
predicated on the idea that technology will create, if not excess, at least 
an adequate supply of bandwidth and electronic expression so that new 
information services will be freely available. Rep. Ed Markey, chairman of 
the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Finance, says "someday, 
choosing which network to use will be no different from choosing which kiosk 
on Harvard Square to buy your newspaper from." Russ Neuman of MIT's Media 
Lab argues that someday soonish most homes will have a choice of connecting 
to five high-capacity networks: one built on the telephone system, one built 
on cable television, one built on the electric power network, a wireless 
network for personal communications devices, and another wireless network 
built from the spaces freed up in the radio spectrum as today's analog 
television signals go digital.

With the advent of real choice, the moral bargain underlying universal 
service - that in return for the use of scarce public resources, telecom 
companies must give service back to the community - becomes largely void. If 
the resources are not scarce, then the moral duties owed the community by 
telecom providers are no greater - and no less - than those owed by other 
firms. The way to recognize that change, and to eliminate many of the 
innovation-crushing practical difficulties in administering universal 
service, is to change emphasis from regulation based on service to 
regulation based on access.

Open access regulation focuses on opportunity rather than duty. Instead of 
saying what services networks should provide at what price, the point of 
access regulation is simply to require big network operators to make 
available to everybody, on a non-discriminatory basis, whatever services 
they do provide - and, importantly, the underlying technologies from which 
those services are constructed. It lets customers decide what services they 
want. Better, unlike mandated services, mandated access promises to break 
open entrenched cable-television and telephone monopolies so that 
competition and choice can begin in earnest.

An easy way to see the difference between access regulation and service 
regulation is to consider the "set-top box," the computer on the TV which 
will provide brains for interactive multimedia entertainment.

Service regulation is when the government specifies a minimum level of 
service, and sets rates for those minimum services - as cable regulators do 
now. In set-top-box terms, the regulations might require, say, 200 channels 
for $25 a month. Access regulation would set neither rates nor service 
requirements; the assumption is that competition will keep pressure on price 
and quality. Instead, access regulations force companies to offer services 
to all customers - without, for example, requiring that somebody buy its 
telephone service in order to watch its movies on cable television. More 
important, access regulations also require big, entrenched companies to make 
available to competitors the components from which their services are 
constructed. In set-top-box terms, this means that customers gain the right 
to buy, say, cable programming from Time Warner, a set-top box from Ted 
Turner, and intelligent agents from General Magic - or whichever company 
offers the best services (whether it be the firm who laid the wire to the 
door or not). Time Warner, for its part, has to offer an interface from its 
cables to Ted Turner's set-top box with the same price and performance as 
that offered for its own boxes.

Access regulations thus boost choice and competition at two levels. First, 
they eliminate the possibility that existing companies can use their huge 
investments in infrastructure to squeeze out new competitors. The 
regulations would enable anybody and everybody to have access to, say, 
installed coaxial cable at roughly the same price at which the cable 
companies' accountants charge the costs of that cable to their own 
businesses. Second, they enable customers to mix and match various offerings 
from a variety of companies to create services they want.

Universal access works successfully in long-distance telecommunications - 
where competition fueled by access regulation has improved quality and 
choice even as it has reduced prices. So legislators have incorporated an 
ambitious variety of access regulation into legislation - particularly into 
the Markey-Fields bill. Not only does the bill require big companies to give 
competitors intimate access to their networks, it also requires them to keep 
expanding those networks so that lack of capacity cannot itself become a 
constraint on access. Telephone companies venturing into cable would be 
required by Markey-Fields to build as much cable capacity as there was 
demand for channels - with the FCC to define "demand for channels" - and to 
make it available to all on equal terms. The hope, at least, is that 
electronic innovation and electronic bandwidth will become the printing 
press of the next millennium - and that cheap, easy-to-produce video 'zines 
will surge alongside the paper ones as technology's contribution to the 
ability of all the artists, college students, political activists, lunatics, 
and sports fanatics to express themselves.

Abandoning universal service need not mean abandoning equality. On the 
contary. If information services are essential and high cost is denying 
these services to the poor, government can give the disadvantaged the means 
to buy some minimum level of service - as it does now with Medicare and food 
stamps. (After all, nobody is suggesting that restaurants should pay more 
for food and supermarket prices should be regulated to provide 
cross-subsidies for universal service of nutrition among the poor.) Equally, 
instead of requiring cable operators and other information-service providers 
to set aside capacity for free (or at least below cost) community 
broadcasting, government can encourage the growth of capacity and provide 
grants for those whose voices it reckons should be heard - as it now does 
for artists. There are already interesting experiments along these lines. 
Both the Commerce Department and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting 
have recently created grants for community-oriented networks. New York state 
has experimented with novel ways of financing telecoms for the very poorest.


But in order to take these experiments further, politicians throughout 
Washington - and particularly Al Gore - will have to indulge in an 
uncomfortable honesty. To imply, as Gore now does when he "challenges" 
network providers to wire every school, hospital, and library in America by 
2000, that it is possible to provide ubiquitous, high-bandwidth networks 
without either new taxes or high prices for some new services. Universal 
service cross-subsidies are a tax - albeit a tax buried in the price of 
services and beneath layers of obscure cost allocation and pricing 
regulations. They are a particularly inefficient and wasteful tax. And, 
worst of all, they are a deceptive and distorting tax, a tax that makes it 
hard to see the real costs of the building blocks of tomorrow's networks and 
thus the real opportunities in building the networks that will change the 
world. That is no foundation on which to build the future. If networks are 
indeed the future of America, at least the nation should begin building them 
as it would speak over them - with honesty at all times, even when the 
honest message is not the one people want to hear.

More important, honesty underlies the sort of regulatory system in which 
networks can realize their potential. By pushing companies to offer network 
services at something like the cost of providing them - instead of a 
fictional price connived for social convenience - regulators can put 
networks on a sound economic footing, and so make them independent of the 
whims of politics and subsidy. By requiring entrenched giants to provide 
basic technology to others as they provide it unto themselves, regulators 
can set free the vast investments already made in telecom infrastructure for 
expansion and innovation, and so fulfill the public trust that built them. 
By allowing innovation to rise or fall on its own merits - rather than 
because of lobbyists' pressure - regulators can enable Americans to choose 
for themselves the way they would like to communicate, to learn, and to use 
the vast potential of the new technology they are creating. Building upon 
the sound foundations of real competition and honest pricing, people can 
begin to build for themselves the sorts of networks they want - rather than 
waiting to be served.


*************************************

Elements in Congressional Legislation

Three key pieces of legislation underlie proposed reform of 
telecommunications. Although Congressional leaders hoped to pass a bill for 
President Clinton to sign by September 1994, they were still wrangling as 
Wired went to press. Both the Markey-Fields bill and the Brooks-Dingell bill 
passed in the US House of Representatives in late June. When - and if - the 
Hollings bill passes in the US Senate, the separate pieces of legislation 
would be reconciled by a joint committee of both Houses before becoming law.



Markey-Fields

National Communications Competition and Information Infrastructure Act of 
1994; named for sponsors Rep. Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts) and Rep. Jack 
Fields (R-Texas).

The linchpin of telecom reform, this bill, passed on June 28, creates 
competition in telecommunications markets, where previously only monopolies 
existed. It does so in three steps:

Local-telephone competition. The bill removes restrictions that prevent 
competition for local-telephone monopolies. It requires the FCC to specify 
the terms under which competitors can connect their equipment and services 
to existing telecom infrastructure. The idea: competitors should enjoy 
access of the same technical quality and cost as the former monopolist.

Cable-television competition. The bill allows local telephone companies to 
offer video programming in competition with cable television companies - so 
long as they manage such operations in a separate subsidiary, unsubsidized, 
at arm's length from the telephone business.

Universal service. The legislation establishes a board, composed of federal 
and state officials, to examine what regulations should be enacted to ensure 
that basic telephone service remains both ubiquitous and affordable. It 
establishes a fund, to which all providers of telecom services will have to 
donate, to pay for the board's recommendations. And the legislation directs 
the FCC and the board to examine promoting end-to-end digital service for 
basic telecom service.


Brooks-Dingell

Antitrust Reform Act of 1993; principal sponsors are Rep. Jack Brooks 
(D-Texas) and Rep. John Dingell (D-Michigan).

This bill lifts restrictions placed on telephone competition by a 1982 
agreement between AT&T and the Justice Department in a settlement of a 
federal antitrust suit. It allows the seven RBOCs created by AT&T's breakup 
to manufacture telecom equipment and offer long-distance and previously 
banned information services.


Hollings

Communications Act of 1994; key sponsor is Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-South 
Carolina).
Hollings's bill is the Senate complement to Markey-Fields. It encourages 
competition in the telecom and cable industries, gives the FCC more 
regulatory flexibility, and ensures the preservation of universal service.

It requires all carriers to contribute to a universal service fund.

It removes manufacturing restrictions on Bell companies and permits them, 
with certain restrictions, to enter electronic publishing and burglar alarm 
services. It also gives the FCC authority to allow a Bell company into 
long-distance service.

It restricts telephone companies from providing cable service outside the 
regions where they provide phone service.

As written, the Hollings bill would restrict local-telephone companies as 
they move to related markets. Bills from the House are more lenient, in 
hopes of encouraging competition. Potential restrictions range across 
federal and state authorities. Lobbyists are likely to argue the issue long 
after the votes on the Communications Act of 1994 have been cast and 
forgotten.

                                   * * *

John Browning is a writer and consultant living in London. He is a 
contributor to The Economist, and wrote "Power PC: Reengineering Regulation" 
for Wired 2.07.

                                   * * *


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=WIRED Online Copyright Notice=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

         Copyright 1993,4 Ventures USA Ltd.  All rights reserved.

  This article may be redistributed provided that the article and this 
  notice remain intact. This article may not under any circumstances
  be resold or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior 
  written permission from Wired Ventures, Ltd.

  If you have any questions about these terms, or would like information
  about licensing materials from WIRED Online, please contact us via 
  telephone (+1 (415) 904 0660) or email (info@wired.com).

       WIRED and WIRED Online are trademarks of Wired Ventures, Ltd.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Subject: Majordomo file: file '2.09/departments/junkets'
Reply-To: info-rama@wired.com
Status: R

--

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
=-=-=-=-=Copyright 1993,4 Wired Ventures Ltd.  All Rights Reserved=-=-=-=-=
-=-=For complete copyright information, please see the end of this file=-=-
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

WIRED 2.09
Deductible Junkets
******************

If you're headed to Dallas for TLC '94...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
Dallas. It conjures up images of urban cowboys, big-haired women, the 
unforgettable J.R. Ewing.... Is your cerebral juke box playing the theme 
song yet? For some reason, this glitzy metropolis surging from the flat, 
shimmering landscape of central Texas has yet to escape the unfortunate 
legacy of Dallas, or the Kennedy assassination, for that matter.

Dallas is truly a textbook of 20th-century architecture. More than anything 
else, the skyline reflects the influence of modernist architect I.M. Pei. 
See the First Interstate Bank Tower at dusk, when the setting sun glows 
against the cool glass exterior. The canted facade of Pei's famous Dallas 
City Hall resembles a piece of concrete pie standing on its point - sort of. 
Architecture buffs should also visit the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, 
30 suburban miles from Dallas.

As the site of President John F. Kennedy's assassination, Dallas lures the 
curious and the nostalgic. Part history, part national obsession, The Sixth 
Floor Museum in the Texas School Book Depository includes 400 photographs, 
four video stations, and two large-screen theaters documenting the life, 
death, and legacy of Kennedy. More than 30 years after the fact, the 
assassination and the multitude of conspiracy theories still captivate the 
nation: 400,000 people visit the museum every year. To avoid them, go early.


For a more lighthearted afternoon, skip off to Fair Park - a 277-acre 
collection of rare Art Deco buildings and formal gardens, mostly constructed 
for the 1936 Texas Centennial Exhibition. Although the city planned to 
remove the exhibition halls after five years, the buildings were saved from 
demolition by the financial drain of World War II.

Urban cowboys, unlike the genuine article, prefer gourmet to grub. Dallas 
obliges with a wealth of ritzy ristoranti and quiet cafes. Nutritional nuts 
can count their cholesterol and lick their lips at the popular Natura Cafe. 
The crowded Cafe Madrid serves traditional Spanish tapas and paella on the 
weekends. For a true taste of Texas, chow down at Del Frisco's Double Eagle 
Steakhouse.

If you finish your homework early, head out to the funky Deep Ellum area, a 
five-minute drive from downtown, and saunter into Sambuca, a trendy 
Mediterranean restaurant and jazz bar. If you're superstitious, the three 
coffee beans in your sambuca will bring you luck, love, and life. Skeptics 
will still enjoy the music. For live alternative rock, don't miss Trees. 
Over in the Exposition Park area, grab a stool at the State Bar, where your 
fellow drinkers may have come from the symphony or the Skin & Bones tattoo 
parlor down the street. Also nearby is University Park, where java lovers 
can get a bottomless cup at any hour
at Cafe Brazil.

Worthy of a paragraph unto itself, The Lounge is a Dallas jewel, set in the 
lobby of the old Art Deco Inwood Theater. Get a table in the back room, 
where you can watch the flick through a glass wall. Or just kick back and 
try to remember - who did shoot J.R.? Or J.F.K. - Jessie Scanlon

Thanks to the Texan twins, Cathy and Cindy Timberlake, and to the stately 
bartender, Jon Lagow. Not to mention Timothy Childs and Eric McQuaid.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Electronic Books '94; New York City (September 26-28)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
It looks like last year's Electronic Book Fair is becoming an annual event. 
No wonder - just look at the growth in the CD-ROM market in the last year. 
Electronic Books '94, sponsored by Mecklermedia's CD-ROM World and Internet 
World magazines, will assess the take-off of digital publishing and its 
impact on traditional media and markets. Special topics include Publishing 
Challenges and Strategies, Transforming Old Media, Emerging Markets, Designs 
That Work, and Rise of Consumer Online Markets. Registration: US$395 before 
September 11, $445 after. Admission to exhibit hall: $10. Contact: (800) 632 
5537, +1 (203) 226 6967, fax +1 (203) 454 5840, e-mail 
ebooks@mecklermedia.com.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Consumer Electronics Show - Mexico; Mexico City (October 4-6)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
That giant sucking sound is CES going south of the border. The first CES 
Mexico promises to be a formidable extravaganza of audio, video, multimedia, 
and other nifty electronics products. Speakers are sure to focus on 
international trade issues as well as recent trends in the Mexican market - 
there are 22 million potential buyers in Mexico City alone. This 
business-to-business fiesta is expected to draw 25,000 attendees and more 
than 100 exhibitors. Registration: US$50. Contact: +1 (805) 639 2280, fax +1 
(805) 658 2882.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Virus, Hacking, and Computer Underground; Buenos Aires (October 7-9)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
Ever seen a hacker tango? The Virus, Hacking, and Computer Underground 
conference in Argentina may be your chance. This first-time conference, 
organized by Virus Report magazine, will cover the cyberworld, the Internet, 
phone systems, and programming, as well as the title subjects. The 
congress's open forum will feature speakers from the "official" world and 
the "underground," including Emmanuel Goldstein of 2600 magazine and Mark 
Ludwig, author of the Little Black Book of Computer Viruses. All events will 
be free, and foreign attendees will be housed by local hackers. Contact: 
Fernando Bonsembiante, +54 (1) 654 0459, fax +54 (1) 40 5110, e-mail 
fernando@ubik.satlink.net.=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


ACM Multimedia '94; San Francisco (October 15-20)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
The second ACM Multimedia conference will focus on the future of multimedia 
and what the hell it will actually do (minus the cynicism, of course). The 
international conference will be organized in two parallel "tracks." 
Sessions in the content creation track will be capped by a multimedia arts 
night, featuring the work of more than twenty renowned artists. In a 
separate track, industry leaders will discuss important legal, technical, 
and business issues facing the new industry. Registration: US$425 before 
September 15, $495 after. Tutorial fees are not included. Contact: +1 (508) 
443 3330 ext.1214, e-mail multimedia.dok@notes.compuserve.com.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Technology + Learning Conference; Dallas (October 26-28)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
The Technology and Learning Conference, sponsored by the National School 
Boards Association, brings district-level administrators together for three 
days of workshops, general sessions, and panel discussions aimed at helping 
public educators make wider use of technology. Speakers include Jaron 
Lanier, Seymour Papert, and teams of school-district leaders. During recess, 
play at over 250 exhibitor booths. Registration: US$425. Contact: (800) 950 
6722, +1 (703) 838 6722, fax +1 (703) 549 6719.

                                   * * *


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=WIRED Online Copyright Notice=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

         Copyright 1993,4 Ventures USA Ltd.  All rights reserved.

  This article may be redistributed provided that the article and this 
  notice remain intact. This article may not under any circumstances
  be resold or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior 
  written permission from Wired Ventures, Ltd.

  If you have any questions about these terms, or would like information
  about licensing materials from WIRED Online, please contact us via 
  telephone (+1 (415) 904 0660) or email (info@wired.com).

       WIRED and WIRED Online are trademarks of Wired Ventures, Ltd.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Subject: Majordomo file: file '2.09/features/moon.land'
Reply-To: info-rama@wired.com
Status: R

--

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
=-=-=-=-=Copyright 1993,4 Wired Ventures Ltd.  All Rights Reserved=-=-=-=-=
-=-=For complete copyright information, please see the end of this file=-=-
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

WIRED 2.09
The Wrong Stuff
*************** 

Are you sure we went to the moon 25 years ago? Are you positive? Millions of 
Americans believe the moon landings may have been a US$25 billion swindle, 
perpetrated by NASA with the latest in communications technology and the 
best in special effects. WIRED plunges into the combat zone between heated 
conspiracy believers and exasperated NASA officials.

By Rogier van Bakel


"Columbia, he has landed Tranquil-ity Base. Eagle is at Tranquility. I read 
you five by. Over." The voice from Houston betrayed no emotion, although 
this was anything but business as usual. A human being was about to set foot 
on the moon for the first time in history, armed only with the Stars and 
Stripes, some scientific instruments, and an almost reckless, can-do 
demeanor that had captivated the world.

The reply from Columbia, the command-and-service module that had released 
the lunar lander 2 hours and 33 minutes earlier, betrayed only equal 
professional cool. "Yes, I heard the whole thing," Michael Collins said 
matter-of-factly.

Houston: "Well, it's a good show."

Columbia: "Fantastic."

That's when Neil Armstrong chimed in. "Yeah, I'll second that," said the 
38-year-old astronaut, the moonwalker-to-be, America's own Boy Scout, and 
the most famous man in the - well, in the universe. And even though the 
static ate away at the clarity of his consonants, Armstrong's sneering tone 
came through loud and clear. The mission control man heard it too. And he 
knew what was coming. Sort of.

"A fantastic show," Armstrong said. "The greatest show on earth, huh, guys?"


There was a moment's silence. Then a cameraman sniggered. And the director 
sighed, and did what directors do when actors screw up their lines. "Cut," 
he groaned. He was a heavyset man in his 50s, and the combination of the 
long hours and the hot studio lights had started to get to him.

"Shit, Armstrong, if you're gonna be a smart-ass, do it on your own time, 
all right? We got 25 tired people on this set. We got a billion people who 
are going to be watching your every move only a week from now. We're on 
deadline here. Now, do you suppose you could just stick to the script and 
get it over with? Thank you."

His assistant stepped forward with the slate. "Apollo moon landing, scene 
769/A22, take three," she announced.

"Action!"

"Columbia, he has landed Tranquility Base," the mission control man began 
again.


Superfraud

The history books lie. So do the encyclopedias and the commemorative videos 
and the 25-year-old coffee mugs with the proudly smiling faces of Neil 
Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin, and Michael Collins. When Armstrong got down from 
that ladder, proclaiming that it was only a small step for him but a giant 
leap for mankind, he was merely setting foot on a dust-covered sound stage 
in a top-secret TV studio in the Nevada desert. NASA's cold warriors and 
spin doctors faked the whole moon landing. Come to think of it, they faked 
all six moon landings - spending around US$25 billion to prove to the world 
that not even the Soviets, especially not the Soviets, could hold a candle 
to the US when it came to space exploration.

Well, at least, that's the view of writer Bill Kaysing. It's also the 
conviction of millions of Americans who have learned to distrust their 
government with a passion. Most of these skeptics don't even appear to be 
steamed about the alleged superfraud. They shrug and raise their palms and 
go about their business. Not Kaysing. He seems to have never heard a 
conspiracy theory he didn't like, and this one tops 'em all. For almost 20 
years now, he has been trying to get out "the most electrifying news story 
of the entire 20th century and possibly of all time." He has written a book 
aptly titled We Never Went to the Moon and won't give up trying to uncover 
more evidence.

Kaysing, a white-haired, gentle Californian whose energy level seems 
mercifully untouched by his 72 years, worked as head of technical 
publications for the Rocketdyne Research Department at their Southern 
California facility from 1956 to 1963. Rocketdyne was the engine contractor 
for Apollo.

"NASA couldn't make it to the moon, and they knew it," asserts Kaysing, who, 
after begging out of the "corporate rat race," became a freelance author of 
books and newsletters. "In the late '50s, when I was at Rocketdyne, they did 
a feasibility study on astronauts landing on the moon. They found that the 
chance of success was something like .0017 percent. In other words, it was 
hopeless." As late as 1967, Kaysing reminds me, three astronauts died in a 
horrendous fire on the launch pad. "It's also well documented that NASA was 
often badly managed and had poor quality control. But as of '69, we could 
suddenly perform manned flight upon manned flight? With complete success? 
It's just against all statistical odds."

President John F. Kennedy wasn't convinced at all that the endeavor was next 
to impossible. In fact, he had publicly announced in May 1961 that "landing 
a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth" would be a Number One 
priority for the US, an accomplishment that was to instill pride in 
Americans and awe in the rest of the world. And so, Kaysing believes, NASA 
faked it, acting in accordance with the old adage that in a war, the truth 
is often the first casualty. (Cold wars, he and his fellow conspiracy 
believers say, are no exception.)

To hear him tell it, NASA had good reason to stage moon landing after moon 
landing, instead of simply admitting that lunar strolls would have to remain 
the stuff of science fiction novels, at least for a while. "They - both NASA 
and Rocketdyne - wanted the money to keep pouring in. I've worked in 
aerospace long enough to know that's their goal."


Absent Stars

There is an almost instinctive rejoinder to all of this: but we saw it. If 
television ever had a killer app, the moon landing was it. We bought new 
sets in droves, flicked them on as zero hour approached, and, miraculously, 
felt ourselves being locked into an intangible but very real oneness with a 
billion other people. It was our first taste of a virtual community, of 
cultures docking. It felt good. And now there's this guy telling us that it 
was all a lie? C'mon! His rockets are a little loose. What proof does he 
have anyway?

Kaysing points out numerous anomalies in NASA publications, as well as in 
the TV and still pictures that came from the moon. For example, there are no 
stars in many of the photographs taken on the lunar surface. With no 
atmosphere to diffuse their light, wouldn't stars have to be clearly 
visible? And why is there no crater beneath the lunar lander, despite the 
jet of its 10,000-pound-thrust hypergolic engine? How do NASA's experts 
explain pictures of astronauts on the moon in which the astronauts' sides 
and backs are just as well lit as the fronts of their spacesuits - which is 
inconsistent with the deep, black shadows the harsh sunlight should be 
casting? And why is there a line between a sharp foreground and a blurry 
background in some of the pictures, almost as if special-effects makers had 
used a so-called "matte painting" to simulate the farther reaches of the 
moonscape? "It all points to an unprecedented swindle," Kaysing concludes 
confidently.

But just how could NASA possibly have pulled it off? How about the TV 
pictures that billions of people saw over the course of six successful 
missions: the rocket lifting off from the Cape Kennedy launch pad under the 
watchful eye of hundreds of thousands of spectators; the capsule with the 
crew returning to earth; the moon rocks; the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of 
space-program employees in the know who would have to be relied upon to take 
the incredible secret to their graves?

Easy, says Kaysing. The rockets took off all right, with the astronauts on 
board, but as soon as they were out of sight, the roaring spacecraft set ourse for the south polar sea, jettisoned its crew, and crashed. Later, the 
crew and the command module were put in a military plane and dropped in the 
Pacific for "recovery" by an aircraft carrier. (Kaysing claims that he 
talked with an airline pilot who, en route from San Francisco to Tokyo, saw 
the Apollo 15 command module sliding out of an unidentified cargo plane, but 
he can't provide the captain's name or the name of the airline.) The moon 
rocks were made in a NASA geology lab, right here on earth, he continues. 
Not very many people on the Apollo project knew about the hoax, as they were 
only informed on a need-to-know basis. Cash bonuses, promotions, or veiled 
threats could have ensured the silence of those who were in on the whole 
scheme.


Zero Gravity

Kaysing is not alone in his assertion that NASA has been, um, mooning the 
public. Bill Brian, a 45-year-old Oregonian who authored the 1982 book 
Moongate, agrees that there is "some sort of cover-up." Although Brian 
thinks that his fellow investigator may very well be right in saying that we 
never went to the moon, he believes there is an entirely different reason 
for many of the inconsistencies the two have found. Maybe we did go, Brian 
says, but it's possible we reached the moon with the aid of a secret zero 
gravity device that NASA probably reverse-engineered by copying parts of a 
captured extraterrestrial spaceship. Brian, who received BS and MS degrees 
in nuclear engineering at Oregon State University (although he now holds a 
job as a policy and procedures analyst at a utility company), uses his 
"mathematical and conceptual skills" to reason that the moon's gravity is 
actually similar
to Earth's, and that most likely, the moon has an atmosphere after all. He 
has crammed the appendices of his book with complex calculations to prove 
these points, but he trusts his intuition, too: "The NASA transcripts of the 
communication between the astronauts and mission control read as if they're 
carefully scripted. The accounts all have a very strange flavor to them, as 
if the astronauts weren't really there."

But why in the world would NASA feel compelled to cover up knowledge of a 
high-gravity moon? "It's a cascading string of events," explains Brian. "You 
can't let one bit of information out without blowing the whole thing. They'd 
have to explain the propulsion technique that got them there, so they'd have 
to divulge their UFO research. And if they could tap this energy, that would 
imply the oil cartels are at risk, and the very structure of our world 
economy could collapse. They didn't want to run that risk."

As this issue of WIRED goes to press, a new book is headed to the stores: 
Was It Only a Paper Moon, by Ralph Rene, "a scientist and patented 
inventor." Published by tiny Victoria House Press in New York, in what it 
has announced will be a first run of "at least 100,000 copies," Paper Moon 
supposedly presents the latest scientific findings regarding the moon 
landing. Rene offers data suggesting, among other things, that without an 
impractical shield about two meters thick, the spacemen "would have been 
cooked by radiation" during the journey. Ergo, the lunar endeavors were 
impossible, and were cynically faked at the expense of gullible people 
everywhere.

Other conspiracy buffs don't doubt that men walked on the moon but call the 
fact irrelevant because extraterrestrials made it there ages ago - and NASA 
knows it and has preferred to keep it a secret. In his recent book, 
Extra-Terrestrial Archeology, David Childress points out various unexplained 
structures on the moon and argues that these might be archeological remnants 
of intelligent civilizations. Childress, an avid believer in UFOs, also 
doesn't rule out the possibility that aliens still use the moon as a base 
and a convenient stepping stone for their trips to our planet. This might 
even mean, enthuses the author, that the moon is really "a spaceship with an 
inner metallic-rock shell beneath miles of dirt and dust and rock."


Children and Senators

Although very few Americans subscribe to such grandiose theories, millions 
of people doubt the authenticity of the lunar missions, much to NASA's 
exasperation. Over the years, the agency's public services department went 
through reams of paper answering incredulous schoolchildren, teachers, 
librarians - and even US lawmakers like former Sen. Alan Cranston 
(D-California) and Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-South Carolina), who had written 
to NASA relaying the doubts of some of their constituents. As many as 100 
million Americans, says Kaysing, are inclined to disbelieve the whole lunar 
adventure. Like many of his statements, that one should be taken with a 
grain of salt: his proof is based on his observation that "almost half the 
people who phoned in to radio and TV shows" he has been on supported him. 
That's hardly irrefutable proof.

But when Knight Newspapers (one of the two groups that later merged to form 
Knight-Ridder Inc.) polled 1,721 US residents one year after the first moon 
landing, it found that more than 30 percent of respondents were suspicious 
of NASA's trips to the moon. A July 20, 1970, Newsweek article reporting the 
results of the poll cited "an elderly Philadelphia woman who thought the 
moon landing had been staged in an Arizona desert" and a Macon, Georgia, 
housewife who questioned how a TV set that couldn't pull in New York 
stations could possibly "receive signals from the moon." The greatest 
skepticism, according to Newsweek, surfaced in a ghetto in Washington, DC, 
where more than half of those interviewed doubted the authenticity of Neil 
Armstrong's stroll. "It's all a deliberate effort to mask problems at home," 
explained one inner-city preacher. "The people are unhappy - and this takes 
their minds off their problems."

Poll or no poll, even James Oberg, a nemesis of Kaysing, conservatively 
estimates that the disbelievers may number between 10 and 25 million 
Americans.

Oberg works for NASA contractor Rockwell International as a space-flight 
operations engineer with the space shuttle program. He writes as a second 
profession, covering all aspects of space activity, with a special interest 
in space folklore. Myths have a way of blossoming in the fertile soil of 
scientific discovery, Oberg notes. "Every age of exploration is the same in 
that respect - from the time of the Phoenicians...to Marco Polo, and 
including mermaids and unipeds and all these mythological creatures that 
lurk at the edge of our exploration. To me, it's extremely humanizing to 
have this typically human reaction - this denial, this myth making - to our 
lunar adventure. I'm not at all surprised that these stories or 
interpretations exist. Actually, I'm surprised they aren't more widespread."


Nonetheless, hoax believers can be found in many parts of society, here and 
abroad. According to Oberg, Cuban children are officially taught that Yankee 
space technology failed miserably and that NASA was reduced to pitifully 
faking every single lunar landing. Some New Agers also contest the 
possibility of moon landings, as do Hare Krishnas. Non-mainstream Christians 
at the Flat Earth Society - a Lancaster, California-based anti-science group 
of about 3,500 members - contest the entire field of astronomy (not to 
mention moon landings). They liken the towering launch pads to the Tower of 
Babel.

The eccentricity of such convictions certainly intrigues Oberg. "I respect 
these people's dedication to their view of the world. One reason they 
fascinate me is that they're a constant reminder to me that we can't rest on 
common knowledge, we can't be complacent with our traditional 
interpretations of things - even though these interpretations are almost 
always right. But I also find their pathology of reasoning, or 
non-reasoning, compelling. We define health by the boundaries of pathology, 
and I try and define rational thought by looking at cases that go over the 
edge."

That's damning praise indeed. So it's no surprise that Bill Kaysing doesn't 
much care for James Oberg, whom he dismisses as "a NASA agent."ood Timing

If NASA had really wanted to fake the moon landings - we're talking purely 
hypothetical here - the timing was certainly right. The advent of 
television, having reached worldwide critical mass only years prior to the 
moon landing, would prove instrumental to the fraud's success; in this case, 
seeing really was believing. The magic of satellites, with their ability to 
enable live global (and interplanetary?) communication, fascinated and awed 
millions of people, much like anything atomic had caught the public's fancy 
in the previous decade. Also, space research and rocket science had advanced 
far enough to make a trip to the moon likely - or, at the very least, 
remotely feasible. "The structural nature of technology had changed to make 
the moon landing possible, but that also made it possible for people to 
doubt it," says Gary Fine, a sociology professor at the University of 
Georgia in Athens specializing in rumor and contemporary legend.

Perhaps more importantly, Watergate hadn't happened yet, and people still 
trusted their elected officials. "A distrust of authority clearly plays into 
this whole thing," argues Fred Fedler, who teaches journalism at the 
University of Central Florida and has written a book on media hoaxes. "With 
Vietnam and Watergate, people have become less trusting, and to some people 
it doesn't matter what the government says; their immediate reaction is to 
disbelieve and to sometimes embrace the opposite view."

The distrust continues to be fed by the mass media, especially in the film 
and TV business. It is rare to find a movie in which a government agency is 
actually depicted as a collection of fairly efficient, competent people who 
serve their country to the best of their ability. Dramatically speaking, an 
elite of sinister, evil bureaucrats is much more appealing. Linda Degh, a 
retired folklorist who taught at Indiana University in Bloomington, and who 
has recently published a book titled American Folklore and Mass Media, is 
reminded of the film Capricorn One. Released in 1978, Capricorn One tells 
the story of a staged flight to Mars. The astronauts grapple with the moral 
implications of the giant charade and fear they might be killed to keep them 
from blowing the whistle. Sure enough, they find themselves hunted down by 
bloodthirsty government thugs; only one of the astronauts makes it to 
freedom and reporters' microphones. Degh recalls that it was "quite a 
slanderous movie, pretending that the government had been killing people," 
and she believes that it must have given a powerful boost to the 
moon-landing hoax theory. "The mass media catapult these half-truths into a 
kind of twilight zone where people can make their guesses sound as truths. 
Mass media have a terrible impact on people who lack guidance."


007 Uncovers Hoax

Peter Hyams, Capricorn One's director, agrees that mass media can be very 
powerful - dangerously so, in fact. "My parents believed that if it was in 
The New York Times, it was true. I was part of the generation that grew up 
believing that if we saw it on television, it was true. And I learned how 
inaccurate newspapers were, and I realized that TV is just as inaccurate, or 
it can be. So I said, wouldn't it be interesting if you took a major event 
where the only source that people have is a television screen, and you 
showed how easy it would be to manipulate everybody." Hyams insists that he 
made Capricorn One "for entertainment, for fun," not because he was making 
not-so-veiled references to the alleged Apollo hoax. "I was aware that there 
were people who believed that we never walked on the moon, but I never read 
their books or consulted with them. And frankly, I think they are being 
totally ludicrous." (Nevertheless, an invitation to a sneak preview 
screening at the time of Capricorn One's release said: "Would you be shocked 
to find out that the greatest moment of our recent history may not have 
happened at all?")

The concept of the moon swindle holds a certain appeal for other filmmakers 
as well. In Diamonds Are Forever (1971), James Bond accidentally stumbles 
onto a movie set that consists of rocks, a lunar backdrop, and a vehicle 
that looks like NASA's Eagle. Men in spacesuits move about slowly and 
clumsily, as if simulating low gravity. Bond's pursuers give chase, but 007 
- stirred, but not shaken - climbs into the lunar lander and makes his 
escape. The scene is never explained. In the high-tech thriller Sneakers 
(1992), Dan Aykroyd's character, a gadgeteer and conspiracy enthusiast, 
refers to the moon landing by casually remarking: "This LTX71 concealable 
mike is part of the same system NASA used when they faked the Apollo moon 
landings." And a small San Francisco Bay area production company with a big 
name, Independent Film and Video Productions, is working on an 
as-yet-untitled feature film in which a writer discovers that the moon 
landings may have been simulated - and then nearly gets killed in his quest 
for the truth.


Simulating One-Sixth Gravity

Technically speaking, could the moon landings have been faked? Was the state 
of special effects advanced enough in the late '60s to fool even the most 
discriminating eye? Simulating one-sixth gravity could have been done with 
the use of hydraulic cranes and thin wires - the Peter Pan approach - or by 
filming scenes under water, says Dennis Muren. Muren, an eight-time Oscar 
winner, is the senior visual effects supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic, 
a division of Lucas Digital. He was responsible for making the Jurassic Park 
monsters come alive and for key scenes in Terminator 2, Star Wars, and The 
Abyss.

"A moon landing simulation might have looked pretty real to 99.9 percent of 
the people. The thing is, though, that it wouldn't have looked the way it 
did. I've always been acutely aware of what's fake and what's real, and the 
moon landings were definitely real," Muren stipulates. "Look at 2001 or 
Destination Moon or Capricorn One or any other space movie: everybody was 
wrong. That wasn't the way the moon looked at all. There was an unusual 
sheen to the images from the moon, in the way that the light reflected in 
the camera, that is literally out of this world. Nobody could have faked 
that."

Of course, Bill Kaysing will have none of it: "Perhaps this guy [Muren] was 
part of the cover-up. Anything is possible." Kaysing likes to paraphrase 
Alvin Toffler: "He writes that most people are producer/consumers - he calls 
them prosumers. They go through life not questioning anything, not knowing 
anything. Ninety percent of the American population has no idea what's going 
on in this country. I'd like to be the one to tell them - tell them at least 
part of it. I'm either going to share the truth about the moon with them, or 
I am going to die trying."


***************

NASA Bites Back


Q: Why is there no discernible crater beneath the lunar lander?

A: "Although the descent engine of the LM is powerful, most of its operation 
takes place thousands of feet above the moon during the early stages of the 
landing," says a NASA information sheet. "At the moment of touchdown, a 
small amount of surface dust is blown away, but the relatively cohesive 
lunar surface seems to deflect the blast sideways."

Q: Why is there an artificial-looking line between a sharp foreground and a 
blurry background in some of the pictures of the lunar surface?

A: "What you see is simply the curvature of the moon," explains Paul Lowman, 
a NASA geophysicist. "Because the moon is such a small body, the curvature 
horizon is only two or three miles away from eye level. That sharp line you 
see in some pictures is the visible horizon. The blurry part you see is 
caused by mountains sticking up from beyond the horizon."

Q: Why are there no stars in many of the photos taken on the moon?

A: "That's one of Kaysing's sillier arguments," says James Oberg, a 
space-flight operations engineer with the space shuttle program. "Go out at 
night and take a picture of yourself under a streetlight. Even if there's a 
star-studded sky, you'll see no stars in your picture because the camera was 
set to properly expose that big lighted object in the foreground - you - and 
will not register much weaker light sources."

Q: How about the various lighting anomalies?

A: "On some pictures, astronauts are lit from more than one side because the 
sunlight is reflected off the lunar surface or off the landing vehicle," 
says NASA spokesperson James Hartsfield. Paul Lowman adds that some 
conspiracy believers are unknowingly or deliberately using pictures of 
astronauts that NASA never claimed were taken on the moon. "There are 
pictures being passed on and published in their circles that appeared in 
pre-moon landing issues of Aviation Week - nothing mysterious about them," 
sighs Lowman. "These are photos taken in a moon-like training facility at 
the Johnson Space Center where, indeed, there were several sources of 
light."


*****************************************

Moon Hoaxes of Yesteryear: Pigs Might Fly


Not to rain on anyone's parade - but a balloon-faring Dutchman walked on the 
moon some 140 years before Neil Armstrong did. In the Southern Literary 
Messenger of June 1835, Edgar Allan Poe published the first installment of 
that prodigious fable, which he unsuccessfully tried to pass off as a 
genuine news story.

Fed up with his miserable life in Rotterdam, one Hans Pfaall, an unemployed 
bellows mender, secretly built a giant balloon. His goal: "to force a 
passage, if I could, to the moon." He gambled that he would gradually get 
accustomed to the very high altitudes. Pfaall purportedly took off on April 
1, and, because of the thinning atmosphere, soon suffered spasms and began 
bleeding from the ears, nose, and eyes. He made it though: after 19 days in 
space, the Flying Dutchman landed in a crowd of ugly little moon people, who 
"stood like a parcel of idiots, grinning in a ludicrous manner, and eyeing 
me and my balloon askant, with their arms set akimbo."

Despite the awkward welcome, the world's first astronaut lived among the 
unsightly critters for five years, then wrote a letter to the Mayor of 
Rotterdam in which he described some of his experiences and negotiated his 
return. A lunar messenger whom Pfaall had entrusted with the missive did 
reach the city (by balloon, of course) but couldn't be persuaded to land; 
after dropping off the letter, he disappeared into the heavens without 
waiting for a reply - no doubt, Poe muses, "frightened to death by the 
savage appearance of the residents of Rotterdam." (Poe's story is recounted 
in Media Hoaxes, a book written by Fred Fedler and published in 1989 by Iowa 
State University.)

Imagine a telescope lens with a diameter of 24 feet and a weight of almost 
15,000 pounds. With it, you could see insects on the moon. OK, so there is 
no life on the moon - but that's not what the readers of the New York Sun 
were told. In August 1835, the penny paper reported the "findings" of the 
British astronomer Sir John Herschel. In a six-part series, reporter Richard 
Adams Locke wrote that the scientist, using a huge custom-built telescope in 
a planetarium at the Cape of Good Hope (at the southern tip of Africa), had 
spotted many spectacular species on the moon. Among them: horned bears, 
tailless beavers, and 4-foot-tall ape-like creatures with thick beards and 
large wings. Locke referred to them as "bat-men." Actually, there were 
plenty of bat-women too, and the two sexes engaged freely in behavior that 
Locke declined to describe - it would have been "improper" on earth.

Herschel was a legitimate, respected scientist who remained unaware of his 
fictional discoveries for months. When word of Locke's elaborate yarn 
reached him, he reportedly laughed and tried to expose the hoax - to little 
avail.

On June 20, 1977, Anglia TV in England caused a nationwide stir when it 
broadcast a documentary called Alternative Three. By linking facts with 
half-truths, and by staging interviews with so-called "astronomers" and 
"astronauts," the makers suggested that both NASA's space program and the 
Cold War were decoys. The power elite in the USSR, the US, and Great Britain 
had in fact been working together on a secret project - Alternative Three - 
that had established bases on the moon and on Mars, so that they could 
escape the coming ecological nightmare on earth. Insiders who were deemed a 
security risk were callously murdered. Scientists had been abducted to do 
experiments in the space colonies. Even ordinary folks had been snatched and 
forced into slave labor on the moon and on the red planet.

Surprise! It was all a hoax, made clear by the closing credits that listed 
the actors on the show and that contained a copyright notice dated April 1. 
Nonetheless, Anglia was flooded with calls, and newspaper headlines reported 
"shock" and "panic." To this day, some people believe that all of it, or 
some of it, is true.

                                   * * *

Anagram enthusiasts will find that Rogier van Bakel (rogiernl@aol.com) has 
Brave Ink Galore. He is a Dutch correspondent in Washington, DC.


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=WIRED Online Copyright Notice=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

         Copyright 1993,4 Ventures USA Ltd.  All rights reserved.

  This article may be redistributed provided that the article and this 
  notice remain intact. This article may not under any circumstances
  be resold or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior 
  written permission from Wired Ventures, Ltd.

  If you have any questions about these terms, or would like information
  about licensing materials from WIRED Online, please contact us via 
  telephone (+1 (415) 904 0660) or email (info@wired.com).

       WIRED and WIRED Online are trademarks of Wired Ventures, Ltd.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Subject: Majordomo file: file '2.09/departments/idees.fortes'
Reply-To: info-rama@wired.com
Status: R

--

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
=-=-=-=-=Copyright 1993,4 Wired Ventures Ltd.  All Rights Reserved=-=-=-=-=
-=-=For complete copyright information, please see the end of this file=-=-
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

WIRED 2.09
Idees Fortes
************ 

Superdistribution
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 

Stop selling software. Give it away. Get paid for its use. Meterware is so 
logical it could be the foundation of the new, networked economy.

By Brad Cox


It has become a maxim: intangible electronic goods - software applications, 
online magazine stories, clip art - are quite distinct from tangible goods 
like baskets, potatoes, and oil refinery machinery. Tangible goods are made 
of atoms; electronic goods are made of bits. While those who produce 
electronic goods must expend the same capital, labor, and knowledge as those 
producing tangible goods, their products can be copied in nanoseconds and 
transported at the speed of light.

The hard-to-copy nature of tangible goods made the traditional pay-per-copy 
mechanism a natural choice. But an info product's ease of duplication so 
thoroughly undercuts the traditional notion of pay-per-copy that the 
possibility of an abundant supply of pre-fabricated information-age goods is 
nearly nixed.

But imagine a significantly altered market mechanism for electronic goods. 
Instead of treating ease-of-replication as a liability to be prevented - via 
labor-intensive copy protection and legal or moral restrictions - this new 
model treats ease-of-replication as the asset upon which a new foundation 
for software engineering could be based. In Japan this new way is called 
superdistribution. Superdistribution lets information flow freely, without 
resistance. Eschewing the low-tech property-rights mechanisms already 
widespread (shrinkwrap software, license servers, dongles, demoware, 
shareware), superdistribution allows miners, refiners, fabricators, 
assemblers, distributors, and marketers to cooperate and compete as 
producers and consumers of electronic goods within a global information-age 
society.

Existing copyright law distinguishes between copyright (the right to copy or 
distribute) and useright (the right to "perform," or to use a copy once 
obtained). In the eyes of the law, when Joe Sixpack buys a record or CD at a 
store, he's actually purchasing a bundle of rights that includes ownership 
of a physical medium along with a limited useright that allows use of the 
music on that medium only for personal enjoyment. Large television and radio 
companies buy an entirely different bundle of rights. They often have the 
same media (whose only difference is a "not for resale" sticker on the 
cover) thrust upon them for free by publishing companies in expectation of 
substantial fees for the useright to play the music on the air. These fees 
are administered by ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and 
Publishers) and BMI (Broadcast Musicians Institute), who monitor how often 
each record is broadcast to how large a listening audience.

Similarly, superdistribution treats each personal computer as a broadcasting 
station whose "audience" consists of a single "listener." First pioneered in 
1987 by Ryoichi Mori, head of the Japan Electronics Industry Development 
Association, superdistribution is based on the observation that electronic 
objects are fundamentally unable to monitor their own copying but trivially 
able to monitor their use. For example, making software - whether it's 
Microsoft's Word or Mike's string-compare subroutine - count how many times 
it has been invoked is easy, but making it count how many times it has been 
copied is much more difficult. So why not build an information-age market 
economy around this difference? If revenue collection were based on 
monitoring the use of software inside a computer, vendors could dispense 
with copy protection altogether. They could distribute electronic objects 
for free in expectation of a usage-based revenue stream. (This, of course, 
raises the same hairy privacy issues that we trade off when we choose to use 
credit cards instead of cash or talk by telephone rather than face to face. 
The real risk to privacy here does not arise when usage information is used 
only for billing, but from any possibility that it might be used for other 
purposes.)

Treating ease-of-replication as an asset rather than a liability, 
superdistribution actively encourages free distribution of information-age 
goods via any distribution mechanism imaginable. It invites users to 
download superdistribution software from networks, to give it away to their 
friends, or to send it as junk mail to people they've never met.

Why this generosity? Because the software is actually "meterware." It has 
strings attached, whose effect is to decouple revenue collection from the 
way the software was distributed. Superdistribution software contains 
embedded instructions that make it useless except on machines that are 
equipped for this new kind of revenue collection.

Superdistribution-equipped computers are otherwise quite ordinary. They run 
ordinary pay-by-copy software just fine, but they have additional 
capabilities that only superdistribution software uses. In Mori's prototype, 
these extra services are provided by a silicon chip that plugs into a 
Macintosh coprocessor slot. The hardware is surprisingly uncomplicated (its 
main complexities being tamper-proofing, not base functionality), and far 
less complicated than hardware that the computer industry has been routinely 
building for decades. Electronic objects intended for superdistribution 
invoke this hardware, which provides instructions. These instructions check 
that revenue-collection hardware is present, prior usage reports have been 
uploaded, and prior usage fees have been paid. They also keep track of how 
many times they have been invoked, storing the resulting usage information 
temporarily in a tamper-proof persistent RAM. Periodically (say monthly), 
this usage information is uploaded to an administrative organization for 
billing, using encryption technology to discourage tampering and to protect 
the secrecy of the metered information. (Think of your utility bill.)

Software users receive monthly bills for use of each top-level component - 
say, Microsoft Excel, Myst, or a Net-based rock video. When these bills are 
paid, payments are divvied up between the makers of the component and makers 
of subcomponents - in proportion to usage. For example, for the rock video, 
payment might go to MTV as well as to the artist. In other words, the 
end-user's payments are recursively distributed through the 
producer-consumer hierarchy. The distribution is governed by usage metering 
information collected from each end-user's machine, plus usage pricing data 
provided to the administrative organization by each component vendor. (The 
various rounds of payment resemble those made by Visa or MasterCard.)

Since communication is infrequent and involves only a small amount of 
metering information, the communication channel could be as simple as a 
modem that autodials a hardwired 800 number each month. Many other solutions 
are viable, such as flash cards or even floppy disks to be mailed back and 
forth each month.

Consider an author who wishes to distribute or sell a multimedia document 
that cannot be handled as a simple text file. Without superdistribution, the 
author's market is confined to those who have already purchased a program 
capable of displaying this document - a run-time version of Macromedia 
Director, for example. The same occurs at each lower level of the 
producer/consumer hierarchy. The market of a programmer who wishes to sell a 
reusable software component is restricted to those who have already 
purchased the components and tools upon which the software component relies.


With superdistribution, the market is no longer restricted to those who own 
Director, because it will be acquired by the customers' operating system as 
if it were a part of the document. The creator of the document accrues 
revenue from those who read it, as does the creator of Director.

The user's operating system acquires subcomponents of the document, such as 
Director and any subcomponents it relies on (QuickDraw, etc.), from the hard 
drive's cache, automatically loading it as needed from the network. The 
operating system can do this automatically and transparently because loading 
software involves no financial commitments when revenue is based on usage 
insteadof acquisition of copies.

Superdistribution addresses the perennial, implicit questions of those who 
might potentially provide the smaller-granularity reusable software 
components upon which an advanced software engineering culture could be 
founded: Where do software components come from? Why should I bother to 
provide them? Why should I engage in such gritty activities as testing and 
documenting reusable software components sufficiently so that others might 
use them? What is in it for me?

Where software's ease-of-replication is a liability today (by 
disincentivizing those who would provide it), superdistribution turns this 
liability into an asset by allowing goods to be distributed for free. Where 
software vendors must now spend heavily to overcome software's invisibility, 
superdistribution would thrust software out into the world to serve as its 
own advertisement. Where the personal computer revolution isolates 
individuals inside a stand-alone personal computer, superdistribution 
establishes a cooperative/competitive community around an information-age 
market economy.

By separating revenue collection from acquisition of copies, hard drives and 
computers can disappear and become just part of the plumbing that conveys 
information-age goods between producers and consumers. Computers and 
telecommunications links become invisible, a transparent window through 
which individuals can communicate, cooperate, coordinate, and compete as 
members of an advanced socioeconomic community.

                                   * * *

Brad Cox (bcox@gmu.edu) is founder of the Coalition for Electronic Markets 
and a faculty member in George Mason University's Program on Social and 
Organizational Learning.


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

WIRED 2.09
Idees Fortes
************ 

Access to Education
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 

Connecting every public school classroom and library to the infobahn is a 
legitimate goal of public policy.

By George Lucas and Sen. Bob Kerrey


How to engineer the information superhighway so it benefits all in our 
society has become a burning issue.

Critics would leave it to cash-starved local communities and school systems 
to choose whether or not to pay the tolls for education on the information 
superhighway. In their model, communities can decide either to increase 
teachers' salaries, buy new textbooks, or cruise the infobahn. This country 
should not accept such an either/or proposition.

Such a course would hobble American education, especially in rural 
communities and inner cities.

We strongly support moving rapidly away from central regulation and toward a 
competitive market where customer choice drives the system. However, we also 
strongly believe that schools, teachers, and students will be left in the 
competitive dust unless we explicitly define and declare their needs.

Traditionally, subsidies have helped to extend basic phone service to 
include rural and low-income customers. Everyone benefited by having more 
users on the public switched telephone network. However, in the dawning of 
the information age - where access to information will be the currency of 
power and knowledge - the definition of access for educational institutions 
should be expanded to include multimedia technologies and services.

We support introducing competition into the local exchange market and using 
market-based theories and pricing. However, this doesn't mean that subsidies 
and public mandates should be abandoned entirely; some of them are 
justified. If we leave the market alone, we will not achieve universal 
access, the only way to attain equity of opportunity for teachers and 
students. Connecting every public school classroom and library to the 
developing superhighway is a legitimate goal of public policy. Adopting 
regulatory policies that will advance this cause is crucial.

Telephone lines should connect every classroom to the Internet and other 
electronic services. Students would then gain access to resources few 
schools can afford; they could then communicate with students and experts 
around the world. It also will support the teachers - perhaps the only group 
of professionals in our society expected to do their jobs with no office, no 
telephone, no privacy. Telephone lines in the classrooms would enable 
teachers to use the telephone and electronic services like other 
professionals do: to access information and communicate with community 
members, peers, parents, students, and experts.

This is only the first step, however. We have talked with students, parents, 
educators, and business, community, and political leaders to formulate a 
vision for education in the 21st century. This vision stresses lifelong 
learning and is student-centered, making teachers, families, and communities 
co-facilitators of learning. This vision takes advantage of new technologies 
to support the educational process.

Nationwide, momentum is building to transform our educational system, and 
the proper use of technologies can reinforce these efforts. But the benefits 
from educational technology ought to be part of the government calculus in 
determining overall telecommunications policy, not just part of our policy 
for improving the quality of education. Another benefit - which the private 
sector should appreciate - is that market demand for advanced 
telecommunications services will increase as more people have the capacity 
to communicate with these new media. As we increase the demand for advanced 
telecommunications services, the average costs of these services will go 
down, making them more affordable for everyone. All of these factors must be 
an integral part of any cost-benefit analysis in determining public policy.

Congress today is considering these interrelated issues. One of its major 
challenges is to figure out how to integrate the benefits of universal 
service policies based on service mandates while at the same time fashioning 
policies based on economic requirements and competition.

The communications paradigm used in this country for the past 60 years needs 
to be overhauled. Congress needs to break out of the traditional boxes 
lawyers and regulators have built over the years - policies that separate 
"voice-phone" service as basic and essential, but lists everything "new" 
(such as touch-tone service) as advanced and competitive and, therefore, a 
luxury and optional.

Yes, we do need a more competitive telecommunications industry. This can 
happen if Congress (1) creates incentives for all competitors to wire and 
connect schools, homes, and libraries with educational technology and 
products; and (2) encourages and permits all providers of telecommunications 
services to freely provide them. Of course, we need to monitor the process 
to see that our national objectives are being met by this market incentive 
approach.

Congress is currently considering legislation addressing these goals. In 
June, the US House of Representatives approved the National Communications 
Competition and Information Infrastructure Act of 1994, which calls for the 
FCC to promote the provision of advanced telecommunications services to 
schools, hospitals, and public libraries. (The House also approved another 
bill affecting telecommunications, the Antitrust Reform Act of 1993. For 
another perspective on Congressional legislation pending at WIRED's 
presstime, see "Universal Service," page 102).

The US Senate will soon take up the Communications Act of 1994, which seeks 
to achieve many of these universal-service protection objectives. In 
particular, the bill would require all telecommunications carriers to 
contribute to preserving universal service. Importantly, the bill would 
require all telecommunications carriers to provide educational institutions 
- among other entities - interstate and intrastate access services at 
preferential rates. The FCC would establish rules to enforce this 
requirement. The bill also would require the FCC to ensure that all public 
elementary and secondary school classrooms and libraries have access to 
advanced telecommunications services.

We fully support these efforts, and call upon all educators and parents to 
speak up for policies that will support universal access to today's 
telecommunications services as well as to the interactive, broadband 
technologies of tomorrow. We mustall work together to ensure that the 
information superhighway is the road to educational excellence in America.

                                   * * *

George Lucas is a filmmaker and chair of the George Lucas Educational 
Foundation. Sen. Bob Kerrey, D-Neb., is an original co-sponsor of the 
Communications Act of 1994.


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=WIRED Online Copyright Notice=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

         Copyright 1993,4 Ventures USA Ltd.  All rights reserved.

  This article may be redistributed provided that the article and this 
  notice remain intact. This article may not under any circumstances
  be resold or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior 
  written permission from Wired Ventures, Ltd.

  If you have any questions about these terms, or would like information
  about licensing materials from WIRED Online, please contact us via 
  telephone (+1 (415) 904 0660) or email (info@wired.com).

       WIRED and WIRED Online are trademarks of Wired Ventures, Ltd.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Subject: Majordomo file: file '2.09/departments/plo.tv'
Reply-To: info-rama@wired.com
Status: R

--

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
=-=-=-=-=Copyright 1993,4 Wired Ventures Ltd.  All Rights Reserved=-=-=-=-=
-=-=For complete copyright information, please see the end of this file=-=-
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

WIRED 2.09
Electrosphere
*************

PLO-TV
^^^^^^ 

The medium is the message.

By Rich Zahradnik


Through the centuries, the American Colony Hotel, like Jerusalem itself, has 
seen many lives: the building started out as a pasha's palace, with a wing 
for each wife. In 1881 a break-away group of American Protestants bought it 
and established a religious community there. In the years since it became a 
hotel, it has served as a meeting place for journalist and source, diplomat 
and go-between, Israeli and Palestinian. Across a divided city, people come 
to meet at the American Colony. Cool stone floors lead through stone 
archways to the dining room. You half expect your waiter to whisper some key 
bit of intrigue.

But today the waiters are taking orders for coffee, and the meeting isn't 
about dramatic secrets, it's about television - Palestinian television. 
Daoud Kuttab - producer, journalist, and president of the Jerusalem Film 
Institute - is explaining how the peace agreement between Israel and the 
Palestinian Liberation Organization will lead to the creation of a 
Palestinian TV station. If the process can avoid the almost inevitable 
hitches, a Palestinian station could sign on sometime this fall.

The right to broadcast may not be as fundamental as the right to vote or the 
right to create a Palestinian-run police force, but the people of the 
occupied territories are already debating the type of broadcasting service 
they want. Their debate over issues of press freedom and media diversity 
reflects a nation struggling to define itself.

"We are in a unique situation," says Kuttab. "We will have television before 
we have a state, so people like myself who are more independent-minded, 
rather than state-minded or government-minded, have an opportunity to 
influence it in one way or the other.... We are really getting into this 
whole issue of broadcasting cold turkey. We have no traditions, no laws, 
very few professionals."

And a great deal at stake.

As Kuttab says, Palestinian TV will debut before there is a Palestinian 
state, even before elections for the government that will run the Gaza Strip 
and the city of Jericho. It must, because everyone involved expects TV and 
radio to play a critical role in those elections. The new broadcasting 
outlet will shape the future state before it exists; those seeking to run 
Jericho and Gaza will want maximum influence over the station. Add demands 
by some in the Palestinian community - tired of years of military censorship 
- for diversity, coupled with a feeling that their own cultural identity has 
been crushed by the Israeli occupation, and you get the idea this little TV 
station will be pulled by massive forces. It will be the only station the 
Palestinians will get for a long while, because of the scarcity of 
frequencies and the absence of cable TV in such poor areas.

How free will it be? The Israelis control the frequencies, at least until 
the Palestinians have an independent state. So the Israelis could shut the 
station down, though that would certainly damage the peace process.

The Israeli government won't be the station's only worry. Within the 
Palestinian community are some who want the new government to have direct 
control over the station. But the Palestinian audience itself will work 
against any attempt to impose heavy-handed controls on the new station. 
Palestinians live in a sea of frequencies - amid Israeli, Egyptian, and 
Jordanian TV and radio, not to mention satellite channels from all over the 
place - and they won't be receptive to the kind of state-controlled 
television offered in other Arab nations.

"You can't fool them very easily; they watch Israeli television with a very 
careful eye and ear," says Kuttab. "We are in a fight to get away from the 
existing Arab models, which are just completely useless."

Kuttab's criticisms of neighboring broadcasters aren't quite echoed by those 
named to run the new station: executives at the Palestinian Broadcasting 
Corporation are politic about channels controlled by those governments long 
supportive of the Palestinian cause. When presenting news stories, "we will 
always take into consideration the other opinion, to guarantee or make sure 
there is always a diversity of opinion," says Sam'an Khoury, deputy director 
general for external and public relations at PBC.

But the commitment to freedom and diversity at PBC remains open to question. 
Radwan Abu Ayyash, director general of the PBC and Khoury's boss, gave an 
ominous address in January, insisting the new station must be under the 
direct control of the Palestinian authorities. "This institution is one of 
the main pillars for the building of an independent Palestinian state," he 
told a conference in Jerusalem. "It is deeply connected with the Palestinian 
National Authority and reflects its policies and natural guidance. In order 
to save this institution from any attempts at political or financial 
intervention, irrespective of its source, which could affect its national 
goals, this institution must be a public national trust under the direction 
and supervision of the Palestinian National Authority."

Ayyash spoke at "Palestinian Broadcasting: Promises and Challenges," the 
first ever meeting on the subject, held in Jerusalem under the auspices of 
the Jerusalem Film Institute and InterNews, an international journalistic 
organization. But a vocal group of Palestinians, including Kuttab, believes 
in creating a Palestinian state that is not modeled on the surrounding Arab 
nations. Topping the list is Hanan Ashrawi, former Palestinian peace 
negotiator and now head of the independent Palestinian Committee for 
Citizens' Rights. "Maybe we should ask ourselves two questions," she argued. 
"Do we want to be a replica of some existing Third World countries or some 
Arab countries who view the media as a tool of authority in a monolithic 
society? This tends to be repressive, autocratic, where every television 
station is surrounded by the army or the police for fear of the next coup 
d'etat, where television or radio is the mouthpiece of authority, and 
opposition is stifled.... Or do we want to be pacesetters? Do we want to be 
models for a forward-looking contemporary state that is confident in the 
fact that the, if you wish, clash of ideas, confrontation of ideas, or 
debate and internal disagreements are a source of confidence and enrichment 
of the overall Palestinian expression?"

The conference brought in journalists from around the world and produced a 
series of recommendations. Palestinian participants called for "clear 
provisions for freedom of opinion, expression, publishing, and broadcasting" 
in the Palestinian constitution and "the continuation of our Palestinian 
tradition, which has refused, during the years of occupation, any form of 
political censorship."

Today, change is evident, though it remains difficult to determine how deep 
it goes. Perhaps Abu Ayyash overstated his case back in January. Perhaps 
there never was a united position among those working to set up Palestinian 
broadcasting. Or perhaps the conference itself had an impact. After the 
conference, the PBC adopted its current name, dropping its previous title of 
Palestinian Broadcasting Authority, to reflect the fact that "it is 
semi-official, and it has to serve all the public," according to Khoury. PBC 
will be governed by an 11-member board of directors, three or four of whom 
will be elected by a larger, 72-member board of trustees drawn from the 
community. The balance of the directors will be selected by the national 
authority with the involvement of the PLO. That may sound ominous, but 
remember: the British government chooses the entire BBC board of governors. 
Adds Khoury, "We have written down very clearly that we would like to see 
freedom of the press, freedom of broadcasting, including the idea of more 
than one station in the future.... We, as people who fought for quite a long 
time against military and political censorship, have made it clear we are 
against any sort of censorship."

At least for now, PBC wants to offer opposition viewpoints and the widest 
range of opinions. It will have to walk a fine line in a community riven by 
Yasser Arafat's decision to seek peace. Islamic fundamentalist groups like 
Hamas have sworn to destabilize the peace process, as have right-wing Jewish 
settlers. PBC - new, underfunded, and untested in the face of laws and 
regulations - will face conditions that would try an ABC or a BBC.

The one wild card not being addressed by any of the players is Israeli 
censorship. Since the Palestinians will be using Israeli frequencies, Israel 
could pull the plug if it opposes what is being broadcast. Yet no one seems 
willing to name how, or if, the Israelis might attempt to censor PBC. 
Israel's ministry of communications says it is negotiating with the 
Palestinians only on professional issues - that is, frequencies - not on 
political issues. The negotiation of political issues is, at least for the 
moment, reserved for politicians and, ultimately, the army.

Khoury insists that once a deal is made between the PLO and Israel, it is 
the laws of the Palestinian National Authority he must worry about. Under 
the agreement, the frequencies "become ours unless the whole agreement falls 
apart. It's not a license from Israel to operate a station; it's part of the 
agreement, so the frequency will be ours. We are very serious about the 
peace accords. They're going to work hard to have them implemented, to have 
them work all the way through." Some form of voluntary censorship will have 
to be set up, since Israel could switch off the station if it likes, claims 
Kuttab. "I know the PLO won't use it to incite violence," he says. "They 
will use it for Palestinian nationalism, and this will not make the Israelis 
happy."

The debate over political control will continue, but, for PBC, there are a 
host of nuts-and-bolts broadcasting issues to settle, issues of frequencies, 
sign-on dates, programming schedules and equipment purchases. The 
Israeli/PLO agreement gives the PBC frequencies for one VHF television 
station and one AM radio station. Specific frequency numbers have been 
identified for the radio station but not for the TV station. PBC already has 
commitments for hardware and operational support from the European Union, 
public broadcaster France 2, and UNESCO. An Ecu 2 million contract has been 
awarded by the European Union to a French company for the transmitters PBC 
will need. France 2, under an agreement between the French government and 
the PLO, will provide engineering, administrative support, and training; 
UNESCO has promised US$500,000 toward the effort. Thanks to the aid, PBC 
already owns an outside broadcast van. But it's still in Paris and can't be 
moved to Israel lest it become a target for right-wing settlers. (What 
better thing to blow up than the symbol of the Palestinians' new freedom to 
broadcast?) As a result, six Palestinians have had to fly to Paris to train. 
When PBC will be able to take possession of the equipment is still up in the 
air.

PBC television's initial programming schedule will run 31/2 to 4 hours a 
day, with a half-hour news show in Arabic and three 5-minute news bulletins 
in Hebrew, English, and French, according to Khoury. Up to 21/2 hours will 
be devoted to local programming focusing on industry, agriculture, 
education, and "promoting the idea of elections." The final hour or so will 
be made up of Arabic films - likely from Egypt, the film capital of the Arab 
world - and entertainment series, including American shows, to be acquired 
on the international market. Khoury views his audience as the 2 million 
Palestinians in the occupied territories and the 1 million Arabs living in 
Israel proper.

Back at the American Colony Hotel, Daoud Kuttab describes how TV is already 
beginning to reach across divides in the Middle East. He is the first 
Palestinian producer to co-produce a TV series with an Israeli company for 
Israeli TV. His Thania Productions, together with AmythOS TV & Film 
Productions, is making Peace Chronicles, a series of video diaries that will 
show how three Israeli and three Palestinian families lived through and 
reacted to the peace process. Israel's Channel 2 will air it, and it has 
been acquired by stations in Britain, Holland, France, and Canada. Kuttab 
hopes it will also premiere on PBC's new station.

Such street-smart, from-the-people production techniques will have broad 
application when the era of Palestinian broadcasting begins. Kuttab says 
he'd prefer to see 20 programs shot on low-grade VHS rather than 10 on Super 
Beta, because a "lowering" of broadcasting standards will allow more local 
productions to get on the air. His greatest hope is that PBC television will 
create a production center capable of providing programming for the 200 
million people who live in the Arab world. For that, PBC needs to be free. 
"The openness we are campaigning for could make this a very good place for 
Arab TV and filmmaking," Kuttab says. "I have dreams that the Palestinian 
area can become a kind of base for pan-Arab television and filmmaking."

                                   * * *

Rich Zahradnik (100135.530@compuserve .com) is editor of Television Business 
International and a freelance writer.


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=WIRED Online Copyright Notice=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

         Copyright 1993,4 Ventures USA Ltd.  All rights reserved.

  This article may be redistributed provided that the article and this 
  notice remain intact. This article may not under any circumstances
  be resold or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior 
  written permission from Wired Ventures, Ltd.

  If you have any questions about these terms, or would like information
  about licensing materials from WIRED Online, please contact us via 
  telephone (+1 (415) 904 0660) or email (info@wired.com).

       WIRED and WIRED Online are trademarks of Wired Ventures, Ltd.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Subject: Majordomo file: file '2.09/departments/rants'
Reply-To: info-rama@wired.com
Status: R

--

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
=-=-=-=-=Copyright 1993,4 Wired Ventures Ltd.  All Rights Reserved=-=-=-=-=
-=-=For complete copyright information, please see the end of this file=-=-
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

WIRED 2.09
Rants & Raves
************* 

Out of Africa
^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
Jeff Greenwald provides an accurate, colorful description of Africa's need 
for communication (WIRED 2.06, "Wiring Africa," page 60). His closing line, 
about assigning priority to an electronic mailbox over feeding the hungry, 
reflects a revolutionary change that calls up a bitter history of wasted 
money, time, energy, and, above all, hopes for the Pan African News Agency.

PANA was thoroughly politicized. Only government communiques could flow over 
its wires. Interestingly, African editors, aware of the self-serving nature 
of the daily flow, used little of PANA's output.

African journalists, for the first time, called for free and diverse news - 
in the presence of ministers of information. Many African states signed on. 
PANA would be a continental communication link. If successful, it would be 
tied journalistically as well as electronically to the global news flow.

Real change will take more than wiring. Most important is political will. 
Decadelong political debates over wiring were founded on most African 
leaders' argument that their countries were too poor for better 
communication systems: give us bread and industry before the democratizing 
aspects of mass communication, they would say. As a consequence, their 
nations have neither adequate communication nor bread.

I have long argued that all are needed simultaneously: social and political 
development and the communications systems that empower them. Political 
will!

Leonard R. Sussman
freehous@igc.org

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Boxes Don't Make Art, People Do
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
Why is it that so many butchers, bakers, and yes, computer hackers imagine 
that all you need is a computer to become a video pro? As a colleague of 
mine once remarked, "Anyone with a camera and a business card is a video 
professional."

Sure the Video Toaster (WIRED 2.05, "Flying Toasters," page 60) is a great 
tool. It has fabulous applications. But boxes don't make great video. People 
make great video. Somehow in the rush for simple (and cheap) technology, 
this basic tenet was lost.

In my business, for every talented Toaster user I meet, I suffer through 
nine vidiots. And the sad part is, these vidiots often finagle contracts 
that should go to more experienced, more talented people. The average 
video-virgin corporate communications client, not knowing any better, will 
contract a job to a Post Toastie using Hi-8 rather than a talented producer 
shooting and editing on Betacam.

But you can bet that the producer working in Betacam knows how to 
conceptualize ideas, knows how to script, knows how to compose a shot, and 
knows her way around an edit suite better than 90 percent of the Post 
Toasties. The bottom line is, the talented, experienced producer will 
deliver a better product: a video with a powerful, hard-hitting message that 
communicates.

Give me a Les Paul, but I won't be an Eric Clapton. Give me a bat, but I 
won't be a Ken Griffey Junior. Give me a Video Toaster, but I won't be a 
Steven Spielberg.

Richard Wieser
Seattle, Washington

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


To Clip or Not to Clip
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
The concern I have about the Clipper encryption scheme that the National 
Security Agency's Stewart A. Baker utterly fails to address (WIRED 2.06, 
"Don't Worry Be Happy," page 100) is that Clipper relies, in part, for its 
security on the secrecy of its algorithm. Ask any non-NSA cryptographer, and 
he or she will tell you that any algorithm hiding something must have 
something to hide. Whether it's a backdoor for NSA's own use or some 
weakness NSA could not eliminate, someone somewhere sometime will exploit 
it.

Pete Gontier
gurgle@netcom.com


Kudos to WIRED for giving Stewart A. Baker an opportunity to tell his side 
of the Clipper story. Too bad he didn't have anything valuable to say. Mr. 
Baker, let me help you understand the one problem that you didn't address: 
we don't trust you. Why? Because you've never given us reason to. (Remember 
the raid on Steve Jackson games, the ATF follies, Iran-contra, BCCI, etc.?) 
Secure encryption, like firearms, represents an insurance policy for all 
citizens against future tyrants. I'll keep my copy of PGP, my Mini-14, and, 
yes, my pocket protector, thank you very much. Like the song says, folks, 
you can't trust freedom when it's not in your hands.

Scott "Wiseguy" Giordano
sgualiardo@scuacc.scu.edu

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Go Go Speed Racer!
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
Why on earth would Richard Kadrey have selected this particular feature to 
introduce your readers to the world of Japanese animation ("Urotsukido-ji: 
Legend of the Overfiend," WIRED 2.06, page 109)? Phrases like "...the 
violence-and-libido-heavy world of manga..." belong in the tabloids, not in 
a quality magazine (which I have always perceived WIRED to be). Manga (and 
anime) are no more sex-and-violence filled than the vast array of American 
fiction - some has it, much does not.

If you are really interested in showing people what Japanese animation has 
to offer, there are a number of fine people available through rec.arts.anime 
who can point you in the right direction.

Jeff Hildebrand
hildebr@mbnet.mb.ca

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Mais Non, C'est Admirable
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
Michael Schrage hysterically attacks the French for their failure to 
understand the Manifest Destiny of "trash for the lowest common denominator" 
that is one of America's major exports (WIRED 2.05, "France's Jerry Lewis 
Media Policy," page 75). He would make a good PR person for European 
McDonald's. But I can't help thinking that, hunched over his Big Mac, he 
secretly admires a society where people insist on eating well, where they 
have economic as well as political rights, where leading intellectuals are 
on prime-time television rather than gathering dust in underfunded 
university departments, and where magazines don't borrow headings from 
another language - Idees Fortes - to suggest that they have content.

Brent Gregston
73252.1314@compuserve.com


Unlike France's intelligentsia, I don't eat Big Macs, I don't admire Jerry 
Lewis, and I don't feel a central government is obligated to fund my 
attempts at creativity. Vive la difference! - Michael Schrage

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Spittin' Mad
^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
I just half-read the article "Rage" (WIRED 2.06, page 102) and found myself 
totally disgusted. I do not like seeing stories like this in your magazine. 
I'm an avid WIRED reader and enjoy finding out about the newest advances in 
the world of computers, communication, and design. Please don't run anymore 
of these "human interest/everyman" stories about geek murderers.

Bob M. Thomas
bob_m_thomas@vine.org


The more of this issue (2.06) I read, the more unhappy I am. Issue 2.05 was 
so much better that it might as well have been another magazine. Maybe you 
should go back to bimonthly; the quality was infinitely superior. I get a 
copy at work and a copy at home for my kid, and we've both read every issue 
cover to cover, until now. I won't be getting a copy for home if you're 
going to run National Enquirer crap like "Rage" and "alt.sex .bondage," and 
I won't bother to buy a copy for work if future issues continue to be as 
irrelevant as this one was. Thanks for a dozen great issues; I really 
enjoyed them while they lasted.

J Williams
jwill@microsoft.com

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Merry Pranksters Reexamined
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
This is not a comment on Joshua Quittner, who I am sure is a superb 
journalist, but on his piece (WIRED 2.06, "The Merry Pranksters Go to 
Washington," page 77), which was not quite in keeping with the WIRED 
tradition of not having any holy cows, of taking jabs at even the most 
holier-than-thou organizations that have sprouted up around the Net.

Nothing I have read has suggested that the Electronic Frontier Foundation is 
doing anything useful besides dragging Al Gore into the fray, and now I find 
myself going through what I hope is the last of the Great Visionary 
articles.

Quittner's piece is infused with the wide-eyed - and childlike - infatuation 
that most journalists seem to have developed for the Net and for those who 
claim to be, or are anointed, "visionaries."

Mr. Quittner, does the EFF really think that an organization like itself, 
with foggy ideals and dubious-to-nonexistent claims to represent the Net as 
a whole, can attempt to set directions for something as wonderfully organic 
and anarchic as the Net?

Ramanan Raghavendran
ramanan@pip.com


My intention, wide-eyed, childlike, and infatuated though it may have been, 
was to profile some of the people who founded the EFF. I had fun; I'm sorry 
if you did not.

I never suggested that the EFF claims to represent the Net as a whole. Just 
the opposite. I think the EFF mines the Net for constituents who understand 
- as you might - that the "wonderfully organic and anarchic" Net is the best 
model for what the federal government is trying to build in the name of the 
National Information Infrastructure. - Joshua Quittner


As a former member of the EFF, I am a believer in what the EFF is fighting 
for; but, having graduated from college into a low-paying job, I found I 
could no longer afford EFF's normal membership price. I shared the 
skepticism with many others when the EFF left its Cambridge offices for DC, 
but I have been impressed at their orchestrated campaign against Clipper and 
other legislative issues. But the level of decadence described in Quittner's 
article, as the EFF board members gathered in one of San Francisco's most 
expensive restaurants and ordered pricey food they barely touched, seemed 
dangerously close to the type of waste we see coming from members of the US 
government. The giddy excitement of EFF board members over mentions on 
C-SPAN and riding on Air Force Two were almost nauseating.

The government is full of politicians trying to become millionaires, and the 
EFF board is full of millionaires trying to become politicians.

Bill Jackson
Boston, Massachusetts


It is one thing to alert a nation to a serious problem, but it is another 
thing to be able to steer someone toward the solution. WIRED has failed in 
that respect. You have successfully hyped everyone about the dangers of our 
losing the right to privacy in electronic communication, yet you have, 
again, done zero to let us know specifically what we can do as readers to 
help combat the problems that you are always identifying. I don't want to be 
just a member of the EFF. I want to be able to take direct action, so I may 
help prevent an epidemic.

I called my congessional representative to tell him that I was against the 
Clipper Chip, and that I was a proponent of the right to privacy in 
electronic communications. I was saddened to get a response from him asking 
me to which piece of legislation I was referring, so he could do more 
research. When I consulted the appropriate issue of WIRED, I could find 
nothing but general information and was unable to give the congressman 
anything to go on. No specific legislation is mentioned. To this day, I have 
been able to find no information about any impending legislation before the 
US House of Representatives.

To the editors, please get off your ego-asses, quit reveling in your 
newfound fame in the publishing world, and take some responsibility in 
following through with the issues you are inflaming the electronic community 
with. Telling us about the problem is not enough! You need to offer 
suggestions as to how someone can solve these problems.

If I hear the name "Mitch Kapor" one more time I'm gonna puke! Please become 
more specific, and do some real research from now on.... At least the legal 
counsel for the NSA was being specific. (Also, no more letters praising how 
good you are.... We know, we know! Really, we do. Details, details, 
details!)

Patrick Mannion
72614.1411@compuserve.com


First of all, Clipper is not a legislative proposal. Second, let us assure 
you that we're giving this grave issue the detailed coverage it so needs and 
deserves. Please refer to pages 48 and 49 of WIRED's April issue (2.04): 
there, under the headline "What Can You Do," we've laid out specific action 
you can take to fight Clipper. If you still crave more, please contact 
HotWired or the Info-rama (info-rama@wired.com) to access our Clipper 
archive. - The Editors

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Where Are the Women?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
Here's a riddle:

We are online in droves. We develop software, shoot video and edit on 
nonlinear systems, create interactive discs, host online services, read 
WIRED, and even work on cyber-magazine editorial staffs. But we are not in 
WIRED magazine. Who are we?

Women, of course.

C'mon guys. Each time I read the cyber-publication of my time, I'm amazed 
that it reads as though published 20 years ago.

Don't stop doing what you're doing, don't freak out about the PC police, 
just add more. Add me, and maybe I and all of my other techno-girlfriends 
will subscribe.

Videogrrrl
Videogrrrl@aol.com

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Shock Value?
^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
As a new subscriber to WIRED, I am having great difficulty coming to terms 
with the difference between your editorial copy (thoughtful, amusing, 
provocative) and some of your advertising (violent, sexist, sick, 
offensive).

I don't know whether WIRED has an advertising code. If you do, I don't think 
it's strong enough. If you don't, I think you should adopt one. At a minimum 
the code should prohibit advertising that 1) glorifies or encourages iolence and/or 2) exploits or demeans women.

Terry Lavender
Toronto

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Zilchies
^^^^^^^^ 
Oh dear, oh dear. Poor Jules Marshall must have been having a blonde day 
when he wrote "Zippies" (WIRED 2.05, page 79).

Plunk yourself down in the center of Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, 
Birmingham, Bristol, London, or even the Isle of Wight and you'll find New 
Age travelers and ravers who have resorted to their lifestyles because they 
cannot get housing, aid, training, or jobs. They've been let down and tossed 
aside by a government that thinks it's still 1924. Yes! Drugs and raves are 
fun! But "pronoia?" Get real. Things are truly bad here, and due to get 
worse.

If there is a zippie movement coming from over here, it stems from the 
attitude that people have zip, with zip to look forward to, and must deal 
with a government that has zip for brains. Sorry, Jules.

Chey Cobb
10004.3342@compuserve.com

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Attention Deficit Di ... What?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
The item on Attention Deficit Disorder ("Interrupt-Driven," WIRED 2.06, page 
46) was illuminating. At least the first part of it was. I flipped over to 
Net Surf before I finished, but I plan to get back and finish the rest as 
soon as I can....

Tom Dale Keever
keever@phantom.com

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Undo
^^^^ 
We made a glaring error on the cover of the June issue: instead of reading 
"Get Wired," the Morse Code we printed incorrectly declared "Geo Wired."

A few errors appeared in the EFF piece we ran in the June issue ("The Merry 
Pranksters Go to Washington," page 77): First of all, EFF moved to 
Washington in January of 1993. Also, Stewart Brand never raced the 
psychedelic bus (he was simply on a bus that was racing, and it occurred 
near Taos). The Trips Festival was in fact the first and only of its kind. 
And Brand's office is technically a fish boat, not a shrimp boat.

The Sun Voyager (Fetish, WIRED 2.06, page 35) is actually not the first 
fully transportable SPARC workstation. SPARC laptops have existed for more 
than a year. y We forgot the credit for the cool image of Juan Atkins on 
page 97 - Lisa Spindler took the photos.

Send your Rants & Raves to:
E-mail: rants@wired.com
Snail mail: WIRED, PO Box 191826
San Francisco, CA 94109-9866

                                   * * *


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=WIRED Online Copyright Notice=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

         Copyright 1993,4 Ventures USA Ltd.  All rights reserved.

  This article may be redistributed provided that the article and this 
  notice remain intact. This article may not under any circumstances
  be resold or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior 
  written permission from Wired Ventures, Ltd.

  If you have any questions about these terms, or would like information
  about licensing materials from WIRED Online, please contact us via 
  telephone (+1 (415) 904 0660) or email (info@wired.com).

       WIRED and WIRED Online are trademarks of Wired Ventures, Ltd.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Subject: Majordomo file: file '2.09/departments/cable.labs'
Reply-To: info-rama@wired.com
Status: R

--

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
=-=-=-=-=Copyright 1993,4 Wired Ventures Ltd.  All Rights Reserved=-=-=-=-=
-=-=For complete copyright information, please see the end of this file=-=-
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

WIRED 2.09
Electrosphere
************* 

Fran-On-Demand
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 

WIRED visits one of the first interactive TV tests - in TCI's backyard
in Colorado - and discovers that the only problem with the idea that
movies-on-demand will drive the creation of the infobahn is, well, the
demand.

By Evan I. Schwartz


This is the best job I've ever had," Fran says, with giddy enthusiasm.

Sporting shiny reddish hair, oversized eyeglasses, and a fresh pair of
sneakers, Fran is the video-on-demand gopher for the sleepy burb of
Littleton, Colorado, entrusted with keeping her eye on a big computer
monitor hanging from the ceiling. When an order for, say, Coneheads,
comes in, she rushes to the giant videotape library on the far wall,
retrieves the correct title, and hurries to insert it into the
appropriate place in a gleaming bank of VCRs. During prime-time hours,
two people share this job. But right now, on a Wednesday afternoon,
it's all Fran.

Fran may or may not realize that her job category will soon be phased out. 
Her employer, cable colossus Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI), is conducting 
this market test with AT&T and US West. But all the other interactive 
television trials just getting underway are powered by computers, not by 
people like her. This particular test, called VCTV (for Viewer-controlled 
Cable Television), happens to be decidedly low-tech. The only point of this 
trial is to gauge what consumers want - and what they will pay for when all 
the technology is ready.

Two and a half videos per month. That's the golden nugget of this
entire market research effort. Since the VCTV test began in July 1993,
the 300 households participating in the trial here in Littleton have
each ordered, on average, between two and three movies every month.
"That's twelve times the national average for regular pay-per-view,"
boasts Jeffrey Shomper, VCTV's marketing coordinator. He's comparing
the finding with traditional pay-per-view, in which viewers dial an
800-number and order from a narrow choice of movies shown every hour
or so. According to the Pay TV Newsletter, published by Paul Kagan
Associates Inc., the figure is only slightly lower than twelve times
the national average, with typical households ordering just 3.5 movies
per year.

To find this out, TCI, AT&T, and US West have chipped in more than
US$10 million.

But considering how much these 300 families have been prodded, prompted, and 
probed, this 2.5-per-month figure is less than impressive. To recruit 
participants, VCTV sales reps went knocking on doors in Littleton on up to 
three separate occasions. If that wasn't enough, flurries of telemarketing 
calls and direct mail pieces with pictures of Kevin Costner were supposed to 
do the trick. And testers waived the monthly subscription fee for the 
purposes of the market test. Viewers only pay on a per-movie basis, usually 
about $3 or $4 a shot. Once 300 households accepted the service, they were 
also given three "barker" channels showing the trailers for the latest video 
releases around the clock. "We are hitting these customers pretty hard," 
says Shomper, in a bit of an understatement.

That's only the beginning of the interactive fun. Half of the participants' 
TVs are fitted with electronic Nielsen monitors allowing analysis of viewing 
decisions the families make; VCTV also tracks viewers' tastes using its own 
system. If someone shows a hankering for any of 19 different movie genres, 
the system takes note; those watching Westerns, for instance, immediately 
start getting hit with direct mail touting all the John Wayne, Clint 
Eastwood, and Gene Autry movies they could bear.

Market research purists might call this "polluting the experiment." No 
market-driven company in its right mind is going to spend this much money 
and effort recruiting and tormenting millions of customers. In the real 
world, the average household might never want to order 2.5 movies per month 
with a remote control. And even if it did, would that generate sufficient 
revenue to build an entirely new, digital, interactive television 
infrastructure?

That is one of the cable industry's most persistent and vexing questions.

Watching any movie, any time - video-on-demand - is supposed to be the 
killer app that propels dozens of new interactive TV services into American 
homes by the end of the century. The home shopping, the custom news 
programs, the play-along game shows, the dozen or so simultaneous football 
games, the home banking, the on-demand Roseanne, the whole 500-channel 
scenario that cable companies have been hyping - all of this is supposed to 
piggyback on the raging success
of movies-on-demand. But there's one glitch: there's not much demand for 
movies-on-demand.

No matter. Market leaders are charging ahead, the less-than-stellar results 
from TCI's test notwithstanding. The trials by Time Warner in Orlando, 
Florida; by Cox Communications in Omaha, Nebraska; by Bell Atlantic in 
Alexandria, Virginia; by AT&T and Viacom in Castro Valley, California; and 
by TCI and Microsoft in Seattle are all set to start by early 1995. All of 
these companies have developed unique ways to replace Fran - they scan 
thousands of films into digital format and load them onto massively parallel 
computers. These video "server" machines will be linked by fiber-optic and 
coaxial cable to the newfangled set-top boxes on the TV sets in the homes
of test customers.

Meanwhile, all these companies are aware of an extreme version of the 80-20 
rule. It's not as if 80 percent of the viewers want to watch 20 percent of 
the thousands of titles that are available. It's more like 95 percent
of the viewers want to watch the same five movies at any given time. That's 
just the way the industry works. When Mrs. Doubtfire is released on video, 
almost everyone wants it that evening.

Computer scientists have tried to come up with a way to accommodate this 
requirement. The goal is to allow as many as 10,000 people to watch the same 
copy of a popular movie at 10,000 different start times. Just as on 
conventional TV or in theaters, movies stored on computers must be shown at 
a rate of 30 frames per second. Because the computer can grab the video at 
rates up to 240 frames per second, in any given second eight viewers can 
access the same portion
of the memory.

But eight is not enough, especially when Jurassic Park comes out on video. A 
technique called "memory striping" increases viewership by chopping up each 
movie into, perhaps, a thousand small snippets. And each snippet is 
automatically placed on a different portion of the memory. This way, eight 
thousand viewers can simultaneously watch the same small segment of a movie. 
When a viewer finishes with a given snippet, special software knows how to 
jump seamlessly to the next one, keeping the movie on track. The software 
could even let viewers rewind, fast-forward, and pause the video, as with a 
VCR.

This all works in laboratories at least. No one has shown that this can work 
for a large group of fussy viewers. And even if the technology can operate 
as planned, there are basic limitations built into it. A single video server 
can handle the viewing demands of about 30,000 households, according to Ben 
Linder, director of technical marketing for Oracle Corp.'s Media Server 
software. Oracle is supplying video database technology to Bell Atlantic and 
other companies conducting trials. The software giant impressed cable 
companies earlier this year with claims that it could supply the technology 
for approximately $500 per household. Some industry analysts don't believe 
it. Taking all the costs into account, many analysts estimate that it would 
cost $30 million to set up a typical 30,000-home network (about $1,000 per 
household). Time Warner's Orlando system, meanwhile, is reportedly costing 
$5,000 per viewer. No matter whose figures you use, the conclusion is the 
same: households will have to spend a lot more than what it costs for 2.5 
movies per month for cable companies to break even on this stuff in a 
reasonable amount of time.

The technology also has some stiff and obvious competition. The corner video 
store seems anything but an endangered species these days. Indeed, the video 
rental industry shows no sign of retreat. A full 80 percent of American 
homes have VCRs. In 1993, these households spent record sums, renting 3.2 
billion videos - an average of nearly one per week. There are roughly 28,000 
video stores in the US, each serving an average of about 2,600 families. 
Although Blockbuster and a few other chains have dominated the business 
press a lot, most of America's video stores are independently run. These 
mom-and-pop operations are an entrenched part of neighborhoods all over the 
country.

Believe it or not, many people actually enjoy visiting them. And walking 
through a typical video store is actually a highly efficient way to search 
for what you want. Movies are all categorized and displayed in full color. 
When you select one and bring it home, you are actually transporting more 
than 100 Gbytes of data with you. Even if the new release that you want to 
see is out of stock, it's not that big a deal. Most people can wait a week 
or two. If it wasn't important to see something in the theaters, it isn't so 
important to see it the minute it hits the video stores.

The inhabitants of Littleton seem to agree with this. Even during a 
particularly harsh winter, even with Fran-on-demand delivered right to their 
living rooms, many of the 300 families in the VCTV trial continued to go to 
video stores. The market research showed only a slight decline in video 
store rentals among these families. Cable companies may yet build some sort 
of interactive infotainment superpipe. But they will probably have to come 
up with some other killer app, some other reason for people to subscribe to 
a new generation of cable services.

"Everybody is talking big," says one telecommunications analyst. "But no one 
has proof that there will be enough demand to justify the costs."

Never before has so much investment and hype and ingenuity gone into such a 
trivial task as replacing the video store. No one knows this better than 
Fran. When told she will be replaced by computers one day soon, Fran just 
shrugs and smiles, her eyes trained on a screen that, at the moment, shows 
not a single request.

                                   * * *

Evan I. Schwartz (eis@murrow.tufts.edu) is a research fellow at the Edward 
R. Murrow Center for International Communications at Tufts University.


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=WIRED Online Copyright Notice=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

         Copyright 1993,4 Ventures USA Ltd.  All rights reserved.

  This article may be redistributed provided that the article and this 
  notice remain intact. This article may not under any circumstances
  be resold or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior 
  written permission from Wired Ventures, Ltd.

  If you have any questions about these terms, or would like information
  about licensing materials from WIRED Online, please contact us via 
  telephone (+1 (415) 904 0660) or email (info@wired.com).

       WIRED and WIRED Online are trademarks of Wired Ventures, Ltd.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Subject: Majordomo file: file '2.09/features/taiwan'
Reply-To: info-rama@wired.com
Status: R

--

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
=-=-=-=-=Copyright 1993,4 Wired Ventures Ltd.  All Rights Reserved=-=-=-=-=
-=-=For complete copyright information, please see the end of this file=-=-
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

WIRED 2.09
Me-Too Is Not My Style
********************** 

In making Acer a global computer brand currently growing at 70 percent a 
year, the Clone King of PC Island, Stan Shih, has become a national hero in 
Taiwan and the most successful information technology entrepreneur in Asia.

By Bob Johnstone


It was while eating a Chinese meal in Mexico that Stan Shih, Taiwan's Number 
One digital entrepreneur, realized personal computers could be marketed like 
fast food.

Stan - as everyone always calls Acer's chair and CEO - has to travel a lot: 
his company, Acer, makes the leading brand of PC in Mexico and has 
facilities in 24 other countries. Wherever he goes, Stan likes to eat 
Chinese food, but the quality of the cooking varies greatly from place to 
place. Now, Stan is a pragmatic man. While pondering how the operating 
principles established by the likes of McDonald's might be applied to his 
beloved national cuisine, he made the connection between burgers 'n' fries 
and boards 'n' drives.

Few industries move faster than the personal computer industry: the product 
cycle for desktop machines these days is narrowing, down to just a few 
months. That means makers can easily get burned by excess inventory - who 
wants yesterday's disk drives? Instead of putting together fully loaded PCs 
in Taiwan and then shipping them worldwide, Stan figured it would make more 
sense to configure machines downstream to suit local tastes. Final assembly 
could be delegated to Acer's standardized production lines - 16 different 
sites worldwide - and components could be sourced according to shelf life. 
Under this scheme, computer housings and floppies could be shipped to 
franchises by sea, motherboards flown in fresh from Taiwan, and the most 
perishable parts - CPUs, hard disks, and memory chips - sourced locally. The 
result cuts inventory shelf life in half, from 90 to 45 days, and customers 
can have it their way - at McAcer's.

Stan's plan seems to be working. In 1993, Acer grew 60 percent, scoring 
sales worth US$1.9 billion. In the first quarter of 1994, sales were up 70 
percent, to US$630 million, boosting Acer into 10th place among PC vendors 
in the US. For the full year, Acer predicts sales of US$2.7 billion. 
Prospects for the next three to five years also look good, as companies 
continue to downsize, replacing their mainframe and minicomputers with 
networks of PCs. Acer's dream is to break into the top five PC vendors by 
1996 and to reach sales of US$8 billion by the year 2000. A tall order 
perhaps, but people have scoffed at Acer's lofty ambitions before - and each 
time Stan has proved them wrong.

There was his controversial 1987 decision to establish a global brand name, 
for example. Stan spent heavily to transform his company from an anonymous 
manufacturer of original equipment for big US and European firms into Acer, 
a brand registered in more than 100 countries around the world with a fancy 
logo to match. This was a step that no other Taiwanese computer manufacturer 
had been bold enough to take; back home, locals accused Stan of hubris. (The 
Latin acer means - among other things - active, energetic, and incisive, but 
the gambler's interpretation of "ace" also resonates well in the risky PC 
business).

Heads shook again two years later, in 1989, when Stan decided to invest 
US$185 million in a joint venture with Texas Instruments Inc. to make memory 
chips. Taiwan didn't do DRAMs, ran the conventional wisdom. Huge Japanese 
and Korean conglomerates would kill them in the market if they tried. But 
Stan had read his tea leaves right, foreseeing the huge increase in demand 
for memory that Windows 3.0 would create. Since coming online in July of 
1991, TI-Acer Inc., located at Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park in 
Taiwan, has begun spitting out DRAMs round the clock, breaking records for 
productivity and generating healthy profits in the process. Acer provides 
capital to TI-Acer, and in return gets half the factory's output of memory 
chips as well as access to advanced semiconductor manufacturing.

Whatever Acer does is big news in Taiwan - it is by far the biggest PC maker 
there, with Mitac running a distant second. (In 1993, according to the 
island's Institute for Information Industry, Taiwan earned 47 percent of 
total Asian PC industry revenues of US$7.6 billion. Japan earned 38 percent, 
and South Korea earned 14.5 percent. In addition to personal computers, 
Taiwanese firms also have shares of between 30 and 80 percent of the world 
markets for computer power supplies, monitors, keyboards, scanners, and 
mice.)

Stan himself is a national hero, king of "PC Clone Island." Fortune has 
called him "one of the 25 people you ought to know for doing business in 
Asia," and MicroTimes has said he is one of the 100 most influential people 
in the US information industry.

Stan has become the standard-bearer of Taiwan's electronics industry because 
he has been with it since the beginning, always leading the way. As a senior 
in high school, he opted for electrical engineering instead of medicine, the 
choice, he says, of 80 percent of his classmates. "I didn't want to do what 
everyone else did," Stan says. "Me-too is not my style."

Beg pardon? If Stan Shih is such an original, then what is he doing cranking 
out clones, which has to be the ultimate me-too business? Stan would 
probably answer that there is a world of difference between making clones 
and making compatibles. By definition, a clone allows no room for 
differentiation, whereas a compatible offers all sorts of chances for a 
canny maker to add value. Take speed to market, for example: in 1986, Acer 
was second only to Compaq - and ahead of IBM - in introducing a 386-based 
machine. And take original technology: in 1991, Acer introduced a socket 
called ChipUp, which makes it easy to upgrade your system with a faster 
processor. Acer has since licensed ChipUp to dozens of other companies, 
including Intel (and sued several Taiwanese clone merchants for infringing 
on its intellectual property).

But no matter how fast you are on your feet and how much techno-savvy you 
can muster, success in such a savagely competitive market as PCs ultimately 
depends on strategy. And it is in this domain that Stan's true originality 
resides.

Stan's innovations in corporate style have pushed Acer to the top. And by 
demonstrating that it is possible to transcend the limitations of the 
traditional, family-based Chinese company - in which the boss makes all the 
decisions and reaps all the rewards - he has set an example for other 
Taiwanese firms to follow, in much the same way that Bob Noyce and Intel did 
for the start-ups of Silicon Valley. "Stan has contributed much to Taiwan's 
PC industry," says Lance Wu, a former district manager at Bellcore who is 
currently deputy general director of Taiwan's Computer and Communication 
Research Laboratories. "He set the road model for many start-ups here."

Stan Shih was born 50 years ago in the Taiwanese port city of Lukang, 110 
miles south of Taipei. An only child, Stan was just 3 years old when his 
father died, so from his earliest years he had to help out with the family 
business. "I learned business in primary school, selling eggs," Stan 
recalls. Through this experience he learned how to convert weight to unit 
price. Even today, Stan reckons that he is swifter at mental math than most 
of his employees.

Eggs were not the Shih family's only stock in trade - they also dealt in 
stationery goods. So Stan acquired a second business model, and a 
sensitivity to shelf life that would serve him well later. "With eggs, the 
margin is 10 percent and inventory is good for two days," he explains, "so 
it's a low-margin, quick-turnover business. With stationery, the margin is 
50 to 60 percent, and you keep inventory for three to six months." Stan says 
he often spends time explaining product cycle times and inventory risk to 
his subordinates.

In high school Stan was a good student, but it was not until he got to 
Taiwan's elite National Chiao Tung University that he really began to shine. 
He graduated with a BS in 1968, did a year's military service, then got his 
master's degree in 1971. Stan came in at the top of his class asan 
undergraduate, the school's first crop of graduates since it was 
transplanted from mainland China. At the university he was good at science 
and math, but he also spent a lot of time on social activities, starting 
teams for table tennis (Stan remains a demon with the ping-pong paddle) and 
volleyball, as well as a photography society and chess and bridge clubs. "I 
was captain of all the societies," he says, "and from that I learned how to 
deal with people."

As he developed leadership skills, Stan began to develop ambitions. 
Initially these were academic, but he says after he came in second in his 
graduate school class, "I lost my interest in study."

In 1971, the electronics industry in Taiwan was just beginning to take root. 
Multinationals like General Instrument and Philips were setting up on the 
island, attracted by the availability of cheap, well-educated labor. 
Graduates were paid $200 a month, an unbelievably high salary for Taiwan in 
those days. At the same time, local home-appliance firms like Tatung and 
Sampo were licensing technology from the Japanese to produce electrical 
goods for the protected domestic market.

Stan's first job was with an outfit called Unitron Industrial Corp., one of 
the earliest Taiwanese companies to boast its own R&D section. There, among 
other things, he single-handedly developed the island's first desktop 
calculator. In 1972, Stan moved on to Qualitron Industrial Corp., a company 
dedicated to calculator production. Qualitron dispatched the 28-year-old 
engineer to Los Angeles (a 27-hour flight in those days, stopping in Manila 
and Hawaii en route) to buy microprocessors from Rockwell and to get trained 
in their application (everything from traffic-light controllers and medical 
instruments to pinball and slot machines). Stan understood that the 
microprocessor would be the core technology for a new industrial revolution.


Characteristically, upon his return to Taiwan, Stan set about spreading the 
word, giving lectures on microprocessors to enthusiastic young Taiwanese 
engineers. (Later, from 1976 to 1980, after Stan founded the company which 
would ultimately become known as Acer, he would train some 3,000 engineers 
in the fundamentals of microprocessor-based design, laying the foundation 
for the island's information technology industry. In the mid-'80s, Acer 
would make PCs available for hands-on training of hundreds of thousands of 
primary and junior high school kids. Such activities are of course not 
entirely altruistic: they also serve to create future customers for Acer.)

As an engineer, Stan's main claim to fame is that he designed the world's 
first pen watch. Not exactly a technical breakthrough, the pen watch was 
nonetheless a big hit commercially. And it taught Stan an important lesson: 
even a small innovation can create a lot of business.

Though successful, Qualitron ran into financial trouble. The company 
borrowed money to bail out a sister company that made textiles. But the 
textile industry was in a tailspin, and the sister company went bankrupt, 
taking Qualitron - and Stan, its product vice president - down with it. The 
way Stan tells the story, he had no choice but to start his own company. In 
1976, he founded Multitech International Corp., the precursor of Acer, with 
$25,000. Stan and his wife Carolyn Yeh owned 50 percent of the firm, with 
four other co-founders sharing the remaining half.

Having your wife as a partner is not unusual in Taiwan, where most 
businesses are family-owned. ("Better to be the head of a chicken than the 
tail of an ox," runs an old and oft-quoted Chinese proverb.) The boss's wife 
often takes the role of tightfisted keeper of the corporate purse. Even big 
companies tend to be centrally controlled, with the smallest budget items 
requiring the boss's approval.

One such company is Acer's arch-rival, Mitac. This is run by Matthew Miau, 
the son of a local petrochemicals magnate. It is hard not to be impressed by 
Miau, who is unusually tall for a Chinese, wears immaculately tailored 
suits, speaks perfect English, and back in the '70s was a member of one of 
Intel's early design teams. By contrast, Stan, with his humble manner, his 
toothy grin, and his hard-to-understand accent doesn't come across nearly so 
strongly. But even back then, as Stan tells it, Acer was twice as big as 
Mitac. Today, he says, that gap has widened: Acer is five times bigger. But 
why?

Because Stan was smart enough to realize that, to grow beyond a certain 
size, he would need to recruit and keep a team of talented managers. This in 
turn would require delegating authority and distributing rewards. Starting 
from Acer's third year in business, Stan began inviting managers to become 
shareholders in the company. Each year more and more employees picked up 
stock options, so that by the time the company went public in 1988, the 
founders had diluted their ownership from 100 percent to about 70 percent, 
and some 3,000 employees had a stake in the company.

"Stan's very generous about benefits and diluting stock for employees," says 
K.Y. Lee, president of Acer Peripherals Inc. "At Acer, we have a chance to 
purchase shares at a very low price."

Tolerance is another of Stan's virtues as a manager. "In meetings, people 
tend to get emotional, argue strongly," comments a second trusted 
lieutenant, Ronald Chwang, president of Acer America. "But Stan keeps his 
cool, never gets excited. He's able to control his emotions and to shift his 
view."

Such qualities have enabled Stan to retain the loyalty of his top managers. 
Lee has been with Acer 17 years, and the average for heads of the group's 
business units is 12 years. Chwang, who was with Intel, is a relative ewcomer, having been with Acer just eight years.

Stan's record on delegation is also impeccable. "When Stan gives us a 
target," says Lee, "it's normally just an outline - the detailed stuff we 
work out for ourselves. We're very entrepreneurial; there's a lot of room 
for us to exercise our discretion."

The ability to delegate is particularly important, because Acer has no huge 
domestic market to depend on. Taiwan exports 97 percent the PCs it makes. By 
contrast, Japanese producers sell 85 percent of their production at home, 
according to Stan. "Since our markets are mostly overseas [56 percent North 
America and Europe, 44 percent Latin America, Pacific Rim, and Middle East], 
we have a much more decentralized structure than a US company, which would 
typically be dominated by its headquarters in the US," says Chwang.

Cracking the US market - which currently accounts for 30 percent of the 
company's sales - has not been easy for Acer. Stan's initial approach was to 
hire experienced outsiders, most notably Leonard Liu, a Chinese-American who 
was formerly general manager of IBM's software development laboratories in 
San Jose, California. In 1990, Liu arranged the acquisition of Altos 
Computer Systems, a small US maker of minicomputers, on the grounds that 
Altos had sizable resources in the US, which Acer would need to compete with 
US firms.

But the acquisition turned out to be a disaster, costing Acer more than $100 
million, including severance payments for former Altos employees. At the 
same time, the recruitment of Liu and others parachuted in from the outside 
created tensions within the company, especially as the confrontational style 
of the newcomers clashed with Acer's more consensus-driven approach. These 
incompatibilities were probably the main reason for Liu's early departure in 
April 1992. (Now chief operating officer at Cadence Design Systems, Liu 
declined to be interviewed for this article.)

The 1990s began badly for Acer in other ways, too. A bloody price war in the 
PC business cut margins. At the same time, the construction and equipping of 
TI-Acer became a black hole that sucked in cash. In 1991, Acer hit rock 
bottom, with losses of $22.7 million. But for Stan, the worst moment came 
when, for the first time in its history, Acer had to lay people off. Or 
rather, ask them to resign ("in a Chinese company, we don't talk about 
layoffs," Stan explains). For Taiwanese long accustomed to hearing nothing 
but success stories about Acer, the layoffs were hard to understand. To his 
credit, Stan did not shirk responsibility for them. "He faced the public 
very bravely," says K.Y. Lee, "and explained why the layoffs were 
necessary."

At the same time, however, Stan was taking more positive steps to get Acer 
back on its feet. He realized that since going public in 1988, Acer had lost 
that crucial motivating sense of ownership, of shared risk and reward. 
Stan's solution was to spin off many of the company's units as separate but 
wholly owned firms, and invite employees to purchase shares in the new 
enterprises. (Acer has also launched joint ventures with local assemblers 
and distributors, like Computec de Mexico, in which it maintains only a 50 
percent share.)

Future plans call for 21 companies to be floated worldwide. In the second 
half of 1994, two subsidiaries, Acer Peripherals and Acer Sertek Inc., will 
likely be listed on the Taiwan stock market. In 1995, Computec de Mexico is 
to be listed on the Mexican stock market. Also in 1995 or early 1996, Acer 
hopes to list Acer America Corp. on the New York Stock Exchange. In 1996, 
Acer Computer International will list on the Singapore stock market.

Further out, it is possible that TI-Acer will be listed in Taiwan in 1997. 
Acer Labs is in the initial phases of being spun off. Approximately 25 
percent of equity in Acer Laboratories Inc. is held by management and 
employees.

Stan communicates this new arrangement using a metaphor drawn from computer 
terminology. He calls it the client-server model, in which strategic usiness units (servers) like Acer Peripherals provide regional business 
units (clients) like Acer America with services such as technology and 
manufacturing. In this model, Stan's role is to be - what else? - the 
operating system for the group.

The difference is that an operating system is an indispensable part of the 
computer, whereas Stan says he does not see himself as an indispensable part 
of Acer's future. "I've worked very hard to make sure Acer won't need me," 
the 50-year-old told Singapore's Business Times last December. "Before I get 
too old I should retire."


*************************

M. I. T. (Made in Taiwan)

The guts of the information age are manufactured in Taiwan. But if you think 
Taiwan is just another bunch of high-tech sweat shops, think again. Taiwan's 
Internet traffic is greater than Japan's. The brain drain of Taiwanese 
entrepreneurs, engineers, and scientists is reversing from Silicon Valley 
back to Taiwan. And Taiwan is now a functioning democracy.

By Andrew Leonard


Parked by the hundreds on city sidewalks, endlessly roaring down alleyways 
and avenues, and ignoring, like the rest of Taiwan's traffic, even the most 
basic road regulations, Taiwan's 10 million motorcycles clog every opening 
on the island. Yet even in the congested capital of Taipei, traffic rarely 
stops. Perhaps it's the inherent flexibility of motorcycles, or maybe it's 
what one observer called the "efficient exception-handling subroutines" of 
Taiwanese drivers. There's a constant flow, an order within the chaos, 
symbolic of a societywide impatience with going slow and an ability to 
overcome any obstacle.

At any intersection, waiting for a light to change, one gets the sense of a 
nation schooled from the cradle in the art of shooting the gap. Drivers 
jockey for position. A backlog of buses, trucks, and cars waits impatiently, 
immobile, but in its interstices a pack of cycles sneaks foward. There's the 
man hauling four propane tanks on a bamboo trestle above the rear wheel of 
his Honda, revving his throttle. There's the woman with a surgical mask over 
her mouth easing forward her red Yamaha, tapping her shoes on the sticky 
tar. When the crosslight turns yellow, the drivers accelerate in a mad 
frenzy, swerving around stragglers and rushing to the next light, where they 
do it all over again.

Taiwan didn't become the 14th-largest trading nation in the world by waiting 
for the light to turn green. To shoot the gaps in today's information age, 
the Taiwanese have latched onto the most crucial commodity of the modern era 
- computer components. Taiwanese companies sell more motherboards, monitors, 
mice, and scanners than any other nation's companies. Taiwan today makes 20 
percent of the notebook computers in the world. Once a wellspring of cheap 
plastic toys and low-grade baseball mitts, Taiwan has turned to churning out 
silicon wafers and integrated circuits - the guts of the information age.

Two out of every five computers in the world have motherboards made in 
Taiwan. US chip designers can be made or broken by a Taiwanese 
manufacturer's decision to choose their products for inclusion on a circuit 
board. Taiwan is one of the few countries that can produce 16-Mbyte DRAM 
chips. The 1993 Computex computer show in Taipei drew 8,000 buyers from 
abroad along with 80,000 domestic visitors.

A mountainous island about the size of Connecticut and Massachusetts 
combined, Taiwan out-maneuvered much bigger nations on its way to the 
technological front by getting to the crosswalk with products just the 
slightest bit better, or cheaper, or faster, than everyone else. Displaying 
the same virtuoso flexibility with which they pilot their motorcycles, the 
Taiwanese have adapted to the zigzags of market capitalism. They possess 
neither the resources nor the power to set the course of the world market, 
but the Taiwanese have few peers at nimbly dodging around it.

Flexibility has been an essential Taiwanese survival characteristic for 
centuries. Eighty-five percent of the population descends from immigrants 
who fled the Chinese mainland two or three hundred years ago, driven by 
famine, war, and the promise of opportunities. After the Sino-Japanese war 
in 1895, China's ailing Qing dynasty ceded Taiwan to Japan for a 50-year 
period that ended with Japan's defeat in World War II. In 1949, after years 
of militant struggle between Chinese Nationalist and Communist forces, 
Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and more than a million of his soldiers and 
followers (the Kuomintang) escaped the Communists in China by fleeing to 
Taiwan. Joining up with a provincial government that two years before had 
suppressed a rebellion by the native Taiwanese, the Kuomintang made the 
island their base for "retaking the mainland." The new leadership imposed a 
restrictive martial law regime, and Chiang's followers, referred to as 
"mainlanders," secured a monopoly over politics and the military that has 
begun to disintegrate only in the last decade, especially since martial law 
ended in 1987.

Still, the last 100 years of cultural and political turmoil haven't been 
sufficient to put a cap on what James Davidson, the United States Consul in 
Taiwan at the turn of the century, described as a national tendency toward 
"overabundant impetuosity." When Taiwanese society chances upon an 
opportunity to make money - or, for that matter, an opportunity just to have 
fun - it surges forward as one entity. All those decades of repression, 
argue some of Taiwan's social critics, have conditioned the Taiwanese to 
strike like lightning whenever they see an opening, and to swerve out of 
danger as soon as the gap closes.


Double E's: Home to Roost

Government encouragement of the "information industry" has played an 
enormous role in Taiwan's growth, but there's a grass-roots 
techno-infatuation going on as well. One day in May, in a cavernous 
exposition hall at Taipei's domestic airport, thousands of twenty- and 
thirtysomethings mill among hundreds of booths, scanning information 
pamphlets and scrutinizing Chinese character-laden computer monitors while 
loudspeakers alternately blare Madonna and Taiwanese folk songs. Some 
visitors stop in front of a full-scale stage to watch a mock Taiwanese folk 
opera celebrating the virtues of a virus-killing application (Taiwan is an 
ace producer of both viruses and virus-protection systems). Across town, 
tucked beneath an overpass cutting through one of the city's busiest 
neighborhoods, is Taipei's KuangHua Market. Buddhist antique stores share 
space with tiny retail computer outlets. Incense wafts past young men and 
women hunched in concen- tration as they compare prices on cut-rate 486 
chips. In the larger basement section across the street, crowds of Taiwanese 
nerds sift through bins of transistors and diodes, inspecting serial cables 
and math coprocessors, searching for that last part necessary to get their 
jerry-rigged clone up and running.

Many of the people who visit the KuangHua Market have jobs with one of 
Taiwan's thousands of small or medium-size high-tech companies. A generation 
ago, most of them fled the country to become electrical engineers (Double 
E's) working abroad. In recent years, many have come back, a reverse brain 
drain that says volumes about how the country has changed in the past 
several decades.

There are now thousands of fluent English-speaking Double E's in Taiwan with 
PhDs from the United States who earlier spent years working for top US 
research laboratories and earning four times what they could in their native 
country. Throughout the '50s, '60s, and '70s, the exodus marked an 
embarrassing loss of face for the Kuomintang. By 1983, more than 80,000 
students had left Taiwan to study abroad and only 13 percent had returned. 
In 1984, Taiwan's 20,000-strong student delegation in the US was the largest 
of any foreign country. Today, that generation is returning to a transformed 
nation.

Today, Taiwan's per capita GNP approaches US$11,000. Land prices in Taipei 
have skyrocketed. Night markets in which shoppers chose their own chickens 
and watched their throats cut (to guarantee freshness) have been replaced by 
Hong Kong supermarket chains. The city is a chaotic jumble of subway 
construction, cracked sidewalks abutting brand-new luxury hotels, and 
endless noise.

But just an hour's bus ride south, on the outskirts of a bustling town 
called Hsinchu, the Taipei-style anarchy has been tamed, at least within the 
boundaries of the Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park, the jewel in 
Taiwan's high-tech crown. It is hard to imagine an environment more at odds 
with the madness of Taiwan's nearby capital city.

Hsinchu is the planned half of Taiwan's love affair with computer 
technology, the place where government activism has channeled Taiwan's 
energy to create the sixth-largest producer of information-technology 
products in the world: the government established the park; 
government-funded research institutes feed new technological breakthroughs 
to the park; and the government is a significant investor in many of the 
park's largest enterprises.

According to Lance Wu, the deputy general director of Taiwan's Computer and 
Communication Research Laboratories, more than a thousand Taiwanese 
scientists and engineers have returned from overseas to work in the Hsinchu 
area in just the last two years.

Besides the promise of good jobs in their homeland, a number of other 
factors contributed to the expatriates' homecoming. The US recession in the 
late 1980s eviscerated a once-thriving job market. The Kuomintang unleashed 
an aggressive government recruiting drive, offering cheap housing, high 
salaries, and other forms of government support. To encourage business, the 
government offered a sheaf of tax breaks and R&D grants, including a 
30-percent tax break per dollar for "strategic" investments of over US$40 
million in a Hsinchu-based enterprise.

The park's final drawing card is location: it sits smack upon a fiber 
backbone connected to the nation's telecommunications network, giving park 
enterprises great Internet access. That's important, Wu says, half jokingly: 
and w"We can't live without our e-mail." In fact, Taiwan's Internet traffic 
is greater than Japan's.


By the Shores of Man-Made Lake

David Tsao, an electrical engineer who earned a PhD from the Polytechnic 
Institute of New York in Brooklyn, spent most of the 1980s in New Jersey 
working for Bell Labs. "But business," he says, "is in my blood." So four 
years ago he returned to Taiwan to start his own company. A solidly built, 
round-faced man, Tsao is now chair and CEO of a 2-year-old, 50-employee 
business based in the park, a company he founded with several other 
Taiwanese alumni of Bell Labs.

Double E's like Tsao who live in the park have homes lining the shores of 
Man-Made Lake. They drive to work on wide, empty streets with names like 
Research and Development East Road and Technology Avenue. Shaded by 
identical 15-year-old trees, their offices and laboratories are, for the 
most part, in nondescript gray concrete buildings inhabited by companies 
whose names, like the streets, all sound the same: UMAX and Climax, 
Multronix and Microtek, Datatech and Yangtech. No traffic, no garbage, no 
noise - this planned community is one of the few places on the island where 
Taiwan can be fairly accused of modeling itself on Singapore.

But the calm is only skin deep. This "park" is no pastoral playground. Last 
year, some 150 businesses and 13,000 workers there pumped out US$5 billion 
worth of high-tech hardware. About half of that came in the form of 
integrated circuits.

Tsao's company, ALFA Inc., has its fingers in a number of telecommunications 
pies, including FDDI-based networking systems and PCMCIA cards. FDDI (Fiber 
Distributed Data Interface) networks provide a data transfer rate of 100 
Mbits per second, and they're crucial, Tsao says, for effective multimedia 
networking. He enjoys showing off his Spartan offices, little more than a 
collection of open cubicles, where workers peer at dense circuit boards and 
flash their fingers across the keyboards of Taiwanese-made Sparc II 
workstations.

Hsinchu is a focal point for a worldwide network of joint ventures and 
technology transfer, much of which is fueled by the personal relationships 
established by these scientists during their sojourns abroad. For instance, 
Tsao's ALFA works hand-in-hand with AT&T. Philips owns shares in Taiwan 
Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., one of the largest semiconductor companies 
in Hsinchu. Many of the returnees have left their families in the US, have 
American passports, and flit back and forth between their old companies in 
Silicon Valley and their new businesses in Hsinchu.

Tsao, as well as most Taiwan engineers, asserts that one of Taiwan's main 
strengths is its preponderance of small and medium-sized enterprises (you 
can't shoot a gap in the traffic with a Winnebago). But there is no 
agreement as to how Taiwan's economy came to be dominated by small 
enterprises. One theory has it that the mainlander-originated Kuomintang 
government saw any large native Taiwanese company as a political threat, and 
therefore tinkered with the tax laws to discourage their formation. Still, 
there isn't any dispute about the current role of thousands of 
motorcycle-like small businesses - particularly in the computer industry. In 
1989, the island's top 20 computer companies made only 50 percent of its 
computers.

But when Taiwan's engineers are asked about the future, they lapse into a 
collective pursing of the lips. No one seems to think that the government's 
plans for a Software Park - for several years the government has been 
announcing the park's imminent founding in Beikang, a suburb of Taipei - 
will reap the same kind of harvest as Hsinchu. Similar efforts to promote 
the automobile and aerospace industries were dismal failures.

Part of the problem is Taiwan's own success. Martial law ended in 1987 - as 
economic growth continued, dissidents applied mounting pressure for 
representation, and the government moved to improve its image overseas. The 
Kuomintang legalized opposition parties, lifted press restrictions, and held 
free elections. It is no longer possible for the Kuomintang to unilaterally 
dispense tax breaks, clear public land, and budget hundreds of millions of 
dollars for a state-of-the-art research lab. Today, a growing portion of the 
legislature is made up of opposition lawmakers who daily demonstrate the 
full meaning of the word obstreperous. They cast a cold eye on proposed 
expenditures, particularly those that might involve tax relief for companies 
with close ties to Kuomintang legislators. The consensus opinion in Hsinchu: 
industrial policy in an open democracy is much easiersaid than done.

But just how crucial was industrial policy to Taiwan's flourishing high-tech 
industries in the first place? The computer industry itself, experts say 
again and again, started by accident.


National Compulsions

Back in early 1982, everyone in Taipei was playing games.

Taiwanese companies churned out knockoff versions of Space Invaders at a 
furious rate. Arcades sprung up all over the city. And then, in March 1982, 
the Kuomintang banned the manufacturing of videogames. Not to anyone's 
surprise: the government had for decades taken a dim view of any activities 
that might impact negatively on the people's "morale" - public dancing, 
gambling, a free press, opposition parties. Videogames joined the list of 
all things verboten.

Taiwanese game manufacturers hardly blinked. They stripped the old games of 
their key components and used them in cloned versions of Apple II computers. 
Apple, in turn, filed a trade action against Taiwan and unleashed a legal 
attack so fierce that the infant Taiwan computer makers quickly abandoned 
copycatting Apple IIs and moved into the far more friendly arena of 
IBM-clone manufacturing.

By September 1982, the Ministry of Economic Affairs designated the 
information industry a "strategic industry" and instructed the Industrial 
Technology Research Institute, a close neighbor to the Science-based Park, 
to develop IBM PC-compatible technology. As a result, even today, the 
domestic market is almost entirely IBM-compatible.

Taiwan's craze for videogames was a perfect example of "overabundant 
impetuosity," and it wasn't the last time, by a long shot, that the whole 
country lost its mind en masse. Throughout the mid-1980s and into the '90s, 
similar fads swept the island. An obsession with a Hong Kong lottery brought 
Taipei to a halt whenever winning numbers were announced. In 1991, some 300 
cable franchises were wiring up the island in a frenzy of competition. In 
restless pursuit of the latest developments in telecommunicated moneymaking, 
Taiwan's gap-happy go-getters have suddenly charged towards the latest 
digital El Dorado: home shopping.

A hustling 29-year-old named Tommy Chen is one person poised to take 
advantage of the current home-shopping madness. Chen is a hardware tinkerer 
who has designed software and hardware for a cable home-shopping company. He 
is also one of the thousands of Taiwanese who have taken advantage of 
decades of economic growth to travel by car instead of the ubiquitous 
motorcycle, but his Daihatsu Charade is hardly the stuff of his dreams. A 
tiny two-door vehicle hardly longer than it is wide is not the kind of car 
that carries much weight with Taiwan's nouveaux riches, the sort of people 
Chen is constantly hustling for investment capital.

"They don't like my car," says Chen. "They look at it and go, 'Where's your 
Mercedes? If you're so good, how come you don't have a Mercedes?'"

"Give me a break!" he shouts, slamming his hands against the steering wheel. 
"I tell them, 'My Mercedes is on my desk!' I've got three Mac Quadras. Top 
of the line. Put them together and that almost adds up to a Mercedes."

Parking in a narrow alley, Chen passes a liquor store with cases of Remy 
Martin XO stacked in the window, and a golf club store (10 years earlier, 
the alley might have housed a family of five stuffing chopsticks into paper 
holders or assembling electric fans). In a building whose discreet sign 
announces the Taiwan Video Shopping Network, Chen finds Bronson Bao.

Bao, who says he used to be a product marketing agent for Intel, claims that 
TVSN was the first purely cable home-shopping network in Asia, and already, 
in only its third year of operation, reaches a million households. But 
profit growth, which he says reached nearly US$5 million in 1993, an 800 
percent increase over 1992, has already begun to slow. TVSN's first 
competitor arrived after only a year and a half.

"And in the last six months," says Bao, who let Chen know that he just 
traded in his Dodge Dynasty for a minivan, "we've seen 40 to 50 new 
competitors."


Made - and Designed - in Taiwan

Tommy Chen and his Daihatsu Charade provide just one example of a pattern 
that plays itself out millions of times over in Taiwan: he is the tireless 
hustler with 10 different projects in the air at once. But he is also an 
example of the close kinship that many Taiwanese, especially men, seem to 
feel to technology. It's a kinship that breeds the thousands of electrical 
engineering and computer science PhDs that Taiwan churns out each year, a 
passion for computer guts that packs Taiwan's many bookstores with pale 
teenagers poring over Unix manuals and C++ programming textbooks. While some 
critics of Taiwanese society say that this mass youth movement into geekdom 
is another result of repressive Kuomintang cultural policies in decades past 
- "there was no room to think about art or culture," declared one dissident 
- there's still no denying that techno-infatuation culturewide is a valuable 
trait for a nation in the 1990s.

Particularly a nation as industrious as Taiwan. The days are long gone when 
a customer could make a single phone call in Taipei, order any kind of 
software from the latest edition of Autodesk's AutoCAD to an 
up-to-the-minute upgrade of Lotus 1-2-3, and then pay a flat rate, per-disk 
charge to the guy on the motorcycle who arrived half an hour later. A flurry 
of copyright and other intellectual property laws has been enacted in the 
last four years, and some of them, swear officials at the de facto American 
embassy in Taiwan, are actually being enforced. In 1991 the US labeled 
Taiwan the Number One counterfeiting country in the world. Now Taiwan is 
earning a hard-won reputation for original design, both in hardware and 
software.

"Made In Taiwan." Hsinchu's engineering elite relish rolling out the phrase 
as an acronym: MIT. Made in Taiwan used to convey all the sorry romance of 
plastic forks and counterfeit Rolexes. Now, to the ears of the Double E's, 
it suggests high-tech mastery and hints of a future in which Taiwan has 
become the "Switzerland of Asia" - the R&D center for all of Greater China. 
They demur at the idea that they might one day be world leaders in 
technological development, but they are confident that whichever way the 
world goes, Taiwan will be right there, weaving through the thick traffic of 
international markets.

                                   * * *

Bob Johnstone (bobjohnstone@twics.com) is WIRED's contributing editor for 
Japan.

Andrew Leonard (aleonard@well.sf .ca.us) is a freelance writer based in 
Berkeley, California. He specializes in cyber-Asia.


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=WIRED Online Copyright Notice=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

         Copyright 1993,4 Ventures USA Ltd.  All rights reserved.

  This article may be redistributed provided that the article and this 
  notice remain intact. This article may not under any circumstances
  be resold or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior 
  written permission from Wired Ventures, Ltd.

  If you have any questions about these terms, or would like information
  about licensing materials from WIRED Online, please contact us via 
  telephone (+1 (415) 904 0660) or email (info@wired.com).

       WIRED and WIRED Online are trademarks of Wired Ventures, Ltd.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Subject: Majordomo file: file '2.09/features/sims'
Reply-To: info-rama@wired.com
Status: R

--

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
=-=-=-=-=Copyright 1993,4 Wired Ventures Ltd.  All Rights Reserved=-=-=-=-=
-=-=For complete copyright information, please see the end of this file=-=-
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

WIRED 2.09
Genetic Images
************** 

When computers breed art and humans direct the flow of fate, startling, 
alien beauty is born.

By Kevin Kelly


There are two ways to make complex things. One is to design them; the other 
is to evolve them. Of the two methods, only evolution brings us things that 
are literally beyond our imaginations.

Karl Sims uses the new power of parallel processing supercomputers to 
harness evolution to create visual images. Sims breeds pictures on a 
Connection Machine made by the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Thinking 
Machine.

His interactive image evolution software is composed of logical parts that 
can be assembled in many ways. Each logical "primitive" designates a form 
function, such as sine or cosine. These bits of equations act as "genes" 
that paint a picture. Any random mixture of genes will produce a picture of 
some sort. Because a small change in the gene formula alters the form of the 
whole image rather than merely a few pixels (just as changing a few genes in 
an organism can alter far more than a few cells), the "space of all possible 
pictures" can be traversed rapidly by moving from one picture variant to the 
next.

Sims devised an art installation called "Genetic Images" that allows museum 
visitors to breed images of their own choosing. (The setup shown above is at 
the Centre Pompidou in Paris, it has also been shown in Linz, Austria.) 
Sixteen monitors arranged in a graceful crescent display 16 random 
variations of an image. Each monitor has a foot switch in front of it. A 
viewer selects a "parent" image by running over and stomping on the pad 
beneath its display. The selected image instantly breeds 16 similar but 
slightly variant offspring, and these appear on the monitors for the next 
round of choosing.

Successive rounds of choose, vary, and choose generate images of 
unbelievable beauty. Sit on a bench before the arc of monitors and watch 
these forms appear and then disappear, never to be seen again: you will be 
struck by how dissimilar they are to both human designs and the designs of 
biology. As this example (selected from pictures bred by museum visitors) 
shows, these mirages are of an alien beauty. They are the daydreams of 
machines.

This art is a joint product of breeding machine and human gardener. Sims 
sees a future for artists as agents who don't create specific images, but 
instead create novel processes for generating new images. The artist becomes 
a god, creating an Eden in which surprising things will grow.

                                   * * *


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=WIRED Online Copyright Notice=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

         Copyright 1993,4 Ventures USA Ltd.  All rights reserved.

  This article may be redistributed provided that the article and this 
  notice remain intact. This article may not under any circumstances
  be resold or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior 
  written permission from Wired Ventures, Ltd.

  If you have any questions about these terms, or would like information
  about licensing materials from WIRED Online, please contact us via 
  telephone (+1 (415) 904 0660) or email (info@wired.com).

       WIRED and WIRED Online are trademarks of Wired Ventures, Ltd.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Subject: Majordomo file: file '2.09/departments/music.reviews'
Reply-To: info-rama@wired.com
Status: R

--

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
=-=-=-=-=Copyright 1993,4 Wired Ventures Ltd.  All Rights Reserved=-=-=-=-=
-=-=For complete copyright information, please see the end of this file=-=-
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

WIRED 2.09
Music Reviews
************* 

Sonic Youth: _Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star_ (DGC)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Ah, Youth: no one ever tagged 'em "easy listening." A college-radio favorite 
that sips from the major-label cup yet remains uncompromised, Sonic Youth 
creates alien, angular (albeit deconstructed, discordant, and self-absorbed) 
music - they must be flattered that hundreds of bands rip them off annually. 
Sonic Youth is 13 now, and Experimental Jet Set, lacking Goo's twisted 
accessibility or the coherence of Daydream Nation, is best described as the 
product of a surly teenager who is unpredictable, lovable, and clumsy.

Yet some things never change. Kim Gordon's voice still wraps around you like 
an old shirt; Steve Shelley's hyperactive drumbeats jar against the guitars 
of Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo; and a repertoire of obscure place 
references, literary characters, and odd rants about indie rock 
(namedropping SST, Superchunk, and Huesker Due) fill out the song list. 
"Winner's Blues," "Doctor's Orders," and "Tokyo Eye" are moody and 
mysterious, punctuated by whispery vocals and mellow guitar - nothing like 
the onslaught of "Starfield Road" and "Screaming Skull." On "Skink," Gordon 
takes a voyage "down to the bottom, and oh, what a bottom it is." From that 
vantage point you'll find the Youth trying to fathom their souls' depth, 
taking soundings on just where a dozen years at the head of the pack have 
left them. The answer comes, perhaps, in tracks like "Self-Obsessed and 
Sexxee," a lascivious, Star 80-esque story of obsession; and "Bull in the 
Heather," which places in close proximity innocence and danger - things a 
rock band should know plenty about.

A sketchbook that feels mostly incomplete, Experimental is no London alling, but it's no Combat Rock, either; like so much about Sonic Youth, 
it's elusive, hard to define. I'd prefer to excuse the band's current 
distractedness as a gawky adolescent's coming to terms with the world. Sit 
back and anticipate a growth spurt.

 - Colin Berry

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Brian Dewan: _Tells The Story_ (Bar/None Records)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This is folk music for the deranged. Dewan's instrument: a homemade electric 
zither. His subject matter: peculiar tales, such as "The Cowboy Outlaw" (the 
post-mortem, er, life of a hanged outlaw's corpse), "Wastepaper-Basket Fire" 
(one guess), and "The Record" (obsession with a new record). Dewan's zither 
can howl like an overdriven Les Paul or sing like a harp in a recital hall. 
His baritone voice can be chilling or uplifting. His brilliance lies in his 
ability to fascinate the listener, despite the horror.

 - Peter Herb

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Erasure: _I Say, I Say, I Say_ (Mute/Elektra Records)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Like the soundtrack to a fairy tale, this lush sonic landscape is 
underscored by Vince Clarke's analog throb and brims with Andy Bell's 
gor-geous voice. While Bell soars from deep-down soul to up-lifting pop 
balladry, straight-man Clarke perfects his inimitable mix of infectious 
melody, spirited rhythm, and electronic wizardry. Add to their chemistry of 
opposites the angelic voices of a church choir, and the fantasy is complete. 
Erasure's lively, eloquent musical adventure bubbles with rich and beautiful 
songwriting. Plonk! Bleep. Sigh.

 - Stephen Reese

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Various Artists: _Internal Journal_ (New Alliance)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
A companion piece to LA Journal, a photo essay about Los Angeles presented 
on laserdisc, Internal Journal collects the poetry of such writers as Wanda 
Coleman, Pleasant Gehman, and Marisela Norte. Unfortunately, these pieces 
aren't among the poets' best, and each poem appears both as an individual 
track and as part of an amalgam of the same recordings offered in quick 
succession. Regardless, this spoken-word disc presents the personality of 
the City of Angels from an insider's view.

 - Paul Semel

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Olivier Messiaen: _Eclairs sur l'Au-Dela...-Polish Radio National Symphony 
Orchestra; Antoni Wit, Conductor_ (Jade Records)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
Olivier Messiaen was one of this century's most original composers. His 
final work, whose title means "Illuminations of the Beyond...," is an 
immense contemplation of death and the afterlife, scored for an orchestra of 
128 instruments. The music, alternately hair-raising and ethereal, is 
ultimately blissful. As in many of his pieces, Messiaen, an ornithologist, 
makes ample use of bird song, "the bird being a symbol of joy and 
jubilation."

 - Bryan Higgins

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Steve Tibbetts: _The Fall of Us All_ (ECM)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
If you lived in Saint Paul, Minnesota, would you go all the way to Bali and 
Nepal for enlightened excitement? Yes, if you're Steve Tibbetts. The 
guitarist and composer is a frequent-flyer of the pan-Pacific type, and his 
habit exerts more than a mild influence on his reverb-soaked Eastern 
trance-feedback playing. It's also echoed by percussionist Marc Anderson, 
who grounds Tibbetts's Himalayan string-bending flights with his own banshee 
beats on exotic hand-drums and percussion instruments. Definite road-trip 
disc.

 - Will Kreth

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Various Artists: _One A.D._ (Waveform)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
Ambient music in the '90s has finally shed all the New Age, mind-numbing 
connotations that have plagued its development. One A.D .is a stellar 
example of the new school of low-key sonics. Here, Wave-form, the US 
counterpart to England's Beyond Records, has distilled three volumes of 
genre-defining compilations. Featured electronic music pioneers combine the 
stark otherworldly beauty of dub reggae with luxurious digital soundscapes. 
The resulting tracks are a solid testament to this music's considerable 
depth and power.

 - Scott Taves

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Hieronymus Firebrain: _Here and There_ (Magnetic)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
Multi-instrumentalist and original Camper Van Beethoven violinist Jonathan 
Segel introduces his four-year musical project. Here reflects influences 
from Richard Thompson to Fred Frith, though it's somewhat stifling in that 
prog rock kinda way. A retreat to Questa, New Mexico, and collaboration with 
psychedelic-in-the-'80s comrades The Whitefronts makes There more compelling 
than its predecessor, however. Optimizing his grass-roots indoctrination to 
indie rock, Segel plays by his own rules.

 - Kristy O'Rell

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Spike Jones: _Musical Depreciation Revue: The Spike Jones Anthology_ (Rhino 
Records)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 

Quintessentially inspired silliness. This two-disc collection of 40 of 
Spike's hits from the '40s and '50s includes original compositions and mad 
versions of pop songs and classical music, all in tight arrangements for a 
jazz combo and a huge battery of percussion (read: washboards, car horns, 
whistles, whips, a starter's pistol, even a toilet seat strung with guitar 
strings). "Vocals" also means gargling and hiccups. Digitally remastered 
from original 78 lacquers, the recorded sound is superb.

 - Bryan Higgins

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Microwave O' The Month
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Napalm Death: _Fear, Emptiness, Despair_ (Earache/Columbia Records)

Slip into the tranquillity of such, er, "songs" as "Twist the Knife 
(Slowly)" and "Retching on the Dirt," and experience the fetid blur that can 
only be achieved by imbibing toxic quantities of JD and contemplating 
suicide: then, wrecked and whacked, you decide to cut a record in your 
garage. I'd rather die than listen to five more minutes of this little 
tantrum.

 - Kristin Spence

                                   * * *


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=WIRED Online Copyright Notice=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

         Copyright 1993,4 Ventures USA Ltd.  All rights reserved.

  This article may be redistributed provided that the article and this 
  notice remain intact. This article may not under any circumstances
  be resold or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior 
  written permission from Wired Ventures, Ltd.

  If you have any questions about these terms, or would like information
  about licensing materials from WIRED Online, please contact us via 
  telephone (+1 (415) 904 0660) or email (info@wired.com).

       WIRED and WIRED Online are trademarks of Wired Ventures, Ltd.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Subject: Majordomo file: file '2.09/departments/street.cred'
Reply-To: info-rama@wired.com
Status: RO

--

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
=-=-=-=-=Copyright 1993,4 Wired Ventures Ltd.  All Rights Reserved=-=-=-=-=
-=-=For complete copyright information, please see the end of this file=-=-
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

WIRED 2.09
Street Cred
*********** 

Cosmology of Kyoto
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
The Cosmology of Kyoto CD-ROM comes with a bare minimum of instructions, 
informing me in a few words how to move within the images. No goal is 
established and no points are scored; the game never informs me what the 
object is, although it discreetly tracks the levels of karma and cash I have 
attained and keeps an inventory of my possessions. The disc comes packaged 
with a large fold-out map showing the streets and principal buildings of 
Kyoto - circa 900, when, as Heiankyo, it was the capital of Japan. I begin 
to wander the streets.

The richness is almost overwhelming; there is the sense that the resources 
of this game are limitless and that no two players would have the same 
experience. I have been exploring the ancient city in spare moments for two 
weeks now, and doubt that I have even begun to scratch the surface. This is 
the most beguiling computer game I have encountered, a seamless blend of 
information, adventure, humor, and imagination - the gruesome side-by-side 
with the divine.

In this medieval Kyoto, people exist alongside ghosts, demons, and goblins. 
On my travels I have met - and interacted with - a dog eating entrails, 
long-winded old farts, tradespeople (who offered me medicines, dried fish, 
cloth, rice cakes, amulets, and a chance to lose money on a cock fight), a 
monk leading a prayer meeting, kids playing ball in the streets (one is 
beheaded by a passerby), a friendly guide dog, a maiden with an obscenely 
phallic tongue, and a gambler who taught me a dice game.

The graphics are hauntingly effective, using a wide-screen landscape format. 
The individual characters are drawn with vivid facial characteristics, a 
cross between the cartoons of medieval Japanese art and the exaggerations of 
modern Japanimation. The speaking voices are filled with personality, often 
taunting, teasing, or sexy. There is the sense, illusory but seductive, that 
one could wander this world indefinitely. This is a wonderful game.

 - Roger Ebert

Cosmology of Kyoto for Mac: US$98. Azuma Lander International: +1 (415) 928 
7914, fax +1 (415) 362 6879.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Mind Your Net.Manners
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
The Net right now is a little like New York in the late 19th century - waves 
of immigrants imposing themselves upon an established society. Not 
surprisingly, the newcomers don't always behave according to local custom, 
and members of the old society are sometimes suspicious and resentful," 
writes Virginia Shea in her book, Netiquette.

Shea's guide to network etiquette will be a valuable tool for the immigrant; 
perhaps, as Guy Kawasaki suggests in the foreword, a copy should be included 
with each modem. Longtime Net citizens will find little help, however. The 
thornier subtleties are not addressed, and some of the technical details are 
just a touch off.

 All in all, Netiquette is handy to have around, especially to cite when 
needed. Gift-wrap a copy for your favorite newbie. Express Mail one to your 
favorite net.bozo. (Be watching for WIRED's new Netiquette column, "Dear 
Diva" - hosted by Dame Raquel, Network Diva - coming in October.)

 - Amy Bruckman

Netiquette, by Virginia Shea, US$19.95. Albion Books: +1 (415) 752 7660, 
info@albion.com.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Newton's Home Run App
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
If you're a baseball freak, and especially if you're a player in the virtual 
pastime called fantasy baseball, you now have a compelling reason to buy 
Apple's Newton: Fingertip for STATS.

It's actually several programs in one: An electronic scorecard that allows 
you to document a game dynamically, with instant access to a dizzying array 
of statistics. An electronic baseball pool where you can compete against 
fellow Fingertippers. And, best of all, a smart front-end to a dedicated 
dial-up service, run by the respected STATS organization, that gives you a 
daily major league baseball update. (There's also a component with a subset 
of the Bill James Encylopedia, but the database is abridged to the point of 
uselessness.)

Scouts at any level will find the scoring component a wonder, and even a 
casual bleacher bum will find it the ultimate status accessory - though it's 
tricky to juggle a Newton, a hot dog, and a beer. But anyone who follows The 
Show intently will love the ability to link to the STATS database and chart 
a favorite real-life or fantasy team. A well-designed interface (minimal 
handwriting recognition) makes it easy to select the players you want 
updated, and once you hook up the modem to call the service (most people can 
use a local number), everything is automated.

Still, hooking the thing up to a modem and phone line every time you want an 
update is a royal pain. With the Newton's 2400 baud modem rate, the updates 
seem to take forever. I want to go wireless! I want to be sitting on the 
deck - either the deck outside my house or the upper deck at Camden Yards - 
with the Newt in my pocket, and hear it beep so I can pick it up and find 
out that Albert Belle has popped a three-run dinger, or that the Rocket has 
tossed another shutout.

Nonetheless, at about two or three every morning, I make the effort to plug 
in the Newton to find out how my Random Hackers fantasy team has fared. And 
every week before our league does waivers, I get the skinny on the disabled 
list. My fellow fantasy baseball team-owners are burning with envy.

Finally, a killer app for the Newton!

 - Steven Levy

Fingertip for STATS: US$99. Fingertip Technologies Inc.: (800) 349 4653, +1 
(714) 759 9399.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Retrocadia
^^^^^^^^^^ 
Fifteen years after the arcade debut of Asteroids comes Microsoft Arcade, a 
Windows collection of five of Atari's best-known arcade titles. Though these 
classic games have been translated by others over the years, Microsoft 
Arcade has done the best job of remaining true to the originals.

The feature attraction in the five-game bundle is Asteroids. It looks and 
plays like the real thing: white lines simulate the vector graphics of the 
original to a T, and the firing accuracy of that damned, small flying saucer 
remains on-target!

Missile Command is another clone right from the arcade. It's the first 
licensed rendition of the nuclear holocaust game to feature three 
antiballistic missile bases, just like the coin-op. The game play picks up 
speed awfully fast on a 486 or a Pentium, but things can be slowed down in 
any of the games by customizing options.

Battlezone and Tempest, likewise, look identical to their arcade 
counterparts. Battlezone, we quickly discover, was actually one of Atari's 
dullest games. Blowing up enemy tanks repeatedly didn't make it appealing in 
arcade halls, being immersed in the game by looking through a periscope-like 
viewer did. Battlezone was virtual reality for a quarter, way before 
somebody invented the term and started charging people six bucks to play 
this type of videogame. Tempest's malady is that any version of this game 
simply won't play well without the spinning knob used on the coin-op to 
whirl the yellow, crab-like shooter around the geometric play fields.

The real mutt of the litter is Centipede. Though this version depicts the 
mushroom-riddled play screen in its original, vertical aspect ratio, the 
graphics are tiny and really require a 21-inch-or-larger monitor.

Sure, it's more fun to play these games on the original coin-ops, but good 
luck finding 'em. If you insist on strict realism, go ahead and buy 
Microsoft Arcade - and send me a quarter each time you use it.

 - Howard Wen

Microsoft Arcade for Windows: US$39.95. Microsoft: (800) 426 9400, +1 (206) 
637 9308.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Technology & Media
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
For a digital communications junkie like myself, Denise Caruso's newsletter, 
Technology & Media, is a godsend. Caruso, who recently edited Digital Media, 
and her team of reporters and editors are not just up-to-speed on the latest 
developments related to communicating through technology, but more 
importantly, are able to provide much-needed critical analysis. This is one 
of the places to go if you want to understand the Big Picture.

The debut May issue kicked off with Caruso's own "'My Way or the Highway'? 
Telco, Cable and Government Cross Wires." Her savvy and opinionated piece 
makes a rather complex subject (how cable and telephone companies are 
attempting to position themselves for the future) understandable, while 
ferreting out the key issues at play.

While the layout leaves much to the imagination, and the editorial mix 
signals a wide search for an audience (among those willing to fork over 
US$595 for 12 issues), it looks as though Caruso has a winner on her hands.

 - Michael Goldberg

Technology & Media: (800) 978 5400, +1 (415) 546 5600.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Shrinks in Love
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
Virtual Love is presented in the form of an e-mail exchange between Aphra 
Zion, psychiatrist and sex therapist, and another screwed-up psychiatrist, 
Marc, who hasn't slept with his wife since she got pregnant (and their kid 
is now old enough to learn to read) and is in love with one of his patients, 
a beautiful Hegelian thinker who hasn't ever been able to let a man 
penetrate her. Marc thinks he has the ultimate cure, but his morals (and 
fear of being professionally ostracized) are holding him back.

For Aphra, online existence is far more inspiring than the humdrum reality 
of treating patients. Like the neurotic woman who gets so turned on after 
she kills her unfaithful lover that she then kills her rich husband. Or the 
middle-aged woman whose father called her Miss America and sexually abused 
her so that it was impossible for her to make love until an artist spent 
almost a year warming up her frozen inner core. The only thing Aphra likes 
better than listening to these confessions of sexual frustration is writing 
her own to Marc via e-mail.

Aphra initially tells Marc of some of her more bizarre patients, but then 
she retreats to her past, and in perceptive detail relates the traumatic 
incidents in her wretched childhood, wretched former marriage, and wretched 
current marriage. In return, Marc e-mails her about his traumatic 
experiences - the death of his younger brother, abandonment by his mother - 
and the two online lovers realize they share a virtual past.

For a while, the doctors become so engrossed in their online relationship, 
it seems they prefer it to reality. Says Aphra: "What goes on in my mind has 
always seemed more real than life. Writing to you, communicating in this 
virtual way, has a stronger reality than any verbal exchange or 
relationship." Both characters use e-mail to express unactionable desires: 
Marc wants to screw his frigid patient; Aphra wants to have an affair with 
anyone else "as a rite of independent celebration." Both, of course, are on 
the verge of leaving their mates.

This book makes clear that Net-based behavior has always been the stuff of 
psychiatry. That's why it's a clever concept to use e-mail to mirror the 
thought processes and feelings of these two messed-up docs - it's all 
virtual, except for the reader who gets a vicarious thrill from getting 
inside these characters' heads.

 - Sylvia Paull

Virtual Love, by Avodah Offit, US$22. Simon & Schuster: (800) 223 2348, +1 
(515) 284 6751.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


DATman
^^^^^^ 
Sony seems to have taken the phrase "good things come in small packages" to 
heart with the TCD-D7 DAT Walkman, a feature-packed, portable Digital Audio 
Tape recorder that fits in the palm of your hand. With CD-quality recording, 
audio position markers, and a recording time of more than two hours (four 
hours in LP mode), the DAT Walkman is an impressive piece of machinery. I 
originally bought it just to tape interviews, but I've used it for 
everything from mastering music to playing back sound cues in theatrical 
productions.

A handy feature is the limiting mode built into the TCD-D7 for music and 
speech, so that music levels don't distort and speech is more distinct. 
While you can't control the amount of limiting, the two settings are useful 
in most applications.

Before you run out and buy one for your very own, there are two pitfalls - 
courtesy of Sony - that you should be aware of. The first problem is 
accessories, which are almost impossible to find. Sony customer service told 
me that I'd have to wait from six to eight weeks for an AC adapter. 
Considering that the unit doesn't work with rechargeable NiCad batteries and 
the four AA batteries only last about two hours, this is no small 
inconvenience. (After a bit of searching, I found a store that sells the 
adapters for US$35 - The DAT Store, in Santa Monica, California: +1 (310) 
828 6487.) The second problem is that the TCD-D7 uses SCMS (Serial Copy 
Management System), an irritating scheme preventing digital-to-digital 
recording.

The US$700 TCD-D7 is a handy little unit. While it won't replace 
professional DAT decks for mastering, it is far superior to both Philips's 
DCC (Digital Compact Cassette) and Sony's MiniDisc technology, both of which 
use lousy compression and therefore degrade the audio they record.

 - Erik Holsinger

TCD-D7 DAT Walkman: US$700. Sony: +1 (201) 930 7669, fax +1 (201) 573 8608.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Video Saves the Radio Star
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
Imagine coming home and turning your radio on to clear music free of 
interruptions. Far-fetched? Not if you get Digital Music Express (DMX), a 
digital music service offered by more than 700 video cable companies. For 
about US$10 a month and a one-time setup fee ($10-$15) your cable company 
will come out and install a small converter box with connectors that fit any 
standard receiver.

You also get a remote control with an LCD display screen. If you hear a song 
you like from one of the 60 channels on DMX, push a button and the song's 
title, artist, composer, album, even a trivia question appear on the 
display.

DMX is blissfully free of the problems that plague regular radio - such as 
signals fading in and out, compressed dynamics, and limited bandwidth. The 
best thing about DMX? No commercials, and no screaming shock jocks. I 
haven't listened to regular radio since I got DMX nine months ago.

 - John Starkovich

Digital Music Express: (800) 362 8863, +1 (310) 444 1744.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Salt of the Earth
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
What better subject for historical multimedia treatment than one with a 
multiple-media core to begin with? Salt of the Earth, a unique film made by 
blacklisted Hollywood leftists in 1953, offers a key work around which 
interactive producers Emily Kaufman and Aleen Stein have built a portrait of 
an era on CD-ROM.

Closely based on the real history of a 1950 strike at a zinc mine in New 
Mexico, the film's plot turns on a shift in traditional roles when the 
strike must be taken over by the miners' wives. Though hardly the most 
nuanced film ever made, it is an earnest and at times touching story of the 
struggle for racial, political, and sexual equality. The black-and-white 
film is included on this disc in its entirety, in a choice of two window 
sizes.

A wide range of ancillary material sets this work in the context of this 
country's worst period of political repression. The filmmakers braved 
incredible difficulties to make this movie, including the cruelly timed 
deportation of the Mexican lead actress, violent attempts at sabotage, and 
the refusal of professional services (themselves under pressure) to process 
the film. The soundtrack had to be recorded clandestinely in New York under 
the pretense that it was for a Mexican adventure story. It's hard to believe 
that a film espousing such homey values could once have been considered so 
radical. Today, Salt of the Earth is on the short list of films selected by 
the Library of Congress for the National Film Registry.

Included are excerpts from the work of director Herbert Biberman, interviews 
with screenwriter Michael Wilson and the other filmmakers, as well as their 
biographies, transcripts of their defiant appearances before the red-baiting 
House Un-American Activities Committee, photographs and histories of the 
real strikers (many of whom played themselves in the film), critical essays, 
and early reviews (including a vile, hysterically anti-communist screed by 
Pauline Kael).

Some will object to watching any film in a small, slightly jerky video 
window on a computer. The format works well for a work important for the 
window it provides on history rather than for its 
quite-good-under-the-circumstances cinematography. Improvements in digital 
video should eventually make a wider range of works appropriate for such 
illuminating treatment.

 - Jim Gasperini

Salt of the Earth for Mac: US$49.95. Voyager: (800) 446 2001, +1 (212) 431 
5199.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Anatomy of a Cel
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
The gulf between casual 'toon potato and serious industry suit is bridged by 
Animation Magazine, which, now in its seventh volume, is as august as they 
come. As indicated in the scope of the magazine's departments, the field of 
animation has a hand in every business involving mass-market visual media: 
commercials, feature films, multimedia, and VR arcade attractions. But on 
another axis are the voices of the puppet-masters themselves, blending their 
own techtalk with personal views on the boundaries between imagination, 
technology, and narrative structure.

Animation refuses to be wowed by the current state of computer animation, 
sharing attention between the cel painter and the software designer. It also 
gives the reader a sense of the historical (one issue features an interview 
with godfathers of limited animation, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera). 
Animation damn near looks like the ultimate resource for the medium, and 
sophisticated as it is, you also get the cute baby animals.

 - Alan E. Rapp

Animation Magazine: US$4.95.Thoren Publications: +1 (818) 991 2884, fax + 1 
(818) 991 3773.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


A Manual of Factual Self-Defense
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
As many as 70 percent of cola drinkers prefer ... " is a refrain that 
usually loses our attention instantly. And well it should. The "As many as" 
means that research showed that any number from 0 percent to 70 percent 
showed the preference.

In Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact in America, author Cynthia 
Crossen picks apart surveys, commercial research, government data, lawyers' 
misuse of statistics, polls of all kinds, and the manifold other ways that 
facts and figures can be made to stand on their hind legs and pretend 
they're smarter than they are. Many of the anecdotes are staggering examples 
of effrontery.

Is anything to be trusted? Crossen shows that the halls of academe have been 
polluted by commercial interests. The government has its own agendas. And 
everybody engages in doubletalk.

The book teems with juicy examples that will get your dander up, but it also 
exhibits some of the glibness that it decries. In one glaring example, 
Crossen attacks a study supporting disposable goods by asking, "If it is so 
economical to use disposables, why have they not replaced glass, china, and 
stainless steel in every home in America?" conveniently ignoring important 
factors such as aesthetics and tradition.

I would have liked to have seen a less popularized analysis. The book ends 
with a set of ethical standards that would do much good if somehow 
implemented. But best of all would be to imbue people with the attitude 
Harry Truman expressed in a memo Crossen quotes: "I wonder how far Moses 
would have gone if he'd taken a poll in Egypt. What would Jesus Christ have 
preached if he'd taken a poll in Israel?... It isn't polls or public opinion 
of the moment that counts. It's right and wrong."

 - Jef Raskin

Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact in America, by Cynthia Crossen, 
US$23. Simon & Schuster: (800) 223 2348, +1 (515) 284 6751.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


What to Ware for Your Wedding
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
Weddings in the US involve big business and - ask any bridesmaid - 
considerable strain and weirdness as well. But, not to worry: 
wedding-planning software has arrived for that white-satin-and-tulle-lined 
market niche.

Bridesmaid for Windows has a simple-to-customize database capable of 
tracking events right down to place cards for a formal wedding dinner. It 
includes a spreadsheet for tracking expenditures and sufficient 
word-processing capability to keep extensive notes of conversations with 
vendors. Take it from a me, a lifetime maid of honor-cum-wedding planner, 
this is handy stuff.

While it won't alleviate the angst of planning a wedding, it will create 
order out of the chaotic preparations you punch in. It assumes - in my 
experience, correctly - that the user has access to other sources for 
advice. The least expensive of several wedding planning programs I've looked 
at, it is also blessedly free of preprogrammed checklist idiocies such as 
"Enjoy your wedding!"

I'm giving Bridesmaid to the next married-person-to-be who calls in a tizzy.


 - Elizabeth Hughes

Bridesmaid for Windows: US$19.95. Simply Software: (800) 425 1122, +1 (205) 
870 1975.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Civil War What If
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
Not just another computer war game, Gettysburg Multimedia Battle Simulation 
is a well produced, interactive history lesson on CD-ROM, in which you give 
the marching orders to General Robert E. Lee's fearsome Army of Northern 
Virginia or the Union's Army of the Potomac. The condition and strength of 
the troops at the beginning of the battle are historically accurate. 
Gettysburg teaches the strategy of 19th-century warfare and shows how 
hard-fought the Battle of Gettysburg was - how it could have gone either 
way. Narrated by Civil War historian Shelby Foote, the disc contains several 
minidocumentaries on a variety of Civil War subjects. Foote's rich, 
Mississippian's voice provides continuous battlefield commentary.

The simulation contains a timeline and detailed maps of the Gettysburg 
battlefield, so you always know exactly when and where you are. Choose a 
friend or the computer as your opponent, and fight for the Blue or the Gray. 
You can command separate brigades or whole divisions. Click on the 
binoculars icon, and scenes from Ted Turner's film Gettysburg appear to 
illustrate what's going on in the battle. Infantry, cavalry, and artillery 
units are all represented. They can be individually directed as they 
advance, retreat, and entrench themselves in defensive positions. Gettysburg 
lets you reenact the battle just as it happened, or modify certain elements 
to see if you can change history. I discovered that with a more effective 
artillery barrage on the final day of the battle, General George Pickett's 
fateful charge on Cemetery Ridge might have been successful. If you have a 
passion for American history, this disc is worth including in your 
multimedia library.

 - Steve Baxter

Gettysburg Multimedia Battle Simulation for Windows: US$69.95. Turner 
Interactive: +1 (404) 885 7972, fax +1 (404) 885 6997.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


The Paste-Bomb Machine
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
Library of the Future sounds very cool, at first. It's a CD-ROM chock-full 
of Literature: the Bible, the Koran, Confucius, Euripides, Tacitus, Chaucer, 
Spenser, Blake - it's all terribly high-minded. Well, not all: there's also 
Conan Doyle, Bulwer-Lytton, H. Rider Haggard, and, oddly, K. Eric Drexler's 
manifesto about technology, Engines of Creation. It's plain ASCII text with 
a nifty search engine, exactly the kind of thing that the inventors of 
CD-ROM were thinking of when they filed the patent.

It lets you down, though, and I think the word "library" has a lot to do 
with it. A library contains books that one might read. If you think you're 
going to read Billy Budd on a VGA monitor, in a monospace font, you're 
kidding yourself.

So if you're not going to use this library for reading, what can you use it 
for?

1) Reference. Now when you wake up at two in the morning and can't get the 
phrase "tender mercies" out of your head, you'll have a place to turn. St. 
Augustine heads the list of hits, but the phrase shows up in the Book of 
Mormon, which you can get to with just a click or two of the mouse. (True, 
then it's two in the morning and you're reading the Book of Mormon, but 
that's a hazard of research.)

2) One-upsmanship. Nothing intimidates like quoting from Milton and Joyce, 
and with the Library of the Future you've got them at your fingertips.

3) Test data. Want to shake down your implementation of a Markoff sieve? A 
20K block of the Brothers Grimm is just the thing.

4) Paste bombs. When some clueless blowhard blathers away about the Second 
Amendment in your favorite newsgroup, revenge is at hand. Slurp the Melian 
dialogue up into your clipboard and let him have it.

It's like any other good tool: useless, unless you know what to do with it.

 - Bob Rossney

Library of the Future, Third Edition: US$149.95. World Library Inc.: (800) 
443 0238, +1 (714) 756 9500, fax +1 (714) 756 9511.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


See Hear
^^^^^^^^ 
Computers are already set up to handle the visual side of multimedia, but 
handling the sound is something else again. Like, where do you put the 
speakers?

Combining its strengths as a maker of good audio gear and great video 
monitors, Proton has put them - and an amplifier - into its 15-inch SVGA 
computer monitor. The 3-inch speakers fire out the sides. Aiming away from 
your ears means they lose some high-frequency response, but that just helps 
the sonic balance: small speakers like these don't have much bass anyway. 
The bass is actually a bit better than expected from small speakers. 
Plugging good headphones into the front-panel jack shows that the Proton's 
built-in stereo amp, delivering only two watts per channel, can go down as 
low as most good headphones.

The video side has limitations, but not serious ones. The 15-inch picture 
isn't much larger than a 14-inch screen and the edges of the picture taper 
in a bit. Colors in VGA (16-color) mode are less saturated than with my old 
14-inch monitor, but in 256-color mode they deepen up again.

You can buy a better monitor, a better amp, and a better pair of speakers, 
but the reasonably priced Proton yields good quality and an uncluttered 
desktop.

 - Ivan Berger

PM1561: US$799. Proton: +1 (310) 404 2222, fax +1 (310) 404 2322.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Reconfiguring the Corporation
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
We all know that global computer networks will revolutionize a wide variety 
of industries. But which industries will change, and how? Globalization, 
Technology, and Competition: The Fusion of Computers and Telecommunications 
in the 1990s is a good introduction to the thinking of business professors 
on this subject. Its 15 articles, most of them grounded in case studies, 
provide simple but powerful concepts for understanding these issues. For 
example:

*The theory of transaction costs predicts which activities a company will 
conduct for itself, and which ones it will "outsource" - a matter of real 
concern if you're doing something that your employer doesn't regard as a 
"core competency."

*One formerly obscure travel agency understood that it could use global 
computer networking to assemble a "virtual company" - a global alliance of 
travel agencies that can rapidly reconfigure itself to serve increasingly 
globalized corporate customers.

*The retail sales business is being revolutionized by companies like 
Wal-Mart that can use computers and networking to track their inventory in 
real time and respond rapidly to demand. Products keep moving, prices keep 
adjusting, and suppliers are kept on their toes.

*Manufacturing is increasingly global as well. We've all heard about the car 
whose parts are made in half a dozen different countries and assembled in a 
few more, with materials constantly flowing wherever they're needed - 
another process that takes heavy networking.

So the phenomena are complicated and the concepts are powerful. The scary 
thing is that the authors of the articles in this book seem to talk only to 
managers. Their language is a synthesis of technocracy and hype in which the 
present and future tenses merge into one. Of course it's great when 
companies can provide me with the stuff I need right away. But do you really 
want to be competing in real time with every person on the planet? It's a 
difficult question even to think about in the stratospheric ozone of 
managerial talk. But let's read the book, and then ask it down here on 
earth.

 - Phil Agre

Globalization, Technology, and Competition: The Fusion of Computers and 
Telecommunications in the 1990s, edited by Stephen P. Bradley, Jerry A. 
Hausman, and Richard L. Nolan, US$34.95. Harvard Business School Press: 
(800) 545 7685, +1 (617) 495 6192.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


The Prince of Persia 2
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
So, you finally finished Prince of Persia. Your fingers hurt from the 
awkward keyboard controls, and your head is swimming from staring into your 
Macintosh magic mirror, but the Princess is at last within your reach. Not 
so fast - here comes Broderbund's sequel, Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and 
the Flame. As before, the traps, mazes, and riddles will have you ignoring 
the rest of your life until you complete the game.

Part arcade battle, part puzzle-solving mystery, this is one of the most 
complicated computer games on the market. Though the plot is thin, it's all 
the motivation you need to start playing. After that, the complex puzzles 
hook you in for the duration.

Production values are superb, but you pay for this beauty in CPU cycles: 
game play is slow, like knitting. Sure, there's swashbuckling - but the 
trade-off between keyboard responsiveness and detailed animation has been 
settled in favor of aesthetics.

 - J. Caleb Donaldson

Prince of Persia 2 for DOS and Mac: US$40. Broderbund: +1 (415) 382 4600.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Babes in TuneLand
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
The first thing that will strike you after installing TuneLand from 7th 
Level is the total absence of any death-dealing instruments or fearsome 
opponents to use them against. The next thing you'll notice is that there's 
always something going on in this interactive songbook. Taking close aim at 
one of the major criticisms of CD-ROM-based titles - that there is too much 
dead air - 7th Level engineers have developed effective techniques to ensure 
that something is always happening while you're waiting for the laser to cue 
to the next song.

And there is a lot going on: everything in TuneLand is active, and clicking 
anywhere yields some sort of response - and not always the same one. The 
title includes over 12,000 frames of very attractive animation rendered 
using digital inking and painting tools developed by MetroCel Animation for 
such tube cult staples as Beavis & Butt-head and The Ren & Stimpy Show. Also 
featured are more than 40 favorite childhood songs sure to delight any young 
child and to drive parents batty after the hundredth playing - today.

It pays to have awesome speakers to listen to the TuneLand ditties, as they 
are full-blown CD-quality audio. Bet you never thought you'd hear the likes 
of former Pink Floydsters Scott Page (who also grabbed a producer credit) 
and David Gilmour exercising their chops on tunes like "The Old Gray Mare," 
"Eentsy Weentsy Spider," and "Three Blind Mice." Your guide to TuneLand's 
"DeskTop PlayGround" is comedian Howie Mandel as the voice of Lil' Howie.

The major disappointment in my travels in TuneLand was the quality of some 
of the incidental audio. These digitized bits jarred my ear after the 
exceptional production values of the principal songs, and made some of the 
dialog unintelligible. I also found disconcerting the presence of characters 
that seemed to be taken straight from the cels of Fantasia and other Disney 
classics.

My favorite touch? The TuneLand package includes a very cool sing-along 
activity book with the heretofore forgotten lyrics of many of my favorite 
childhood songs plus cutouts of TuneLand characters that I - uh - kids can 
color in and play with. If you're looking to spend some quality time with a 
child snuggled up in front of a computer, TuneLand deserves a CD-ROM caddy 
of its very own.

Looking for something more adult? Stay tuned for 7th Level's next project: 
The CD-ROM Thingie, starring Monty Python.

 - Clay Gordon

TuneLand for Windows: US$49.95. 7th Level Inc.: +1 (818) 547 1955.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Scare Tactics
^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
Every Friday evening on Fox television, FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana 
Scully face truths we'd all like to avoid - pyrokinetic killers, ghosts, 
Native American werewolves, and UFOs, for example. We'd like to avoid them, 
but some idiotic urge keeps us coming back for more.

The X-Files delivers serious chills. In one episode, people keep turning up 
dead, missing their livers. Mulder and Scully track down the killer, a 
seemingly immortal mutant with a Hannibal Lecter appetite and the ability to 
squeeze through tiny openings. In another, two men are killed at the same 
time, on opposite coasts, their blood drained from punctures in the neck. 
Their preteen daughters turn out to be clones of a fertility clinic 
researcher, herself part of a creche of psychotic clones created during the 
Cold War. (And the daughters are none too friendly, either.)

Special effects are low-key on The X-Files. But that's OK, since the real 
terror comes across with hardly any blood or gore; the show's pacing and 
storylines are what make me keep the lights on when I watch.

 - Adam Rogers

The X-Files, on Fox, Friday at 9 p.m. EST and PST.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Using Wireless Communications in Business
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
You bought your pager and it was good. Then you got a cellular phone and it 
was better. Now you hear acronyms like SMR and PCS, companies like RAM and 
ARDIS, and buzzwords galore. What do you do?

Grab a copy of Using Wireless Communications in Business by Andrew M. 
Seybold. An engineer by training, Seybold skips the consultant-speak and 
provides helpful advice to individuals and companies looking to go wireless. 
He discusses the differences between local- and wide-area networks, what 
hardware and software are necessary, what's available and what's coming Real 
Soon Now. Seybold, a wireless road warrior himself, says wireless is not 
just another transport, it's a way of life.

The last two chapters, "Recapping the Services" and "A Guide to 
Implementation," are worth the price of the book by themselves. And although 
Using Wireless Communications in Business was written for nontechnical 
types, an overly complete glossary (it even defines "proprietary" and 
"mailbox") helps to guide you through.

Now what's needed is a book to explain how to carry all of this stuff.

 - Andrew Anker

Using Wireless Communications in Business, by Andrew M. Seybold, US$34.95. 
Van Nostrand Reinhold: (800) 544 0550, +1 (212) 254 3232.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Street Cred Contributors
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
Phil Agre (pagre@ucsd.edu) teaches in the Department of Communication at the 
University of California, San Diego. His book, whose working title is 
Computation and Human Experience, will be published by Cambridge University 
Press.

Steve Baxter (baxcam@aol.com) is a Seattle-based CBS video journalist and 
CNN software reviewer.

Ivan Berger has been writing about audio and other aspects of electronics 
since 1962. He's currently technical editor of Audio Magazine.

Colin Berry writes about music and other things for Ray Gun, Puncture, bOING 
bOING, and SF Weekly. He's probably waited on you in some San Francisco 
restaurant.

Amy Bruckman (asb@purple-crayon.media.mit.edu) is a graduate student at the 
Media Lab at MIT, where she does research on virtual communties and 
education. She is the founder of MediaMOO and MOOSE Crossing.

Roger Ebert's film reviews appear in the Microsoft Cinemania CD-ROM, which 
recently added a Mac version.

Jim Gasperini ,(jimg@well.sf.ca.us) is currently designing multimedia titles 
for several platforms in Paris and New York.

Michael Goldberg (insider@netcom.com) is a frequent contributer to WIRED; he 
interviewed Strauss Zelnick in issue 2.06.

Clay Gordon is an 11-year veteran of the computer graphics industry. At the 
moment he is working on ways to make information safe from computers.

Peter L. Herb (plherb@aol.com) is an attorney in New York City who plays 
guitar and can be found most weekdays wearing a bow tie and suspenders.

Bryan Higgins (bryan@well.com) plays the French horn and clavichord, writes 
fiction and software, and lives in Berkeley and Soda Springs, California.

Erik Holsinger is an independent producer, composer, and author of the 
MacWEEK Guide to Desktop Video and How Multimedia Works (Ziff Davis Press).

Elizabeth Hughes lives in San Francisco; that is, when she's nottraveling in 
Asia and writing about the Pacific Rim.

Steven Levy writes the "Iconoclast" column for Macworld magazine and is the 
author of numerous books. He wrote "Bill and Andy's Excellent Adventure" for 
WIRED 2.04.

Sylvia Paull (fax +1 (510) 524 7975) is an agent provocateur, co-host of 
Cybersalon West, and an always willing co-conspirator.

Alan Rapp is the guy you think you've met before that you actually haven't.

Jef Raskin (raskinjef@aol.com) is the originator of the Macintosh computer 
and plays the Contrabass recorder in F, which stands over 7 feet tall.

Stephen Reese (jangle@tvo.org) works as a freelance writer, electronic 
musician, graphic artist, filmmaker, and computer software designer.

Adam Rogers (arogers@acs.bu.edu) is a science writer in New York. He doesn't 
watch nearly enough television.

Bob Rossney writes the Online column for the San Francisco Chronicle and is 
still looking for a reason to buy a CD-ROM player.

Paul Semel (beerhound@aol.com) writes for The New Review of Records, Ray 
Gun, Sound Views, Buzz, Dupree's Diamond News, and The Splatter Effect. He's 
also an editor of Mixed Media, a journal of art and literature.

John Starkovich is a musician and audio electronics maven who spends far too 
much time delving in the wonders of consumer technology.

Steve G. Steinberg (tek@well.sf.ca.us) is the editor of Intertek, a journal 
about technology and society .

Scott Taves (staves@aol.com) is a music journalist and director of special 
projects at Reactor, an interactive software developer/publisher in Chicago. 
He's partial to machine music.

Howard Wen once wrote for VideoGames & Computer Entertainment. That was a 
long time ago. He sleeps - and lives - in the Dallas, Texas, area.

                                   * * *


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=WIRED Online Copyright Notice=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

         Copyright 1993,4 Ventures USA Ltd.  All rights reserved.

  This article may be redistributed provided that the article and this 
  notice remain intact. This article may not under any circumstances
  be resold or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior 
  written permission from Wired Ventures, Ltd.

  If you have any questions about these terms, or would like information
  about licensing materials from WIRED Online, please contact us via 
  telephone (+1 (415) 904 0660) or email (info@wired.com).

       WIRED and WIRED Online are trademarks of Wired Ventures, Ltd.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Subject: Majordomo file: file '2.09/departments/fetish'
Reply-To: info-rama@wired.com
Status: RO

--

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
=-=-=-=-=Copyright 1993,4 Wired Ventures Ltd.  All Rights Reserved=-=-=-=-=
-=-=For complete copyright information, please see the end of this file=-=-
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

WIRED 2.09
Fetish
****** 

The Wailing Wallmount
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
Bang & Olufsen's BeoSound 2000 is a compact music system that includes a CD, 
cassette deck, AM/FM tuner, and 50-watt dual-amplified loudspeakers, all 
nicely consolidated into an optional wall-mount design only 4 inches thick. 
BeoSound senses your hand as you reach for it, and a tinted glass door 
automatically opens to reveal the control panel. When you select a music 
source, only the controls relating to that source remain lighted. You can 
set up the CD player to dub cassettes, and a special feature called Start/Go 
automatically rewinds tapes to the beginning before it plays them. BeoSound 
2000: US$1,595. Bang & Olufsen: (800) 323 0378, +1 (708) 299 9380.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Share Your Seurat
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
Canon's awesome CJ-10 Color Copier drew nerds out of their black-and-white 
world. Now Laser Today's ColorLink fax software lets them share their 
vibrant visions over the phone. Used in conjunction with the CJ-10 and a 
high-speed modem, ColorLink sends image files or scanned documents to a 
CJ-10 anywhere on the planet. No CJ-10 on the receiving end? No problem. The 
free ColorLink receiver-only software lets people with a computer and modem 
receive color documents as data files. Canon CJ-10: US$5,999. Canon: (800) 
652 2666, +1 (714) 753 4000. ColorLink: $995. Laser Today International: +1 
(415) 961 3015.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Fleet Feet
^^^^^^^^^^ 
Designed by people who live to skate, Voodoo In-Line Skates have the support 
of good hiking boots and the comfort of daily running shoes. They're great 
for high-speed hill descents, and the extra support and isolator midsoles 
add shock absorption for rough roads and rad turns. They're breathable too, 
so you won't stink up the place when you take them off. Voodoo In-Line 
Skates: US$369.95. K2 Corporation: (800) 426 1617, +1 (206) 463 3631.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Cyberspace in Your Backpack
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
It feels great to get away from it all, but it's tough when you need to jack 
into cyberspace on a moment's notice. For maximum connectivity you need the 
AirCommunicator. Use it with your laptop to make cellular phone calls, send 
faxes, or access the Net with its 57,600 bps modem. The AirCommunicator 
comes bundled with communications and fax software and uses proprietary 
error-checking software that boosts through-put. AirCommunicator: US$1,595. 
Air Communications Inc.: (800) 247 3282, +1 (408) 749 9883.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


A New Set of Sense Organs
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
You're scaling a sheer rock cliff. The next section of the climb will take 
one hour. Should you move on? Well, it's 3 p.m., 55 degrees Fahrenheit with 
a steady barometer, and you're heading 30 degrees NNE at 5,000 feet. Go for 
it! How did you get all this information? Not on the Internet. You just 
glanced at your Casio Triple Sensor ATC-1200 watch. The Triple Sensor has a 
digital compass, altimeter, barometer, and thermometer. So wire up your 
wrist and explore the world with your sensors on. Triple Sensor ATC-1200: 
US$249.95. Casio Inc.: (800) 634 1895, +1 (201) 361 5400.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Mega Veg-Out
^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
Even a great 35-inch TV can't give you the movie theater experience at home. 
This has as much to do with the aspect ratio as it does with the size of the 
screen. That's why Toshiba built this 56-inch rear projection TV with the 
same width-to-height proportion as today's movie theater screens: 16 to 9. 
Built-in and external surround speakers are driven by a Dolby Pro Logic 
decoder and a 68-watt amp that'll make you feel like you're at the Bijou. 
56D90: US$4,000- $5,000. Toshiba: (800) 631 3811, +1 (201) 628 8000.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


World Band in Your Hand
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
Get a world of information in your hand with Sony's ICF-SW100 world band 
receiver. Whether you're in Bali or the Silicon Valley, you can receive 
almost all the world's broadcasts - from microwave to FM stereo, shortwave, 
and longwave. Information is presented on a sharp LCD display, and the unit 
has an easy-to-use control panel for set-ting stations, time zones, and 
timer functions. I never forget to toss this half-pound puppy in my carry-on 
bag. ICF-SW100: US$450. Sony: (800) 222 7669, +1 (201) 368 9272.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


A Rube-Free Vacation
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
One of the few places on earth where you can escape tourist hordes is the 
ocean floor. But as great as scuba diving is, you can't stay down for very 
long. If you want to extend your voyage to the bottom of the sea, try the 
C-Questor, a fully submersible vehicle that looks more like a sci-fi space 
pod than a personal submarine. It can descend to 130 feet and comes equipped 
with air conditioning, a radio, lights, and a life-support system that'll 
keep you supplied with air for up to three days. (It's up to you to figure 
out how to log on to the Internet from 100 feet below the surface.) 
C-Questor: US$85,000. C-Q Industries Ltd.: +1 (604) 463 3447.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Keep Your Hands on the Wheel
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
Most phones are for talking through, but here's a car phone that you can 
talk to. The 3050 cellular phone from AT&T features a voice-recognition 
system that frees up your hands to do important things, like steering. You 
can tell the 3050 to dial one of 60 different numbers stored in its memory, 
to answer a call, or to hang up. If you don't like to drive and jot down 
notes at the same time, you can use the built-in voice memo pad. Finally! 
You can simultaneously drink coffee, shave, and wage business while you tear 
down the highway. 3050: US$399.99. AT&T: (800) 232 5179, +1 (201) 581 4067.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Molto Moto
^^^^^^^^^^ 
One of the fastest street-legal racing motorcycles in the world, the Ducati 
916 is built on a traditional steel frame, but everything else is about 
reinventing the motorcycle for extra speed, handling, and safety - from the 
single-sided swing arm in the rear that gives you greater stability to the 
dual halogen headlights in the front for extra visibility. Weighing only 429 
pounds, this Italian stallion packs a whopping 114 horsepower (more than a 
lot of automobiles). But it's the beauty of the 916 that'll make your fetish 
feelers really throb, even when it's parked in your garage. Ducati 916: 
US$14,500. Cagiva North America Inc.: +1 (201) 839 2600.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Beam Machine
^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
Videographers who need to make a big splash at presentations or people who 
just can't wait to get home to view their vacation adventures will love the 
CPJ-7 portable LCD projector from Sony. It hooks up to any camcorder or 
videocassette player and will project images onto an area as large as 100 
inches wide. The built-in stereo speakers will provide punch to the 
presentation. The CPJ-7 is light and small enough to stow in your camcorder 
bag and tote to the next gig. CPJ-7: US$800. Sony: (800) 222 7669, +1 (201) 
368 9272.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Road Disc
^^^^^^^^^ 
When I was a kid, my parents always picked up a copy of AAA's Triptics 
before planning a family vacation. Now before I embark on a cross-country 
drive, I spin up Compton's AAA Trip Planner CD-ROM instead. It combines a 
travel information database - which gives ratings on hotels, restaurants, 
and points of interest - with mapping and intelligent routing software 
developed by GeoSystems. Your next jump out of cyberspace is just a click 
away. US$59.95. Compton's NewMedia: (800) 862 2206, +1 (619) 929 2500.

                                   * * *

 - Edited by David Jacobs


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=WIRED Online Copyright Notice=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

         Copyright 1993,4 Ventures USA Ltd.  All rights reserved.

  This article may be redistributed provided that the article and this 
  notice remain intact. This article may not under any circumstances
  be resold or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior 
  written permission from Wired Ventures, Ltd.

  If you have any questions about these terms, or would like information
  about licensing materials from WIRED Online, please contact us via 
  telephone (+1 (415) 904 0660) or email (info@wired.com).

       WIRED and WIRED Online are trademarks of Wired Ventures, Ltd.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Subject: Majordomo file: file '2.09/features/penn'
Reply-To: info-rama@wired.com
Status: RO

--

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
=-=-=-=-=Copyright 1993,4 Wired Ventures Ltd.  All Rights Reserved=-=-=-=-=
-=-=For complete copyright information, please see the end of this file=-=-
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

WIRED 2.09
Penn.
***** 

A completely unredeeming profile of Penn Jillette, wired magician, Umaphile, 
little girl trapped in a fat man's body.

By Joshua Quittner


"TAXI!" bellows Penn Jillette, throwing open the double doors of his 
apartment building and hurtling out into the midtown Manhattan street.

This is a terrifically corny thing to say, as Penn isn't even looking for a 
taxi. He's just saying it for effect.

His buddy, The Public Servant, has just arrived and smiles darkly in Penn's 
wake. The Public Servant (not his real name) is a powerful politician, a top 
aide to a senator whose name you'd recognize in a Times Square minute. The 
Public Servant takes daily briefings at the White House and virtually 
controls one of the Senate's most powerful committees. All that stroke and 
The Public Servant wants nothing more than to be in Show Biz. He wants it so 
much he's glommed onto Penn, just for the contact high.

It's an odd-couple scene: The Public Servant wears a conservative trench 
coat and suit, and big-haired Penn wears a black leather Harley Davidson 
motorcycle jacket, an earring shaped like an elephant tusk, a pound of 
silver bracelets, red nail polish on his ring finger, and a white T-shirt 
emblazoned with the logo of his favorite band, Half Japanese.

Even in Manhattan, where, by God, you see it all, people are practically 
diving for cover as Penn, 6 feet 6 inches and 275 pounds, lumber-thrusts up 
Seventh Avenue, big voice blaring, slapping his pal, The Public Servant, on 
the back, shouting, "Man, it is fucking GREAT to SEE you! You FUCK!"


I have to say right here, right now, I am a little uncomfortable being part 
of Penn's entourage. I am not The Public Servant, and celebrity profiles are 
not my event. I don't read them; I don't write them - not that Penn Jillette 
is Jack Nicholson or anything. I mean, I'm assuming you know who he is: the 
talking half of the still-hip Penn & Teller magic act; the sometime guest 
on, say, the David Letterman show; the voice of Comedy Central. Or maybe you 
already caught Penn & Teller's act in person; it ran on and off Broadway for 
so many years that they're moving to Las Vegas, partly on the premise that 
New York is played out.

Now, I can understand if you're thinking, Big deal, why is WIRED so hot for 
Penn Jillette? What has he got to do with digital culture? This is not 
People magazine. You want lifestyles of the rich and famous, watch 
Entertainment Tonight.

Here's why I am following Penn around for the next 40 hours: Penn Jillette 
might be the most wired person in America.

I know you're saying to yourself, Hype, hype, hype. And frankly, I didn't 
believe it myself, until I ran Penn on the WIRED Universal Nerd Index. His 
rating is way over the top:

>> Would rather hang out with scientists than rock stars. (earns him 25 
points)

>> Has a stopwatch-sized gadget with a voice-recognition chip that 
understands phone numbers, and a buffer into which he can dictate four 
minutes worth of recording. There is no known use for this object. (15 
points)

>> Has a Japanese-made television in his office that is always on CNN - 
muted, with that way-cool, closed-caption chip spewing out subtitles. (8 
points)

>> Runs invitation-only computer bulletin board. (30 points)

>> Doesn't do drugs. Not even coffee, tea, or cola. (2 points)

>> Uses a PC laptop instead of a PowerBook because "I like a command-line 
interface." (12 points)

>> Carries money in a "carny roll" (big bills on the outside with 
progressively smaller denominations nested inside) and points this out to 
strangers. (4 points)

>> Does card tricks. (6 points)

That's 102 points. Stephen Hawking himself scored only 94. And Hawking 
doesn't do Movie Night. Movie Night is a Friday-night ritual that begins at 
the Howard Johnson in Times Square, where more than a dozen people, mostly 
guys - not beer-guzzling, sports-loving guys either, but computer scientists 
and statisticians and molecular biologists - convene for a healthy HoJo 
repast. Then, like the high-school Audio Visual Squad out on a toot, they 
march off to see a midnight movie at one of the area's finer cinemas.

You could say that Penn Jillette is the captain of that squad, the dude with 
the keys to all the rooms.

Only now, he's a grownup and can get girls.


But such standardized tests can tell you only so much about a person, of 
course, and when that person happens to be a world-class magician - someone 
used to tampering with reality - it's prudent to double-check your results 
with some field work. A long weekend with Mr. Jillette, 39, will be the 
wired acid test, which explains why, about two hours after hooking up with 
him, I find myself having dessert with him and The Public Servant at Cafe Un 
Deux Trois in the theater district. (Not lunch, which we ate at a Chinese 
restaurant earlier; just dessert. The men like the dessert here and like 
sitting in a window seat that they refer to as "The Sinatra Table.") 
Actually, Penn and I are each eating a dessert; The Public Servant, smelling 
WIRED expense account, has ordered two desserts, and is forking creamy 
spoonfuls of profiterole into his mouth, pretending to be interested while 
Penn explains to him why it is his duty, as one of the most powerful humans 
in Washington, to sink the Clipper Chip.

Penn not only understands the Clipper debate but he explains, quite 
eloquently, how key escrow encryption works. He draws diagrams. On the place 
mat. He's good.

"I am familiar with what you're talking about," says The Public Servant, who 
points out that he recently saw something on TV that explained the issues. 
"It's definitely a problem that the government, through a technological 
fluke that allowed it to do wiretaps on telephones, now believes it has a 
constitutional right to eavesdrop on all conversations."

Penn beams and nods his head vigorously. The Public Servant is getting the 
message, he's on board. Penn loves this guy, the quickness of his mind. 
They've been friends since working on a late-night talk-show pilot a few 
years ago. "Exactly. Now, what the fuck can we do about it? What should we 
do?" Penn asks.

"My advice to you is surrender," says The Public Servant. "It's your only 
option."


An hour later and Penn and I are in a taxi, stuck in traffic, and Penn's got 
the stopwatch-sized Voice Organizer up to his ear, trying to hear the 
address of a photographer's studio where he is supposed to be at this 
minute. The Public Servant has split, mumbling something about "making Fat 
Boy's day," and Penn is scheduled to have a new head shot taken for his 
monthly column in PC/Computing magazine.

A magician who writes a column for the third-largest PC magazine in the 
country? Yes, it's wired. Penn writes 600 words for the column, which has 
the coveted, well-read back page position. The column follows two rules: it 
is never about computing, and it always mentions Uma Thurman. Thurman was 
June in Philip Kaufman's Henry and June. Penn has never met her but thinks 
"her name sounds like a sex goddess." He said he was first attracted to her 
after seeing her near-naked body in some film. He dropped her name in one of 
his first columns when he needed an example of a file name.

Penn used thurman.uma.

"I have mentioned her - and will continue to mention her - more than any 
other writer in the world," he vowed in another column.

Penn's columns tend to be unlike any others you'll see in PC mags. He 
doesn't shrink from the confessional, nor does he shrink from making fun of 
his own iconoclastic quirks. "Among my many stereotypical high-school girl 
attributes is keeping a journal," he writes. "Bubble baths, manicures, big 
hair, malls, giggling, sports ignorance, and Madonna identification are also 
on that list, and you can bet a few meg that I'll get to those subjects in 
future columns."


We finally ditch the cab and run the half mile or so to the studio, which 
doubles as the photographer's apartment. It is flawlessly sparse, lofty, and 
bright. Fresh-brewed coffee, cakes, and juices, including watermelon juice, 
are in the kitchen for the clients. But Penn immediately decides that 
something is awry.

"You seem to have fewer pictures of naked women than most photographers," 
Penn says. He is crushed.

Then he poses for a variety of stills. Sunglasses on, sunglasses off and 
blue eyes blaring. Head cocked. Ponytail cinched in a barrette. Ponytail 
undone. ("Do you think the hair looks a little ... too ... Howard Stern?") 
Then he asks the photographer if the camera would be able to capture 
something he writes on his wristwatch calculator. The photographer says 
maybe. Penn types out:

"PC/C 666."

"Most of my hate mail comes from Christians," he explains. "This'll give 
them something to work with." Penn is such an ardent atheist he refuses to 
go to weddings.

The assistant asks Penn about the unusual double-ax pendant around his neck.


"It's a lesbian symbol which means I'm a slave to an Amazon. Which I think 
is funny on a large guy like myself," Penn explains. The assistant stares at 
him. "I'm a little girl trapped in a man's body," Penn adds. The assistant 
backs away uncertainly.


We decide to walk the 10 blocks back to his apartment.

Testing the Most Wired Guy in America thesis, I ask him if he'd rather be a 
scientist than a magician.

"Give me 30 or 40 more IQ points and I'd be right there alongside Rob," he 
says, referring to Rob Pike, one of his best friends. ("Rob and I are 
stupidly close.") Pike also happens to be a "scary-smart" computer scientist 
at Bell Laboratories, AT&T's research lab and patent mill, across the Hudson 
River in New Jersey.

Penn always loved science and would have liked to be a scientist, just like 
Pike. But he felt he didn't have the aptitude, not to mention that he never 
went to college. "I would never want to do something unless I could become a 
player," Penn says.

Say he could become a player today: would he rather be a scientist than a 
magician? "No. I live a perfect life."

Besides, he says, he uses his fame to meet scientists. Around 1987, when he 
and Teller were doing a show in the Boston area, Penn went over to the Media 
Lab at MIT and put up a sign on a (physical) bulletin board inviting Media 
Lab types to his show: "I really dig you guys, I'm a big fan of the Media 
Lab, and anybody who wants to come, come." For free. A number of them came, 
and Penn later got a tour of the lab. He made some friends there, one of 
whom introduced him, via e-mail, to Pike.

"Rob Pike wanted to pull a scam on his boss, Arno Penzias," Penn recalls. 
Penzias, a Nobel laureate, was vice president of research at Bell Labs. Penn 
& Teller helped him concoct what has come to be known as Labscam, a 
practical joke that cemented their friendship.

Here's how Labscam worked: Pike invited Penzias to participate in a 
demonstration of a voice-recognition project that he and Unix co-creator 
Dennis Ritchie were supposedly working on. He sat in front of a computer 
terminal while a camera with a bright light shined in his eyes. ("The bright 
light was my idea: a practical joke can't be all sweet and pleasant," Penn 
says in a home video of the event.) Penzias was told to speak to the 
computer. The computer, using super-sophisticated software, would quickly 
learn Penzias's voice, as he repeated such words as "Ho-ho-kus," and phrases 
such as "Kenneth, what is the frequency?"

Then, for the piece de resistance, Pike told Penzias that the computer now 
understood him and was ready to demonstrate its prowess. Penzias was given 
what Penn calls "the Magician's Choice": he was asked if he wanted to 
interview the unknown star of a soap opera he didn't watch, the author of a 
book about modern-dance empress Martha Graham, or Penn & Teller.

"Call us cocky, but we felt he'd make the right choice," says Penn.

He did. Penzias was told that he could "interview" Penn & Teller, whose 
images were on the computer screen, by asking questions from a topic list he 
was given. The computer would not only understand Penzias's questions but 
would compile answers by splicing together video footage. Of course, what 
Penzias didn't know was that the real Penn & Teller were sitting in an 
adjacent room and the images of the pair on his computer screen were nothing 
more than The Boys on a closed-circuit link.

After a few foul-ups and incorrect responses, Penzias got around to asking 
the main question on his list: "Will you do a trick for us?"

Well sure, said Penn, and the two got up from their seats. The computer 
image-Penn said that he and Teller had always wanted to go from TV to 
reality and, as Penzias looked at what he thought was a recording , the real 
Penn & Teller ambled through the door to Penzias's office. In the video, 
Penzias looks ashen, shaken - like he's about to faint. In other words, it 
was a successful practical joke.

"I like to think that when you team up Dennis Ritchie, Rob Pike and Penn & 
Teller, some people will be terrified," says Penn.


The first thing you see when you enter Penn's loft-like apartment is a pair 
of large, carved, wooden tikis. The title of the work is "Mama Tiki Cries 
While Daddy Tiki Eats Their Young." It's quite good. If you like tikis.

The apartment is filled with art, as well as kitsch: dice clocks and skulls 
and chili-pepper Christmas lights. Also, lots of pictures of naked women. At 
one end of the loft is a room furnished with Mission-style chairs and a 
settle. When Penn flips a switch, the draperies shut automatically and a 
movie screen slinks down from the ceiling so you can watch movies from his 
laserdisc and video collection. Very wired.

All the movies are archived on Penn's computer; after one is viewed, Penn 
notes the time and date, and prints it out on a list. That way, when he 
gives you the list, you can see if he saw something recently and you'll know 
not to request it.

The back wall is filled, floor to ceiling, with his video and CD collection, 
including a CD of Richard Feynman playing the drums (called Safecracker 
Suite and featuring "Interaction by the Three Quarks"). The top few shelves 
contain Penn's porn collection. My favorite title: REALLY HARD KINK Vol. II. 
I can't stop thinking, What did volume one leave out?

At the other end of the apartment is Penn's office. A massive, dirty pink, 
corrugated metal desk dominates. A stenciled border rims the room. The 
stencil alternates between three things: an alligator, a microchip, and the 
silhouette of a naked woman. Along the windowsill are some photos. There's 
one of his parents, holding a cactus. Next to that is a photograph, circa 
1910, of a young man flanked by young women. "That's my Uncle Johnny, who 
died swimming the Charles River when he was 25," Penn says. Uncle Johnny was 
trying to win a bet. "My aunts say I remind them of him."


Penn sits down at the pink desk and fires up his Toshiba laptop, the only 
computer he owns. It has a color screen. All of Penn's databases are stored 
on the Toshiba, including an inventory of the laserdiscs and CDs he owns, as 
well as a daily log of each CD he listens to. That's so Penn can say he was 
listening to a particular thing at a particular time on a particular day, if 
he wants to. He also takes notes on every conversation he has. And, since 
1985, he has written two pages in his journal each morning.

As I listen to this, I am beginning to think I am the subject of Nerdscam - 
you know, convince WIRED what a PowerNerd you are to impress the readers.

But Penn insists this is all real, all part of his daily routine: "I'm very 
organized. I didn't do anything before I had a computer. Computers changed 
my life. Paper doesn't work like my head; the computer does."

You might wonder what Penn does with all his databases.

Much of the information finds its way onto the Jungle.


The Jungle was named after a Bally pinball machine, Jungle Lord, which was a 
popular feature of Penn & Teller's office for many years. The name lives on 
as the moniker of Penn & Teller's private electronic bulletin board, which 
went up in March 1987. The Jungle's primary role is to keep Penn and Teller 
wired with each other and their office while they're on the road. The board, 
which resides on a computer in their office, has been useful as a way to 
exchange script ideas and conduct other business.

Beyond that,though, it provides a place where Penn and Teller can always 
find their friends. About 20 people have accounts on The Jungle. It is 
harder to get an account there than it is to get a MacArthur grant. Even The 
Public Servant isn't on it, though Pike, of course, is.

"What I usually do, when I have an adventure in the world, I write up a 
rough draft, which I send to my buddies on The Jungle," Penn says. One 
posted adventure details Penn's exploits shooting a pilot in Hollywood for a 
TV show with a heavy virtual reality hook. Penn got to do his own stunts. 
Penn got to light himself on fire. He wore a Nomex suit. "Just saying the 
word Nomex makes me hard," he says.


The door to Penn's apartment flies open and an angel-faced speedster 
rollerblades in and plops down onto the sofa.

"He's my geek," Penn says of the young man. "He does my computer stuff."

His name is Colin Summers and he's worn either rollerskates or rollerblades 
every day - all day - for the past 20 years. Penn found him rolling around a 
computer store where he was a salesman in 1985. Penn had become entranced 
with computers and wanted to ramp up as quickly as possible. So he went out 
in search of a tutor and randomly picked Colin. "I said, 'You - I want to 
know how to do cool things with a computer,'" Penn recalls. "The chances of 
being ripped off by someone you pick at random are very low; the chances of 
being ripped off by someone who picks you are very high."

Penn and Teller were writing scripts on PCs at that time and they wanted a 
central place to drop them off, at any time of day. So they hired Colin on 
as the computer guy.

Colin is also trained as an architect and is helping Penn design a ranch in 
Nevada, "an A-frame on over five acres of pure desert," called "The Fuckin' 
A." Penn has been profiled in lots of magazines, including The New Yorker 
and GQ. He claims he has never read one profile, though his friends do and 
tell him what they read. "If you write anything about me that I don't like, 
I'll quit my job," he cautions me now. "And my new job will be hunting you." 
Is this wired? Or psychotic? You be the judge. Colin skates out of the room.


I wonder what we're going to see for Movie Night," Penn muses. It's been 
about nine hours since Day One began, and we are heading uptown, after 
seeing a play called Blood Orgy of the Carnival Queens.

As the leader of Movie Night, Marc Garland will decide what tonight's movie 
will be, Penn explains. The friendship of Garland and Penn dates to 
Greenfield High School, in Massachusetts, where Garland was the 
math-and-science wizard and the only guy with longer hair than Penn.

You can whine and wheedle about wanting to see this movie for Movie Night, 
or that one, but it makes no difference. Garland decides.

"There has been a lot of speculation about how Marc selects a movie," says 
Penn. "But no one really knows for sure."


Rob Pike is already waiting at HoJo's with Xerox handouts of a recent Nature 
article when we sit down. The article is about how lawyers don't understand 
the statistical underpinnings of DNA "fingerprinting."

"The question they ask of the guy in the dock is, what is the probability 
that an innocent man would match this DNA? And the answer is, of course, 
about one in a million," says Pike, looking around the table and pausing for 
drama. "The question they should ask is, given the match, what is the 
probability that he is innocent? And the answer is, about one-third."

I don't know what the hell Pike is talking about. Penn looks lovesick.

It's an unusually good turnout for tonight's Movie Night. Just about 
everyone at the table has an account on The Jungle.

In addition to Pike, there's Jamy Swiss, a man with a flowing Vandyke who 
Penn says is "probably the best close-up magician in the world," meaning he 
does tricks in front of two to three people at a time, card tricks and some 
involving coins. There's Chip Denman, a statistician at the University of 
Maryland, and his wife, Grace Denman, a computer person for Marriott. Chip 
and Grace are active in the skeptics movement, which seeks to debunk 
everything from facilitated communication to holy tortillas. There's David 
Shaw, a biochemist working on a cure for cancer up in Cambridge, and his 
wife, Diane Martin, a lawyer. (The out-of-towners came in for the weekend 
and are planning to go to the Penn & Teller show in Atlantic City tomorrow.)


Barry Marx is here as well. Marx, at Absolute Entertainment Inc., a 
videogame production company in New Jersey, is producing the Penn & Teller 
videogame, which will be available for the Sega CD platform this winter.

To round it off, Colin rolls in.

Someone asks Garland what we're going to see tonight.

"I'm leaning toward Leprechaun II," he says. Everyone groans.


Across Broadway and two blocks south, the AV Squad sits in the front row, 
just as they do every Friday night, passing around a large bucket of 
buttered popcorn and a bag of Twizzlers. As the lights dim and a garrulous 
drunk in the back hoots insanely, Garland jumps to his feet, faces the 
audience, and gives a brief introduction: "Good evening, Ladies and 
Gentlemen, and welcome to tonight's feature presentation, Leprechaun II, a 
hilarious romp through...."

Just like he always does.

When the rating "PG" flashes on the screen to announce a preview of a coming 
attraction, all 20 people say, quietly, "Yessssssssss." They repeat this 
each time a rating for a preview is shown. It's the first rule of Movie 
Night.

The other rules are simple: If the name of the featured movie is said during 
the movie itself, you applaud. If the name of any other movie is mentioned, 
you say "wow." You might try this sometime; the stupidest movie becomes a 
game show, with maximum audience participation.

In Leprechaun II, we said "wow" a lot: anytime the word "leprechaun" was 
said, since that's the name of the first movie. We never got to applaud, 
however.

The movie is about a savage leprechaun, who, pretty early on, eviscerates a 
wino. "This is already better than Clifford," says Penn. The worst of the 
250 or so movies he's seen on Movie Night was Sister Act, the Whoopi 
Goldberg vehicle. It's hard to say what the best movie was, though he says 
they "saw Leonard Part 6 three times. It was an amazing movie. None of us 
could figure out what they were trying to do. We were just dumbstruck."


A few hours of sleep later, I hop into a stretch limo with Penn, bound for 
Atlantic City, where Penn & Teller are scheduled to do two shows tonight. 
It's about noon, Day Two.

Penn puts a cassette tape into the deck; the tape is from his band, Captain 
Howdy. Lou Reed wrote one of the songs, called "Tattoo of Blood," which is 
about the time Penn had a tattoo done, without ink, just to see what it 
would feel like.

Most of the way down to Atlantic City, we talk about interactive 
entertainment. Penn says it'll never work. Entertainment - movies, theater, 
music, art - boils down to the performer, not the audience, being in 
control.

"Technology adds nothing to art," he says. "Two thousand years ago, I could 
tell you a story, and at any point during the story I could stop, and ask, 
Now, do you want the hero to be kidnapped, or not?" But that would, of 
course, have ruined the story. Part of the experience of being entertained 
is sitting back and plugging into someone else's vision.

"The fact of the matter is, since the beginning of time, you could buy a 
Picasso and change the colors. That's trivial. But you don't because you're 
buying a piece of Picasso's fucking soul. That's the definition of art: "Art 
is one person's ego trip."

Penn says he and Teller "have been offered a huge amount of money and a huge 
amount of technology to do interactive shit. We have turned them down. Not 
that the technology wasn't up to snuff, but because we don't have any 
ideas."

"The whole fucking world is pretending the breakthrough is in technology," 
he says, as we whiz by the Blade Runner-like landscape of New Jersey oil 
refineries. "The bottleneck is really in art."


It is only natural that Penn, the magician, should have an intimate 
understanding of the relationship between technology and art. Or more 
specifically, technology and the art of magic.

Technology is, and always has been, an important tool in the magician's bag 
of tricks, explains Teller. Though he never talks on stage, off stage Teller 
is a marvelous talker, a historian of magic, and now, in the hour or so 
before their first show, he's holding forth during dinner at an Atlantic 
City hotel.

Magicians have always exploited new technologies, from Jean Eugene 
Robert-Houdin, who used a trick involving an electromagnet to quell a 
rebellion in Algeria in the mid-19th century, to, well, Penn & Teller.

Teller quotes Arthur C. Clarke, who noted, "A sufficiently advanced 
technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Eight years ago, Penn & Teller devised a trick that illustrated Clarke's 
Law, Teller says. You might recall this number - the World's Most Expensive 
Card Trick - done before millions of people on Saturday Night Live.

While the Saturday Night audience watched Teller sit on stage surrounded by 
computer equipment, Penn was out in Times Square, "by a newsstand," Teller 
recalls. "Penn had two passersby select one card from the pack and remove 
it. He then fanned the cards so the TV camera could get a glimpse of the 51 
others. I apparently captured the fan on my computer scan, and took a still 
frame to determine which card was missing. I turned to a second terminal and 
typed in Four of Diamonds. The terminal transferred it to the giant 
Spectacolor screen in Times Square: Penn just looked over the bystanders' 
shoulders, and there it was."

"All that elaborate rigamarole could have just as easily been done by a 
standard palming of the card," he adds. In fact, the trick was done like 
this: The "bystanders" were really two actors. And the answer was always 
going to be the Four of Diamonds; that was the card that the actors had been 
instructed to select. But what everyone saw was an incredible stunt done by 
powerful, mystical computers.

"The subject of that trick was how close to magic being able to manipulate a 
lot of technology is," Teller says.

I am a little shocked at this admission. Call me a sucker, but I always 
figured magic tricks, especially the Penn & Teller kind, were far more 
sophisticated displays. And now, this glimpse behind the scenes makes me 
feel uneasy. It makes me think, again, that the Penn I have been watching is 
a setup, too.

Without even saying this to Teller, I must have conveyed it, because he says 
then, "I have worked with Penn for 20 years and have seen probably every 
face there is to see. Under all the veneers of flamboyance is someone of 
impeccable integrity. After all, I am literally trusting him with my life."


Penn Jillette is grasping one end of a red rope. The other end is holding up 
Teller, who's cinched tight in a straitjacket, and hanging upside down from 
the ceiling, dangling over a bed of 18-inch-long, sharp, wooden spikes.

Penn has just hoisted Teller aloft for the benefit of about 800 people here, 
in Bally's Grand Hotel, for the 11 p.m. show, and if he lets go, Teller will 
surely be impaled on the spikes. Mr. Gravity guarantees that.

Now Penn lashes the rope to a flimsy red folding chair, then plops himself 
down onto it and says: "Good evening. We are Penn & Teller, and you've 
probably heard by now that we do magic...."

He sighs loudly, opens a book of poetry, and quickly finds a selection by 
Ernest Lawrence Thayer, "Casey at the Bat." This poem, he tells the 
audience, will take him 1 minute and 34 seconds to read. "Afterwards, I will 
jump to my feet and take that all-important bow."

In other words, unless Teller escapes, Penn will skewer him like a corndog 
on a stick. I don't think I'm giving anything away by saying that Teller 
escapes, only to eat a fistful of nails in the East Indian Needle Mystery 
and live without air for eight minutes in Teller's Underwater Coffin. Penn, 
among other things, smashes three liquor bottles and juggles the knife-sharp 
shards.

I, for one, am starting to go ga-ga. It's been 36 hours of Penn watching, 
and I've yet to see him do something that isn't wired. My whole definition 
of "wiredness" has grown, too. I see that in addition to owning decent 
gadgets and having a career that works the edge in a dangerous but creative 
way, being wired means being closely connected to people as well: your 
partner, your pals, your co-workers.

In the limo back that night, we try to watch a video, an awful movie about a 
savage sniper in a jungle war, who, early on, eviscerates a Contra. It's 
3:30 a.m., and it's all we can do to say "wow" and applaud at the 
appropriate places.


A few weeks later, I drop by Penn's apartment to hear him rant. I figured 
ranting - really showing passion about certain topics - is the blood test of 
the truly wired. I find Penn going through his e-mail at his desk, sipping a 
Blenheim Ginger Ale, from Blenheim, South Carolina - his new cult-fave drink 
- and Colin is hovering around, fetching him stuff. The Voice Organizer is 
recharging in its holster.

"Rant for me," I say.

"OK, let's talk about Fat Boy and the Acid Head," he says, referring, of 
course, to the US president and vice president. "First of all, he lies about 
how far he runs every day. That's why I call him FAT BOY. He's the third 
fattest president in US history - which I don't hold against him, because 
I'm fat, too." (Penn is ranting so fast, I can't keep up. I should have 
brought a tape recorder. I'm getting like, one out of every three sentences 
now.)

"He once said he could run faster than a Navy Seal. THERE OUGHT TO BE A 
RULE: IF A PRESIDENT CAN OUTRUN A NAVY SEAL, THEY BOTH OUGHT TO BE FIRED." 
The Navy Seal ought to be fired for obvious reasons, the president because 
if he can outrun a Navy Seal, he's spending too much time running and not 
enough time managing affairs of state. Rant, rant. He's picking up speed, 
like one of those nuts that calls late-night talk radio, oblivious to time, 
to what people might think, about to explode.

"People always talk about what A REGULAR GUY Clinton is, and I do believe 
that, he is. A regular guy. THAT'S WHY I DON'T WANT HIM TO BE PRESIDENT." 
The last president Penn liked was Thomas Jefferson, he says. "Thomas 
Jefferson was not a regular guy. HE WAS A PRESIDENT."

Now Penn turns to the information superhighway, ranting like a crank at a 
city hall public hearing. "Fat Boy and his sidekick, algore - you say it 
like that, real-fast, like Igor ... algore - are doing nothing to speed up 
the construction of the information superhighway. All they're doing is 
slowing it down. They ought to just step back and let free enterprise handle 
it."

Yessssssssss.

Net access for all? Not on your life. A bone-headed idea, says Penn. "I defy 
the Acid Head to name one fucking show poor kids need to watch on cable," he 
said. "Taking television away from poor people is the BEST THING YOU COULD 
DO FOR THEM. Rich people turn the TV off SO THEY CAN READ."

Technology, though, is the key to protecting free speech, he screeches. "Fat 
Boy is doing the most Luddite, anti-technology thing possible with the 
Clipper Chip. Political freedom and freedom of speech are becoming 
technological issues, not free-speech issues, and I think that's good. Now 
that everyone is getting on the Net - 23 million people, 10 million within 
the last year, an incredible figure - NOW THE GOVERNMENT IS WORRIED!"

His head is about to burst into flames, the man is so wired.

Someone asks him, What about Hillary?

And Penn pauses, his eyes gleaming, his hair electrocharged, his heart 
pounding, and Blenheim Ginger Ale coursing through his veins. Penn says: "I 
have nothing to say about her." Clearly, even Penn Jillette has his limits.

                                   * * *

Joshua Quittner covers cyberspace for Newsday. He's the co-author of Masters 
of Deception: The Gang that Ruled Cyberspace, which will be published by 
HarperCollins in January.


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=WIRED Online Copyright Notice=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

         Copyright 1993,4 Ventures USA Ltd.  All rights reserved.

  This article may be redistributed provided that the article and this 
  notice remain intact. This article may not under any circumstances
  be resold or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior 
  written permission from Wired Ventures, Ltd.

  If you have any questions about these terms, or would like information
  about licensing materials from WIRED Online, please contact us via 
  telephone (+1 (415) 904 0660) or email (info@wired.com).

       WIRED and WIRED Online are trademarks of Wired Ventures, Ltd.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Subject: Majordomo file: file '2.09/departments/camnet'
Reply-To: info-rama@wired.com
Status: RO

--

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
=-=-=-=-=Copyright 1993,4 Wired Ventures Ltd.  All Rights Reserved=-=-=-=-=
-=-=For complete copyright information, please see the end of this file=-=-
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

WIRED 2.09
Electrosphere
************* 

CamNet: Those Who Cam, Do
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 

If you don't like TV, go out and make some of your own.

By Michael Goldberg


They have interviewed high school students who sell condoms (and fear AIDS) 
at Condomania, a trendy Melrose Avenue prophylactic store.

They have tagged along with John, the nude handyman, as he repaired a leaky 
faucet in his birthday suit.

They have videotaped the Church Ladies for Choice singing to the tune of 
Malvina Reynolds's "Little Boxes": "Psycho Christians, blocking health care, 
and they all look just the same; There's a white one and a white one and a 
white one and a white one; Psycho Christians, blocking health care, and they 
all look just the same."

They have toured the Nixon Library, hung out with anti-nuke protesters in 
the Nevada desert, and aired previously unseen outtakes from Elvis's 1968 
comeback special. They have caught up with writer Paul Bowles in Tangiers 
and journeyed to Amsterdam to cover High Times magazine's official 1994 
Cannabis Cup, a smoke-out where so much dope was consumed that one gets a 
contact high just watching the footage.

And, on a less humorous note, one of the far-flung video journalists (VJs, 
they call themselves, and they're not referring to Kennedy and her MTV 
brethren) interviewed students and parents in Kalkaska, Michigan, on the day 
that a public school was closed because the community vetoed, for the third 
time, a tax increase. One 59-year-old resident whose seven children (and 
several grandchildren) attended the Kalkaska schools admits with no apparent 
remorse, "I voted 'No' on every one
of them."

They are CamNet, the Camcorder Network, and they want to liberate your TV 
screen.

Their video verite offers a refreshing and badly needed dose of everyday 
people dealing with the joys, sorrows, highs, and lows of real life, in 
stark contrast to the blood-and-guts video bites typically dished up by the 
blow-dried robots of network news.

Using mostly amateur, unpaid VJs scattered throughout the country who have 
Hi-8 camcorders and plenty of chutzpah, CamNet's founders and editors, Nancy 
Cain and Judith Binder, have been beaming their delightfully offbeat, often 
insightful, sometimes funny, always intelligent, frequently political, and 
genuinely entertaining documentary-style news shows out into a million or so 
American homes for the past two years.

It is the night of April Fools' Day, and Judith Binder is on assignment. 
Armed with a small Sony Hi-8 camcorder (see "How to Become a CamNet VJ," 
page 79), Binder is standing in the parking lot behind Mondo Video A-Go-Go 
in Hollywood, where a performance art troupe will soon begin its satiric 
Crucifixion Carnival,
in which "The Miracle of the Bleeding Heart of San Moronus" will occur.

But first, as longhaired artsy types unload a cross - with a life-sized 
Jesus figure attached - from the back of a van, Binder has her camera 
trained on a self-described "rock singer/actor/alien" who calls himself 
Rocket Boy. Wearing a red beret and wild beard, he explains that he's 
currently acting in an underground film called The Revenge of Big Foot, in 
which he "goes to hell for raping and killing Big Foot's daughter." As 
Binder lets the videotape roll, documenting this craziness, she is assisted 
by actress Beth Lapides, a sometime CamNet correspondent who at the moment 
is deftly handling Rocket Boy's interrogation.
"So, Rocket Boy, what's with the name?" wonders Lapides.

"It has to do with my five UFO experiences," Rocket Boy matter-of-factly 
replies.

"Oooh!" exclaims Lapides. Then, without a pause, she asks him to talk about 
his most recent one-on-one with these alleged space invaders. "They came 
down to me and asked me to help find a person, another alien actually, who 
had been kidnapped...."

And so it goes when you're out there, trying to break new ground, looking to 
show that slice of life that rarely makes it onto the TV screen.

Two weeks later, in the Venice Beach, California, cottage that houses Nancy 
Cain and serves as CamNet's base of operations, Cain explains that the only 
snippet expected to make it onto the screen from the Crucifixion Carnival is 
a 30-second bit featuring a young woman. The woman, playing the role of a 
"cheerleader for Jesus," goes through her routine yelling: "G-O-D God! Go 
God!" and thrusting blue-and-gold pompoms toward the sky.

"We might use that as a 'bumper,'" says Cain, referring to brief, evocative 
pieces of video - kids playing video games, two turtles fighting, a snail 
oozing through the grass, a little girl explaining why she doesn't like TV 
commercials - that are interspersed between CamNet's longer pieces.

Cain and Binder never go anywhere without their camcorders. Sometimes a tad 
spacey, sometimes highly focused, Nancy Cain has the look of a '60s anti-war 
protester, with her long, curly, slightly out-of-control hair and oversized 
jeans jacket. The look fits, though - in the late '60s Cain was part of 
Videofreex, a radical video group that shot footage of Woodstock and the 
Chicago Seven.

Judith Binder is more uptown: styled reddish hair, black combat boots, jeans 
with appliqueed fish, and plastic snake earrings.

CamNet is their labor of love. Neither of the founders are paid, and often 
they have to supplement the advertising revenues that dribble in to keep 
their show on the air. To survive, Cain has taken on outside video-editing 
jobs, most recently working on infomercials. Binder, who is financially 
independent, does theatrical consulting and directing on the side.

Since going on the air in 1992, more than 40 hourlong CamNet shows have been 
broadcast.

When asked why she devotes so much of her time to CamNet, Binder gets very 
quiet, very serious. "It's my way of expressing myself," she says, adding 
that she believes the work is making a positive contribution to the 
community. "I feel I need to give service."

"We are the alternative network," says Cain proudly. "We give people the 
chance to communicate with each other using this vehicle, the camcorder. You 
don't have to be on the Internet; you can be on the CamNet."

While network news and CNN tend to report what could be considered the 
official version of the news, CamNet offers a down-to-earth, proletarian 
perspective. The VJs see themselves as video revolutionaries. Long before a 
home video of police beating Rodney King shook the nation, Cain and Binder 
understood both the power and revolutionary nature of the camcorder. No 
longer limited to media professionals, the camcorder today is nearly as 
omnipresent as the VCR. "Everyone pretty much has access to one," says 
Binder. "Either they own one, or they know somebody that has one."

In an MTV-world of quick cuts and trendy camera angles, CamNet pieces unfold 
slowly. CamNet VJs couldn't care less about slick; what they're after is 
emotional resonance. People are allowed to talk for more than just a 
sentence or two. To view CamNet is to look through a window into the real, 
dirty, unvarnished, and - in a sense - unedited world.

It's not The News, cautions Cain, but the other news.

Right now, CamNet is at something of a crossroads. In the two years it's 
been on the air, Cain and Binder have assembled a crack crew of VJs and 
managed to get national acclaim for a show put together on a true shoestring 
budget (US$1,000 per on-the-air hour). But without a sales team to bring in 
serious advertising dollars, without savvy business brains to expand its 
audience, CamNet is a good idea in search of serious capitalization.

That hasn't stopped the two women from continuing to produce the show, but 
they have spent much of this year seriously pursuing Hollywood dollars that 
can fund their dream of the CamNet Channel -- alternative news and features 
24-hours a day.

With access to the tools of the trade, everyone is a potential VJ. Take 
correspondent Barbara Brownell, a teacher, actress, and mother living in 
North Hollywood, California. Brownell stumbled across CamNet while channel 
surfing and dug it so much she bought her own camcorder and became a regular 
contributor to CamNet. Whileanyone is a potential VJ, it takes practice to 
deliver footage that will satisfy the exacting and peculiar standards of 
Binder and Cain. "No talking heads," Binder says. "No anchorman-style 
narration. Just tell the story by showing it to us."

Many of the pieces they air are remarkably intimate. A prosthetic-breast 
manufacturer gives them a tour of the factory, then reveals that she herself 
wears prosthetic breasts. She even pulls a falsie out of her bra, as 
CamNet's camera rolls. "We don't have any three-man crews," says Cain. "One 
person with a little camcorder just isn't intimidating."

"They feel this is their chance to be heard," adds Binder, trying to explain 
the willingness of people they video to expose their humanness. "We're not 
confrontational. We're not there to confront them, we're there to hear them. 
I think people are starved to be heard. And most of the time, people are not 
being heard."

Though the pieces are often heavily edited - Cain and Binder can go through 
two hours or more of raw footage to pull together a five- or six-minute 
segment -- the goal is to create seamless television. "If it looks like it's 
happening at the moment you're seeing it, if it looks like you're 
experiencing it live and you're inside it instead of outside it, then it 
works," says Cain.

"Like you're overhearing it - or, I should say, watching it - as it happens, 
as opposed to being told about it later," adds Binder.

Cain and Binder met in the fall of 1985 at the Wallenboyd Theater in Los 
Angeles. Cain's husband, satirist (and publisher of The Realist since 1958) 
Paul Krassner, was performing his stand-up routine. By chance, they happened 
to be sitting near one another at a long table. Cain overheard Binder 
saying, "I have this little JVC camera and I can fit it into my bag ... and 
I have so many jobs and I don't even have time to do all of them."

"I turned to her and said, 'The first thing you have to do is raise your 
rates.' Which she still hasn't done," Cain laughs. "She said to me, 'What do 
you mean?' I said, 'Well I shoot with that same kind of camera.' 'You what?' 
It was a big shock. It was great. So that was a Saturday, and I think on 
Monday Judith came down here. At the time I had nothing in this place but a 
coffee table. We had to go somewhere else to look at each other's video."

"But I wasn't going to let her go," continues Binder. "I knew this was it!"

The two women discovered that each had been shooting video for years and 
that they shared the same fervor for the medium. Cain had first picked up a 
camera in 1969 while working as a producer at CBS-TV in New York; she says 
that once she started shooting video in the field, she began daydreaming 
about a community-based video news channel. For a time, as part of 
Videofreex, Cain did broadcast home-grown video using a jerry-built 
transmitter to her neighbors in upstate New York. Binder was a housewife 
until the feminist movement of the '70s inspired her to pursue her interests 
in art and theater. In addition to directing alternative theater in LA, she 
turned to photography, and in the '80s to video, to document female artists.


Cain and Binder became good friends and business partners, helping each 
other out on any and all video jobs that came along. Then they got a lucky 
break. At the end of the '80s, two of Cain's longtime friends, Tom Weinberg 
and John Schwartz, started The '90s Channel in Boulder, Colorado. The '90s 
Channel began by broadcasting independently produced documentaries in eight 
cities on United Artists Cable (now owned by Tele-Communications Inc.). At 
the same time, Weinberg and a number of his associates, including Nancy 
Cain, developed The '90s, a weekly hourlong alternative news and features 
show that primarily used camcorder footage.
Cain and Binder were hired as producers. The '90s went on the air in 1989 
and ran for four seasons. For two seasons it was funded by PBS, aired on PBS 
affiliates, and seen in more than 100 markets. While working on The '90s, 
Cain and Binder put together a loose network of VJs. But in 1992, PBS 
canceled its support for The '90s. "That's PBS," says Cain with a shrug. 
"They never do what we want them to do. I don't know why they discontinued 
it."

Meanwhile, Cain says, The '90s Channel was "desperate for good programming." 
So instead of seeking out other staff TV jobs, Cain and Binder created 
CamNet, which gained instant access to the million or so homes that get The 
'90s Channel as part of their basic cable package.

Operating out of Cain's cottage, surrounded by editing equipment on loan 
from Weinberg (he eventually took the equipment back; CamNet currently 
trades ad space for editing time), Cain and Binder put the show together. 
Initially, they produced two two-hour shows each month. Each show was 
"looped" and broadcast continuously, 24 hours a day, for a week, on The '90s 
Channel. At the beginning of this year, they cut back to producing one 
hourlong show each month to free them up to capitalize and develop better 
distribution.

CamNet currently airs on The '90s Channel in ten localities: Los Angeles; 
suburban Denver; Baltimore; Detroit; Philadelphia; Vernon, Connecticut; 
Alameda, California; Scottsdale, Arizona; Shreveport, Louisiana; and Oakland 
County, Michigan. At press time, CamNet was also available via satellite on 
National Access Television (NATV) in the US, Canada, and Mexico.

"We share air with Yoga With Lisa, Punk Wave, and Girls Girls Girls, " says 
Cain.

"That last one is suspect," smiles Binder.

Nancy Cain is doing her best to hold back the tears. As Cain, Binder, and I 
sit in the living room of Cain's cottage, just a block away from the 
craziness of the Venice Beach boardwalk, she is screening an extended piece 
on a woman who spends her days singing for spare change in New York's 
Christopher Street subway station.

The piece is powerful. The singer, a young woman from Alabama who is missing 
a few teeth, is a real talent, an Emmylou Harris of the streets. As she 
strums her electric guitar and sings James Taylor's sad ballad, "You Can 
Close Your Eyes," a drunk tries unsuccessfully to clap along in rhythm. For 
the most part, the singer is ignored by the New Yorkers hurrying onto the 
subway cars. At one point, when the camera leaves the singer to focus for a 
moment on the drunk, he snaps, "I told you don't put the fucking camera on 
me. You want to pay me, pay me!"

When she's done singing, the woman kneels before her open guitar case, 
counting the $3 or $4 contributed by passersby. Does she make much, she is 
asked. "Pretty good," she replies dispassionately.

"Something about that really gets to me no matter how many times I see it," 
says Cain.

"Sad, so sad," says Binder. "Her eyes."

"And her situation," says Cain.

Spend a few days with Cain and Binder, and it becomes clear that CamNet is 
not simply a job but a way of life. Actually, CamNet isn't a job at all. At 
the moment, they're running but one paid ad, for Phone Relief, a device that 
attaches to a telephone headset and allows for a hands-free phone 
conversation. "CamNet is absolutely an act of love," says Cain. "We've got 
to do this."

They've been actively pursuing financing from a major media company. They've 
"taken meetings" with executives from CBS Late Night, Fox, Time Warner, and 
others. They say an exec at Time Warner promised, "We're going to throw some 
money at you," but then wouldn't return their calls.

"They like it, but then they get scared," says Cain. "As I always say, if 
you want to be innovative, you have to be innovative. That's the problem."

But lately things have been looking up. In May they negotiated a deal with 
two veteran TV executives who hope to turn CamNet into a real business. The 
plan is for Cain and Binder to spend a month in a top-of-the-line video 
suite (paid for by the execs) and put together a killer CamNet demo. Their 
new business partners intend to shop the show to medium-market network 
affiliate stations for broadcast during "fringe" hours.

The two women are hopeful that before long they'll have the resources to air 
a 30-minute version of CamNet daily. Still, if things fall through, they'll 
continue on their own, self-financing CamNet and airing it through their 
current outlets. "The more the Hollywood execs say 'No,' the more determined 
we are," says Cain. "For every deal that doesn't happen, it just makes us 
more determined, goddamn it!"

Individuals interested in buying copies of CamNet shows can do so for $20 
from CamNet. Call +1 (310) 399 3775 or write to CamNet, P. O. Box 2757, 
Venice, California 90294.

How to Become a CamNet VJ

CamNet is looking for volunteer VJs (there's no money in it yet). If you 
think you've got what it takes you can reach CamNet at +1 (310) 399 3775. If 
you want to submit something you've already shot, send a VHS copy, not the 
original, to CamNet, P. O. Box 2757, Venice, California 90294, along with a 
self-addressed envelope with postage if you want the tape returned.

Binder and Cain insist that they look at everything and will offer feedback.



CamNet Rules:

1) Use a Hi-8 camcorder.

2) Bring along plenty of high-quality Hi-8 tape (Fuji is recommended).

3) Bring two extra fully charged two-hour camcorder batteries.

4) Buy an external, directional microphone (available for less than $100) 
and attach that to your camcorder. The built-in microphone doesn't cut it.

5) Wear a stereo headset (available for $3 or so) and monitor the sound as 
you are shooting.

6) Keep your lens as wide as possible; avoid zooming in on your subject. If 
you want to get closer, physically move towards your subject.

7) Keep shooting! Videotape is cheap. Keep the camera running, even if 
nothing is happening. Chances are, as soon as you shut it off, something 
will happen.

8) No tripods.

9) No talking heads.

10) Follow these simple rules and CamNet will be happy with your tape.

                                   * * *

Michael Goldberg (insider@netcom.com) is a regular contributor to Wired; he 
interviewed Strauss Zelnick in issue 2.06.


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=WIRED Online Copyright Notice=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

         Copyright 1993,4 Ventures USA Ltd.  All rights reserved.

  This article may be redistributed provided that the article and this 
  notice remain intact. This article may not under any circumstances
  be resold or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior 
  written permission from Wired Ventures, Ltd.

  If you have any questions about these terms, or would like information
  about licensing materials from WIRED Online, please contact us via 
  telephone (+1 (415) 904 0660) or email (info@wired.com).

       WIRED and WIRED Online are trademarks of Wired Ventures, Ltd.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Subject: Majordomo file: file '2.09/departments/news.suck'
Reply-To: info-rama@wired.com
Status: RO

--

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
=-=-=-=-=Copyright 1993,4 Wired Ventures Ltd.  All Rights Reserved=-=-=-=-=
-=-=For complete copyright information, please see the end of this file=-=-
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

WIRED 2.09
Electrosphere
************* 

Online or Not, Newspapers Suck
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 

How can any industry which regularly pulls Doonesbury strips for being too 
controversial possibly hope to survive online?

By Jon Katz


For millions of Americans, especially young ones, newspapers have never 
played a significant role. That's why it's sometimes hard to know, recall, 
or even imagine that there's almost no media experience sweeter - at the 
right time, in the right place, with the proper accessories - than poring 
over a good newspaper. In the quiet morning, with a cup of coffee - so long 
as you haven't yet turned on the TV, listened to the radio, or checked in 
online - it's as comfortable and personal as information gets.

Delivered to your door daily, newspapers are silent, highly portable, 
require neither power source nor arcane commands, and don't crash or get 
infected. They can be stored for days at no cost and consumed over time in 
small, digestible quantities. They can also be used to line trash cans and 
train pets. They're recyclable. At their best, they have been fearless, 
informative, and heroic - exposing corrupt practices and crooked 
politicians, delving into health care and other complex issues. They can be 
deliciously quirky, useful, even provocative - filled with idiosyncratic 
issues and voices.

They're under siege, of course. Newspapers have been foundering for decades, 
their readers aging, their revenues declining, their circulation sinking, 
their sense of mission fragmented in a world where the fate of presidents is 
slugged out on MTV, Donahue, and Larry King Live. Television has stolen much 
of their news, magazines their advertisers and best writers, cable many of 
their younger readers. And the digital revolution has pushed them still 
closer to the wall, unleashing a vigorous flow of news, commentary, and 
commerce to millions and millions of people. CompuServe and CNN ensure that 
newspapers are stale before they're tossed on the trucks. With the possible 
exception of the comics, everything a newspaper used to do somebody else is 
doing more quickly, more attractively, more efficiently, and in a more 
interesting and unfettered way.

The newspaper industry has never liked change, viewing it rather the way a 
Temperance Lady viewed speakeasies. For a long time, papers have 
demonstrated an unerring instinct for making the wrong move at the wrong 
time. At heart, newspapers are reluctant to change because of their 
ingrained belief that they are the superior, serious, worthwhile medium, 
while things electronic are trivial or faddish.

Over the past decade, newspapers have made almost every kind of radical move 
except transforming themselves. It's as if they've considered every possible 
option but the most urgent - change. Times Mirror Co., publishers of the Los 
Angeles Times, bought newspapers, magazines, cable systems, and TV stations. 
Recently, the company appeared to be returning to its printed roots, selling 
off its cable properties a year after selling its TV stations.

That makes newspapers the biggest and saddest losers in the information 
revolution. With the possible exception of network-TV newscasts, papers are 
now our least hip medium, relentlessly one-way, non-interactive, and smug. 
We all know the formula: Plopped on the doorstep once a day. Breaking 
national and international news up front, local news next, stories broken up 
and jumping inside. Grainy, mostly black-and-white photos. Culture, 
features, TV, listings, recipes, and advice columns in the back. Stentorian 
voices on the editorial page. Take it or leave it, and if you don't like it, 
write us a letter.

But the growing millions of people sending and receiving news and their 
opinions of it to one another via modem is another story. Digital news 
differs radically from other media. No other medium has ever given 
individual people such an engaged role in the movement of information and 
opinion or such a proprietary interest in the medium itself. The computer 
news culture fosters a sense of kinship, ownership, and participation that 
has never existed in commercial media.

When in January 1994 a Prodigy subscriber used his wireless modem to flash 
news of the LA earthquake to the Net well before CNN or the Associated Press 
could report it, a new news medium was born. Within minutes, Prodigy and 
other BBSes had set up topics and conferences to relay information, pinpoint 
the quake location, notify distant relatives, and even - in some cases - 
organize rescues. No information structure has ever been able to do anything 
remotely like it.

Meanwhile, after years of newspapers' ignoring computers or relegating them 
to the far corners of the business sections, you can't pick up a paper any 
longer without reading the words e-mail, Internet, or cyberspace. The media, 
burned so often by techno-hype, are belatedly realizing that this time it's 
not all fantasy.

You can practically hear them shrieking "OK, we get it!" So-called 
electronic publishing is the hottest thing in newspaper publishing since 
cold type, and one of the last great hopes for a reeling industry that is 
trying to preserve a vital role for itself.

One of the best arenas in which to watch the newspaper and computer cultures 
collide is America Online, where much of the nation's elite traditional 
media is scrambling to catch the train. There, side by side, two profoundly 
different information structures clunk into one another, new next to old, 
diverse next to homogeneous, Washington pundits one icon away from Smashing 
Pumpkins fans, the powerful few alongside the voluble and suddenly empowered 
many.

The Newsstand on America Online now offers more than 35 newspapers and 
magazines, one of the first and best known being the San Jose Mercury News's 
pioneering Mercury Center, launched last year. Among the others on AOL: 
Time, USA Today, The New York Times, The New Republic, Road & Track, Wired, 
National Geographic.

The online explosion has caught newspaper publishers' attention, and what's 
left of their imaginations, blasting them off their self-important butts. 
This is where they are making their stand, haunted by the ghosts of 
cathode-ray tubes past. This time, publishers say, they're not going to be 
left behind, cut out of all those profits, isolated from young markets, 
watching their influence erode.

In April, the chair of the Tribune Company in Chicago, citing the growth of 
online services and CD-ROM and the digitalization of commercial 
communications, announced to the Newspaper Association of America that "it's 
easy to make the case that over the last 12 months there has been an 
unprecedented movement that will profoundly change the industry." His sense 
of timing may have been off - lots of people have known about this 
"movement" for far longer than 12 months - but it is pretty simple to make 
the case: papers are going online.

But watching sober, proper newspapers online stirs only one image: that of 
Lawrence Welk trying to dance at a rap concert. Online newspapers are 
unnatural, even silly. There's too much baggage to carry, too much history 
to get past. They never look comfortable, except on some of the odd 
community message boards, when the paper ends up offering just another BBS, 
instead of a reinvention of itself.

The San Jose Mercury News has made the biggest and, by most accounts, the 
best-known newspaper online effort so far, with its Mercury Center on AOL. 
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's effort, Access Atlanta, appeared on 
Prodigy in March, free to subscribers for a month. The New York Times showed 
up on AOL in early June with a surprisingly un-newsy service, @times, that 
primarily offers reviews, listings, and message boards on the day's arts and 
entertainment. There are no live chat areas. @times was put together by the 
business side of the paper, with no journalists, columnists, or editors in 
evidence in its early weeks (it later issued an online apology for its lack 
of response and promised that Times staffers would soon get up to speed). 
Though hundreds of users tried to message @times and many asked for e-mail 
addresses for reporters, there was no one for them to talk to. Users could 
write letters to @times, but not to the newspaper through the service. There 
was very little interactivity of any sort.

The Times is partly hamstrung by the fact that it can't offer most of its 
past articles and reviews, having sold its electronic archival rights to 
Mead Data Central's Nexis a decade ago, when most of the media thought 
computer users were credit card thieves and national security risks.

The Washington Post also plans to go electronic, initially for 
IBM-compatibles, using online technology, created by Ziff-Davis Interactive, 
that has so far been greeted with an enthusiastic buzz. The Post Company's 
Digital Ink subsidiary will offer many of the same visual elements as its 
printed paper - including Post logos, photos, and graphics - as well as 
e-mail, online conversation, advertising, calendars, and other listings.

The San Francisco Chronicle and the San Francisco Examiner are also about to 
join the online rush, with an online service (called the Gate) that provides 
news summaries, electronic mail, and access to the Internet. The Los Angeles 
Times is going online with Pacific Telesis. The Associated Press and United 
Press International already offer online news reports, as do many 
specialized financial, technical, scientific, computer, and trade 
publications. Newspaper analysts predict that by the end of this year, 
nearly 3,000 papers will offer some electronic or interactive services.

And though it's not exactly a newspaper, there will be lots of news on 
Apple's much anticipated eWorld, a user-friendly information and messaging 
service set up structurally and graphically as an electronic village.

The arrival of such media heavyweights means that journalism has already 
reached a critical mass online. There seems no turning back now.

The San Jose Mercury News project, being one of the first, is also one of 
the most monitored. In business terms, Merc Center has been disappointing: 
it's had a tough time attracting subscribers, and the program's designers 
say readers have had trouble grasping some of its services. The 6,200 
subscribers who have signed on to America Online specifically through the 
Merc Center since its May l993 debut represent less than 20 percent of 
America Online's 35,000 subscribers in the San Francisco Bay area, and less 
than 2 percent of the Mercury News's 290,000 daily circulation. But lots of 
new media start small and then build.

Last fall, Merc Center added a service that allows readers without computers 
to punch in codes to obtain information by fax. Subscribers pay fees of 
US$2.95 for the phone and fax service and $9.95 a month for the computer 
service that is part of AOL, which allows them to read the news via computer 
as it appears in the printed paper or use codes to call up information 
that's been edited out. Subscribers are encouraged to use bulletin boards 
and electronic mailboxes to communicate with the staff.

The paper's President and Executive Editor Robert Ingle certainly gets the 
picture: "Our communication historically has been: 'We print it. You read 
it,'" he told The New York Times in February. "This changes everything."

But does it? And should it?

So far, at least, online papers don't work commercially or conceptually. 
With few exceptions they seem to be just what they are, expensive hedges 
against onrushing technology with little rationale of their own. They take 
away what's best about reading a paper and don't offer what's best about 
being online. Online papers like Merc Center at least represent good-faith 
but primitive and expensive efforts to grapple with new realities. @times 
seems far more arrogant with its disregard for real interactivity, for any 
participation in the process by anyone other than The New York Times itself.


Online papers pretend to be seeking and absorbing feedback, but actually 
offer the illusion of interactivity without the reality, the pretense of 
democratic discussion without yielding a drop of power. The papers seem 
careful about reading and responding to their e-mail, but in the same pro 
forma way they thank readers for writing letters. They dangle the notion 
that they are now really listening, but that's mostly just a tease - the 
media equivalent of the politically correct pose. The real power, as always, 
lies not in online exchanges but in daily story conferences among a few 
editors who don't read e-mail. In fact, the familiar newspaper model lurks 
behind every icon: You can write us as many letters as you want, in a faster 
way than before, and we'll read them. But we're still going to decide what's 
important, and then we'll tell you. And we'll do it in a format that's even 
less pleasant, portable, and convenient than the paper itself.

To read the San Jose Mercury News or any other newspaper at home or work, 
you have only to spread it over your desk and read what catches your eye or 
intrigues you.

To read the Mercury News online, you have to go to your computer, turn it 
on, log onto AOL, go to the Newsstand on AOL, and click on the San Jose 
Mercury News line. When it opens on a larger Mercury Center graphic box, you 
choose from one of eight different elements and departments - In The News, 
Advertising, Entertainment, Bay Area Living, Sports, Business, 
Communication, News Library. A code text search permits readers of the paper 
to input special codes from the actual newspaper itself to call up stories 
or learn more about them. It's an interesting effort to provide an 
additional news dimension, but it seems a pointless one. If this information 
wasn't important enough to be printed in the paper, why should we pay to 
retrieve it? That's the point of a newspaper, after all - to filter the 
worthwhile information, then print it.

Users can also call up that day's paper - the front page, national and nternational news sections, local and state coverage, editorial and 
commentary, business, sports, and living. They can talk to the Mercury News 
by sending messages or communicate directly with the Mercury News library to 
search any day's paper.

But there is little the Mercury News offers online that AOL couldn't offer 
itself. The best thing about Merc Center - the community and special 
interest message boards, the chats with auto editor Matt Nauman or 
California Governor Pete Wilson - could also be provided in a non-newspaper 
context and, in fact, are at the heart of the computer bulletin boards that 
preceded online papers.

Reading a newspaper online is difficult, cumbersome, and time consuming. 
There is none of the feel of scanning a story, turning pages for more, 
skipping easily back to the beginning. The impact of seeing a picture, 
headline, caption, and some text in one sweep is completely lost. With news 
glimpsed only in fragments and short scrolls, the sense of what the paper 
thinks is important disappears. You can't look at a paper's front page to 
absorb some sense, however limited, of the shape your town, city, or world 
is in. You can't skip through a review for the paragraph that tells you 
whether to see the movie or not or skim through movie listings for show 
times. Much of what still works about a paper - convenience, visual freedom, 
a sense of priorities, a personal experience - is gone. Online, papers throw 
away what makes them special.

The online culture is as different as it's possible to be from the print 
press tradition. Outspoken and informal, it is continuously available, not 
delivered once a day. It is so diverse as to be undefinable, a home to 
scientists, hackers, pet owners, quilters, swingers, teenagers, and 
homemakers. Online, there is the sense of perpetual conflict, discovery, 
sudden friendship, occasional hostility, great intensity, lots of business 
being transacted, the feeling of clacking through your own world while whole 
unseen galaxies rush above and below you. You log on never quite knowing 
what discussion or argument you'll be drawn into, which new people you'll 
meet, or who from your past will mystically appear. The experience bears no 
relationship to reading a newspaper. In fact, one of the major selling 
points of a paper is its organizational and informational predictability. 
The weather, sports, and TV listings are always in the same place, or ought 
to be.

It doesn't have to work this way. These two media can coexist and complement 
one another.

One of the more interesting electronic publishing projects, a pointed 
contrast to the earnest but uninspiring Merc Center or the remote @times, is 
Time magazine's aggressive experiment on AOL. It's odd that Time, for years 
one of journalism's leading symbols of imperiousness and conservatism, seems 
to have grasped the real potential of interactivity better than almost 
anybody else.

To read Time online and offline is to sense that the new information culture 
is actually changing the magazine. Rather than simply shoveling Time online, 
the magazine's editors and writers have gone to considerable lengths and 
expense to understand and adapt to it.

For one thing, Time now covers new media better than its competitors. Not 
too long ago, it wouldn't have approved much of the freewheeling online 
communication style, complete with flaming, dirty words, and diverse 
opinions. Once it would have published a cover story just like Newsweek's 
silly "Men, Women and Computers" (in the May 16, 1994 issue), which 
stereotyped computer men as macho dirtballs and women as nurturing, delicate 
cyber-moms. Now, it wouldn't. Time Online's issues boards on AOL have become 
vigorous and democratic civic forums, with thousands of subscribers slugging 
it out around the clock about everything from Clinton's sex life to gays in 
the military. Anyone interested in journalistic accountability should drop 
by to watch Time's once-Olympian editors receive electronic drubbings from 
irate members of the National Rifle Association, retirees furious about 
coverage of entitlement programs, devout Catholics defending the Vatican's 
latest pronouncement.

One such thumping occurred following publication of the June 27, 1994 issue 
of the magazine. Time's Managing Editor Jim Gaines went online to face a 
record number of visitors - Time officials estimated the number to be at 
least 70,000 - including many outraged readers demanding to know why the 
magazine had altered a photograph of O.J. Simpson to make the picture appear 
darker than it was. The notion that a Time managing editor would face so 
many readers live is the media equivalent of cows learning how to fly.

If San Jose Mercury News executives find the results of some of Merc 
Center's services disappointing, Time's are thrilled with Time Online. It 
appears designed not to replace the magazine or plop it into a different 
format, but to gain a toehold in cyberspace and even absorb some of its 
values.

>From the start, Time seemed to grasp that online communications required a 
different ethic than a "Letters To The Editor" column, perhaps partly 
because Time had hired as consulting editor Tom Mandel, a professional 
futurist and a longtime member of the Well, and chosen Senior Writer Philip 
Elmer-DeWitt, who covers the digital world, as its editorial guiding force. 
The pair seems to have brought with them the right combination of the values 
and traditions of both journalism and the Net. Mandel, whose own online 
style is to be ubiquitous and sometimes aggressive, understands that real 
interactivity transcends Feedback icons.

Time also seemed to grasp online users' resistance to the blatant 
commercializing that dominated Prodigy. The magazine avoided advertising 
initially, but has inevitably added a product information icon to its AOL 
menu. Even there, though, the magazine seems to at least be conscious of the 
differences in culture - magazine readers expect blatant advertising but 
computer users don't.

But the more telling impact of Time's online experiment is the intense, 
sometimes furious back-and-forth between Time Online subscribers and Time's 
writers and editors. Discussions in Time Online have also influenced stories 
in the magazine, Mandel said.

Time has gained only a handful of new subscribers from its online project 
and doesn't expect many. But it has gained more than a foothold online: it 
has become a part of the culture.

Newspapers, by contrast, seem to have missed the real lesson of the past 
half-century. Their mistake wasn't that they didn't invest in television or 
put their stories on screens, it was that they refused to make any of the 
changes that the rise of television should have mandated.

TV meant that breaking news could be reported quickly, colorfully, and - 
eventually - live. Live TV supplanted the historic function of the 
journalist. Cable TV meant a whole new medium with the time and room to 
present breaking and political news, entertainment news, live trial 
coverage. Computers meant that millions of people could flash the news to 
one another. All of these changes have given newspapers a diminished role in 
the presentation of news.

But the explosion of new media needn't eliminate the traditional 
journalistic print function. Quite the opposite, it could make newspapers 
more vital, necessary, and useful than ever.

The more complicated the gadgets become, and the more new media mushroom, 
the more we need what newspapers have always been - gatekeepers and 
wellheads, discussion leaders on politics and public policy questions, 
distributors of horoscopes, sports listings, and comics. They're not going 
to have a monopoly any more, and they don't get to tell us only what they 
think we should know. They'll have to chuck the stern schoolmarm's voice. 
They'll also have to really listen to us, not just pretend.

If newspapers could do with more interactivity, they might not need as much 
as bulletin boards offer. Everybody can't be talking to everyone at the same 
time. We need distinct voices standing back, offering us detached versions 
of the best truth they can find in the most factual way. We need fair-minded 
if less arrogant fact-gatherers and opinion-makers to help us sort through 
the political, social, and cultural issues we care about but need help in 
comprehending.

We need something very close to what a good newspaper is but with a 
different ideology and ethic: a medium that gives its consumers nearly as 
much power as its reporters and editors have. A medium that isn't afraid of 
unfettered discussions, intense passions, and unashamed opinion. A medium 
that recognizes we've already heard the headlines a dozen times.

Online publishing seems to reinforce the idea that newspapers should look to 
the past, not the future, for help in figuring out how to respond to all 
this competition and pressure. What newspapers need to change isn't the 
delivery technology - it's the content of their papers. Even if they get all 
interactive and smart about going online, it's a marginal solution to a 
fundamental problem, and a diversion of resources that could be put to much 
wiser use.

The San Francisco Chronicle is never going to beat the Well at its own game 
anymore than the Well could become a successful print daily, nor should it. 
Online services provide breaking news, are intrinsically interactive, and 
know much more about computers and technology.

Newspapers might begin to think about reversing their long-standing 
priorities, recognizing that everyone with electricity has access to more 
breaking news than they provide, faster than they provide it. They should, 
at last, accept that there is little of significance they get to tell us for 
the first time. They should stop hiding that fact and begin taking advantage 
of it. What they can do is explain news, analyze it, dig into the details 
and opinions, capture people and stories in vivid writing - all in greater 
depth than other media. They should get about the business of doing so.

Newspapers remain one of the few elements of modern media that refuse to bid 
for talent. As a result, they've long ceded many of their best writers and 
editors to publishing or magazines. Newspapers now have little original or 
distinctive writing: when newspaper reporters do have something 
extraordinary to say, they are often forced to go outside their medium to 
give their stories the treatment they merit and to gain full impact. Papers 
ought to reclaim this territory, seeking out provocative writers, giving 
them freedom, paying to keep them.

And the newspaper industry's relentless alienation of the young is the 
corporate equivalent of a scandal. Big city papers have almost no young 
staffers, now that it takes years to work through elaborate hiring 
structures and rigorous trials to get to urban metro desks. In addition, 
papers have trashed almost every significant part of youth culture for 
decades - from rock to radio to TV to rap and videogames - portraying each 
as stupid, violence-inducing, and dangerous. Hackers were mostly portrayed 
as weirdos while newspapers dozed through the arrival of another new medium 
that the nerds were piecing together in basements and bedrooms.

Newspaper publishers then hold regular conventions at which they wring their 
hands in bewilderment at the loss of younger readers and despair even more 
at those lost advertising dollars. Kids' tastes are no great mystery, not to 
cable TV or to a whole new generation of magazines. The young are busy and 
mobile. They like their media with attitude and lots of point-of-view. They 
especially like media that is full of informality and self-mockery - the 
much reviled Beavis & Butt-head being a classic example. Interactive media, 
from Nintendo to computer games to call-in talk shows - even channel zapping 
- is not a futuristic notion but the only kind of media they know, the kind 
they patronize and expect.

There's more.

Real investigative reporting, something few other media can do as 
effectively as newspapers, has almost vanished from mainstream media. Op-Ed 
pages are almost universally soporific. Papers are still astonishingly 
primitive graphically, many still running black-and-white photographs 24 
hours after we saw the real events live and in color. Papers have clearly 
lost touch with much of the public on issues as diverse as race, crime, and 
political coverage. A Gallup Poll found that journalism ranks far below 
banks and cops in terms of public confidence - and that the number of people 
who rate journalists highly in terms of ethics and honesty has dropped from 
an already dismal 31 percent in l985 to 22 percent in l993.

The institutions of journalism seem in desperate need of some mechanism for 
re-connecting with an alienated public, and they needn't transform 
themselves into online publications to do it. An e-mail address on every 
reporter's stories would help. And gain journalists countless news sources 
as well.

If newspapers are going to invest heavily in anything, perhaps it ought to 
be in younger, more talented, more diverse staffs. The newspaper industry 
fails to take into account the dreary toll corporatization and chain 
ownership - the great fears of online users - have taken on newspapers' 
voice, vibrancy, and relevance. Founded by hell-raisers, papers too often 
have been cautious, tepid, and pompous. A century ago, newspapers were 
markedly more opinionated, fractious, and provocative than the corporate 
chain-produced dailies of today. Newspapers are drunk on information highway 
coverage and gee-whiz stories about the Internet, and their readers have to 
be overdosing.

There's more to come.

Roger Fidler, director of new media development for Knight-Ridder, told the 
Newspapers and Telecommunications Opportunities conference last year that 
he's working on yet another futuristic fantasy: an electronic publication 
combining the traditional look of a paper with full-motion, full-color video 
and sound on a portable notebook-sized display. Newspapers somehow never 
seem at home with techno-hype or -fantasies. It's not in their history or 
tradition, not a natural part of their culture. They have always been at 
their finest rooting out, shaping, and helping us define the great issues of 
the day. And writing about and mirroring our lives closer to home.

Maybe Fidler's tablet will work and help papers finally catch up. But it's 
hard to see why we need it or why Knight-Ridder wouldn't be better off 
hiring a couple of hundred bright young reporters instead. The answers to 
newspapers' problems might be much closer to home and much simpler.

"People have not stopped reading newspapers because of the latest high-tech 
gadgets," said Peter Thieriot, president of The Chronicle Publishing 
Company's newspaper division last year. "People have stopped reading 
newspapers because newspapers became less relevant."

                                   * * *

Jon Katz (jdkatz@aol.com) is media critic for New York Magazine. He has 
written widely about media and worked as an executive producer of the CBS 
Evening News. Of his three novels, the most recent is The Family Stalker 
(Doubleday).


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=WIRED Online Copyright Notice=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

         Copyright 1993,4 Ventures USA Ltd.  All rights reserved.

  This article may be redistributed provided that the article and this 
  notice remain intact. This article may not under any circumstances
  be resold or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior 
  written permission from Wired Ventures, Ltd.

  If you have any questions about these terms, or would like information
  about licensing materials from WIRED Online, please contact us via 
  telephone (+1 (415) 904 0660) or email (info@wired.com).

       WIRED and WIRED Online are trademarks of Wired Ventures, Ltd.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Subject: Majordomo file: file '2.09/departments/flux'
Reply-To: info-rama@wired.com
Status: RO

--

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
=-=-=-=-=Copyright 1993,4 Wired Ventures Ltd.  All Rights Reserved=-=-=-=-=
-=-=For complete copyright information, please see the end of this file=-=-
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

WIRED 2.09
Flux
**** 

Nonstop AOL: Not only has AOL surged over the 1 million subscribers mark, 
but ABC recently announced it will join NBC and CBS in hosting AOL-based 
forums. Hmmmm. Makes you wonder what's really going on. If these three are 
so committed to online services, why don't they just build their own and 
compete with AOL? Are Cap Cities and Barry Diller really that afraid of the 
looming competition from the likes of Apple (eWorld) and Microsoft (Marvel)? 
If so, may they rest in peace. 
###
But Someone's Looking: A summary of "responsibilities" for a new vice 
president of marketing at a major media company recently crossed our desks. 
"The Vice President, Marketing will be responsible for developing 
innovative, creative, and addictive content and services that will attract 
and retain the consumer and professional markets." No, we can't tell you 
who's looking or what they might start. But they seem to understand the 
bottom line.
###
Prodigal NBC: Well, NBC is branching out at least. NBC is collaborating with 
Prodigy in the launch of America's Talking, NBC's all-talk cable channel. 
Prodigy will offer live chat areas that will allow viewers, guests, and 
hosts to communicate live, thus solving the eternal question: PC or TV? 
NBC's answer: both, preferably in the same room. And, BTW, the press release 
claims, "America's Talking executives and hosts will respond to every e-mail 
they receive." There was no e-mail address y on the press release.
###
Game Wars: Given their divergent corporate cultures, we thought the 
Sega/Microsoft alliance for gaming OSes was weird, but given the competitive 
alliances now shaping up, it all makes sense. Microsoft recently bought 
high-end SGI software shop SoftImage, so it doesn't take a, er, Rocket 
Scientist to see that SoftImage's 3-D wizardry will end up in future Sega 
game machines. Meanwhile, SoftImage's archrival in the high-end graphics 
field is none other than SGI software shop Alias Research, who this summer 
announced a strategic alliance with ... you guessed it: Nintendo.
###
Kodak Clicks on Sculley: You may have missed it, but John Sculley, whose 
legendary fallout with both Apple and Spectrum Information Technologies Inc. 
should keep biographers busy for a few years, is now a quarter-time 
consultant to Kodak for its digital-imaging and brand-marketing strategies. 
Look for a complete rundown on Kodak in these pages a few issues hence. 
###
Old Engineers Never Die, They Just Stop Being Upgraded: The 1994 IEEE 
(Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Member Opinion Survey 
turned up this thread: older y engineers are finding it hard to get work. 
Involuntary unemployment rates among engineers aged 50 and above were three 
times higher than in any other age group, according to the survey. Other fun 
facts: the average annual income of an electrical engineer in the US is more 
than US$70,000, 68 percent of US engineers use e-mail, and the average 
engineer works a 9.2 hour day. Interested in the rest of the survey? E-mail 
ieeusa@iee.org.
###
Tiger Tiger Burning Bright: We went to Microsoft to check out the scene (we 
found nothing to contradict Doug Coupland's brilliant descriptions in WIRED 
2.01), and certainly the hottest thing there is Tiger, born of many 
late-night e-mail missives between Bill Gates and uebergeek Nathan Myrhvold, 
Microsoft's vice president of advanced research. (On the Microsoft IQ bell 
curve, Myrhvold rates way up there: he graduated from college at 14 and had 
three PhDs by the time he was 23.) From our notes on the Tiger demo: "Twelve 
streams of digital video (Look! It's Sliver! It's Elvis! It's Sega!) fast 
forward, rewind, play, and pause all at once. All this direct off 20 or so 
gigabytes of hard disk connected to 486-based servers. And it even disk 
mirrors and does redundancy! Pretty cool. You hear a lot about 
video-on-demand, but to actually see it happen is revelatory. While the 
system promises two-way high-bandwidth interactivity, the demo did not show 
it. Heck, that's not what gives cable TV execs a woody anyway." For more on 
our Microsoft tour, check out HotWired (info-rama@wired.com, with get help 
in the message body).
###
Base Opening: Now open for business on AOL is Military City Online (keyword 
MCO). No kidding. Included in the conference lineup are classifieds (where 
you can pick up a US$4,500 Thompson machine gun) and a "military mall" 
(restricted access, use of a valid social security number required).
###
They Have a Sense of Humor, Anyway: Tom Kalil, the "David Letterman of the 
Clinton/Gore administration" announced the administration's "Top Ten Reasons 
why the White House Staff Likes the Internet" at his closing keynote at 
INET'94/JENC5 in Prague earlier this summer. Some of the highlights: "We 
have access to the Top Secret Air Force server with cool gifs of UFOs and 
little green men"; "We get all that great electronic fan mail on the Clipper 
Chip"; "We love getting flamed by rabid libertarians on 'com-priv'"; and "On 
the Internet, no one knows you're a bureaucrat."
###
First Battle in the Memetic Viral Wars: Remember those dork lawyers who 
swamped the Net with advertising? Well a young Norwegian hacker came up with 
a nifty - and scary - little "Cancelbot" program that sniffs out any and all 
posts from the grandstanding lawyers, then erases them. Hmmm. This prompted 
Dave Farber, noted Net.poster, to wonder where all this technology is taking 
us. "How about a Cancelbot that erases all the e-mail YOU post anywhere - 
have any enemies? How about your landlord, or your mother-in-law, or your 
15-year-old, or your ex, particularly that 15-year-old? - Or how about one 
which injects some fascist or racist comments in place of your own golden y 
prose, still signing your name?... How does censorship work now, for print 
and other nonnetwork media? Market forces in the US, perhaps; social 
consensus, government control, and religion elsewhere. Someone had better 
bring some balance to bear, soon, on the Internet, or we may all get stuck 
in the crossfire between the ambulance-chasers and the 'Cancelbots.'" Makes 
you think.

                                   * * *


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=WIRED Online Copyright Notice=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

         Copyright 1993,4 Ventures USA Ltd.  All rights reserved.

  This article may be redistributed provided that the article and this 
  notice remain intact. This article may not under any circumstances
  be resold or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior 
  written permission from Wired Ventures, Ltd.

  If you have any questions about these terms, or would like information
  about licensing materials from WIRED Online, please contact us via 
  telephone (+1 (415) 904 0660) or email (info@wired.com).

       WIRED and WIRED Online are trademarks of Wired Ventures, Ltd.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Subject: Majordomo file: file '2.09/departments/net.surf'
Reply-To: info-rama@wired.com
Status: RO

--

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
=-=-=-=-=Copyright 1993,4 Wired Ventures Ltd.  All Rights Reserved=-=-=-=-=
-=-=For complete copyright information, please see the end of this file=-=-
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

WIRED 2.09
Net Surf
******** 

Edited by Kristin Spence


See Me, Hear Me
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
Much to the chagrin of, say, members of the Internet Wilderness Society, 
multimedia development is fast encroaching on Internet back country: ASCII 
domination is being challenged by the likes of Mosaic and Internet video 
capability. While it helps to have a Sun SPARCstation and an MBONE 
(Multicast Backbone) feed, garden variety Mac and Windows machines (the 
Swiss army knives of the Internet) are worthy companions as you embark on 
video and audio online expeditions. Your computer will need its own numeric 
Internet address: SLIP and PPP will work, but they can be so sluggish that 
your connection will be reminiscent of a drive up a steep mountain road 
behind a Winnebago.

Internet videoconferencing for the masses comes courtesy of Cornell 
University's CU-SeeMe. Developed by Tim Dorcey, Richard Cogger, and others 
back in 1993, CU-SeeMe's been a big hit with the K-12 Global Schoolhouse, as 
students and educators can now easily interact and evaluate collaborative 
projects. One noteworthy application was the CitySpace project at San 
Francisco's Exploratorium. During its run, students submitted digital images 
and objects for inclusion in a 3-D virtual world kept alive by a Silicon 
Graphics Onyx - a system more costly and temperamental than any sports car. 
Students all over the world were able to watch CitySpace's growth through 
regularly scheduled drive-throughs broadcast via CU-SeeMe.

For Macs, the minimum requirements to receive CU-SeeMe transmissions are a 
68020 processor, System 7, a 16-level grayscale display, and MacTCP. Sending 
requires these plus a VideoSpigot (or AV Mac), a camera, and QuickTime. For 
Windows, minimum receive requirements are a 386SX, Windows 3.1, a 256-color 
video driver, and a WinSock-compliant TCP/IP stack. To send, you need a 
386DX, everything listed above, a camera, and a Microsoft Video For 
Windows-compatible video board (SuperMac's VideoSpigot or Creative Labs's 
Video Blaster will work fine).

Both versions install easily. After some trivial configuration, you'll open 
a receive or send/receive connection to the numerical address of another 
participant or reflector site. Reflector sites are Unix powerhouses that 
facilitate multi-participant conferencing. Most come and go with the 
projects they support, but the following are usually available: CNIDR at 
128.109.178.103; Cornell at 192.35 .82.96; NASA Select at 139.88.27.43; 
NYSERNet at 192.77.173.2; or DHHALDEN at 158.36.33.3. Connect and you might 
find yourself in the middle of a multiwindow conference, or staring at a 
test pattern or empty office.

Once connected, each sender appears in a named window, which is cleverly 
refreshed in a checkerboard pattern. CU-SeeMe also displays data transfer 
and frame-per-second statistics. CU-SeeMe was implemented on the Mac long 
before being ported, so Mac versions usually contain a few features not 
found in the Windows versions. Most missing features are inconsequential, 
but the current Mac version comes bundled with Charley Kline's Maven, a 
Mac-only audioconferencing tool.

Developed at the University of Illinois, Maven supports a variety of 
encoding, quantization, and oversampling strategies for Internet audio, and 
operates in either a push-to-talk (mouse-activated) or squelch 
(voice-activated) mode. It's a natural for AV Macs and comes with an 
exquisite readme file.

Definitive versions of CU-SeeMe can be acquired at 
ftp://gated.cornell.edu/pub/video. To get on the mailing list, send an 
e-mail message with subscribe cu-seeme-l Your Name to listserv@cornell.edu. 
For definitive versions of Maven, travel to ftp://k12.cnidr.org/pub/Mac. To 
get on Maven's mailing list, send e-mail with subscribe maven Your Name to 
listserv@cnidr.org.

CU online!

Thanks to Steve Cisler, the Henry David Thoreau of Apple, for introducing me 
to both the Internet Wilderness Society and CU-SeeMe.

 - Eric S. Theise (verve@cyberwerks .com)

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Yours for the ASCII-ing
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
Perhaps your .plan needs some sprucing up. Well, if it's inspiration you 
need, check out alt.ascii-art. In addition to variations on the classic 
ASCII themes (cows, spaceships, Homer Simpson), this newsgroup boasts a 
menagerie of exotic wildlife, a showcase of ceremonial swords, a 90-line map 
of New Zealand, some Warhol-inspired ASCII Spam cans, and a gargantuan 3-D 
stereogram composed by a Lockheed engineer and entitled "Highway 101 on 
Friday Afternoon Before Memorial Day, in 3D." In this case, art imitates 
ASCII.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Help Is on the Way
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
If it's anarchy you face when searching for online files, Anarchie offers 
order within the chaos. A new MacTCP-based tool available as shareware from 
Peter Lewis (peter.lewis@info.curtin.edu.au), Anarchie searches Archie 
servers for files stored on anonymous ftp sites Netwide. Once the files are 
found, Anarchie neatly compiles a list for your perusal. A double-click 
retrieves the file via anonymous ftp (and also does the de-binhex) and then 
passes it off to a Stuffit decompressor if need be. TurboGopher requires 
several manual steps, and Fetch is great if you already know where to go, 
but Anarchie offers the best of both worlds. Peter doesn't just drop the 
program on you; it comes with a readme file, a quickstart, and a predefined 
list of Archie servers. You can also save aliases for ftp sites so you'll 
have bookmarks for later browsing (it even comes with a great list of 
predefined bookmarks). Furthermore, Anarchie 1.1.0 is scriptable and 
recordable, so future automation could potentially be very cool. Surf to 
ftp.tidbits.com/pub/tidbits/tisk/mactcp/ftp/anarchie-120.hqx to nab your own 
copy. Then send US$10 to Peter N. Lewis at 10 Earlston Way, Booragoon WA 
6154, Australia. Your search might just be over.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


On the Wing
^^^^^^^^^^^ 
Birders will twitter over the AVES Bird Related Information server at 
gopher://vitruvius.cecer.army.mil. AVES provides a nest for over 100 
annotated graphics files of birds from around the world. These are some of 
the most beautiful images on the Net. Peruse the readme files, or - for 
those with .au or .wav sound capability - listen to the song of the Indigo 
Bunting. Audubon wouldn't have believed it.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Is It Green, or Is It Green?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
If you want to know where your elected officials really stand on 
environmental issues, check out the League of Conservation Voters's National 
Environmental Scorecard Web site at http://www.econet.apc .org/ 
lcv/scorecard.html. Here the league - the bipartisan political arm of the 
environmental movement - keeps a tally of how every member of congress has 
voted on environmental issues for the last four years. By counting only 
borderline votes on bills that can really do something for the environment, 
the league holds accountable those politicians whose words may be for 
nature, but whose hearts, wallets, and votes are for their corporate 
backers. You can also burrow in via gopher to gopher.econet.apc.org or send 
a blank message to the mail server at scorecard@econet.apc.org to get the 
same information. You may be dismayed by what "green" really means to the 
people on Capitol Hill.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


On the Internet, No One Knows You're a Dalmatian
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
Surfers who like it hot - like brush-fire-in-the-Outback hot - should slide 
down their net.firepoles to http://life.anu.edu.au /firenet/firenet.html. 
Awaiting you is the Australian National University's Firenet site, offering 
fire news, bibliographic materials, meteorological data, mailing-list 
archives, and an expanding collection of educational material on rural and 
landscape fires. Also accessible via ftp and gopher, this site's a 
three-alarmer!

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Dharma Bums
^^^^^^^^^^^ 
Questions to Cybermonk is a service offered by the senior monastics at Zen 
Mountain Monastery in Mount Tremper, New York. The service assists those 
individuals who have sincere questions about Zen practice and who do not 
have access to experienced practitioners or the support of a local 
meditation center. If you're out to impress or want to demonstrate your 
understanding of the Dharma, please save your comments for a more 
appropriate forum (i.e., a private interview with a Zen teacher). If your 
quest isin earnest, however, send e-mail to dharmacom@delphi.com, with 
Question to Cybermonk in the subject line. All questions are confidential 
and will be answered via e-mail only. Because of an already overwhelming 
influx of questions, it may take a week or more to receive a response, so 
please exercise query restraint and patience.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Breaking the Sound Barrier
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
For surfers whose choice of music is industrial, techno, electro, or goth, 
an archive of underground bands is available via anonymous ftp from 
ftp.netcom .com in /pub/cvoid/net-bands (the ftp.netcom site is often at 
capacity, so you may wish to save yourself trouble by trying 
netcom2.netcom.com). Login as anonymous and cd to /pub/cvoid/net-bands. A 
repository for underground bands reviewed in Sonic Boom - the monthly 
posting available in the rec.music.industrial newsgroup - this trove offers 
sound bites, lyrics, and reviews. The only downside to this archive is that 
it's run by a working musician, so there's often a lag between a review in 
Sonic Boom and its appearance in the archives. Nevertheless, cut over to 
this wave and expose yourself to some great (and not-so-great) underground 
cyberbands.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Laserdiscs Never Die
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
For "All You Ever Wanted To Know About Video Laserdiscs But Were Afraid To 
Ask," cruise to the University of Iowa, home to a 24-item menu of applicable 
files. Texts here, written by one Robert J. Niland, are ASCII based and go 
as far back as 1989. No file is newer than 1992. Though dated, the 
information remains valuable and the topics relevant. Consider it the 
perfect site to begin your laserdisc research. Among the subjects covered 
are introductions to the laserdisc, imported discs and Surround Sound, 
suggestions for producers, care and repair, tips for retailers, and advice 
on player purchase. Fast forward to gopher://chop .isca.uiowa.edu, advance 
to item six, General Information, and hit "play" at Information on Video. 
Now hand over the remote....

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Getting Wired Advice
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
Looking for a local Internet connection? Need tips on the care and feeding 
of ferrets? Experience the "Getting Wired" Series, newly available to AOL 
users all through the month of September. Hear the thoughts and ideas of 
such Internet pros as Ed Krol, Adam Engst, Karen Coyle, Carole Leita, and 
Bernard Aboba as these Net.greats offer advice on connecting to and surfing 
the Net.

Drop in to the WIRED Auditorium (from AOL, type keyword WIRED and click on 
the Auditorium icon) beginning September 8, and continuing every Thursday 
night from 8:00-9:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, and participate in an 
illuminating hour of informative discussion. E-mail net.series@wired.com to 
receive specific bios and schedule of speakers. Transcripts of each event 
will also be available for downloading in the WIRED Auditorium after the 
series is over. Get connected!

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Wipeout!
^^^^^^^^ 
"The number you have reached (for the Compact Disc Connection, Wired 2.04, 
page 124) has been changed. The new number is cdconnection.com. Please make 
a note of it."

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


.sig of the month
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
                         )       \   /      (
                        /|\      )\_/(     /|\
*                      / | \    (/\|/\)   / | \                       *
|`.___________________/__|__o__ _\`|'/___o__|__\____________________.'|
|       Morgaine            '^`   \|/   '^`      ez030275@ucdavis.edu |
|                                  V                                  |
|      "If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody,come    |
|       sit next to me. -Alice Roosevelt Longworth                    |
|__________________________________                                   |
|Art work by Alan Greep, U of Essex|                                  |
| ._________________________________________________________________. |
|'               l    /\ /    \\            \ /\   l                 `|
*                l  /   V      ))            V   \ l                  *
                 l/           //                  \I
                              V

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Thanks to the Wired 2.09 Surf Team
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 

J. Stephen Burke 4_sburke@fair1.fairfield.edu

Joe Foss iff1@midway.uchicago.edu

JC Herz mischief@mindvox.phantom.com

John Makulowich verbwork@access.digex.net

Andy Rozmairek andy@wired.com

Brent Sampson sampsonb@ucsu.colorado.edu

Izar Tarandach izar@cs.huji.ac.il

Eric S.Theise verve@cyberwerks.com

                                   * * *


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=WIRED Online Copyright Notice=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

         Copyright 1993,4 Ventures USA Ltd.  All rights reserved.

  This article may be redistributed provided that the article and this 
  notice remain intact. This article may not under any circumstances
  be resold or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior 
  written permission from Wired Ventures, Ltd.

  If you have any questions about these terms, or would like information
  about licensing materials from WIRED Online, please contact us via 
  telephone (+1 (415) 904 0660) or email (info@wired.com).

       WIRED and WIRED Online are trademarks of Wired Ventures, Ltd.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Subject: Majordomo file: file '2.09/departments/microware'
Reply-To: info-rama@wired.com
Status: RO

--

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
=-=-=-=-=Copyright 1993,4 Wired Ventures Ltd.  All Rights Reserved=-=-=-=-=
-=-=For complete copyright information, please see the end of this file=-=-
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

WIRED 2.09
Electrosphere
************* 

David Versus Goliath
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 

Little Microware has a rock called OS-9 in its sling as it takes on the 
giants in the battle to own the multimedia set-top box.

By Stephen Jacobs


In case you hadn't noticed, everyone's talking interactive TV these days. 
Product trials, broken deals, mergers, start-ups - there's a rash of ploys 
to make your boob tube brilliant by hooking a computer to it. To many in 
this country, the word computer is still wedded to images of Silicon Valley 
and Microsoft, the company that strides the personal computing landscape 
like a Goliath. Chairman Bill Gates has said Microsoft is spending a cool 
US$100 million a year on developing software for multimedia, interactive 
television, and the information superhighway. The popular wisdom says that 
what Bill wants, Bill gets. Yet some of the hottest developments in software 
for interactive television are happening nowhere near Silicon Valley; 
they're happening thousands of miles away in the Midwest.

Des Moines, Iowa, is not the city that most of us would pick as the site of 
a burgeoning industry revolution. But then, Des Moines surprises. Sure, it's 
a small Midwest town surrounded by flat and well-farmed land, but that's not 
all there is to it. There's a Thai restaurant whose zillion-page beer list 
boasts brews from all over the world. There's a monumental modern Civic 
Center whose concert hall hosts world-class guitarists. And there's 
Microware Systems Corporation, a 200-employee, privately held corporation 
that makes an operating system called OS-9.

Microware is headquartered in a 25,000-square-foot building just down the 
road from the offices of the National Pork Producer's Council. So far, it 
may not sound like anything to get excited about. OS-9 was created to 
control manufacturing and robotics applications. The latest addition to its 
product line, Digital Audio Video Interactive Decoder (DAVID), is a version 
of OS-9 for set-top terminals, the cable decoder boxes of interactive 
television.

DAVID is the program that runs "under the hood," the skeleton around which 
user interfaces will be built by manufacturers of the terminals. It must be 
a pretty impressive set of bones - it's been licensed to 15 manufacturers of 
set-top terminals for interactive television, including IBM, Philips, Zenith 
Corporation, Fujitsu, Mitsubishi, Kyocera, GoldStar, Samsung, Adaptive 
MicroWare, Divicom, and EURODEC. By the time you read this, more will be on 
board. Oracle's media servers will communicate with these DAVID-based 
set-top boxes in Bell Atlantic interactive television trials in New Jersey 
and Northern Virginia. (A groundbreaking Federal Communications Commission 
decision in June cleared the way for Bell Atlantic to compete with cable in 
providing video programming in Tom's River, New Jersey.) Other announced 
interactive TV trials that are using DAVID include Nynex's Manhattan and 
Rhode Island trials; Cox Communications's trial in Omaha, Nebraska; Telecom 
Australia's system; and Hong Kong Telecom's system.

Though Microware's operating system was developed for manufacturing and 
process control, it also has been used in multimedia for some time. DAVID 
has its roots in the operating systems for Tandy's Color Computer 3 and 
Philips CD-I, which are versions of OS-9 with platform-specific modules. 
Even so, conventional wisdom puts a small, relatively unknown software 
company at a disadvantage against a major player like Microsoft.

Predictably, Microware President Ken Kaplan doesn't see it that way.

"I don't know what other people think, but I just don't think Microsoft's 
gonna be a player. I just think it's too late. We've been working on this 
for two, three years. We've got real product. By the time they figure out 
how to put Windows on a set-top box, we'll have a couple of million boxes 
out there and working. At least that's the plan," says Kaplan.

Since 1977, Microware has been developing ROMable (i.e., small enough to fit 
in the Read Only Memory chips on a system's motherboard) real-time operating 
systems, and doing quite well, thank you. Microware began when, as Drake 
University students, Ken Kaplan and Larry Crane (vice president of advanced 
research) got a grant from the National Science Foundation to write software 
for first-generation microprocessors. They started with the Motorola 6800 - 
the precursor to the 68000 series of CPUs that would drive the Macintosh. 
This work led them to develop RT/68, a small, efficient multitasking 
operating system for industrial applications. Kaplan and Crane founded 
Microware to develop and sell RT/68, putting a small ad in Byte magazine. 
Orders began rolling in from around the world. Physicist Rudolf Keil at the 
University of Heidelberg used RT/68 to control lasers for physics research. 
More than an early user, Keil was one of the first Microware customers to 
begin working with the company. He ended up leaving the university to become 
Microware's German distributor.

Motorola was so pleased with RT/68 that in 1978 the company asked Microware 
to develop a Basic language for the 6809 processor, the bridge chip between 
the 6800 and Motorola's popular 68000 series. Microware began developing the 
Basic and an operating system to go with it. That was the beginning of OS-9. 
Kaplan and his team modeled OS-9's I/O and process handling after those in 
Unix, which at the time was a relatively unknown operating system. 
Microware's decision to use Unix as a model may have been a gamble then, but 
it has proved to be a fortuitous choice: Unix has since grown to become the 
lingua franca of the Internet. As a result, the OS-9 of a decade ago was 
more ready for the information superhighway than many other operating 
systems are today.

OS-9 is popular in industrial applications worldwide for robotics, 
telecommunications, or any other type of application that requires a small, 
on-board operating system to handle a large number of processes extremely 
quickly. The head of Microware's French office, Nick Rainey, ticked off 
several applications that have made OS-9 popular in Europe:

"CERN, the particle accelerator; the French pay-phone systems that now run 
off 'smart cards' - that's OS-9; British Telecom; subway systems. I had a 
big surprise when I went to open the Russian office. They took me over to 
see the space flight simulators, and they'd been running the whole system 
off a version of OS-9 that they'd bootlegged from some Germans somewhere. 
They were really glad to see us!"

OS-9 made early inroads in Japan, when Fujitsu made 6809-based personal, 
multitasking computers for the Japanese market. In the US, OS-9 can be found 
in NASA simulators as well. Flight simulators, maintenance, and testing 
equipment for McDonnell-Douglas, Lockheed, and Boeing also run off of OS-9. 
Microware's sales are pretty well divided into thirds between the US, 
Europe, and the Pacific Rim.

Coming into view

Microware seemed to burst into public view from nowhere when Bell Atlantic 
announced specifications for its interactive services in January 1994. The 
specs could only be met by terminals running DAVID. This was a surprise, as 
Bell Atlantic had released a preliminary set of specs several months before 
that appeared to be based on Modular Windows, Microsoft's now-dead operating 
system for multimedia. In reaction to the Bell Atlantic announcement, the 
January 18 Wall Street Journal ran a feature story about Microware. Since 
then, Kaplan and company have been signing set-top box contracts right and 
left.

Modular Windows is kind of a mystery. Apparently, it was to have been a 
smaller, faster, trimmer version of the Windows operating system for set-top 
boxes. It has been replaced by a new system from Microsoft called Tiger. The 
Wall Street Journal piece left the impression that Bell Atlantic ran DAVID 
and Modular Windows in competition and chose Microware over Microsoft.

Not true, says Microware's multimedia marketing manager Arthur Orduna. "We 
didn't go head-to-head with Modular Windows because there was nothing to go 
head-to-head with."

Orduna says Bell Atlantic asked Microware to assemble an OS-9 comparison 
chart, something that would list the specifications and merits of several 
different operating systems. Microware was unable to obtain the information 
it needed on Modular Windows.

"First I called Microsoft directly, and all I could get was 'Give us your 
number and we'll call you back.' Then we asked a friend of ours to call 
Microsoft as a developer and ask about Modular Windows, the normal sort of 
play-acting shit we get from our competitors. What our friend got for an 
answer was 'Well ... give us all the specs and information about the system 
you're developing and we'll call you back.' "

Microware struggled to find someone who knew or would talk about Modular 
Windows. They finally found a source at Tandy, where Modular Windows was 
being used in the development of a home entertainment system prototype. 
(Microsoft wouldn't talk about it with WIRED, either, but at press time has 
just announced its Tiger database for interactive set-top boxes.)

"We talked to this technician who worked on their interactive project," says 
Orduna. "He really didn't have specs either, but he bitched and bitched 
about the integration process and how difficult it was to implement Modular 
Windows on a consumer platform. So I called back the project manager at Bell 
Atlantic and told him 'I'm faxing you back this OS-9 comparison chart, and I 
really have to apologize beforehand for the gaping holes in there on the 
Modular Windows part because we don't know them. But, we have the number of 
this engineer you can call, and he can give you some insight on what it's 
like to integrate Mod Windows on a consumer platform.' A couple days later 
they said, 'OK, you're it.' "

As a corporate entity, Bell Atlantic didn't make an agreement with Microware 
or specify DAVID as the operating system for its set-top terminals. It 
merely published a set of specifications that only DAVID could meet. No deal 
has been cut between the two companies, allowing each to keep its freedom 
and avoiding any accusations of monopolistic or restrictive behavior on the 
part of Bell Atlantic.

Multimedia experts?

CERN and French smart cards may sound far removed from the world of home 
entertainment systems, but Microware got its foot in that door a long time 
ago. The company has been slowly building a presence in consumer electronics 
since the early '80s. That's when Tandy used OS-9 in the Radio Shack Color 
Computer, fondly remembered by some as the CoCo 3.

"We did the original operating system for the Tandy Color Computer," says 
Kaplan. "We did a windowing GUI for that called Multiview. So we always 
thought that OS-9 would be a good operating system for consumers. No one 
back in those days was thinking about multimedia."

What they were thinking about was game machines. In the mid-1980s Microsoft 
announced MSX (Microsoft Extended Basic), a product that was supposed to be 
an industry standard for computer/game machines like the Commodore 64 and 
the Atari 800. Microsoft worked with ASCII Corp. in Japan to push the 
standard to a consortium of manufacturers including Sony, Matsushita, and 
Yamaha. The plan was to introduce it in Japan and then bring the systems to 
the states. It was not successful. In January 1986 Microsoft announced its 
long-term commitment to CD-ROM development. By February 1986 Microsoft and 
ASCII Corp. had dissolved their relationship.

Meanwhile, Microware's work for Tandy brought the firm to the attention of 
Philips. Philips had made an early video game system called the Magnavox 
Odyssey and had asked Microware to collaborate on a new product - originally 
envisioned as a type of rack-mountable game system. (It eventually evolved 
into CD-I.) After evaluating systems from 60 other companies, Philips 
decided to ask Microware to develop CD-I's CD-RTOS, the operating system in 
every Philips CD-I System.

Microware got the CD-I contract in January 1986, and in the summer of 1986 
Kaplan got a phone call from Silicon Valley. Bill Gates wanted to buy the 
company. Kaplan didn't want to sell but was willing to talk about joint 
ventures. Gates wasn't. The negotiations ended there before they had 
started, and Gates's picture earned a place of honor on Kaplan's dart board.


In the meantime, to support CD-I development, Microware formed two joint 
ventures in the interactive media field. The first is called OptImage. "Both 
Philips and Microware had to develop software and hardware to make discs," 
says Kaplan. "It's a chicken-and-egg problem. We needed to make discs to 
test our software, to test the prototypes. It wouldn't be a core business 
for either Philips or Microware, but somebody had to do it." Another 
Microware joint venture called MicroMall has been running CD-I-based 
shopping and information kiosks in several areas, including Chicago, as a 
preliminary step in designing shopping services for interactive television. 
The digital interactive "catalogs" at the heart of the systems use digital 
stills, audio, and video to display items from J C Penney, Land's End, and 
others.

Getting on the Net

While he was working with Philips on CD-I, Kaplan began hearing about 
another form of future multimedia delivery.

"Not long after we got involved with CD-I and understood digital audio and 
digital video, it became clear that ultimately audio and video could be 
delivered by a network," says Kaplan. "Maybe it would be even better to 
deliver it via a network rather than via optical disk, but the transmission 
technology and the digital video compression weren't quite there yet. I 
remember back in '86 the Philips engineers said, 'There's a way to do it; we 
can't make the silicon yet, but in four or five years we will.' So it was 
known back then that it was doable."

OS-9's popularity in the telephone-switching world had landed Microware on 
an advisory committee for Bell Atlantic. At about the same time that Philips 
was beginning to talk about digital video, the phone companies were talking 
about it as well. Bell Atlantic was starting to talk about sending digital 
video over copper wires. Bell Atlantic asked Microware if the OS-9 inventor 
wanted to participate in some of the research. About two years ago, 
Microware realized that if it combined OS-9 modules written for phone 
switching and telecommunications networking with the modules written for 
digital audio and video, they had all the parts of an operating system for 
set-top terminals. Soon after that, DAVID was born.

Driving a prototype

Recently, the folks from Microware have found themselves at a lot of trade 
shows to show off DAVID, either on their own or sharing booths with Oracle 
or set-top terminal manufacturers. If you walked into these booths, you'd 
see a demonstration of digital video on demand being driven by a DAVID 
set-top box talking to a video server. Additional DAVID networking protocols 
on the set-top box and the server would be handling the communications 
between the server's operating system and the DAVID system in the set-top 
terminal. Of course, all this is transparent to you. All you see is the 
interface designed by the set-top box manufacturer and the video delivered 
by the server.

At a recent demonstration in Des Moines, Microware used a Kyocera prototype 
set-top terminal. About the size of a standard cable decoder, the box came 
with one of those massive, 3,000-button multiremotes that are becoming 
standard in the consumer electronics industry. What wasn't standard were the 
cursor-control-style keys in one section of the remote. Those were the ones 
that drove the interactive part of the terminal.

The video was delivered by one of Microware's prototyping servers, through 
T1 lines to the local phone company offices several miles away in downtown 
Des Moines. The remote could perform VCR-type functions on the digitized 
video quickly and with no sync problems. The system responded instantly, 
much faster than a VCR. The only downside was the control of the "arrow 
pointer" via the remote: infrared doesn't seem to be the most effective 
communications channel between controller and terminal, and scrolling up and 
down a screen is agonizing.

So what about Microsoft?

Since January there's been a lot of press about Microsoft's plans for 
interactive TV. From what's being said, Microsoft's model of a delivery 
system is similar to Microware's.

"We're looking at a switching broadband network," says Karl Buhl, marketing 
manager in advanced consumer technology for Microsoft. "We'd have four parts 
to the system: Tiger [Microsoft's current solution] continuous switching at 
the head end, coax from the head end to the home, a set-top terminal in the 
home, and a Microsoft software package running the system."

Conventional wisdom says Tiger will blow everything else away. Ken Kaplan 
doesn't buy it. "Microsoft is coming into this business from a standing 
start. No one wants them in this business anyway. They're not welcome."

"If Ken thinks we're not wanted here in the industry he should talk with 
TCI," Buhl counters. He says TCI's trials with Microsoft's Tiger technology 
will begin in Seattle at the end of the year. (See WIRED's interview with 
TCI head John Malone, WIRED 2.07, page 86.)

Obviously, Kaplan thinks it's not too early to count Microsoft out. "Bill 
Gates says he's been spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year on this 
business," Kaplan reasons. "Do you know what kind of return he's got to get 
on that investment? There isn't that much money in set-top-box software, 
sorry. Microsoft wants to get a piece of everything, probably per 
transaction. The market can't afford that. It can't afford Microsoft, and 
those in the industry don't want monopolists dominating their business. Not 
to mention that Microsoft doesn't have a clue about this business. It's a 
TV-set business, not a computer business.

"This happened to them once before. They missed the boat totally on 
networking. That's why Novell took off. Bill didn't figure it out, he didn't 
see it coming. He didn't approach it right, and Novell came in and ate his 
lunch."

According to Microware's Orduna, DAVID was not just a lucky acronym choice. 
While the name's been trademarked, the logo hasn't been finalized. The first 
version of the DAVID logo followed the biblical metaphor right down to a 
sling. That got a thumbs down as taking the joke a bit too far. But if 
Microware really wants to get Microsoft's goat, maybe it'll choose a logo 
inspired by Novell.


*************

Why OS-9?


Why do set-top terminal companies want a robotics operating system for 
interactive television?

Most personal computing operating systems are large and relatively slow. 
They still don't effectively multitask or run more than one application at a 
time. They take up a lot of hard-drive space and memory. The multitasking 
that systems like Windows and System 7 do is "cooperative." Different 
applications rarely stop or pause each other; they wait for breaks in CPU 
usage to have the computer change horses between them without shutting each 
other down. These systems are almost polite. They have response times of 
half a second at best.

In robotics or manufacturing systems, operating system needs differ. The 
scope of the operating system doesn't need to be as broad as that of a 
computer operating system, and often it must be able to fit into the system 
memory, right on the circuit board. True multitasking is vital. Different 
applications, or tasks, need to be able to interrupt each other, and 
quickly. A response time of half a second is much too slow.

"If a robot arm has reached its position, you probably need to tell it to do 
something immediately," says Peter Dibble, a research scientist for 
Microware. "You can't have it just waiting around while another task clears 
the screen."

Operating systems for set-top terminals must be compact enough not to need a 
lot of memory or a hard drive, in order to keep the cost of the box down. 
They must also be fast and multitasking. A half-second response time can 
give you frozen video or garbled audio.

"There are a lot of things going on in a set-top box at once," says Curt 
Schwaderer, a principal engineer at Microware. "First, you've got a 
networking front end that's sending data in at 1.544 Mbits per second. While 
all this networking stuff is trying to deal with (all this data coming in 
off the) T1, you've got another piece of the operating system that's taking 
the data and playing a movie with it. Then there's the third, interactive 
part, where you press buttons on a remote control. That requires more 
processing going on inside the box and more networking-type data going back 
and forth over the serial line so that you can do things like Fast-Forward, 
Rewind, Stop, Go Back."

OS-9 is modular so that it can fit a wide variety of needs without taking up 
a lot of system resources. A modular operating system allows designers to 
pick exactly which parts they will need. The heart of the operating system, 
called a kernel, fits in only 29 Kbytes of chip memory. DAVID, which is just 
a specific mix of OS-9, networking, and video modules, will fit all the 
necessary parts for a set-top terminal OS into about 256 Kbytes of memory 
while running true multitasking, not cooperative multitasking.

Some set-top box manufacturers are waiting for the development of a video 
compression scheme more advanced than the current MPEG 1. Not Microware. The 
first DAVID set-top boxes will use systems that TCI initially passed on.

"I'd rather have something that works this year and see it get better 
later," says Microware's Dibble. "It would be fun to be able to deliver the 
set-top box that would start with HDTV and go on from there, the one that 
wouldn't deliver anything but quadraphonic sound and wouldn't work unless 
you had broadband fiber. Maybe that will happen. Maybe if we're lucky we 
will be the people still doing it because we were the ones who delivered the 
relatively not-so-wonderful stuff."

                                   * * *

Stephen Jacobs (sxjnce@rit.edu) is a contributing editor for Videomaker 
magazine.


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=WIRED Online Copyright Notice=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

         Copyright 1993,4 Ventures USA Ltd.  All rights reserved.

  This article may be redistributed provided that the article and this 
  notice remain intact. This article may not under any circumstances
  be resold or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior 
  written permission from Wired Ventures, Ltd.

  If you have any questions about these terms, or would like information
  about licensing materials from WIRED Online, please contact us via 
  telephone (+1 (415) 904 0660) or email (info@wired.com).

       WIRED and WIRED Online are trademarks of Wired Ventures, Ltd.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Subject: Majordomo file: file '2.09/departments/elec.word'
Reply-To: info-rama@wired.com
Status: RO

--

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
=-=-=-=-=Copyright 1993,4 Wired Ventures Ltd.  All Rights Reserved=-=-=-=-=
-=-=For complete copyright information, please see the end of this file=-=-
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

WIRED 2.09
Electric Word
*************

The Kernel Kid
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
Linux, a full-featured Unix clone, will turn your PC into a workstation - 
for free. Started as a do-it-yourself project in 1990 by 20-year-old Finnish 
college student Linus Torvalds, Linux has grown into a mature operating 
system, co-developed by volunteers from every corner of the online world.

Unsatisfied with Minix, an earlier version of Unix for DOS, Linus taught 
himself all about 32-bit protected mode (the key to implementing a 
multitasking OS on the 386) and, after a six-month hacking session, 
distributed the source code for Linux Release 0.01 to 10 or so troubled 
souls who had expressed interest over the Net. It's doubtful more than one 
or two of them were senseless enough to actually compile it.

Subsequent versions, however, attracted the attention of hundreds, maybe 
thousands, of programmers who formed themselves into an ad hoc development 
team, taking on tasks as ability and interest (and sometimes Linus) 
dictated. At present, Linus primarily coordinates work on successive 
versions of the kernel, and estimates that he authored less than half the 
code in the official 1.0 kernel, which was released by the development team 
in March 1994. Matt Welsh, coordinator of the Linux Documentation Project, 
estimates that third-party companies have sold over 10,000 CD-ROMs 
containing Linux and related documentation, and that thousands of people 
have downloaded Linux from ftp sites. Several companies voluntarily donate a 
portion of their sales to Linus, according to Welsh.

Linux supports an enormous collection of high-quality free software 
including TCP/IP, Emacs, C and C++ compilers, The X Window System, and, for 
the timid, an MS-DOS emulator. For starters, check out the book Linux 
Installation and Getting Started (available at sunsite.unc.edu, along with 
Linux itself).

So, is Linus going to become the Bill Gates of Finland? Maybe not. He claims 
to be "by no means a good student" and is in no hurry to graduate since 
"Linux has taken a lot of time from my studies, and I like the work I have 
at the University which keeps me alive."

For photos of Linus downing a few cold ones after the successful release of 
1.0, go to WWW address: http://sunsite.unc.edu /mdw/linux.html. Linus: 
torvalds@cs.helsinki.fi.

 - Seth Rosenthal

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


How Reagan Got AIDS
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
When Benetton's Colors magazine ran a series of rasterbated photographs 
portraying Arnold Schwarzenegger as an African American and Spike Lee as a 
Jewish kid from Brooklyn, the results drew more guffaws than gasps.

But when Benetton asked Site One New York - the digital imaging studio that 
produced the race-erasing illustrations - to give former President Ronald 
Reagan AIDS, nobody laughed.

"It wasn't a pleasing job. I wouldn't wish giving AIDS to anybody, but it 
sure was an interesting project," said Site One artist Tony Spengler, who, 
along with Kathy Grove and Mary Reilley, created the gaunt, sore-covered 
image of Reagan for Colors's June issue.

Starting with a full-color photograph of a healthy, rouge-cheeked Reagan, 
Spengler and his partners altered the appearance of the former president's 
head by "removing portions of the neck and exaggerating the features that 
were already there" to make Reagan appear emaciated. Using photographs of 
Kaposi's sarcoma lesions as reference, the artists dotted Reagan's face and 
neck with red sores. "Only a couple of lesions are real; the rest are 
illustrations," said Spengler.

The finished image, shown here, was run in Colors alongside a sardonic mock 
obituary eulogizing the former President for "his quick and decisive 
response to the AIDS epidemic early in his presidency" and for "averting 
what could have been a global catastrophe costing millions of lives." Site 
One New York: +1 (212) 447 1517, Colors: +39 (6) 6880 4050, e-mail: 
70214.2344@compuserve.com.

 - Mark Frauenfelder

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


H-Gun is Media for Media
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
In 1989, while attending the School of Art Institute in Chicago, Ben Stokes 
and Eric Koziol formed H-Gun Labs to produce adrenaline-fueled music videos 
for the swelling ranks of Chicago's industrial music scene. With a style 
that combined dozens of edits per second with non-Euclidean camera angles, 
H-Gun paved its way into other music genres and fatter budgets, all the 
while skirting the edge of MTV's content guidelines.

Five years and around 100 videos later, the team is aiming its gun at other 
targets: animation, TV shows, and commercials. A Cartoon Network promotional 
spot for Jonny Quest was accompanied by a funked-up theme song that had 
little to do with Hanna or Barbera. Such flourishes are obviously a result 
of H-Gun's music-video past. Koziol explains, "Music video becomes the trial 
ground for new techniques and looks - viewers tend to become more 
sophisticated and get bored with a straight take on things."

Toiling away in their 8,000-square-foot "lab," H-Gun has developed a sci-fi 
TV pilot called Mad Science. "It's an alternative to all of the straight 
science fiction that's on TV now. The technology of Star Trek with Pee Wee's 
Playhouse sensibilities," says Koziol.

Having recently completed TV commercials for Atari Jaguar and Virgin Games, 
Stokes concludes, "We're slowly making the transition into commercials, but 
one thing I would note about our commercial work is that it's all for other 
forms of media ... video games, TV programming, etc. We're media for media." 
H-Gun Labs: +1 (312) 808 0134.

 - Dan Sicko (reverbmag@aol.com)

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Speed Freaks
^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
In the world of product marketing, one formula for success holds true: get 
there first.

Stratos Product Development Group, a Seattle product design firm, has built 
itself upon that formula. "A product delayed by even a few months can mean 
lost market share and initial profits," says Stratos President Allan 
Stephan. Stratos develops new products in one-half to two-thirds the time 
that its clients - Microsoft, Apple, Nintendo - estimate it would take their 
own designers.

Speed and quality are thought by many design houses to be conflicting 
demands, but Stratos sees them as being inextricably linked. "The same 
processes that speed prototyping can bring ini-tial design problems to 
light," says Stephan. "At this point, modifications are easy and inexpensive 
to make."

An essential second ingredient to Stratos's formula for success is the 
breadth of its staff. With specialists in every conceivable area of 
industrial design, the company can put together complete product development 
teams quickly and with less reliance on outside help. For example, they 
employ experts in application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) design to 
integrate electronic logic into the tiniest possible footprint, resulting in 
a smaller product, reduced power consumption, and lower manufacturing costs.


Speed may not be everything, but it does make an excellent calling card, 
especially in an industry where the life of a product can be measured with a 
ripening banana. Stratos Product Development Group: +1 (206) 448 1388.

 - Gary Good

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Personal Movie Captions
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
Unlike millions of moviegoers who flock to the cinema each year, people who 
are deaf or profoundly hearing-impaired often pass on all but foreign films 
with subtitles - because the dialog escapes them. That may soon change.

During several screenings in March at the Smithsonian's National Air and 
Space Museum in Washington, DC, about 100 deaf people tested four 
technologies aimed at providing captions visible only to those who need to 
see them.

"What everybody would like is some kind of magic invisible captions that 
only show up when you put on a pair of glasses," says James Hyder, assistant 
manager of the Air and Space Museum's theater. "Unfortunately, the 
principles of physics make that impossible."

Of the four prototypes tested - polarized glasses, VFD screens mounted on 
seat arms, tiny TV screens attached to visors, and a sheet of transparent 
plexiglass reflecting captions that are projected in reverse from the back 
of the theater - Hyder says the latter offers the most promise. The 
plexiglass is mounted on a gooseneck attached to the seat so viewers can 
adjust it for their own comfort. The system, simply called the "Rear View" 
device, allows viewers to put the captions wherever they want, at the bottom 
of the screen, in the middle or to one side, and still watch the movie 
through the plexiglass. In test screenings, viewers liked the system.

The total installation cost of such a system is currently upwards of 
US$10,000 for an average movie theater. Unless that figure dips below about 
$3,000, Hyder says most theaters probably won't consider installing it. But 
the Air and Space Museum is going ahead with plans to install the "Rear 
View" device, sometime by the end of 1994, making it the first movie theater 
in the world to offer viewers closed captioning.

 - Betsy Bayha

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Digital Cruise Control
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
"I'm not afraid of the technology," said actor Tom Cruise. "It is important 
not to restrict the creative aspect of what digital can do and to keep that 
growing." But like many others attending the first annual International 
Artists Rights Symposium this summer, Cruise was pushing to revamp the 
nation's copyright law. He wants to make it difficult for copyright holders 
to change works without the consent of the artists involved.

After seeing how film from the past can be transformed and combined with new 
material - such as making Nixon and JFK say things they never uttered in 
real life to Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump - many actors and directors are eager 
to protect their work from becoming blended into a holovision commercial for 
21st-century Diet Coke. "I don't want anybody else playing the roles I play, 
and I don't want to play anybody else's roles," said Cruise.

Characterized by one attendee as a "digital housebreaking session," many 
participants seemed eager to make computer artists the scapegoats. But 
Steven Spielberg, whose Jurassic Park stampeded to success on the strength 
of its digital dinosaurs, jumped in to protect the special-effects pixel 
pros, proclaiming, "Those so-called nerds who operate the computers, they're 
absolutely artists!" He sided with Cruise by claiming the real issue was 
about not allowing "A Few Good Men [to be] turned into A Few Good Women, 
unless it's a result of the director, Rob Reiner's choice."

 - Paula Parisi

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Clipping Clipper: Matt Blaze
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
In February, government spooks from the National Security Agency smiled 
smugly as the White House announced its endorsement of the Clipper Chip to 
replace the battle-scarred current standard, DES. Clipper, they proclaimed, 
is unbreakable. The announcement set off a storm of public debate.

Below the warp and woof of the public debate, however, few noticed the NSA 
quietly inviting encryption experts to "test" the vaunted Clipper Chip. Go 
ahead, try and break it, the NSA said. And while none of these experts 
succeeded in breaking Skipjack, the algorithm used in Clipper, in May a 
young researcher working for AT&T's Bell Laboratories, Matt Blaze, managed 
to put one hell of a dent in it.

Blaze discovered a mega design flaw in the technological "backdoor" of 
Clipper: the Law Enforcement Access Field (LEAF). The LEAF contains an 
encoded copy of the "session key" that can be used to read encrypted data. 
With information held in separate top-secret digital vaults by two 
government agencies, law enforcement should be able to decode the session 
key. Bottom line: corrupt the LEAF and cops can forget about unscrambling a 
Clipper-encoded communication of any kind.

The LEAF is protected by a 16-bit checksum, which is a kind of self-checking 
mathematical equation. But hold on, Blaze warns: any random sequence of 16 
bits has a 1-in-65,000 shot at passing that checksum test. Generating that 
many numbers is a simple hack for even a pedestrian programmer. Blaze found 
it possible to generate a seemingly valid, yet "rogue" checksum in about 42 
minutes. Blaze's method means law enforcement officials can't tell if they 
have a valid or bogus LEAF.

Blaze's discovery was but one factor precipitating a July 20 announcement by 
Vice President Al Gore marking the adminstration's retreat from Clipper. 
Other problems included a patent infringement lawsuit as well as massive 
protests from the software industry and civil rights advocates around the 
world. Clipper's role, according to Gore, has been reduced to voice 
communication encryption only.

Blaze's research paper that helped sink Clipper is available through 
anonymous ftp at research.att.com: /dist/mab/eesproto.ps.

 - Brock N. Meeks

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Brain Waves on The Net
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
At the UCLA Medical Center, doctors can keep tabs on their patients' brains 
even when they aren't making their rounds. Each patient at the Neurosurgical 
and Trauma Intensive Care Unit has a bedside electroencephalogram monitor 
(showing brain activity), connected to a peer-to-peer network, in turn 
connected to the Department of Neurosurgery's LAN. Neurosurgeons can review 
patients' brain waves from the office and phone instructions to the 
hospital.

The computer team for neurosurgery has connected the LAN to the Internet. 
This allows a review of patients' vital signs and brain wave patterns from 
anywhere there's Net access. UCLA doctors have the ability to send brain 
wave data to specialists anywhere in the world, saving precious time, and 
possibly lives.

 - Rodney Bianco

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Magic Fanatics
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
Move over Nintendo! A game made of paper has harnessed the power of the Net. 
Magic: The Gathering, a card game released in August 1993 by Wizards of the 
Coast in Renton, Washington, became an instant hit among teenagers, and fans 
have flocked to cyberspace, creating a booming Magic culture there.

The object of Magic is simple. Each player acts as a sorcerer trying to 
drive the opponent from the land of Dominia. The cards are slightly smaller 
than baseball cards, and are sold in starter sets of 60 playing cards 
(US$7.95), supplemented with Booster Packs of 15 cards ($2.45) and Expansion 
Sets (prices vary). The cards determine spells, artifacts, and enchantments. 
Players build their card decks according to their own strategies, based 
partially on the extent of their card collections, and this adds to the fun 
of the game. Even a master collector can draw a bad hand - the game has 
myriad variables, and a player with a measly deck can still win with a 
little luck. The game also rewards players who have extensive knowledge of 
trivia and rules.

Demand for the game has been stunning. Wizards of the Coast grew from seven 
employees to 70 in less than a year. The first shipment of 600,000 cards 
sold out in four days. The company produces 65 million cards per month, but 
can't keep up with the demand. Dave "Snark" Howell (snark@wizards.com), the 
company's cyberspace liaison, estimates there are around 80,000 Magic 
players.

Despite its low-tech origins, Magic owes much of its success to the Net, 
both for customer support and production. The company has been online since 
the beginning, and recruited many of its employees by scanning Magic Usenet 
groups for the friendliest, most knowledgeable Magic maniacs. And the Net is 
loaded with online newsletters, strategy guides, product information 
bulletins, and Web pages.

Magic is portable, inexpensive, and fun to play. It encourages interaction 
between players. And - in a world typically populated by fanboys - women are 
playing this game! Howell says: "We're really excited that young males 
aren't the only people who enjoy the game." What good businessperson 
wouldn't be?

Wizards of the Coast: +1 (206) 624 0933, e-mail: questions@wizards.com.

 - Anita Brenner (brenner@well.com) with Andrew Torres 
(torres@cyberspace.org)

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Prediction, as Niels Bohr once noted, is difficult. To help build a better 
crystal ball, economists Linda Nazareth and Benny Tal at the Canadian 
Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) are turning to a technology from the world 
of artificial intelligence: neural nets. They claim that nets provide better 
forecasts of Canada's gross national product (GNP) and inflation than the 
usual econometric models. Just as important, they have shown how neural nets 
and traditional economic models can do better together than each can do 
separately.

CIBC's conventional models of Canada's GNP tended to underestimate growth in 
Canada's booming economy and to overestimate inflation. Nazareth and Tal 
reckoned that this was because the relative simplicity of the mathematical 
formulas in traditional models could not capture the complexity of the 
relationships among the factors underlying economic growth and inflation - 
wages, commodity prices, interest rates, and so on. Neural nets, they 
reckoned, could do better. And, armed with BrainMaker Professional neural 
net software from California Scientific, they tried to do just that.

Instead of plugging data into pre-existing formulas, neural nets teach 
themselves the relationships between inputs and outputs. For example, CIBC 
uses 10 different economic statistics to predict inflation. The neural net 
starts by assuming some random relation between the 10 statistics and 
inflation. Then, using historical statistics, the net is taught to improve 
its guesswork by repeatedly comparing its prediction to the actual outcome. 
Each time its prediction is wrong, the net re-tweaks the relationships 
between the inputs in a way designed to reduce the error. Eventually, the 
net teaches itself to predict inflation.

But the very complexity and customization of the nets is also their greatest 
potential drawback. Nowhere in the net is there any idea or explanation of 
why the inputs might be related in such-and-such a way with outputs. The net 
is trained empirically, and the technology will just as merrily try to find 
relationships between the cycles of the moon and inflation as between wage 
rates and inflation. Unless the person training the net already has a good 
idea of which data will help predict inflation, and why, there is a real 
risk of creating a profoundly flaky crystal ball - which works for a while 
and then just stops working.

So, Tal and Nazareth say they prefer to use neural nets and traditional 
models together. Traditional models help them understand basic relationships 
between variables; nets create more complex, subtle, and customized versions 
of those basic relationships. Both EconoNet and PriceNet, models Tal and 
Nazareth designed, have shown tentative signs of outperforming the 
traditional models from which they were created, and the two economists are 
looking for new futures to gaze at through their neural crystal balls.

 - John Browning

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


The AIDS Database
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
A group of scientists at the Stanford University Medical Center are 
designing an AIDS database they hope will bring new treatment procedures to 
those with HIV-related diseases. Currently, many community-based AIDS 
treatment centers and healthcare workers can't keep up with the details of 
particular experimental treatments and who may be eligible for them. The 
T-Helper II database, according to research head Dr. Mark Musen, "identifies 
available treatments and brings them to the attention of the person seeing 
the patient."

The T-Helper II, scheduled for beta-testing this fall, automatically matches 
a patient's records with suitable new experimental treatment protocols 
geared to the individual's needs. The system also indicates what steps 
should be taken to avoid problems that could arise from combining suggested 
treatments with previously assigned ones.

A related system, T-Helper, the development of which began in 1991, stores 
and organizes patient records that have been manually entered or 
electronically transferred from treatment centers' previous databases. It is 
currently being tested by two California-based AIDS treatment centers.

Musen stresses that privacy is paramount when establishing patient-record 
systems. With the T-Helper systems, healthcare providers must enter 
passwords to access records. Before records can be removed from clinics for 
outside research, they are stripped of patient names and other identifying 
factors and are only referenced by a scrambled number.

The group hopes that the T-Helper II will serve as a model for developers of 
the next generation of computer-based patient-record and treatment-protocol 
systems that could also be accessed online. "The goal is to move the focus 
of clinical research into the community where most patients would prefer to 
be treated," Musen says.

For more information, write to: Section on Medical Informatics, Stanford 
University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA 94305-5479.

 - David Pescovitz

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Virtual Sweat
^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
One reason more people don't exercise regularly is that working out - 
particularly on stationary bikes in health clubs - is just plain boring. 
CyberGear, a Cambridge, Massachusetts, start-up, wants to change that with a 
VR bike simulating the fun of outdoor exercise.

The bike faces a 19-inch monitor displaying a square kilometer of virtual 
terrain drawn in real time. You are given complete freedom to go anywhere 
within that terrain. If you try crossing a stream, the pedal tension 
increases accordingly. If you round a sharp turn at high speed, the 
handlebars dip and the bike frame tilts. There are even virtual racers who 
compel harder exercise by goading you to race them. Of course, there's 
nothing to prevent you from taking a shortcut. CyberGear's active soundtrack 
adds to the "outdoor" experience.

Sweeney Town, the first version of the software, depicts a New England 
countryside complete with roads, a church, a bar, a mill, and a cliff. 
CyberGear President Mike Benjamin admits that the current graphic interface 
"is not the most realistic, but it is absolutely seamless." Later versions 
will re-create an underwater scenario (in which you're a fish in the middle 
of a very interactive food chain) and even outer space. The latter will 
probably require a "weapon" upgrade to keep the videogame crowd happy. 
"People want a trigger," says Benjamin. CyberGear is also making the bikes 
network-ready, so you can cycle with friends.

Prototypes of the VR bike have tested well, though Sweeney Town's hazards 
can be a little more than virtual: Benjamin once actually sheared off the 
bike's crank when he got stuck between two virtual oak trees.

The bike will be manufactured by Tectrix Fitness Equipment of Irvine, 
California, and will be marketed to health clubs for about US$6,000 each. 
Unless it pops a simulated tire, the VR Bike could be in a gym or fitness 
center near you by the time you read this. CyberGear: +1 (617) 491 3252, fax 
+1 (617) 491 3354.

 - Jerry Franklin

                                   * * *


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=WIRED Online Copyright Notice=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

         Copyright 1993,4 Ventures USA Ltd.  All rights reserved.

  This article may be redistributed provided that the article and this 
  notice remain intact. This article may not under any circumstances
  be resold or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior 
  written permission from Wired Ventures, Ltd.

  If you have any questions about these terms, or would like information
  about licensing materials from WIRED Online, please contact us via 
  telephone (+1 (415) 904 0660) or email (info@wired.com).

       WIRED and WIRED Online are trademarks of Wired Ventures, Ltd.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Subject: Majordomo file: file '2.09/features/cyber.deter'
Reply-To: info-rama@wired.com
Status: RO

--

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
=-=-=-=-=Copyright 1993,4 Wired Ventures Ltd.  All Rights Reserved=-=-=-=-=
-=-=For complete copyright information, please see the end of this file=-=-
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

WIRED 2.09
Cyber-Deterrence
**************** 

What happens when you combine media voyeurism, technological exhibitionism, 
and strategic simulations? WIRED visits the digital battlefield of Desert 
Hammer VI and the Advanced Warfighting Experiment (AWE) to see whether the 
US Army can win the next war without firing another shot.

By James Der Derian


I missed the first yellow warning sign. It was dark, I was on a 40-mile, 
dead-end road into the heart of the high Mojave Desert, and I was running 
late. Not wanting to give the public affairs officer another opportunity to 
explain what o-five-hundred meant, I pushed the rental car up to 90. A few 
miles later there was a second sign. This time I put on the high beams and 
slowed down. On it was a black silhouette of a tank, and underneath, "Tank 
Xing."

I had reached Fort Irwin, California, site of the US Army's National 
Training Center. Created in 1980, its purpose is to take the troops as close 
to the edge of war as the technology of simulation and the rigors of the 
environment will allow. For three weeks in the spring of 1994, this 
635,052-acre military base served as the testing ground of the first fully 
digitized task force, one element of the 194th Separate Armored Brigade from 
Fort Knox, Kentucky.

Digitally enhanced, computer-accessorized, and budgetarily gold-plated from 
the bottom of their combat boots to the top of their kevlars, soldiers of 
the 194th Brigade were here for Desert Hammer VI. Also known as the "digital 
rotation," this experimental war game was developed to show the top brass, a 
host of junketing members of Congress, and an odd mix of journalists how, in 
the words of the press release, "digital technology can enhance lethality, 
operations tempo, and survivability." Combining real-time airborne and 
satellite surveillance, digitized battlefield communications, helmet-mounted 
displays, a 486 computer for every warrior, and an array of other high-tech 
weaponry, the brigade had come wired to move faster, kill better, and live 
longer than the enemy. If the old nuclear deterrent was to depend on the 
frightful force of mass destruction, the new digital strategy is to win the 
total information war.

Back when messages traveled at the speed of a horse, and overhead 
surveillance meant a view from a hilltop, Prussian strategist Carl von 
Clausewitz warned in On War against the arrogance of leaders who thought 
scripted battles would resemble the actual thing: "All action must, to a 
certain extent, be planned in a mere twilight, which in addition not 
infrequently - like the effect of fog or moonlight - gives to things 
exaggerated dimensions and an unnatural appearance." Would digitization 
render von Clausewitz's famous dictum obsolete? Would today's commanders be 
able to use satellite tracking and computer-equipped soldiers to dispel the 
fog of war? After three days, I thought I knew the answer, but by then the 
question had changed.

Almost every US unit that fights at Fort Irwin goes to battle against the 
"Krasnovians," American soldiers serving in a sim- ulated Soviet brigade. 
When global crises dictate, the Krasnovians can also take on the role of 
"Sumarians" (Iraqis) or "Hamchuks" (North Koreans). On the first day of 
Desert Hammer VI, I chased black-bereted Krasnovians through the Whale Gap, 
into the Valley of Death, and watched them kick American desert khaki all 
the way to the John Wayne Hills.

On paper, the digitized army's combination of brute force and high tech 
appeared formidable. At the high end of the lethality spectrum, the 
Americans had top-of-the-line M1A2 Abrams main battle tanks, each carrying 
an information system that collected real-time battlefield data from 
airplanes, satellites, and unmanned aerial vehicles. At the low end were the 
"21st Century Land Warriors" (also called "warfighters" but never "soldiers" 
or "infantry") who came equipped with day- and night-vision scopes mounted 
on their M-16s, video cameras, and 1-inch LED screens attached to their 
kevlar helmets. The 486 computers in their rucksacks were wired to radios 
that could send voice or digital-burst communications to a battle command 
vehicle coordinating the attack through a customized Windows program.

Fort Irwin's public affairs officers were equally well armed. With budget 
cuts clearly on their minds, our voluble handlers, equipped with glossy 
brochures, informed us more than once that "smaller is not better: better is 
better." Other slogans sounded like a hybrid of Nick Machiavelli and Bill 
Gates, promising to "Win the Battlefield Information War" and "Project and 
Sustain the Force." One major went so far as to speculate, "If General 
Custer had digitization, he never would have had a last stand." Analogies 
proliferated like mad: digitization is the equivalent of the addition of the 
stirrup to the saddle or the integration of helicopters into the Army.

However, when the motto miasma met the fog of war on the first day of 
battle, the fog seemed to win out, especially since it came amply 
supplemented by sand, dust, and smoke. Our personable handler, a Major 
Franklin Childress, attempted to narrate the battle as it unfolded. After 
leading our small convoy of three humvees to a fine hillside perch, he 
provided a running commentary on what we could see and also on what we could 
hear as we eavesdropped on the radio traffic. We overheard accounts of 
confusion and of fratricide or "friendly fire." Although no one in the 
military would go on record about how the war game had commenced, a defense 
industry rep let me know later that the first blow had been delivered by an 
unarmed cruise missile launched off the California coast. Fortunately for 
the residents of Las Vegas, the missile had stayed on course and landed on 
the live-fire range.

Our first visible sign of the battle came when an array of Black Hawk and 
Apache helicopters flew by so low that we could look down on them from our 
hillside perch. Some were pretending to be Soviet Hinds, and my first 
thought was of the helicopters shot down over Iraq on April 14, the week 
before my visit, in a deadly, real-life case of "friendly fire." I filed 
away my question as an F-16 followed the helicopter, sweeping over our hill 
and dropping flares to confuse possible ground-to-air missiles. Had the 
pilots who shot down the helicopters been trained to attack American 
Blackhawks pretending to be Soviet Hinds?

The confusion increased as loud bangs joined the visuals. An M-22 simulator 
round the size of a fat shotgun shell exploded nearby as a Stinger missile 
crew fired at an F-16 fighter plane. White plumes from the blank Hoffman 
shells that simulate tank and artillery fire spread across the battlefield. 
The arrival of the main show was signaled by tracks of dust on the horizon. 
Tanks, humvees, and armored personnel carriers came out of the wadis in 
bursts of speed. As the Krasnovians mixed it up with the Americans, vehicles 
bearing the orange flags of the observer-controllers darted in and out of 
the battle, tallying the kills. Rather than loaded weapons, they depended on 
the MILES, or Multiple Integrated Laser Engagement System, first developed 
by Xerox Electro-Optical and now better known to civilians as laser tag. 
Hits and near-misses were recorded by the electronic sensors on the vests 
and belts that circled soldiers and vehicles alike, and transmitted via 
microwave back to computers at "Star Wars," the command center. From our 
hillside we could see the flashing yellow strobes of the MILES sensors 
spread across the battlefield as the Krasnovians cut through the American 
forces. Simulation-hardened and terrain-savvy, the Krasnovians rarely lose.

Suddenly we got an order to move: our position was about to be overrun. For 
a brief moment, as the Krasnovian tanks came down the ridge, I became 
separated from the other observers and stood within smelling distance of the 
tanks as they roared between us. With synapses firing and hormones mixing 
into a high-octane cocktail, I sensed the seductive rush that comes with 
simulated war. I was detached and yet connected to a dangerous situation 
through a kind of voyeurism, as if I were watching myself watch the tanks 
bear down. Perhaps therein lies the hidden appeal of simulation: it enables 
soldiers to espy death in a fictitious borderland where fear and fun, pain 
and pleasure, you and the enemy encounter one another. The simulated 
battlefield makes dying and killing less plausible, and therefore more 
possible.

Day two began like the first: late and in the dark. But this time I did 
catch the icon on the first yellow warning sign. It was of a tortoise. One 
more question for the major.

The main group had already left. A humvee was waiting and ready to catch up 
to the media convoy. The new driver, however, failed to inspire much 
confidence. He was unable to make radio contact with Major Childress and 
kept switching frequencies, until I suggested that he put up the antenna. He 
kept getting the radio messages wrong, at one point even slowing down to 
check for a flat tire because he heard the humvee ahead inform the major 
that it had one.

After a cross-country shortcut through a minefield (marked by round plastic 
bowls that looked like doggie dishes) and a couple of wrong turns, we caught 
up with the rest of the group at what appeared to be a desert rest stop for 
21st century warfighters. I was first directed to a medical unit, simulating 
the latest in "tele-medicine." Each soldier in Desert Hammer carried a 
3.5-inch computer disk in a breast pocket, not to stop a bullet but to store 
a digitized image of a predestined wound. In a real war in the near future a 
video camera would record the body damage. In this case the medic popped the 
disk into a portable PowerBook to discover that his victim had a sucking 
chest wound. The image was digitized and transferred via a radiolink to a 
triage unit in the rear, where a doctor talked the medic through the 
treatment of the wounded soldier. It seemed to work: the soldier got up and 
walked away from the stretcher as I moved on to another station.

Standing in the sand next to a Bradley was a borg. He was made of flesh and 
metal and looked like he had just walked off the set of Star Trek: The Next 
Generation. He had his Sony minicam, his eyeball-sized display screen, his 
portable 486, and his global-positioning-system antenna on his helmet. When 
I asked him if he realized he was a dead ringer for one of the tough 
colonial marines in Aliens, he curtly answered: "I don't know about that, 
Sir." (When talking to soldiers, all journalists enjoy an instant field 
promotion to officer.) I was taken aback, but later surmised that I had 
transgressed rule Number One of the armed services: never, never confuse an 
Army grunt, especially a fully digitized grunt, with a Marine no-neck. It 
seemed that all the hype we were hearing about joint operations was only 
slowly making its way down the ranks.

Judging from some of the thousand-mile stares I got during this and other 
interviews, the simulated battle in the Mojave Desert had managed to 
replicate at least one of war's primary characteristics: fatigue. 
Surprisingly often, soldiers responded to my questions about the reality 
factor in simulations with the claim that the Persian Gulf War was much 
easier than this. Technology has advanced quite a bit in a few years. 
Keeping up with machines is dirty business.

The final stop on the digital tour was an M1A2 tank. I took a few pictures 
and started to walk away but was stopped by the hovering Major Childress, 
who asked, "Do you want to take a look inside?" He surely registered my 
surprise. Three years ago, just after the Gulf War had ended, I came out to 
the desert to look at the training that was said to have won the war. At the 
time I was told that I could take pictures of just about anything - except 
for the inside of an M1 tank, which remained classified. Now, I was invited 
to videotape a state-of-the-art model. A gunner walked me through the 
cyberspaces of the Inter-Vehicular Information System: "Here, your position 
is triangulated by satellite, an enemy targeted by laser range finding, and 
a friendly identified by a relay from a J-STAR flying overhead."

I was impressed but also confused. What was the reason for this new policy 
of access? I asked my standard stock of questions: Would the friction of war 
overheat a cybernetic battle plan? Would the surge of information overload 
the digital systems, especially the primary information node of the battle 
network, the warfighter? Would the new technology further distance the 
killer from the business of killing? In response I received off-the-shelf, 
by-the-book answers: perhaps, but not so far - and, besides, this is all in 
the experimental stage.

However at some point - I think it began with the tour of the tank - I began 
to suspect that I was asking the wrong set of questions. The Army has always 
prided itself on being grounded in reality. Now, like the Navy and the Air 
Force before it, the Army is leaping into a realm of hyperreality, where the 
enemy disappeared as flesh and blood, and reappeared, pixelated and 
digitized on computer screens in kill zones, as icons of opportunity. Was 
there a paradox operating here, that the closer the war game was able to 
technically reproduce the reality of war, the greater the danger of 
confusing one for the other? When soldiers begin to mutate into cyborgs, the 
old questions seem irrelevant.

The transitional moment was the Gulf War. Although General H. Norman 
Schwarzkopf has always referred to himself as a "mud soldier," in 1990 he 
sponsored a war game called Exercise Internal Look '90, which combined 
computer simulations with minimal troop movements to model an Iraqi 
invasion. During the final days of the exercise, reality caught up with the 
simulation and Iraq actually invaded Kuwait. In his autobiography 
Schwarzkopf recounts that his planners kept mixing up reports of the 
simulation and the war. It turns out that the mud soldier was our first 
cyberpunk general.

The blurring of war and simulation goes back even further in the history of 
Operation Desert Storm. In a 1990 USA Today interview, Schwarzkopf revealed 
that before the war, Iraq was running computer simulations and war games for 
an invasion of Kuwait. During the war, Schwarzkopf, according to his own 
account, was programming daily computer battles against Iraq.

Among the many causes of the Gulf War, what importance should we place on 
the proliferation of simulations? Have new improved simulations begun to 
precede and engender the reality of the wars they are intended to model?

Clearly the Army doesn't read French critics like Jean Baudrillard or Paul 
Virilio for answers about the potential hazards of global simulation at 
digital speed. But what do they read? The day before my departure I had 
received an air-express package from the Office of the Secretary of the 
Army. Officially it was identified as the press kit for the Advanced 
Warfighting Experiment (AWE). But "press kit" does not do this document 
justice. Collected in a large, three-ring binder with the triangle logo for 
"The Digital Battlefield" on the cover (satellite, helicopter, and tank in 
each corner, connected by lightning bolts to a warfighter in the middle) 
were more than 30 press releases, brochures, and articles on the Army of the 
future. Computer-generated images were mixed in with all kinds of fonts and 
graphics.

Leading the paper charge was a prolegomenon from the office of the Chief of 
Staff that provides the best encapsulation of the rationale behind the 21st 
Century Army, Force XXI:

"Today the Industrial Age is being superseded by the Information Age, the 
Third Wave, hard on the heels of the agrarian and industrial eras. Our 
present army is well-configured to fight and win in the late Industrial Age, 
and we can handle Agrarian-Age foes as well. We have begun to move into 
Third Wave warfare, to evolve a new force for a new century."

In the slickest brochure, bearing the short yet pretentious title, "The 
Vision," I found a section called "Exploit Modeling and Simulation" that 
read like a good cyberpunk novel:

"Ten thousand linked simulators! Entire literal armies online, Global 
real-time, broadband, fiber-optic, satellite-assisted, military simulation 
networking. And not just connected, not just simulated. Seamless."

It gets better, and for good reason: it was written by Bruce Sterling for 
WIRED (see "War is Virtual Hell," issue 1.1, page 46). What does it mean 
when WIRED is appropriated for the Army's information war? Perhaps in the 
new era of simulation, Sterling's writing, as well as my own reportorial 
presence at Fort Irwin is just one more chip in the Army's motherboard.

As early as 1964, after reading a breathless promotional account of the 
"cyborg" under development by General Electric (from the photographs the 
cyborg looks like a robotic elephant), architect and social critic Lewis 
Mumford warned of the coming of a new "technological exhibitionism." Soon, 
he believed, this perverse display of military technology would pervade all 
of society.

Was I bearing witness to an even more powerful hybrid? What happens when you 
combine media voyeurism, technological exhibitionism, and strategic 
simulations? News flash: In the 21st century Army, you get the 
cyber-deterrent.

If this sounds far-fetched, consider the worst-case scenario that currently 
underlies strategic thinking. As CIA Director James Woolsey put it at his 
confirmation hearings, a "bewildering variety of poisonous snakes" has 
sprung forth from the slain dragon of communism. When the dragon expired, so 
did the mighty, if illusory, deterrence value of nuclear weapons. On a quest 
since Vietnam to fight only quick, popular, winnable wars, and imbued by the 
spirit of feudal Chinese strategist Sun Tzu, who wrote that "those skilled 
in war subdue the enemy's army without battle," the 21st century Army has 
perhaps found in the cyber-deterrent its Holy Grail. The cyber-deterrent is 
fast, digitized, and is as spectacular in simulation as it is global in 
effect. With the price of nukes falling and their availability increasing, 
the digitized option has the added advantage of being out of reach of all 
but the richest rogues. And it makes a hell of a photo-op.

Digitization, making ever more convincing simulations possible, seems 
destined to replace an increasingly irrelevant nuclear balance of terror 
with a simulation of superiority.

Moreover, the digitized deterrence machine bears an important similarity to 
its nuclear counterpart: it does not necessarily have to work to be 
effective. Its power lies in a symbolic exchange of signs - give or take the 
odd reality check in the desert to bring religion to the doubters. This is 
the purpose of spectacles like Desert Hammer VI: to render visible and 
plausible the cyber-deterrent for all those potential snakes that might not 
have sufficiently learned the lesson of the prototype of cyberwar, Desert 
Storm.

Here at Fort Irwin, the desert functions again as a backdrop for the 
melodrama of national security. The effect of Desert Hammer is to turn von 
Clausewitz on his head. Military maneuvers are no longer about dispersing 
the fog of war, but about stage-managing the special effects. Combining 
Disneyland, Hollywood, and Silicon Valley, the National Training Center, 
full of video cameras and computerized special effects, not to mention 
thrilling rides, has superseded Los Alamos and the Nevada Test Site to 
become the premiere production set for the next generation of strategic 
superiority.

Can one conduct a critical inquiry into the information war without becoming 
just another informant for it, material for the Army's sequel, 
"(Re)Visions?" Biologist-turned-social-critic Donna Haraway, more sanguine 
than Mumford about the technological turn, offers a possible escape pod from 
the dilemma. In her embryonic 1985 essay, "Manifesto for Cyborgs," she 
wrote: "From one perspective, a cyborg world is about the final imposition 
of a grid of control on the planet, about the final abstraction embodied in 
a Star Wars apocalypse waged in the name of defense, about the final 
appropriation of women's bodies in a masculinist orgy of war. From another 
perspective, a cyborg world might be about lived social and bodily realities 
in which people are not afraid of their joint kinship with animals and 
machines...."

There are cyborg alternatives to be found in the desert. Heading back at the 
usual hellbent speed from the battlefield on day two, I asked the major over 
wind and noise about the strange warning sign that had caught my attention 
early in the morning. "Desert tortoise," he shouted. "Fifty thousand dollars 
if you kill one." I had to wait until we returned to the base to find out 
whether that was the bounty or the penalty. In asking, I learned that the 
tortoise had been assigned threatened species status in 1990. And since Fort 
Irwin encompasses some of its main breeding grounds, a clash of armored 
vehicles and armored reptiles was inevitable.

What was the Army to do? It decided to go green, or at least a slightly 
muddy version of it. The following morning, I met with Fort Irwin's civilian 
environmental scientists, enlisted by the military to protect the tortoises. 
Judging from their intensive prep and genuine enthusiasm, they didn't get 
many opportunities to sell their eco-wares to the press. After all, how 
could a lumbering desert tortoise possibly match the media appeal of an M1 
tank going flat-out?

After the briefing, the tortoises' appeal was evident. The slide show was 
informative ("Without our help, the survival rate of the tortoise is 1 
percent"), moving ("To a raven, a freshly hatched tortoise looks like a 
walking ravioli"), and amusing ("Here we see several tortoises in parade 
formation after completing their training at Fort Irwin").

The scientists claimed to be matching the warfighters chip for chip in the 
information war. Tortoises were tagged with transmitters, tracked by radio 
telemetry, and graphed in grid locations by computers. Landsat satellites 
were used to identify good habitat areas, aerial mine detection technology 
to find tortoises moving on the ground, and electronic sensors to warn off 
vehicles that might endanger the creatures.

Surveillance and communications technology was binding humans and tortoises 
into an interdependent community. By the end of the briefing, I began to 
believe that I had just witnessed the telling of a postmodern fable. 
Perhaps, with a techno-ethical assist and a leap of faith, the tortoise 
might yet beat the tank.

I knew it was a stretch - and not quite Aesop - but what more can one expect 
when machines take the place of animals in the imagining of the human race?

                                   * * *

James Der Derian (jderian@polsci.umass.edu) is author of Antidiplomacy: 
Spies, Terror, Speed, and War (Blackwell Press). He is currently at work on 
Virtual Security (Free Press).

                                   * * *


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=WIRED Online Copyright Notice=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

         Copyright 1993,4 Ventures USA Ltd.  All rights reserved.

  This article may be redistributed provided that the article and this 
  notice remain intact. This article may not under any circumstances
  be resold or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior 
  written permission from Wired Ventures, Ltd.

  If you have any questions about these terms, or would like information
  about licensing materials from WIRED Online, please contact us via 
  telephone (+1 (415) 904 0660) or email (info@wired.com).

       WIRED and WIRED Online are trademarks of Wired Ventures, Ltd.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Subject: Majordomo file: file '2.09/departments/computer.bowl'
Reply-To: info-rama@wired.com
Status: RO

--

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
=-=-=-=-=Copyright 1993,4 Wired Ventures Ltd.  All Rights Reserved=-=-=-=-=
-=-=For complete copyright information, please see the end of this file=-=-
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

WIRED 2.09
Electrosphere
************* 

Nerd Games
^^^^^^^^^^ 

Each of them has always taken pride in being the smartest guy in the room - 
but hey, now they're all in the same room. John Schwartz reports from this 
year's Computer Bowl, where the East evened the score.

By John Schwartz


There are few rooms in the known universe where lyrics like this - 
especially when accompanied by accordion - would go over: Lady of Spain, I 
upload you/Send me your FAQ, I'll decode you....

But then, let's be honest. That one even bombed here - but at least everyone 
in the audience got the joke. And they also knew that the gag wouldn't cost 
the laughmeister, David House, his day job as a top exec for Intel.

Because this was The Computer Bowl, an annual fund-raiser for The Computer 
Museum in Boston and one of the rare tribal gatherings for the computer 
industry's pioneers. The Bowl is patterned after the old College Bowl game 
shows, but all of the questions are about computers. Which is as it should 
be, because these are the folks who made it all possible. You can call it a 
trivia contest if you like, but to these guys it's money in the bank. The 
players are drawn from the ranks of the industry's legends. Take Bob 
Frankston, the co-creator of VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet, and David 
Liddle, who runs Paul Allen's Interval Research but first made his mark as 
one of the smartest smart guys at Xerox PARC. Each of them has always taken 
pride in being the smartest guy in the room - but hey, now they're all in 
the same room.

The aforementioned room, of course, is appropriately done up. It's the San 
Jose Civic Auditorium, disguised as the inside of a huge PC - and, since the 
set was a borrowed Intel Comdex stage - featuring a prominently displayed 
Pentium chip. No wonder the auditorium seemed hot.

This year's event was the All-Star Game, a showdown for the top players from 
the previous five games. Those contests ended with three wins for the West 
Coast and two wins for the East; the East was out to even the score on the 
only battlefield that matters: nerd knowledge.

Imagine for a moment GE's John Welch putting on silly clothes to match wits 
with, say, Henry Kravis. No way.

But this is the computer industry. It's different: wonkishly proud and 
gloriously uncool. And rich, of course: since its inception in 1988, the 
Bowl, presented by the Association for Computing Machinery, has raised more 
than US$4 million for the Museum.

"Ladies and gentlemen, hackers of all ages," says emcee Stewart Cheifet, 
host of the PBS show Computer Chronicles, introducing the bout. "It is the 
revenge of the nerds, the ultimate moment of geek glory!"

"Who knows more about computers?" Cheifet asks. "The people from the East 
Coast, who brought us mainframes and minicomputers? Or the people from the 
West Coast, who brought us silicon chips and personal computers?"

They were all Wunderkinder once, but many of them are now going gray. And 
several of the jaunty baseball-style T-shirts they've agreed to wear pull 
tight over spare tires.

So, while nobody's taking any of this seriously, and it's all for a good 
cause and everyone on stage is buddy-buddy, you can't help but feel the room 
tense up as Mitch Kapor and Bill Gates go head to head on a question. (You 
know the history, but here's the recap: Kapor, founder of Lotus Development 
Corp., walked away from the job in 1986 because the company had gotten too 
big and it just wasn't fun any more - in no small part, it was said, because 
Bill Gates and Microsoft had helped turn software into just another 
cutthroat business. Kapor went on to found the Electronic Frontier 
Foundation, fighting for civil liberties in cyberspace, while Bill Gates 
went on to amass more money than god. The people in the audience at the 
Bowl, of course, knew all of this and more.)

Questioner Andy Grove, the Intel CEO, asks the players to multiply 11 by 11 
- in base 89. Kapor takes the bait, struggling for a moment, and answers: 
"It's going to be one, and whatever stands for 22." The judges say "No" and 
the crowd breaks up, but Kapor's wide-eyed shrug seems to say, "You do it, 
then." Gates can't resist: He buzzes. He gropes. "132."

Host Stewart Cheifet explains, "That's not the correct answer either. The 
correct answer is 121 because it's always 121 except for base 2."

Oh, yeah, right, murmurs the crowd.

Grove smirks. "Obvious," he intones, shaking his head.

Gates, however, successfully guessed the annual cost of the electricity 
required to run all the world's personal computers each year - $4.6 billion. 
His math apparently gets better when he works with really big numbers.

Questions ranged from the obscure to the historical. What did computer 
pioneer Alan Turing do in the woods to guard against wartime inflation? 
(Buried two silver ingots.) How many buttons did Doug Engelbart's first 
mouse have? (Three.) Was the internal pre-release name of Borland's Quattro 
spreadsheet: 1) Buddha, 2) Rows and Columns, or 3) Spreadsheets R Us? 
(Buddha, based on Borland' s pun (and hope) that Quattro would "assume the 
Lotus position.")

This bowl is more low-key than previous bouts - it is another time around 
for each player, after all - but still they tense at the buzzers, waiting to 
slap before some other millionaire can make a move. Liddle buzzes the moment 
he hears the letters "ATM," and blurts out the words "Asynchronous Transfer 
Mode" - but oooh! It's a sucker-punch: the question is actually about 
Automated Teller Machines.

At half time this year, the players leave the stage for a charity auction. 
The audience bids up to $3,600 for a book of essays on Albert Einstein 
autographed by the scientist, while one of Kapor's old Hawaiian shirts pulls 
in $1,300.

Then the bidding heads into the stratosphere. Gates has come to sit in the 
audience, and he gets into competition with Gordon Bell, the computing 
pioneer who developed the phenomenal VAX minicomputer for Digital Equipment 
Corp. The prize: being publisher for a week of Computerworld, the trade 
journal, and visiting one of the newspaper's offices around the world. With 
the combined skills of an auctioneer and a stand-up comic, Christie's 
auctioneer Ursula Hermacinski gets them up to $28,000 before Gates drops 
out. (Later, at the after-dinner bash, Patrick McGovern, CEO of 
Computerworld's corporate parent, offers Gates a week of his own on the 
condition that he match Bell's price. Gates agrees. It's cheaper than buying 
Computerworld outright, though of course he could do that, too, if he 
wanted.)

The last buzzer sounds, and the East takes it, 190-150, evening the ongoing 
battle, 3-3. The top scorers - Liddle and David Nelson, senior software 
consultant for Novell Multimedia - each receive one of the treasures of the 
Computer Museum: memory cores from MIT's original Whirlwind computer, the 
machine that began the museum's collection. The tiny metal donuts suspended 
in the latticework of wires are stunning works of techno-art: Liddle regards 
his with something like awe. All those zillionaires - they're just guys. 
He's holding history.


****************************

More Computer Bowl questions


Supercomputers used for DNA sequencing played a major role in the movie 
Jurassic Park. What brand of supercomputers were used for DNA sequencing in 
the novel Jurassic Park?

 Cray - though the more photogenic Thinking Machines appeared in the movie 
version.

Where does the "Gopher" search software on the Internet get its name?

 The University of Minnesota's burrowing mascot.

What is Bill Clinton's Internet e-mail address?

 president@whitehouse.gov.

What does the acronym "Sega" stand for?

 Service Games.

Of the following, who does not wear earrings: Jean Louis-Gassee, Steven 
Wallach, or Philippe Kahn?

 Kahn.

In what 1974 movie did George Segal have a computer implanted in his brain?

 The Terminal Man.

True or false: the US Department of Defense got permission from Ada 
Lovelace's descendants to use the name Ada for the high-level language?

 True.

                                   * * *

John Schwartz (jswatz@well.com) covers Science for the Washington Post.


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=WIRED Online Copyright Notice=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

         Copyright 1993,4 Ventures USA Ltd.  All rights reserved.

  This article may be redistributed provided that the article and this 
  notice remain intact. This article may not under any circumstances
  be resold or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior 
  written permission from Wired Ventures, Ltd.

  If you have any questions about these terms, or would like information
  about licensing materials from WIRED Online, please contact us via 
  telephone (+1 (415) 904 0660) or email (info@wired.com).

       WIRED and WIRED Online are trademarks of Wired Ventures, Ltd.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
.