Software Vault: The Sapphire Collection/Software Vault (Sapphire Collection) (Digital Impact).ISO/cdr16/wired1_1.zip/STREET.CRE

Text File | 1994-09-18 | 38KB | 767 lines

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**************************** G*E*T**W*I*R*E*D*! ***************************


_Wired 1.1_
Street Cred
***********

The Machines Take Over
War in the Age of Intelligent Machines
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
My favorite headline from the Gulf War read: "Television-Guided Smart
Bombs Find Targets." The semiotic anatomy of that single sentence could
have filled volumes. War in the Age of Intelligent Machines by Manuel De
Landa would serve well as one of those volumes. Actually written before
the Gulf War-as-mini-series, this small but remarkably rich book offers
a unique and enlightening historical analysis of military technology,
control, command, and communications.

War in the Age of Intelligent Machines tracks the US military's long-
standing tradition of centralizing decision-making, and in the last
decade, of transferring advisory and even executive-level decisions to
machines.

De Landa introduces us to a future robot historian, a second narrator of
sorts that is charting its own genealogy. This character gives the book
a dispassionate machine's-eye-view of military technology development.
As this character develops, it consistently attempts to limit or remove
humans from its feedback loops. De Landa believes that the introduction
of personal computers has worked at cross-purposes to the military's
strategy of centralizing battlefield management. He argues that computer
hackers and visionary scientists have a prime opportunity to create
"escape routes" that will thwart the efforts of the government and the
military to "capture and enslave" liberatory technologies such as
computer networks.

In constructing his critique of centralized power and in mapping the
migration of control from humans to machines, De Landa deftly applies
some post-modern philosophy and the latest developments in the science
of chaos and self-organizing systems. He looks at turbulent flows
(migrations, crusades, invasions), singularities (points where order
emerges from chaos), coherency, and many varieties of systemic noise,
all as they apply to the emergence of military hardware, software, and
wetware (the implant of technology directly into the body).

This somewhat difficult book can be read and appreciated on many
different levels. It is a patient and methodical treatise on military
technological history, a primer on self-organization, a further
exploration of the philosophy developed by Deleuze, Guattari, and
Virilio, and a statement of inspiration and hope to those of us who work
in the trenches fighting for decentralized, humane, and symbiotic
relationships with machines.

- Gareth Branwyn


_War in the Age of Intelligent Machines_, by Manuel De Landa, 1991, $17
MIT Press, 617-625-8569.

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

Homebrew VR
Taking Virtual Reality Out of the Labs and Into Your Garage
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Hot to cybertrot, neo-nerds have grabbed the virtual reality gauntlet
and waltzed it right into their home-based workshops. In wired garages
across the land, they're revving their reality engines so they can stick
their heads and poke their fingers into the kinds of cyberspaces
previously inhabitable only by the techno-elite. And they're not hocking
the house to do it.

For some time scientists and academics have been "defining" virtual
reality, and they tell us VR ain't cheap: a modest, research-quality VR
system costs at least $20,000. But thanks to cooperative  techno-
pioneering efforts, people are "doing VR" for under $3,000.

Naturally, you need more than cash. You need time, tinkerer traits (the
ability to wield a soldering iron helps), and access to electronics
supplies. Programming chops also come in handy. Most of all, you need
burning desire - if not to turn your dreams into reality, to turn your
dream worlds into "reality."

As for the VR system, it needs an engine. It also needs a windshield on
the world (output device), a way to be steered (input device), and fuel
(software to create, view, and interact with the scenery).

The computer engine must possess the horsepower to handle graphics and
real-time interaction. Budget-conscious travelers rely on Commodore
Amiga and IBM-style PCs (80386 or '486 with VGA boards). A monitor lets
you view the cyberworld, but to enjoy a "3D" effect, get some LCD-
shutter stereo glasses (made by Sega, Haitex and Toshiba, sold for $60
to $75), which resemble sci-fi Ray Bans. Add magnetic or ultrasound
tracking devices to let the system track head movement, and your visual
perspective shifts accordingly as you swing your head.

To steer, use the mouse/joystick/keyboard combo. Or, like serious
cybernauts, wear a sensor glove such as Mattel's Powerglove for
Nintendo. (Production discontinued in 1991, but you can still find it in
job-lot warehouses and toy stores for under $30). The glove uses
ultrasonics to detect hand motion and "bend sensors" to detect finger
motion.

>From the nets, you can pump some public-domain fuel for the PC, Amiga,
Atari ST, NeXT and Mac. The software lets you define graphic objects in
virtual worlds, give them characteristics such as color, sound, and
weight, define how one object affects another, navigate the environment
and interact with objects in it. Check out Rend386 - it offers fast,
colorful, stereo graphics on a PC with support for mouse, joystick,
keyboard, Powerglove, stereo glasses, and, with some programming, real
VR helmets. Rend386 resides on CompuServe and Internet.

You can buy VR software, too. Domark's Virtual Reality Studio ($90) for
PC compatibles and Amiga lets you use mouse, joystick, and keyboard to
design landscapes with interactive objects. The top-of-the-budget line,
VREAM's VR Development System, goes for $1,500, runs on PCs, and works
with all the cool VR input/output devices. You can imbue VREAM
cyberworlds with photo-real textures (apply a watery finish to your
octopus' garden) and, from $90 to $400, you can buy pre-packaged VREAM
environments - clip worlds!

Most VR homebrewers exchange tips, code, and demos on the nets. Bulletin
board services with considerable VR activity include the WELL,
CompuServe, Bix, America Online, and the Internet. VR homebrewers also
salivate over PCVR ($26 for 6 issues), a newsletter dedicated to the
"Virtual Reality Experimenter Using the IBM Personal Computer." Articles
show how to interface PCs to Powerglove and shutter glasses, build a
head-mounted display, and so on.

It's not easy to create a world. And the results don't resemble those
created with slick systems. But, as one net resident puts it: "Sure it
won't be fast. I don't care. Sure it will have lousy resolution. I don't
care. Sure it will be buggy. I don't care!"

What he and others care about is the fact that they're sparking creative
breakthroughs...and they're helping to drive the development of an
industry, a communications tool, and the ultimate multimedium.

- Linda Jacobson


Virtual Reality Studio, from Domark, 408 246 6607. VR Development System
>from VREAM, 312 477 0425. PCVR newsletter, from gradecki@rodeo,uwyo.edu.
Stereo glasses of all types available from Spectrum Dynamics, 713 520
5020 or [e-mail].

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

Totally Wired Music
Songs of Freedom - Bob Marley (Tuff Gong/Island)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This four-disc set is a mixed blessing.  There's too much generic stuff
>from the Wailers' early years, none of which hints at the genius that
seems to spontaneously manifest in 1970 with the birth of the Wailers
band.  The middle two discs are solid, a basic greatest hits collection,
but the last disc is spotty, padded out with dubs, remixes and rarities.
The liner notes, comments on individual tracks and photos don't justify
the price ($49); fans already have most of this and those interested in
Marley's legacy will be better served by a CD of Burnin' or Natty Dread.

- j. poet

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

As Serenity Approaches - Marcus Roberts (RCA/Novus)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Stride-piano is a style most often associated with the likes of Scott
Joplin and Fats Waller. However, jazz pianist Marcus Roberts has decided
to revisit stride playing here in the '90s for its rhythmic verve and
ability to captivate an audience. Roberts, formerly of Wynton Marsalis'
band, is a gifted young pianist - blind since the age of 4 - who
continues his respectful archeological studies of this centuries' piano
masters. Reaching into material from Waller, Jelly Roll Morton, and Duke
Ellington - as well as several of his own cuts - Roberts continues to
assimilate  and freshly interpret a rich palette of styles. Duets
include Morton's "King Porter Stomp" (w/ Wynton Marsalis on trumpet),
Waller's "The Jitterbug Waltz" (w/ Ellis Marsalis on piano), and
Ellington's "Creole Blues" (w/ Ronald Westray on trombone). Of his own
creation - check out Robert's touching "Angel."

- Will Kreth

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

The Pahinui Brothers (Private Music)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
If you've ever been to Hawaii, and were lucky enough to get away from
the tourist traps; away from Waikiki and away from the ABC stores, away
>from top 40 radio in your rent-a-car and happened to tune to KCCN-AM -
you may have heard the music that Don Ho will never represent.
Traditional Hawaiian slack-key guitar is a rare thing, and one of the
best at it was the late Gabby "Pops" Pahinui. Now, more than 15 years
since recording with their dad on The Gabby Pahinui Band album - the
sons of Gabby have joined together to create a heartfelt new effort,
with help from such luminaries as Ry Cooder, Jim Keltner, David Lindley
and Dwight Yoakam. Highlights include a duet between rhythm guitarist
Bla and Yoakam on the country-flavored "Do You Love Me?" and a swinging
reggaefied cover of John Lennon's "Jealous Guy" - warmly sung by bassist
Martin and accompanied by the inimitably grin-inducing slide-guitar
playing of Cooder's.

- Will Kreth

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

Wireless E-mail
RadioMail and the Embarc Pager
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Tired of checking your e-mail account? Now there's a gadget that lets
you grab your e-mail out of thin air, but it comes with a catch: to
reply, you'll have to log on to a conventional online service.

Motorola's nationwide Embarc (Electronic Mail Broadcast to a Roaming
Computer) paging system offers wireless delivery of electronic mail
directly to notebook computers, palmtops, and pocket organizers like the
Sharp Wizard.

A little larger than a pager, the Embarc unit attaches to your
computer's serial port and alerts you when a message arrives. But to
reply you must log on to Embarc's special mail service. That's a big
disappointment - if you have to log on every time you want to send a
message, why lug around another gizmo?

It isn't cheap either. In addition to the unit cost of $395, a $25 set-
up fee, a $15-per-month subscription fee, and dial-in connect time at
$12 per hour, there are per-message charges. For example, to send a 400
character message for delivery within 15 minutes costs $2.83.

Embarc's not cheap for interactive messaging, but it's excellent for
broadcasting, especially given its deep discounts on messages sent to
address groups. For example, sending a 1,200-character message to 100
people anywhere in the US costs only six cents per recipient. That'll
keep your sales force informed.

Embarc includes free delivery of USA Today's basic news and weather
briefs, and other news services are likely to be available soon.
Motorola also offers interconnections to a few commercial e-mail
services such as GE Information Services, the IBM Information Network
and AT&T Mail, and plans connections with others, including MCI Mail.

Before you rush out and buy one, check out a two-way wireless service
announced last fall by RadioMail Corp. in Menlo Park, Calif. The
RadioMail unit is bigger than Motorola's (about the size of a small
paperback book), the batteries last for a day instead of a month, and
broadcasting to hundreds of users is more expensive, but it allows you
to send your messages from wherever you are, without touching a phone.

- Jeff Ubois


Embarc Pager, 801-579-2748.
RadioMail, 415-349-5683.

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

Skimming a Culture
_Shampoo Planet_
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Blazes of color and type, four-note hooks and half-sentence squibs,
layered together in heavy rotation until you're sure the meat is real
this time, real, fresh, tasty, new, hot - and then returning in thirty
seconds with the new bait: This is marketing.  The first generation to
come of age in the fullness of its roar is blinking its eyes and trying
to tell its TV-deafened story.  Douglas Coupland's very funny book,
_Shampoo Planet_, gets this sense down cold.  If his characters,
skimming a culture of their own off the firehose that's trained on them,
seem cartoonish; if the plot buried under the delightful mess of
language is strictly undergraduate; if the overall taste is of Don
DeLillo in child-sized portions; that's all in character.  The surprise
is that Coupland doesn't seem to grasp what has been lost: _Shampoo
Planet_ isn't filled with rage, and it ought to be.

- Robert Rossney


Shampoo Planet, by Douglas Coupland, 1992, $20, from Pocket Books, 800
223 2348.

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

Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier
_The Hacker Crackdown_
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
One morning in early 1990, US Secret Service agents brandishing an
unsigned search warrant entered the building of Steve Jackson Games
Inc., and proceeded to haul off its computer equipment. The SS accused
Mr. Jackson of conspiring to publish a "manual on computer crime." The
"manual" was actually a simulation game book based on concepts found in
cyberpunk science fiction. Steve Jackson was never charged with any
crime, but the confiscation of his business equipment sent his company
into a financial tailspin, resulting in layoffs that canned half his
workforce. (As of this writing, Steve Jackson Games' computer equipment
remains in confiscation.)

_The Hacker Crackdown_ analyzes the elements and events leading up to
the Jackson raid (and some other very weird and scary hacker busts), and
examines the shock waves still reverberating throughout the digital
community.

Science fiction author-cum-journalist Bruce Sterling hung out with the
major players of the story: telco employees, computer hackers,
simulation gamers, science fiction writers, civil libertarians, and law
enforcement agencies. He watched them work and party, and listened to
them talk to each other about their jobs and about the other players in
the game.

He also studied the complex feedback loops that linked the groups. The
victims - telephone companies that become unwitting hosts for illegal
hacking - use law enforcement agencies to censor people who point out
programming holes in their networks. The computer-crime law-enforcement
community is a curious mixture of ladder-climbers and "good-guy"
hackers, who, in eagerness for promotions, will readily raid the homes
and offices of the people who equate the use of their modems with first
amendment rights.

The computer underground, a grab-bag of malicious pranksters, armchair
anarchists, and believers in technology, is as much at war with itself
as it is with everybody else. The civil libertarians, who've set up the
Electronic Frontier Foundation as a way to establish rules that everyone
can agree with, are winning friends and enemies on all sides.

Not directly connected to the system, but definitely tweaking the knobs
of the hysteria meter, are the disinfotainment media (a.k.a. "Hard
Copy"), who bend the truth so as to terrify their audience. It's
Sterling's departure from this brand of hype journalism that makes _The
Hacker Crackdown_ so enjoyable. His active participation with all the
players makes for a book that presents a balanced and deep understanding
of what's really happening in the computer underground.

- Mark Frauenfelder


Hacker Crackdown, by Bruce Sterling, 1992, $23, from Bantam, 800-223-
6834 x9479 or 212-492-9479.

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

Bozo Filters
^^^^^^^^^^^^
Every large, diverse group of people includes a number of "bozos" you
can't stand. Computer networks are no exception.

Anyone who is online for any length of time develops a personal bozo
list. Often the same characters are found on many people's lists. There
are netbozos whose names are known to tens or hundreds of thousands of
online participants. But some become bozos only to a small number of
people they happen to drive up the wall.

Arguing (flaming) doesn't work, because it often rewards the bozos with
their own perverse currency. If everybody ignores an attention-seeking
bozo, that does have an effect, but there are always new people who
haven't been drawn into the same stupid discussions a dozen times, and
are liable to feed the bozo a straight line.

In the Usenet, the globe-spanning collection of informal online
discussions, the answer to bozos is a software solution, the "kill
file." You create a file that your Usenet-reading software consults. If
you put the name of a particular person in that file, you never see
anything they post again. If you put the name of a certain discussion
topic in that file (say abortion), you never see that topic again.

The virtues and drawbacks of a potential bozo filter for commercial
online communities have been debated for years. In the summer of 1992,
Jef Poskanzer invented a freeware bozo filter for the WELL, an
innovative online system based in Sausalito, Calif.

To use Pokensar's bozo filter, you put the identities of all your bozos
in a file called your ".blist." Until you take those names out of your
bozolist file, everything they post on the WELL will be hidden from your
eyes, replaced by the message: <bozofiltered>. Not only do their
venomous or gratuitously uninformed words disappear from your view, but
you get the satisfaction of reading that message.

The main reason WELL users debated whether or not to install a bozo
filter was based on the fear that the filter would fragment the
interwoven conversations and destroy the community that had become the
most valuable part of the Net. In every community, people have to
disagree from time to time. A tool that enables people to evade
disagreement, one argument went, would weaken the kind of give-and-take
and polite debate that are essential to maintaining a vital, diverse
community. Another argument is that people, having different bozos,
would be missing different parts of the same conversation. The shared
mental model of what has been said over the course of a conversation is
another building block of virtual communities, and WELLites feared that
bozo filters would give everybody slightly skewed mental models.

I tried a bozo filter and I was an instant convert. Out of 7,000 people
on the WELL, and seven years of pretty constant use, I have only four
bozos on my ".blist." But I find that the prospect of facing the WELL in
the morning is considerably brighter now that I don't have to read the
daily blah-blah from those four. It's only been working a couple months.
It doesn't seem to have shredded the discourse and I think bozo filters
have actually raised the conviviality of the community. I'm generally
skeptical of technical solutions to social problems, but bozo filters
are evidence that tools sometimes work better than rules.

- Howard Rheingold


The Bozo Filter can be found on The WELL, 415-332-4335 (voice); go to
Public, topic 36.

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

Slide Projector for the '90s
Kodak Photo CD
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Remember the scene in the sci-fi thriller "Blade Runner" where the
hero's television set zooms in on a photo?  Down 3, over 4.  Enhance.
Well, welcome to the future, replicant.

Check out  Kodak's new Photo CD player.  It connects to your TV like any
good VCR -- through the antenna, RCA jack, or S-video.  Your photos on
the CD (scanned in by your local Fotomat from a regular roll of film)
fill the screen, crisp and clear.  Pop up a shot, slam it where you want
to zoom and bam, into enlargement.  One bitch is that there should be
more levels of zoom.  Also the panning around is weird, it feels like
it's moving in reverse.

Since not every one of your shots is a gem, you can select what
enhancement level and in which order to view a disk.  For even more of a
future shock, the player can also play straight audio CDs, as well as
interactive CDs.

At $499, the player is a bit pricey, but those of us who surf the edge
always pay premium.  Make no mistake, they will get cheaper and this is
the future. I can't wait to microwave popcorn and force my friends to
watch my new-fangled slides.  Beside, I want to be buried with one so
that future generations can discover it clutched in my dusty fingers.  I
picture a King Tut-style exhibition.

-  Ben Calica


Kodak Photo CD Player, basic model $449, from Kodak, 800 945 7200.

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

BBSs of the Month
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
CUFON, Computer UFO Network is dedicated to providing a free, 24-hour,
public source of reliable, verifiable information about the UFO subject.
No message bases are installed. CUFON's file area makes freely available
verified documents and other solid information, including government
documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

The National Amputee Connection  is a BBS for the amputee community and
those involved with amputees. This BBS is sponsored by the North Texas
Amputee Support Group in Dallas, Texas.  Active message areas, including
amputee, spinal injury and chronic pain; informational file area.

- Kathleen Creighton


UFO Reporting and Information Service, 2400 baud, 206 776 0382. National
Amputee Connection, Rob Thurlow, sysop, 2400 baud, 214/238-0928.

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


Game Boy
Sega Genesis CD-ROM
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Sixteen-year-old Glenn Rubenstein has played more than 1,000 different
video games. Glenn can load a tough new game onto one of the many
machines in his bedroom and beat it in eight hours. He's become such an
expert that his local newspaper started carrying a column of his game
reviews, which is now about to go national. Here's what Glenn is raving
about these days:

The most exciting type of CD video games by far are the Sega Genesis
line. These new multimedia games use full-motion video,  digitized
sound, full-length musical scores and interactive storylines. They are
almost movies - Sega has set up an entire studio and hired professional
composers, animators, and scriptwriters to create these multimedia CDs.

Of the 20 games delivered for Christmas 1992, two are real standouts:
"Night Trap" and "Sewer Shark."

Picture this: A group of villains have taken over a house where college
co-eds are planning to spend a weekend. In "Night Trap," it's up to you
to save them. The house is loaded with all sorts of booby traps,
including trap doors, springs on beds, explosives, and others that you
must set off at the right time to defeat the villains. The interface for
this game is easy: point and click. You can switch the room you are
viewing on the screen with just the push of a button. And, as if the
game weren't challenging enough, in every scene there is full-motion
video for the backgrounds which seem to show you something different
every time you play it.

"Sewer Shark" is a shoot-'em-up game with a difference. You are racing
down a sewer at top speed. Your mission is to clean it up - not of
litter, but of evil forces. Your targets (primarily rats) are fast
moving and you never know what will come at you next. Like "Night Trap,"
"Sewer Shark" runs in full-motion video, which makes it extremely fast
paced and sets new standards for non-stop action. In fact, there is so
much action and so many scenarios, the game comes on two discs, making
it an exceptional value. Sega is putting forth a tremendous effort to
make sure that their CD-ROM unit is not just another average peripheral.
The multimedia system is technologically superb, but the key is that it
now has the games available to make use of its abilities.

- Glenn Rubenstein


Sega Genesis CD Player, $299, Night Trap, $60, from Sega of America,
800-872-7342 or 415-591-7529. Sewer Shark, $60 from Sony Image Soft,
310-858-3777.

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

Crash-tested Homework
Prides' Guide to Educational Software
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Bill and Mary Pride have eight kids, all of them home-schooled. The
Prides are into using computers for class work, so they have a computer
room stuffed with a Mac, Apple IIGS, Amiga, a 386 clone, various CD-ROM
devices, Nintendo, a Miracle Piano system, and so on. Add five or six
kids to the room at any one time, and you have a homeschooling arcade.
In between lessons, Ma and Pa and their computer-savvy kids have
evaluated every piece of educational software known to be on the market.
The kids are ceaseless and merciless testers. Somehow the Prides found
time (and a vacant computer) in this madhouse to compile their
evaluations in a humongous and amazingly complete atlas to all
educational software available for personal computers and CD-ROM
platforms. The Prides compare hundreds of pre-school, language arts,
math, science, social studies, and test-preparation programs. Their 600-
page "Prides' Guide to Educational Software" is a gold mine for any
parent unhappy with the structure of school, and intrigued, but baffled,
by the choices available for computer-assisted education.

- Kevin Kelly


Prides' Guide to Educational Software, by Bill and Mary Pride, 1992,
$27.50, from 800 346 6322.

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

Lost in Space
The Sci-Fi Channel
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
You can almost picture a group of executives at the USA Network,
reclining in a boardroom in deep padded leather chairs, staring at a
wall-sized video projection of early prime-time programming. Sliding a
remote controller back and forth across the table in a corporate
"channel surfing" exercise, just as you or I would do at home - they
suddenly hit upon the fact that "Star Trek" (both the "Next Generation"
and the original episodes) are airing on three stations concurrently.
After a series of quick exchanges, nods and glances - hands snap up
telephone receivers, fax machines and ... a network is born - the Sci-Fi
Channel.

The television viewer landscape continues to divide in a process of
niche-mitosis. Witness within the last year-and-a-half the arrival of
the Entertainment (or E!), Cartoon, and Caribbean Satellite networks, as
well as the re-launch of the Learning Channel. The attention-span
demands of additional channels will certainly shake out some of the
contenders from the pretenders. Where the embryonic Sci-Fi Channel
stands today is the lag time between its September 1992 launch (relying
on such old cosmic war-horses as "Space 1999" "Lost In Space" and
"Battlestar Gallactica") and the establishment of new, internally-
generated programming - to which the channel has dedicated $30 million
dollars. And while the audience may be enthusiastic - the real challenge
will be seeing if those at Sci-Fi can hold these viewers and lure-in new
ones who may not have initially been interested in its start-up melange
of recycled cult faves.

- Will Kreth


Sci-Fi Channel on USA Networks: Eastern region:  212 408 9150, Central
region:  312 644 5413, Western region:  310 201 230.

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

Talk Back to Your TV? Not.
Interactive Network
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Futurists tell us interactive television is the cure for our addiction
to passive entertainment. But if today's generation of interactive TV
systems is any indication, please pass the potato chips.

Actually, interactive television has been with us since Zenith
introduced the Space Commander remote control in 1962. Could it be that
smarter control units in two-way communication with television programs
produced for interactivity will someday be as commonplace as the remote
is today? Probably.

In the future, a television viewer might be able to branch through
different story lines, select programming on demand, or play live games
against millions of other viewers. For now, the most you can do is
predict the next play from scrimmage or try to outguess Jessica on
"Murder She Wrote."

These are among the services offered by Interactive Network, probably
the most advanced system on the market today. IN offers a $200 control
unit and a monthly subscription to its television simulcasts. The
programming is delivered to the user by radio subfrequency, presenting
information and play options on the control-unit screen in synch with
programming on television. For example, as you watch the "Jeopardy"
answer revealed on television, you enter the question on your unit at
home. Later, you upload your score to the IN computers and compete for
prizes against other players. Besides game shows, IN's programming is
heavily weighted toward sports and talk programs.

For now, the system is available only in sections of Northern
California. But the company hopes to be available nationally within two
years. IN doesn't have the market to itself, but no competitor has as
strong a pedigree. David B. Lockton founded IN in 1988 armed with a
patent for transmitting data in unused parts of broadcast transmissions.
The chief technologist is Dr. Robert J. Brown, who fathered Pong. IN's
board includes a former head of Warner/AMEX cable, the founder of the
Lexis and Nexis database services, and the president of NBC Cable.
Technical advisors include luminaries Nicholas Negroponte, Alan Kay, and
Bob Teeter, the Republican Party pollster.

But really eye-popping are the investors: NBC, A.C. Nielsen, United
Artists, Cablevision, Singatronics, Videotron and the Granada Group of
England. All these investors have substantial distribution or
programming rights. With this financing and an $18 million public
offering in 1991, IN has ample funds to build its market.

With a patented system for receiving and ranking up to 50 million user
scores, IN will specialize in sports and game programming. "We are still
looking for the killer application," said James "Bow" Rodgers, IN's vice
president of sales and marketing.

So were we, as we played with two IN units over a period of several
months. We found much to like with the system. The control unit itself
is well designed. Uploading scores to IN's central computer is
completely automatic.

The big question is the programming. Playing along with sporting events
was fun, but the total focus on predicting the outcome of plays
eventually grew tiresome. Ditto for game shows - diverting but shallow.
Polling applications have interesting implications for Perot-style
electronic democracy, but it is hard to see how such surveys could be
made statistically significant.

Interactive TV will really take off when there is a big enough user base
to justify the programming costs. In the meantime, questions about
transmission systems, user interface, and interactive applications are
yet to be answered. For now, keep on munching.

- Dan Ruby and Dan Lavin


Interactive Network, 415-960-1007.

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

Guerrilla Cinema
Film Threat
^^^^^^^^^^^
Film Threat is nothing if not the most iconoclastic and funny magazine
to take on Tinseltown. So acerbic is its take on big-budget and
bombastic cinema, one imagines that editor Christian Gore and his
cohorts have worn-out a videotape copy of Robert Altman's "The Player"
in a coffee-cup stained VCR. In his tasty editor's notes, Gore usually
skewers the spoon-fed assumptions of the movie-going minions, with ax-
grinding satire and snide asides. A new national distribution deal and a
exclusive interview with "Ren and Stimpy" creator John Kricfalusi in the
December '92 issue has given this once margin-walking Spy magazine for
guerrilla film and video makers/enthusiasts a push toward the widening
middle-fringe of hipness.

- Will Kreth


Film Threat, $11.85 for six issues, from 818 760 8983.

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

A Book You Can Start Anywhere
_From Alice To Ocean: Alone Across the Outback_
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Taped to the back of this visually stunning book about a 27-year-old
Aussie's lunatic trek across the outback (accompanied by a few camels
and a dog) are two CD-ROM discs and a letter from Rick Smolan, the force
behind the Day in The Life series of coffee-table ornaments.

"The two CD discs tucked into the back of this book are demonstrations
of an exciting new form of publishing," Smolan writes. Indeed they are.
The discs, one for the new Kodak Photo CD player and another for the
Macintosh CD player, provide an entirely new way of understanding Robyn
Davidson's odyssey.

Throughout the CD version of the book, Davidson's Australian drawl reads
to us from her best-selling and well-written book Tracks. While the
layout and interactive features of the CD-ROM are compelling, the Apple
CD is by nature slow, and you are left pining for some kind of fast
forward feature (we did not look at the Photo CD version).

The promotional nature of the book might also leave you a little cold:
if you don't own a Photo CD player, the letter urges you to run down to
your "local consumer electronics dealer" and ask them to play it for
you. Yeah, right. And when you quit the Mac version, a promotional
window comes up informing you the program was created in Macromedia's
Director, and just in case, here's the software company's phone number.

According to the publisher, _From Alice To Ocean: Alone Across the
Outback_ is the first book to include CD-ROM discs. For a first effort,
this project is remarkably well done.

- John Battelle


_From Alice to Ocean_, 1992, $49.95 from Addison Wesley, 800-447-2226.

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

The Law Catches Up
_Syslaw_
^^^^^^^^
It's almost a cliche by now that the frontier of new media, particularly
the electronic media of computer conferencing, runs ahead of the law.
Legal paradox seems the norm in online life, where there is no there
there, and operators of computer networks - system operators, or sysops
- are half-way between publishers (responsible for what is said) and
telephone companies (not responsible for what anyone says). It turns out
there is more law on this frontier than imagined, and now that money,
real money, is being made by small conferencing sysops, "syslaw" is
catching up. _Syslaw_ (Second Edition) is a remarkably readable book
detailing current interpretations of intellectual property and civil
liberties online. It's required reading for cyberspace cowboys.

- Kevin Kelly


_Syslaw_, by Rose and Wallace, 1992, $35, LOL Productions, 800-321-8285.



Copyright (c) 1993 Wired magazine