Ian & Stuart's Australian Mac: Not for Sale/Another.not.for.sale (Australia).iso/hold me in your arms/RUSirius & StJude/Tech

Text File | 1994-11-21 | 14KB | 275 lines

THE TECHNOLOGY

Fully 50% of HOW TO MUTATE & TAKE OVER THE WORLD will
deal with technology. There will be

%   Real technology at the present state of the art, and its likely
entensions
%   New technologies currently in the works.
%   Logical extrapolations into the near future. Some are fairly
certain. Others -- like the "upload your mind into the Net, then
freeze your head" ideas of silicon valley -- are possible, and
touted by some actual reputable scientists. Probable or not: it's
mindstretching fun.
%   Some playing around with psychological and cultural
detonations as technology impacts society
%   Techniques for adapting technology for specific purposes,
which is a euphemism for hi-jacking the given technology --
what high crit calls "detournement." Hitch-hacking rides for
[your message here] on the microwave relays and satellites,
intrusions into interesting places, hacking medical and surgical
techniques for upgrading one's person.

Focused primarily on info/comm technologies, MUTATE  also
looks at tech ranging from robotics and nanotechnology to
smart drugs and plastic surgery. MUTATE will use strategies
like FAQs and ordinary email, hacker instruction manuals,
surreptitiously taped phone conversations and hacked
[pseudo]government communiques to inform our readers about
current and near-future tech developments. Some parts of this
book will introduce readers to secrets or semi-secrets in areas
still being worked on by leading-edge computerphiles. What
follows is a listing of only some of the technologies MUTATE
will deal with. In most cases the list will specify the
format/medium for the data.

% The interlinked computer networks, otherwise known as the
"Information Highway" and even "cyberspace" will form the
terrain in which much of the action of this book takes place.
The current and near-future workings of the Internet will be
presented as fragments from an Internet employee handbook
passed on to a member of the Underground. Strategies for
controlling the online activity, both in terms of censorship of
content and commercial payment/proprietary interests will be
bashed about.

% Through the cypherpunk and crypto-anarchist underground
we will learn tactics for overcoming attempts to control action
on the net. Cypherpunks (A real group whose name was coined
by charter-member St. Jude) and crypto-anarchists (real
existing persons, but also a joke name coined by Cypherpunks
co-founder Tim May) issue frequent manifestos and
communiques via email. These are usually a mix of humor,
ideological and anti-ideological advocacy and hard technical
data. This book will use actual downloads, and also mimic their
style to provide the readers with all they need to know about
the why and how of privacy defense on the Net: encryption
schemes, the politics of privacy, schemes for pseudonymous
economic networks, ideas for completely anonymous banking
and financial transactions, ideas for the implementation of
digital cash online, and so forth. These materials will appear
frequently throughout the book.
   Actual rants downloaded from this completely overt
underground movement will illustrate use of The Hack to alter
and illuminate history. This puts the Cypherpunks at the center
of our "Mutate and world takeover" scenario. The Hack is to
current cypherpunks and cryptoanarchists what "The Deed"
(usually just ruler-assassination) was to anarchists of the 19th
and early 20th centuries. The Perfect Hack is audacious,
diabolically clever, and exactly apt.  The Cypherpunks
synergize hard tech and soft. Their goals are political, their
means are technical, and they operate brilliantly in both
modes.

%   Media Piracy has a major function in our revolution as well.
The why and how of stealing free airtime by surfing the
television and radio waves, both before and after these media
are merged with the telephone and the Net, will be
communicated firstly by an 8-page article in WIRED 2000.
These acts will be further detailed in statements released by
the pirates, FBI reports on their techniques, and interpersonal
dialogue tapped by other pirates and cypherpunks during
Underground faction wars.

% Extropian technological developments will be peppered
throughout the book. Extropianism is a belief system that
proposes developing human knowledge and technology to
defeat entropy. An Extropian technology might be any
development that helps people to live better, longer lives.
Major areas of focus for Extropians include drugs, tech and
techniques for self-enhancement, cryonics and other strategies
for immortality, space colonization, nanotechnology
(submolecular manipulation and manufacturing), and medical
technologies.
   An overview of Extropianism is given early in the book, with
short descriptions of technologies and the current state of their
art in a six-page Extropian newsletter received by R. U. A large
section of this newsletter will feature a quick-and-dirty listing
of drugs for self-optimization, forwarded instantly to St.Jude
for comment. It covers intelligence enhancement, longevity,
health, aphrodisiacs, sensory tuning, mood adjustment, mind
expansion and creativity, deprogramming and addiction
control, bodybuilding, etc -- a paragraph on each detailing uses,
handy abuses, chemical structures and basic research data
including contraindications, and bibliography. Based in 1994,
this will be almost entirely factual, with perhaps one futuristic
tweak to keep readers on their toes.
   These drugs and nutrients may pop up throughout the book,
in one case combined with yoga and exercise in the regimen of
one of our techno-guerrillas.
   Still later in the book, self-enhancement gets hardcore, with
cybenetic implants, replaceable body parts, and viral phages
programmed for release of neurochemicals appropriate to the
moment.
   Nanotechnology will play an important role in the later years,
and in fact, ends the book... and the WORLD. Nanotech is
introduced to the Underground when the nanotechers are
driven underground and their arrival is heralded or denounced
by excited revolutionists. Discussion about the pros and cons of
nanotech ensue. (CAN it cover the planet with the dreaded grey
goo?)  Details about nanotechnology are made explicit through
the breakthroughs and breakouts mentioned in the plotline.
Transcribed audio tapes of highly advanced nanotechies
dissolving into pure data along with their laboratory records
ought to teach us a great deal about this technology to end all
technologies.
   Cryonics gets the spear when Dr Seagull weepingly describes
for Pirate Television the Federal Marshals destroying his crypt.
Other strategies for immortality are presented by Dr. Gullixon
to a captive audience of radical prisoners, transcribed here for
the captive reader. Prisoners, after all, have to do something...

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SAMPLE:
From: stjude
Date: Thu, 9 Nov 93 12:34:04 EDT
To: rusirius
Subject: Dyslexics on drugs: GHB aka Grevious Bodily
Harm??

I tried that "drug" what supposedly capped the boy
moviedude. It's just gamma-hydroxy benzoic acid, which
all humans contain. More of it may not have helped me
lose weight but it sure made me sleepy. He was either
*really* finely tuned for a moviestar -- even for a
vegan tree-helping moviestar -- or it wasn't GHB at
all. Maybe it was primatesbane -- cocaine -- what with
the seizures and death and all. Or maybe Anne Rice's
coven raised the cone of power to stop him from
conducting the INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE. Horror of
horrorshows: and look who is Lestat. Maybe they'll
fire it up again and strike Tom Cruise blind or
impotent or something.
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% MONDO Vanilli, and its media and performance actions will
provide the pretext for explorations of media technology and
technique. Current and slightly future media and performance
will be deconstructed for your pleasure. MV's business
situation and strategies will  illuminate the economic impact of
nearly-infinite data transmission and storage on the economics
of media-based art and entertainment.
   Using reviews and a feature article in ROLLIN' SPIN
magazine, the evolution of computer-based multimedia
technology and its links to other forms of media will be
explored with the second MONDO Vanilli release, LOTSA STUFF.
The sidebar from the ROLLIN' SPIN article gives a quick look at
the evolution of computer-based multimedia tech.  Issues of
uploading to the Net, copyrighting and copylefting of CDs,
videos and computer-indigenous media will be touched on
later, in a flurry of hacker email regarding the cracking and
uploading of LOTSA STUFF.
   Virtual Reality-oriented technologies come up thrice in MV's
entertainment career and each time it prompts excited tech
writers to review the current state of the art. MUTATE will
attempt realistic predictions for the near-future of this
technology that so many people are hot and bothered about.
   We will learn about state-of-the-art robotics, artificial life, 3D
illusionist theatrical technology, and large-auditorium sound
and video technology through the diagrams and notes of
DChamp, every time MV has to tour. Oh, and don't forget
pages torn out of shopping catalogues.
   We investigate the techniques, and also the ethics and
aesthetics of media manipulation, advertising, propaganda, and
the possible psychological effects of wraparound TV viewing
and VR technology, through the MONDO Vanilli television
program and MV performances and also through actions of the
media pirates.

% Spying and surveillance forms the third strategy of the
underground (after crypto-phreaking/computer hacking and
media piracy). Those on the creepier end of the revolution
insist on providing us with THE UNDERGROUND GUIDE TO
SPYING AND SURVEILLANCE. Sampling heavily from old
Loompanix and CIA handbooks, augmented with quirky hacks
and new technologies, this anonymous underground manual
tells what you need to know for knowing what you need to.
Contains a survey of modern surveillance equipment and
techniques, opportunities and problems of fake identity in the
high-tech era, plastic surgery, how to spy back on the
government and police agencies, weapons of self-defense and
real data on hacking existing spy satellites. Real data!

% Playing the online financial market for extraordinary profit
with supercomputers using chaos, complexity and virtual
reality technology is pivotal to our plotline. "How Zarkov and
Gracie Broke the Bank" in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL details
some of the techniques. A sidebar by economist Peter
Schwartzenkopf provides a brief history of money and the
implications of its movement into cyberspace.

% Other hacker tricks, including cooking and exterminating
viruses, hacking online accounts, and hacking ATM accounts
will be described through encrypted intra-underground
communication. (It's okay: we'll decrypt it for you first.)
   The popular hacker strategy known as social engineering,
which is nerdtalk for manipulating real people to give you the
information you want, becomes central to the "Interpersonal
Appropriation" strategy that is important to our revolution.

% Biotechnology rears its cute little head several times during
this story. Liz Green's "Instruction Book for Desktop
Biotechnology," is too lengthy to run in full, but excerpts will
certainly help those with a little knowledge do a lot of damage.

SAMPLE:
_________________________________________________
The Midnight Scientist, October 14, 1995
THIS SOUNDS LIKE A JOB FOR... SUPERCAT!
Given the nature of Nature nowadays, it's no wonder that cats have
become [hu]man's best friend. They don't care that there is no
outdoors left. They don't need to run about in it, excrete on things
and yammer at other beings, do they? They share the sedentary
habits of their human companions, appreciate long periods of
solitude/neglect in an enclosed space, and in all circumstances
perfectly illustrate cool.
   Ah, but cats are far from perfect. For starts, they have attitude
problems.  Given an optimal size, they would probably eat us. In
the1970s breeders tried for a perfected cat. All they came up with
was the Rag Doll: big as a dog but doggy, floppy, a feline Barney. Of
course, they relied on old time-intensive methods -- mating, kittens,
etc.
   This past June some genetic engineers at UC Berkeley took a
summer sabbatical and successfully hacked the Ideal Cat. By mid-
September Liz Green and her co-conspirators in the gene mill had
an alpha version of Supercat1, sealpoint-siamese model. The supercat
is twice as large as the subcat, and its bigger skull holds a big round
forebrain, home of the social skills. It actually has Lassie- or
Flipper-level language comprehension, and a rudimentary sense of
social consequences. This may be only an superior form of cupboard
love -- who knows with cats? -- but the supercat appears to like
humans. In the proper social context it may embrace its human
housemates, rub its whiskers on them, and -- if the attention seems
welcome -- even press or stroke their skin with its paws.
   The supercat may have lovely manners, but it remains a cat. It's
inscrutable as hell, more graceful than thou, and intimidates though
attitude. Birds up through the size of penguins are in peril, and small
dogs are doomed, unless they've been properly introduced.
   The distribution of supercats is now in startup. SuperCats Forge and
Foundry is implementing an emailorder lab. If Federal OKs come
through as expected, SF&F will crank out Cats to customer spec in a
range of colors, patterns and temperaments.
   There are rumors that Dr. Green is investigating pygmy elephants.
Small enough to fit into a car, husky enough to bear loaded
saddlebags for shopping, the pygmy elephant is affectionate and
very intelligent. Its skin is reportedly "like warm glove leather."

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