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

Text File | 1994-11-21 | 49KB | 966 lines

PLOT

IN THE 1990S A MAJOR SPLIT IN THE AMERICAN PUBLIC IS
BECOMING OBVIOUS: THERE IS THE NUMERICALLY LARGE
MINORITY OF HIP MEDIA FANS THAT KEEPS MONDO VANILLI
THE MOST POPULAR SHOW ON TV -- AND THERE IS THE
STRANGE BEDFELLOWSHIP OF CONSERVATIVES AND THE
POLITICALLY CORRECT. LONG WORKING OUT THEIR
INCOMPATIBILITY PROBLEMS, THEY ARE NOW A POWERFUL
ALLIANCE TO NARROW WHAT'S CALLED PERSONAL LIFESTYLE
CHOICES -- AMONG THEM THE CHOICE TO ENGAGE WITH THE
INCREASINGLY RAW AND BIZARRE EXPERIMENTAL MEDIA
THAT MV LEADS. THE MOST ACTIVE GROUP IN THE NEW
CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT IS THE HUMAN ANTI-
DEGRADATION LEAGUE, WHOSE ANNOUNCED GOAL IS
IMPOSING ON ALL MEDIA ITS ANTI-DEGRADATION
STANDARDS -- "THIS DEGRADES WOMEN, THIS IS DEGRADING
TO CHILDREN. AND THIS IS DEGRADING TO..." HADL'S TAKEOVER
OF THE INTERNET, "THE MARCH ON THE INFORMATION
HIGHWAY" LEADS TO THE FORMATION OF AN AMERICAN
UNDERGROUND, WHICH BECOMES INTERNATIONAL, JOINED BY A
VARIETY OF UNDERGROUND NETS OF HACKERS [dedicated
technos who play with given tech in novel ways], PHREAKERS
[HARDWARE AND PHONE HACKERS], CRYPTOANARCHISTS [A
HUMOROUS TERM FOR ANARCHISTS WHO WANT TO CHANGE
THE WORLD WITH CRYPTOGRAPHY], AND PEOPLE JUST PLAIN
PISSED OFF AT SEEING THE PLANET-WIDE DISCOURSE
CENSORED. THE UNDERGROUND CREATES ITSELF WITH MANY
FACTIONS AND MANIFESTATIONS.

1994
April 30, 1994: The first MONDO Vanilli album,
AMERICA'S NEWEST HITMAKERS, climbs rapidly to
number one on the charts. This manic reflection of chaotic
times has the effect of making the times even more chaotic.

1995
May 15, 1995: Police Roadblocks on the Information
Highway: Censorship enforced on the Internet by the
Feds.
The Net has been identified by the New Conservatives as the
medium of the future. The religious Right, old-style feminists
and the politically-correct Left have been pouring millions into
mass recruiting for their Human Anti-Degradation League,
which pressures their membership to buy modems and SIGN
ON. The constituency of the Net changes over a few months to
be powerfully pro-censorship.
   In spite of thousands of vocal nerds, net management and
the FCC are pressured to draw up "Anti-Degradation standards"
-- which for starts ban all the usual religious and sexual words
like damn and pork, along with racially offensive or sexist
terms like whitebread and chick -- enforced by Federal spot-
monitoring of all messages on the Net.
   The parallel, pointed out at once by scandalized Libertarians,
is the federal highway system: the local governments aren't
REQUIRED to set 55 mph speed regulations, but they'd better if
they expect to get federal funds. The Net management caves in
to unremitting pressure: the Net is no longer gross.

May 16, 1995: the CryptoNet. You can't censor what
you can't read. Cypherpunks [A GROUP OF HACKERS,
CRYPTOANARCHISTS AND CRYPTOGRAPHY FANS CONCERNED
WITH PRIVACY AND FREEDOM], disbanded a year ago when
they believed they had Won, reconvene. They and Libertarian
cryptophreakers and hackers everywhere initiate emergency
countermeasures, issuing manifestos and rants, and posting
directions for obtaining encryption tech, both software and
hardware [AN EXAMPLE OF ENCRYPTION HARDWARE IS THE
SCRAMBLER PHONE. SOFTWARE ALLOWS EMAIL TO BE MASHED
INTO WHAT LOOKS LIKE RANDOM BITS UNLESS YOU HAVE THE
KEY TO UNMASH IT]. Hackers stay up all night and bash code
[that is, they program] or dig out their old email encryption
gear and fire it up: heh: practically overnight there are several
compatible pseudonymous encrypted email systems [USING A
PSEUDONYM WITH THE PROPER EMAIL SYSTEM PROTECTS
YOUR CARNAL REAL IDENTITY]. Internet traffic starts to look
like -- random bits! Except for the religious bits. And the
random chitchat. Technical discourse seems to have
disappeared from the Net. But what remains is very nice.

June, 1995: The MONDO Vanilli World tour uses robots,
artificial life, and 3-dimensional visual and audio technology to
give attendees a wraparound full-sensory experience of such
wonders as a lesbian sm session, the slaughter and cooking of a
large pig, a kind of neo-Erhardt Seminar Training (EST) session
and other delights. The use of the most advanced illusionist
theater technology for an erotic and psychologically challenging
audience experience makes the tour a wild hit. The HADL uses
the MV world tour as a pretext for extending itself
internationally, with very mixed results. Holland and
Scandinavia predictably laugh even more than they did at MV,
but in most European countries the conservatives recognize
their own, and HADL signs Tem up.

July 18, 1995: The long-foreseen Federal banning of
"unauthorized" encryption software and devices. The
battle for the Internet part 3: a special session of Congress
passes a Public Safety Encryption Bill to outlaw use of non-
regulated encryption, both hardware and software. This hurry-
up legislation is HADL-backed, and supported by haters of
child-porn GIF files everywhere [GRAPHIC INFORMATION
FORMAT == A FORMAT FOR SENDING PICTURES ONLINE].
Mandatory prison terms are suggested for violations of the new
bill, which is based on the old laws that ranked cryptography
along with munitions as a government prerogative. The
attendant new bureaucracy is called the Encryption Regulatory
Commission (ERC).

July 19, 1995: Nerds' Revenge: instant Underground,
CounterNets, Media hacking. The Cypherpunks, world's
first completely open conspiracy, becomes a secret anti-
organization. Some Extropians [A SILICON VALLEY GROUP OF
SCIENTISTS, MATHEMATICIANS, PROGRAMMERS AND
WEIRDIES DEVOTED TO COMBATTING ENTROPY WITH
EVERYTHING THE HUMAN MIND CAN THROW AT IT, TO EXTEND
LIFE AND INTELLIGENCE], some Libertarians, some hacker
types decide it's time to create an Underground.
   They do this by declaring there is one. (An Underground is
first of all a semiotic construct.)  They post these declarations
Internet-wide without interference, since they avoid saying
"fuck" or any of those other words. They seem to have a lot of
fun with this: they bounce their manifestoes untraceably and
sign them with faction names like The Moles [a word that
means either a burrowing mammal or a deep-cover spy], their
motto -- "We are the blemishes on corporate America" etc.
   Having declared it into being, most of them join the
Underground simply by taking up a secret life based on
untraceable communications. Some of them go further:
becoming invisible in a data-based culture is something they've
worked up to for years. They vanish. (And very happily in
most cases -- those who always secretly longed for their own
Revolutionary Underground... like the Rave kids who got their
own Sixties.)
   Those who physically Go Under sometimes leave the US to
join or create their own TAZes -- temporary autonomous zones
-- in parts of the world where they can be free from laws, cops,
and the unbearable pressures of niceness. There has been since
1992 a movement toward setting up "offshore" banks and
other financial and trade institutions, free ports, etc, out of the
reach of governments, particularly the U S. This movement
becomes more important as these years wear on.
   An underground, especially a conceptual one, lives by
communications. Most of the ongoing revolutionary discourse
takes place (surprise!) on the Internet. Pseudonym talks to
pseudonym via offshore remailer systems [USUALLY A BBS
THAT SERVES AS AN EMAIL DROP, LIKE A PO BOX, SO THAT
RETURN ADDRESSES CAN'T BE TRACED. USING SEVERAL
REMAILERS EVERY TIME PRETTY WELL OBLITERATES YOUR
TRAIL] with elaborate verification protocols to prove they are
who they say they are. (The easy way to verify, with
unregistered encryption keys [IF YOU ENCRYPT SOMETHING
WITH YOUR PRIVATE KEY AND ONLY YOUR PUBLIC KEY
UNSCRAMBLES IT, IT MUST BE FROM YOU. A GOVERNMENT
PLAN TO REGISTER -- AND READ -- ALL KEYS IS IN THE
WORKS.], is outlawed.) This leads to the reputation net that
Cypherpunks foresaw long ago -- Skull vouches for you, so
Cruncher thinks you're okay. Disguised messaging --
steganography -- is the easy way to send stuff you don't want
read: into a harmless Hallmark greeting GIF you insert an
encrypted goody whose presence the Feds won't suspect if your
handle is AuntMarge.
   Pseudonymous posting on the Internet is possible by
bouncing posts through remailers -- hello, Finland! But there's
a growing feeling that hitchhacking -- hitching a ride on
existing media -- needs to be extended. SneakerNet is one
microwave relay-hacking crew. Satellite hacking is long
overdue: there's a group called Reach! and another called
Mooners. Over the course of months a Conelrad network is
painfully hacked together in urban areas of North America: a
radio-based semi-encrypted independent net -- look: no wires!
The conceptual BigNet (all the nets and BBSs) that links the
whole Underground together is called the Mycelium. This is
typical nerdish humor: Mycelium is the underground net of
fibers constituting the real body of a plant that only
occasionally sprouts mushrooms.
   Meanwhile, other Underground hackers with long-standing
grudges against broadcast media find new and fascinating ways
to subvert it....  INTO THE MATING GAME FLASHES A
MICROWAVE-RELAY HACKER IN A SMILEY-FACE MASK
READING OFF A SHEET OF PAPER: "AND NOW, A BRIEF MESSAGE
FROM YOUR HACKER UNDERGROUND: TODAY'S STUFF YOUR
GOVERNMENT DOES NOT WANT YOU TO KNOW."
   These interruptions are REALLY POPULAR: people sit with
their remotes ready to tape them, and trade them back and
forth.
   When hackers crack into and read off long-secret
government statistics on real unemployment rates -- greater
than 50% in mid-1995 -- the viewing, taping public has a mass
breakthrough on the reality front: most of them do little BUT
view and tape. The world is the TV screen. The message is the
media. And media -- especially with that self-realization -- is
getting weirder by the day.

Sept. 1995: MONDO Vanilli's TV show
As a huge media event, the MONDO Vanilli TV show opens in
tandem with a marketing push of the MONDO Vanilli headware,
available for $18.95 at 7-11 stores, that allows the viewer to
see and hear the program comfortably in 3D. The show is the
Monkees forcibly bred with David Cronenberg -- a ridiculous
pop band living together and getting silly, yeah, but beneath
the surface extremely weird biological and psychic stuff is
happening. The show is bizarre and sexual, but not as far
Tround the bend as MV's public performances.
   The program's popularity, however, raises to new volume
the shouts for censorship of the TV waves, now supporting
over 1,000 channels and generally viewed as being both out of,
and beyond control. But if they can control the Internet, thinks
both sides, why not television?

Oct 1, 1995: The Mutants' Manifesto is posted on the
Net. The Underground, already very various, sprouts a few
new manifestations: armed persons with serious politics, like
the Paxton Quigley Brigade -- "We're Armed, We're Female."
[MS QUIGLEY WROTE Armed and Female, DEFENDING FEMALE
SELFDEFENSE. SHE TEACHES SHARPSHOOTING.] One branch of
the armed wing, heh, call themselves the Mutants, dedicated to
"Mutating and Taking Over the World." Their manifesto forms
one of the core documents of the book.
   To media- and Net-hacking activities the Underground has
been adding direct actions against financial and law-
enforcement operations of the State and the mega-corps.
   Popular aboveground cyber-writer and humorist St. Jude is
called the patron saint of the movement -- the saint of hopeless
causes, yes -- for her satires on the goals and methods of the
Underground. She denies any direct connection, but she is
continuing a longterm lovership with one of the group's
perceived "leaders," and helps maintain communications among
factions.

Oct 3, 1995: Robin Hood Day. Today people all over the
United States and Canada woke up either richer or poorer. Bank
accounts of less than $30,000 were mysteriously credited
$3000. Accounts with more were debited the same amount.
There were no public announcements, no manifestoes.

Oct 31, 1995: Halloween online. Many pranks, on the
Internet and on broadcast TV.

Nov - Dec 1995: The X-Xmas campaign. Pirates jam
Christmas advertising and traditional tired holiday hoopla,
substituting advertising-parody jingles and Tom Lehrer-style
carols. A couple of factions start a "Take Back the Solstice"
campaign, broadcasting pagan spiral dances with torches,
prayers for the safe return of the sun, etc.
   Immediately other segments of the Underground come back
with pagan parodies and Free the Holidays campaigns -- Let
My Kwanzaa Go! It's very festive.

1996

Jan 1996: Simone 3Arm does a solo performance tour,
which morphs over the course of the tour into a Goddess
revival-meeting format. Mass conversions result.

Feb 2, 1996: The second MONDO Vanilli record release,
LOTSA STUFF, comes with an album's worth of music and a
full CD-ROM. This will be a pretext for exploring the evolution
of computer-based multimedia technology and its links to other
forms of media. LOTSA STUFF gets hacked immediately and is
made freely available on line -- which fact is then heavily
publicized by MV. MV thus sets a Free-the-Media precedent --
seemingly encouraging phreakers to crack and freely distribute
not only its own stuff but any musical or CD-ROM release.

Early 1996: How to Mutate and Take Over the World.
Pirate media pranking by the Underground has evolved an
ongoing shtick called Mutate and Take Over the World:


SAMPLE
_________________________________________________
___
THE EVENING NEWS IS FOCUSING ON THE PLIGHT OF THE LEFT-HANDED.
SUDDENLY THE SCREEN GOES PLAID. A FIGURE STEPS BEFORE THE CAMERA:
THE SMILEY FACEMASK NODS ITS HEAD IN GREETING. HIS/HER VOICE IS
ELECTRONICALLY TREATED TO SOUND LIKE MICKEY MOUSE:

GOOD EVENING, COMRADES. THIS UNSCHEDULED INSTALLMENT OF MUTATE
AND TAKE OVER THE WORLD IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE COMMIE FACTION
OF THE INTERNATIONAL ANARCHIST PICNIC, AND BY THE COPYRIGHT
LAWS OF SOMEBODY'S GOVERNMENT... BUT NOT MINE.
   WE ALL NOW UNDERSTAND THAT THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS
COPYRIGHTED, PROTECTED, SAFE, TAME DATA. ONCE DATA'S DISTRIBUTED,
IT GOES WILD -- FERAL DATA. IT JUST HANGS AROUND BEING FREE AND
REPRODUCING ITSELF. SOUND LIKE FUN? BUT FREE DATA CAN BE TRAPPED
AND SOLD: YOU CAN SELL WATER TO SOMEBODY IN THE DESERT, RIGHT? TO
SOMEBODY WITH NO ACCESS, YOU CAN EVEN SELL DATA.
   OKAY, SAY YOU'RE A LEFTO-ANARCHIST. YOU WRITE OR PROGRAM
SOMETHING TRULY SNARKY AND YOU WANT PEOPLE TO SEE IT, FREE, AND
YOU DON'T WANT SOME CORPORATE SLAVEDEALER MAKING MONEY OFF IT.
WHAT TO DO?
   REMEMBER, THE BEST HACK USES THE TOOLS AT HAND. THE COPYRIGHT
LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WERE DRAWN UP FOR JUST THIS
SITCH. YOU ATTACH A LABEL TO IT, SAYING THAT IT'S COPY-PROTECTED BY
LAW, THAT IT'S ILLEGAL TO DISTRIBUTE IT AND THEIR ASS CAN BE SUED
OFF... UNLESS THEY DISTRIBUTE IT FREE.
   THIS IS CALLED COPYLEFTING, AN IDEA CREDITED TO RICHARD
STALLMAN. IT'S A SMART WEAPON: IT HITS ONLY THE LAW-ABIDING.
   REMEMBER THIS AND TAKE COMFORT, FRIENDS: THERE ARE MILLIONS
OF WAYS TO BE POLITICALLY INCORRECT.
   THE UNDERGROUND--dropping to a synthesized deep intimate tone--
Loves You.
   STAY FREE!

A FEW SCENES OF A JAPANESE PORN MANGA ANIMATION, ITS
TRADITIONAL BLANKED-OUT GENITALS REPLACED BY NEW-MODEL CARS ,
TREES, AND MAJOR HOME APPLIANCES; SLOW FADE TO BLACK. NORMAL
BROADCAST RESUMES.
_________________________________________________
_____

Early 1996: U. S. Ranks Worse than Cambodia in Infant
Mortality!
In this election year, the media starts with the damning
statistics early on. While America continues to be the center for
media/tech evolution and the capital of the world for
entertainment and media,
and while a small percentage continue to make money,
America is declining into a class hierarchy typical of her former
banana colonies to the south. The over-50% real unemployment
rate makes for a demoralized formerly middle class and, for
the less demoralized, more career opportunities in crime. So,
the country that ALREADY (real life, today...) has the greatest
percentage of her people imprisoned starts to turn large areas
of real estate into prison "annexes." This is indicative of a
possible strategy for resolving the unemployment problem
without resorting to politically unpopular welfare statism.
Meanwhile, mainstream economic statistics still show the
economy doing OK in a "slow growth" phase.

April 1, 1996: April Fool Extravaganza by pirate media
prankers, hours of "Best of" and new releases from all factions.
Some of them are wild beyond belief.

June 1996: Simone 3Arm becomes the first
televangelist for CyborGoddess, with a saturation
syndication. She's pitching the religion she just founded, which
begins with the Creed, "I believe in CyborGoddess, her Explicit
Graphicness. I celebrate Her public rites of the CyborErotic."
   The religious right goes nuts, of course. Email complaints and
rants, carefully unexplicit, swamp the Internet.

SAMPLE
_________________________________________________
_____
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, JUNE 19, 1996, MEDIA WATCH
SIMONE OUTSTRIPS HERSELF: THE MEDIA'S RECENTLY HAD A THING
FOR SMALLISH BRUNETTES WITH HOT EYES AND A STYLISH WAY WITH
THE OUTRAGE. WE HAD MADONNA IN THE 80S AND EARLY 90S, WE'VE GOT
SIMONE3ARM TODAY AND MAYBE INTO THE MILLENNIUM. SHE'S GOT THE
MEDIA BY THE HOLY VESICLES: SHE'S THE CULT HERO WITH AN ACTUAL
CULT. NOTICED THE MARKET SHARE OF THE RELIGIOUS CHANNELS
RECENTLY? THAT'S NOT FROM YOUNG BILLY GRAHAM III, GUY.
   IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE PREACHED AT, CATCH SIMONE ON MTV AND
THE MONDO Vanilli show, BUT IF YOU REALLY WANT TO GET RELIGION,
WATCH GODDESS LIVE! ON THE LIVING RELIGION CHANNEL EVERY NIGHT
AT MIDNIGHT. TV FIRSTS GUARANTEED ON EVERY HALF-HOUR SEGMENT.
IF YOU'RE LUCKY YOU'LL CATCH THE CELEBRATION OF THE SACRAMENT.
YOW! ER... BLESSED BE!
_________________________________________________
_____

Oct - Nov 1996: HADL does a saturation campaign of
Paid Political Messages endorsing those candidates it can be
reasonably certain will follow their line. The Human Anti-
Degradation League is a powerful lobbying force, and word is
they've sewn up the election. One goal of their campaign in this
election is to force the reasonably certain to be re-elected
Clinton(s) to move against what they perceived as media
decadence. They're pounding on this maxim: if, as the prankers
have forced everybody to believe, the medium really is the
world, this world is messy and corrupt. The HADL lobby is
pivotal in the re-election, exacting public campaign promises
from all candidates to move on the issue.

Oct - Nov 1996: Election media pranking. Wild parodies
of all the candidates and their programs, much burlesquing of
the HADL Paid Political Messages. Different segments of the
Underground have different takes on this, and differing senses
of humor, and it's pretty funny. Unofficially it's the most
popular phenomenon on TV -- a two-month wonder. As the
election comes near the Vote, What For? and the Nobody for
President anarchist branches pitch their message with, other
political theorists claim, too much effectiveness.

Nov. 1996: Bill and Hillary -- er, GORE re-elected by a
landslide.

Nov: 1996: With online tax filing now fully implemented and
being used by the majority of tax-paying civilians, hackers are
able to corrupt the data at the point and in the moment of
reception. Over 30% of the tax forms are corrupted beyond
recognition. This becomes news about three months later and
results in yet another sales tax increase. This action continues,
implicitly, throughout the "struggle."

Nov - Dec 1996: The 2nd annual XXmas and Solstice
celebration. Much merriment is made.  Constant Ad-slot
hacking(see sample immediately below.). This year Overworld
broadcasting has its own counterChristmas programming:
sometimes it's hard to know which is which.

SAMPLE
_________________________________________________
_____
note: the reporter who writes this column will be seen to be
radicalized over the course of the book:
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, NOV 29, 1996, MEDIA WATCH
THE BALANCE BETWEEN VIEWER ANNOYANCE AND VIEWER DELIGHT --
QUICK, TURN ON THE VCR! -- IS BEING SORTED OUT BY THE PIRATES OF THE
AIR.
   NICELY TIMED AD-SLOT HACKING SEEMS TO BE EASING COMPLAINTS
ABOUT INTERRUPTIONS OF SCHEDULED FAVE SHOWS AND FOOTBALL
GAMES.
   SO, INTO OUR TRADITIONAL 3-MINUTE COMMERCIAL BREAKS ARE
DROPPED SUCH FAMILIAR ANTI-ADS AS THE ONE-LINER "INSERT YOUR
MESSAGE HERE", WITH THE SEVERELY OUT OF FOCUS PORN STUFF
HAPPENING IN THE BACKGROUND, AND EVER-MORE-STATE-OF-THE-ART
COMPUTER GRAPHICS AD PARODIES. NEW IS A FEATURE TURNING UP IN
SPOTS IN THE EVENING NEWS AND THE MONDO Vanilli Show: "THE 3-
MINUTE MUTANT."

Late Dec 1996: A post-holiday HADL campaign on cleaning
up broadcasting and squashing the pirates.

Dec. 1996: The Disinformation Highway.
The hardcore intruders [HACKERS WHO LIKE TO BREAK INTO
SYSTEMS.] in the Underground get busy, striking at U S
Government targets. One group hacks communiqus at the
highest levels of the State Department and the Pentagon,
breaking into allegedly hack-proof private communications
networks and altering or substituting, working without
publicity in hopes the changes will pass unnoticed..
   Others -- or maybe the same ones, who knows? -- hit the
Internet, inserting minor but time-wasting glitches in the
subnetworks, even unto tweaking the PCs of home users
hanging off the Net. (This generates a lot of interfactional static,
some sections cherishing free communications and some just
wanting to DESTROY.)
   Worse, oh much worse, using insider knowledge of the
dynamics of interaction within selected public and private
organizations (HADL affiliates and the anti-encryption agencies
are only the obvious targets), they are able to sow discord and
confusion within them, avoiding suspicion by mimicking the
communiqus of individuals with poor face-to-face
communications skills and/or with already bad interpersonal
relationships. This results in severe policy mis-steps, intra-
organizational warfare and job loss and, finally, a major foreign
policy dbacle as U. S. troops are sent to Palestine to protect
Palestinians from a minor Israeli military incursion, only to
have them returned home before their arrival. This strategy of
interception and replacement of communications to cause
confusion becomes known as "Interpersonal Appropriation."

1997
Feb. 1997: The War Against Violence and Porn. In 1997
a bi-partisan alliance in Congress announces the War. All the
media are heavily pressured to self-censor for a G-Rated
[Suitable for All Audiences] content. If it's not fit for a five-yr-
old it's not suitable for YOU.
   The response of the major networks and the print media is
swift: things get Nicer than before, very rapidly. There's no
censorship like self-censorship; it's moving toward a 50s Disney
world on all channels -- except for the continuing media
hacking from the Underground, which is perceived by the
authorities as politically subversive as well as politically
incorrect. There is a lot of pressure to find the "leaders" and
put them away. A large part of the War Against V&P budget
goes toward crushing the Underground.

March 1997: The media get sweeter and sweeter.
Meanwhile, the still hot MONDO Vanilli releases VANILLI
DECADENCE and co-sponsors the parody "Decadent Art" show,
with the Third Reich parody group, NSDAP (New School of
Design Art and Performance). The show is slated to run in Los
Angeles for ninety days, and includes the latest in computer
wearables [COMPUTERS AND GEAR THAT, YES, CAN BE WORN.]
and 3-Dimensional sensory saturation staging, the new human-
like robots, and pushes to the absolute edge the physical
torture of an audience using light and sound. As well as nightly
live performances by MONDO Vanilli, the "Decadent Art" show
features all of the leading "shock" artists of the time. It is shut
down after one week and all participants are threatened with
arrest.

March 1997: The Underground starts a heavy pirate-
publicity campaign to organize from and within the jails.
   It also uses the strategy of Interpersonal Appropriation in
attacks on the ERC (Encryption Regulatory Commission), making
great chaos in this barely formed organization. Deeply satisfied
with being able to read/listen to the personal communications
of the leading political enforcers of decency -- which reveals
tremendous corruption and hypocrisy -- portions of the
Underground turn a great deal of attention to all forms of
surveillance, including video surveillaince (they hack spy
satellites to their own use), and old-fashioned shadowing.
Revelatory materials are widely distributed over pirated media
and the Nets. The tweaked stuff is hilarious, but the actual
liberated stuff is only mildly convincing, given the ability of
even modestly technically sophisticated individuals to alter or
even create realistic-seeming activity in any medium.
Nevertheless, the sexual peccadilloes, drug habits etc of the
"Moral Elite" becomes a primary source of hilarity on all the
media.

April 1, 1997: The 2nd April Fool Extravaganza. Anti-
ads for this event have been blitzing the real ads for weeks,
promising a media breakthrough, the most surprising ever:
"Revealed! The Shocking Future Of Media!"
   April 1 evening programming draws the heaviest viewer
share ever. Surprise: for the 24 hours following, ONLY
REGULARLY SCHEDULED BROADCASTS. It's pretty shocking, all
right. Viewers get the point.  This is what life would be like if
the Overworld gets its way.

April 3, 1997: The Information Liberation Front --
"Information Longs to be Free" -- is raided in Mountain
View, CA. An armed standoff lasting several hours ends when
the Front -- one computer scientist -- cheerfully gives himself
up. He passes out copies of the Information Liberation Front
manifesto to the arresting officers and the gathered media, and
quips to the Press that he's looking forward to jail, because he's
missed all his friends. The ILF guy [who actually exists, with all
sorts of name changes to protect him] will be an ongoing
character: he's a gun nut, a right-Libertarian, (Heinlein
tendency), and very inventive, combative and funny. We'll see
his view of the prison Underground.

April 8, 1997: Biotechnology Produces AIDS Counter-
Virus. The AIDS virus is tamed, not destroyed, but AIDS now
means only a minor susceptibility to disease and infection. The
public sexual puritanism remains in place, which only makes
the secretive but massive transgressions more delicious.

May 1997: Pirate advertisements. Amenities of the
Underground are pitched online and in ad-slot hacking on TV.
Online and offshore banks are explained and pitched. Real and
virtual TAZes (Temporary Autonomous Zones) are hawked with
resort style promos -- "Belgian New Guinea. Where the balmy"
etc. Some really ambitious hackers blitz the home shopping
channels with underground "products," most of them fictional
and scandalous. Parodic public broadcasting campaigns ask for
viewer support for real, virtual, or completely fictional
underground institutions. Promo spots like: "The few, the
happy. Be all that you can be, in the Underground!" With
contact information for newby-level [NEWCOMER] hookups with
the Net. This is very gutsy. It indicates a move toward the Open
Secret model for action. [THE NOTION THAT THERE IS NO WAY
OF CRACKING A REVOLUTIONARY ORGANIZATION THAT HAS
NOTHING TO HIDE AND ACCEPTS EVERYONE WHO WANTS TO
JOIN.]

June 1997: MONDO Vanilli, along with other media-
oriented businesses finds itself in a sudden economic
crunch -- because information that previous longed to be
free, now is. Media has been "liberated" by the hacking that
MV helped foster as its own media prank. Media in general is
in chaos, but MV has its own special problems. Sponsors are
leery of being hacked in the MV TV show slots, which are
primo targets. MV becomes a media arm of Sony/Paramount
and is given its own TV network with some unreal estate on
the Internet to sweeten the deal. It becomes one of the many
groups programming its own 3D interactive VR game. As usual,
the bizarre content causes consternation, and subsequent fat
profits.

July 9, 1997: The unexpected retirement of Bill (and
perforce, Hillary Rodman) Clinton as the result of a scandal so
bizarre (we assume), so raw (we think) that no media were
able to even hint at its nature under the new Standards of
Decency -- "All the News that's Correct to Print."

July 10, 1997: The succession of Al and Tipper and the
appointment of Catherine McKinnon Masson as vice-President
initiates full industrial-strength New Puritanism. Jesse Helms is
appointed by the new administration to head the newly
created  Bureau of Media Standards (BMS).  Noted technophobe
and anti-biotech fanatic Jeremy Rifkin is appointed Secretary
of the Interior. Much rejoicing from oldstyle feminists and
fundamentalists in the usual flavors: Christians, Jews, Moslems,
New Agers, Luddite-Revivalists et al. Correct Politicians become
dominant in both parties.

August 10 -13, 1997: Hacking at the End of the
Universe V. Members of the American Underground openly
attend a European hackers convention sponsored by Hac-Tic
outside Amsterdam. Strategies for online bankers, schemes for
digital cash -- an ongoingly difficult problem -- offshore
hacking, and other strategies are discussed... It's an interesting
event, because any face2face meating [NERD JARGON FOR
ACTUALLY NONVIRTUALLY BEING WITH SOMEONE ELSE.] is
possibly dangerous. Being there in one's seizable body, even in
Holland... One can be fearless only online, with the proper
precautions, right?

Sept. 1997: Sectors of the Underground start using both
"Interpersonal Appropriation" tactics and the corruption of
data to undermine computer and media megacorporations,
particularly 3PO, Apple-Nintendo, Madonna Inc, Paramount-
Sony, and Snapple-Disney Virtuality. With underground
sympathizers now making up a large minority of the society, an
underground sect organizes a highly successful work-sabotage
campaign which results in a season of nearly universal releases
of faulty software and hardware. This causes tremendous
snafus for Undergrounders themselves, particularly hackers,
prankers, and extropian futurists dependent on fully functional
unsabotaged tech. There is bitter infighting, with hardcore
technophiles on one side vs. the punker No-Futurists, the teen
lone-marauder types, and PROCESSED WORLDers [A ZINE,
Processed World PUT OUT BY A SITUATIONIST-INFLUENCED
GROUP  THAT URGES DATA-ENTRY SLAVES, THE LOWEST IN
THE HIERARCHY, TO RISE UP AND OOPS! SPILL SWEETENED
COFFEE INTO THE KEYBOARD] , queasily allied on the other.

Nov 1997: the War Against the Unrated, The War
Against Meat, the War Against This and That
Tipper's 1997 State-of-the-Union Speech: The Caring Society.
She calls for bi-partisan support for the outlawing of things
known to the Surgeon General to be bad for the body such as
unsafe Sex and most Drugs, and those known to the Attorney
General to be bad for the spirit, such as almost all forms of
post-punk Rock'n'Roll and immoral happenings on broadcast
TV.
   Before Congress breaks session for the winter holidays in
1997-1998, alcohol can be issued only by state liquor stores
countrywide, and tobacco is contraband as an addictive
substance. Some soreheads join the Underground, where
smokers and nonsmokers bicker bitterly.
   As the repression rolls on, the FDA requires a new warning
label on non-veg foodstuffs -- "The Surgeon General has
determined that eating meat may be hazardous to your health,
and meat-eating contributes to the injury and death of other
sentient beings" -- and meat is made outright illegal in some
municipalities -- the so-called Bluegreen Laws. There's a
campaign by HADL to extend don't ask-don't tell to all sexual
orientations, and to make unmarried sex between anybody
definable as rape without notarized signed contracts.
Carnivores and people of all the genders join the Underground.
    Such paradrugs as vitamin and amino supplements, many
over-the-counter meds (aspirin is a powerful anticoagulant,
and causes Rye Syndrome!), and of course whole constellations
of tools for tinkering with one's metabolism and attitude are
made illegal without a prescription and a user's manual. Those
ultra-suburban segments of the Libertarian population that
have not yet joined the Underground do so now.
   A crackdown on genetic engineering and research, and an
end to nanotech [ITTYBITTY TECH: MACHINES A COUPLE OF
MOLECULES ACROSS MAKE COMPLICATED THINGS FROM
ATOMS AT HAND] appropriations forces biotechnologists and
nanotechnologists and the last few of the Extropians
underground, with Eric Drexler identified as their leader.
People with friends who are supercats and pygmy elephants
join the Underground too, pre-emptively.
   Song lyrics, and in fact all publicly available art and
entertainment, are now required to be submitted to the newly-
formed Jesse Helms committee for approval. Famous musicians
and some of the most chic artists issue press statements and
join the Underground in herds. Artists and musicians who are
not famous pass out pamphlets or xeroxed position papers, and
do likewise. (Ironically, since live performance obviously skips
free of this approval process, club nightlife returns).
   The state of women's fashion in this country has never been
duller. MOST fashion degrades women, it turns out. Many
American designers defect to Eastern Europe, which is
becoming the center for trendy new design of all kinds. Many
other chic persons consider buying modems and joining the
Underground.

Late Nov 1997: Sub Rosa signs on. She irregularly hacks
into MTV. A combination of Tokyo Rose and PUMP UP THE
VOLUME, she intersperses unknown bands' videos with blatant
Underground agitprop. She's an immediate hit.

Dec 1997: the antiantichristmas campaign. The pirates
jam themselves, interrupting scheduled broadcasts to read
brief gloomy messages: THIS YEAR'S ANTIHOLIDAY
CELEBRATION HAS BEEN CANCELED DUE TO GOVERNMENT
REPRESSION. HAVE A NICE LIFE. MER-RY CHRISTMAS!

1998
Jan 1998: In response to the new legal pressures, to keep its
comfortable status MONDO Vanilli goes lite, transforming itself
into a deeply ironic, yet barely perceptable, parody of the most
treacly kind of publically approved programming.
Nevertheless, rumors of connections with the Underground
persist.

Feb - April 1998: The War Against the Wars Against.
After a bad winter of increasing repression, many different
sections of the Underground fight back: nerds, performance
artists, genesplicers, guitarists and nicotine addicts in
withdrawal take to the streets. In some areas -- Austin,
Minneapolis, Seattle, New Orleans, Boston, and of course
Berkeley and San Francisco -- there are armed uprisings. [This
will be massively enlarged upon: this is a fun section.
Everybody I know wants to pick up the gun. Good luck.]
Everywhere there is street hacking: unofficial parades,
stripping events, public sex. Lots of rubber (mostly) bullets
from the cops, and stunners on all sides. The Spring festivities
run through the summer.

April 1, 1998: The day the banks stood still.
An unofficial bank holiday. No transactions transacted in North
America and Europe. All systems down. At 9 AM April 2,
Greenwich Time, everything is back to normal. Sure.
International financial structures are shellshocked. The
Underground has given them a demonstration they can't fire
rubber bullets at. Massive investigations follow. The hackers
left no audit trails.

June 1998: Violent police action against an illegal
Ghetto Rage music concert sets off inner-urban rioting coast
to coast. Much shooting and bloodshed throughout the summer.
HappyNews mainstream media can no longer refuse to report
the news, and the shocking reality comes through...

Social Overview:
It is noted that the murder rate in major urban areas has
reached upwards of 500 killings per day.  Thrill kill cults and
gangs issue their own manifestos... they want to be understood.
Many claim an allegiance to the underground and are
extraordinarily eloquent in their ideological justifications. Some
modern primitivist subcultures have turned to cannibalism and
one group of pranksters are noted for convincing the
completely tattooed, pierced, and otherwise physically-altered
that frontal lobotomies are the next cool thing.  Prostitutes,
many in number since this is one of the few forms of money-
making work still extant, are often violently feminist post-
riotgrrrrrls.  As a result, a demographic slice of the post-
industrial economy, including captains of industry, are now
secretly eunuchs. This continues because it gets no publicity --
guess why.
   With the sophisticated robotics replacing nearly all
industrial workers, and with all forms of information and
media available online, the only kinds of work left, outside of a
few managers, are physical services such as home delivery,
massage, restauranting etc.  That and protection.  The few
enclaves of the rich are protected by heavily armed hired
toughs. "Escort services" advertise discreetly: bonded
bodyguards. Whatever gets you through the parking lot.
   The riots die down with arrests and the cooling of summer
into fall.
   Did I hear somebody say "Cyberpunk?"

Oct. 1998: Medical Science Announces New Artificial
Liver, which is puffed as a great advance over the real thing,
much better at detoxing the environmental, heh, poisons. The
rich, both legitimate and Underground elite, rush to have their
livers replaced. The economy gets a boost, and alcoholics and
stimulant abusers celebrate wildly.

1999
Working together; artists, cypherpunks, hackers,
media hackers, et al. keep up a barrage of assaults on
the mainstream society in all its aspects. Illegal TV
shows and computer networks are known to be more popular
than those that are government approved, although this is
widely denied.
   It's become a clich that the Underground sector of the
economy is now bigger than what's now called even in polite
circles the Overworld or Overground. There's no way this can
be proved, since the border between the two -- the ground? --
is muddy. The Under overlaps into the Over by parasitising it
in various ways -- maintaining a steady inflation by
intercepting and altering Federal Reserve currency regulation,
for example, and by siphoning off perceived fatcat money
reserves. Also the intra-Underground economy isn't directly
quantifiable: they're using a polymorphous free money system
with a variety of means of exchange, including straight-out
barter.

Jan: 1999: Farming is completely dead, replaced by
biotechnologically-produced self-replicating food
stuffs. In spite of severe restrictions from Interior Secretary
Rifkin, new, tasty and peculiar forms of healthy foods are
cheap and available... but nothing quite as satisfying as a juicy
steak or a roast duck, which one can eat only in private, and
only after negotiating with very nasty Black Market types.
Admissions of personal carnivorous habits meets with the kind
of hostility previously reserved for smokers and fur wearers.

Feb 1999: An Underground Cryonics lab, operated out
of a prison, is busted and thousands of the "Undead" are
killed, finally.

March 1999: The Return of Simone 3Arm and her flock
from her island retreat, and the fact that they're not bothered
by the forces of repression during a 3 month tour, is indicative
of the level of chaos and disrepair that this society has
devolved to. Her appearance on the treacly and by now not-
terribly-popular MONDO Vanilli show does raise some
consternation however.

April 1999: Imprisoned Extropian technophiles unveil
a series of new developments including: implants capable
of manipulating aspects of brain chemistry at will, an injection
that will cause people to grow new skin in any color desired,
and a wing-sprouting program that allows prisoners to take to
the air, ignoring the prison walls. Also, an artificial liver that's
BETTER than theirs.

June 1999: MONDO Vanilli announces its independence
from Paramount/Sony and markets a new product
called Second Skin. This skin-based total immersion
experience is sensation- rather than content-based, and though
it's known to be sinfully pleasurable in much the same way
that good sex and body drugs are, it is not perceived as needing
to be censored or controlled since no sex or drug or
communication is involved. A second refinement will allow
wearers to experience content-based illusions from their own
unconscious, in a waking state similar to lucid dreaming.
Scrappi DChamp is now the CEO of MV and he lately seems to
be doing a Howard Hughes, hiding behind barbed-wired in his
Hawaiian estate, and not talking to anyone for weeks at a time.
The rumors that he has his artificial liver removed and
"disinfected" in a gross and bloody daily ritual, however, are
false.  Scrappi is actually one of the few people who won't get
with the improved techno-liver.

July 9 - 16 1999: Financial market players Gracie and
Zarkov, taking advantage of increased chaos in the
global mainstream financial markets, make the
equivalent of the Government's yearly budget in a
week by bouncing money around the globe. A biologically-
based supercomputer using chaos and complexity theory allows
them to do split-nanosecond trading exponentially increasing
value. They stop when their wealth is equal to the US
Government's. The world economy goes nuts and G & Z
contribute generously to offshore and Underground financial
systems.

Oct. 1999: The Underground is now so rich that the
wealth starts to spread to the huge underclass and
things on the street mellow a little. On the heels of the Simone
3Arm tour, people start to gingerly test the waters regarding
freedom of communications. Seeking to regain some
momentum, the mainstream internet gives Simone3Arm some
unreal estate. This territory becomes a major attractor for
pomo primitives and other hipsters -- the most chic virtual TAZ
of this time.

Jan.-Nov. 2000: The Sirius bid for the Presidency
R. U.--who has been playing it relatively straight, but is still the
weirdest thing outside the Underground, announces his
candidacy for the Presidency. Starting off in a prankish and
playful stance, he will eventually arrives at radical anti-
Overworld positions and receive Underground support.

Mar 2000: Liberalism not spoken here
With candidate R. U. Sirius getting alot of support from the vast
numbers of extremely alienated sub-culture and underclass
types, the mainstream candidates--Democrats: Al & Tipper
Gore, Republicans: Senator Oliver North and Senator Arnold
Schwartzenneger and perenials Ross Perot and Jerry Brown--
flash conservative again, complaining about the tendency
towards a new permissiveness in media. The incumbent Gore's
lead a new charge against decadent media, such as Simone
3Arm's Internet bbs, and against the underground in general.
Several prisons that have formed the core of the Underground,
and that were left more or less alone during the non-election
years. are raided. Much death and violence ensues. The
Underground is upset.

April 20, 2000: Multiple Singularities. [THE
SINGULARITY IS A CONCEPT INVENTED BY SCIENCEFICTION
WRITER VERNOR VINGE: EVER MORE RAPID TECHNOLOGICAL
EVOLUTION BROUGHT THE PLANETARY CULTURE TO THE POINT
WHERE EVERYONE MYSTERIOUSLY VANISHED.] The Washington
Post breaks a story that has been covered up for years: There
have been local breakouts of the Singularity in nanotech
research. These incidents have severely impeded advances in
nanotech, keeping it always a month or more behind the point
where the truly innovative researcher and his/her lab vanishes
in a flash of pure data.  As of March of this year, only nanotech
second-stringers are left unsingulared, and science-watch
reporters hint that nanotech research may be a self-limiting
phenomenon.

May 2000:  R U Mutates for real.
After a few lame public appearances, R. U. Sirius is dragged by
St. Jude to an underground lab where he is given a complete
upgrade.  Just completed data storage technology biochips are
inserted into his brain, he is given a complete physical
makeover including the latest in plastic surgery and
replaceable parts.  Using advanced mind control techniques, he
is completely brainwashed, Manchurian Candidate style, by
undergrounders.  And a bacterial phage programs him for
perpetual vasopressin release so that he can never sleep and is
always alert.  Throughout the spring and summer, he is a most
impressive candidate and by September 1, he is polling better
than 50%.  The nearest contenders, the Gores, are at 25%.

September 9 2000: Public Freakout
Overamped from vasopressin, having peculiar internal and
external physiological effects from the confluence of physical
changes, R. U. has a psychotic break during the first of the
official Presidential debates.  When he claims to have a palm-
top nuclear bomb in his left coat pocket set to go off and, at
that exact moment huge red-green boils pop out on his face,
the debate is canceled and he's led off by the Secret Service for
questioning.

Nov 10, 2000:  R. U. Sirius' attempt to spring back to
life after the debate debacle, claiming exhaustion and food
poisoning, doesn't succeed.  The Gores are once again elected in
a landslide victory.

2001
Feb 2001: R. U. Sirius busted for drugs, pornography,
and steak with french fries.  Scrappi DChamp announces
that MONDO Vanilli is disbanded and that he will concentrate
on improved 3rd and 4th versions of "Second Skin."  However,
he also releases a pre-digital, totally retro,  all-instrumental
solo album of ambient sixties style surf music called TOO
STUPID FOR WORDS. It fills a yes, much-needed void and
becomes extremely popular.

Sept 2001: The underground cracks the finances of the
empire and the multinational system, and through the
manipulation of stocks, futures, and money itself is able to
claim virtual ownership of everything. At the same time, the
nanotech breakthrough occurs and becomes usable. After a few
trivial riots and shoot-em-ups, the system is overwhelmed.
Sirius and St. Jude are hailed as avatars but more in humorous
nostalgia.

Oct 31, 2001: The breakout of the pink goo. [THE
NIGHTMARE OF THE NANOPEOPLE IS A "BREAKOUT" THAT
COVERS THE EARTH WITH SELF-REPLICATING
MICROMACHINES: THE GREY GOO.] A Halloween prank by a
teenage nanotech hacker covers Provo, Utah in a foot-deep
pink carpet of self-replicating human sex pheromones, which
creeps outward from the computer center at BYU. Brigham
Young students and townies roll around in the pink goo like
kids, while real kids, completely immune, say "EWWW, GROSS"
and go back to the Nintendo. Horrible orgies in ensue. The final
cleanup takes weeks, with industrial vacuum cleaners wielded
by boyscouts in gasmasks, (who are afterward quarantined,
AND chaperoned.) etc. Copycat crimes sweep the globe, usually
customized like Provo to hit at local vulnerabilities.

Ded. 25, 2001: An all-retro, all-acoustic MONDO Vanilli
reunion performance broadcast worldwide is the catalyst
for tremendous pagan public celebrations, but the festivities
are dampened when at the end of the program Simone 3Arm
announces that they may think it's cool that now retro is
avant-garde, but the whole IDEA of avant-garde is cluelessly
pass, she's bored with everything but cooking, and wants only
to launch her own gourmet chef TV program in the tradition of
her childhood hero, Julia Childs.

AFTERTHOUGHT: WORLD ENDS
April 3 - May 20, 2002: The world ends. A nanotech
manufacturing program used in all outlets of the multinational
General Fields Nabisco has a bug, which is fixed with a bad fix,
which leads to other blunders.  Clouds seeded by a fire in a Mrs
General factory leads to world-wide typhoons of self-
replicating nano-edibles. Ultimately, the planet is smothered
with Key Lime pie filling.