The World of Computer Software/World_Of_Computer_Software-02-387-Vol-3of3.iso/t/thinknet.zip/THINKNET.004

Text File | 1992-08-16 | 88KB | 2,043 lines

======================START=OF=THINKNET.004=FILE=================

|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|||     FINAL DRAFT - YOU MAY DISTRIBUTE THIS VERSION [3]     |||
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||


                             /|   .......  ..   ..    .     .      .      .
                           .==|........ ...  ..   ....   .     ....   ..
._____.   . * .     .    / ===|_ _.    ..______________________________......
   |  |   | | |\    |  / ======== |\ ...|  .... |.THINKNET:An Electronic....
   |  |---| | |  \  |< ========== |. \ .|---- . |.Journal Of Philosophy,...
   |  |   | | |    \|  \ ======== |... \| ..... |.Meta-Theory, And Other..
   |  |   | | |     |    \ ====== |.... |____.. |.Thoughtful Discussions....
                           .==|  ........  ..     .... ..      ...     .. .
                             \|    .... ...  ..  ..  . . ..   .          .


-----------------------------------------------------------------
AUGUST 1992           ISSUE  004              VOLUME 1   NUMBER 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------

 Thinknet is a newsletter about cooperative philosophical
thought in cyberspace, both on BBSs and on the networks.

Issues three and four are a back-to-back double issue with the same
number. If you do not have issue three you are missing the main
content of this pair of newsletters. This issue contains the overflow
material. Separating the two issues maintains a reasonable file size
and makes it easier for the reader to refer to the main contents of
the newsletter.

 *CONTENTS*

 RESOURCES
    Sociology List                    -- a new mailing list
    Cylinder                          -- a society and a mailing list
    Alphaworks                        -- a work in progress
    Library of Congress New Books     -- an information source
    Directory of Electronic Journals  -- a map of cyberspace
    Computer Aided Cooperative Work   -- a new journal
    History & Macintosh Society       -- a newsletter and disk
    MindField                         -- a new journal
    Mark Twain Forum                  -- a mailing list
    Idealistic Studies                -- a journal changes format
    History of Philosophy of Science  -- a new academic association
    Hermeneutics                      -- a mailing list
    Ontology of Internet              -- a plea for help
 FEEDBACK
    Mark Jones
    Lance Fletcher
    Agatti
    D.E. Stevenson
    Art Botterell
    Mark Klein
    Edward Bielmetti
    Brian Capouch
    Patrick Wilken
    John Muse
    Russ Savage
 THINKNET PUBLICATION DATA REPEATED
<<<<<<Thinknet Electronic Newsletter (c) 1991 Kent Palmer.>>>>>>>

-----------------------------------------------------------------
 RESOURCES                                                    kdp
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 *SOCIOLOGY LIST*

 It is odd that there is no sci.sociology newsgroup. In order to
attempt to get one set up I have started a mailing list called
[e-mail]. If you are interested in sociology and
would like to see us form our own newsgroup then you should contact
us and join the movement. Send a message like:

SOCIOLOGY YourFullName <[e-mail]>

to [e-mail]. The list offers discussion on all aspects
of sociology.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
 *CYLINDER*


From: [e-mail] (Raven Zachary)
Subject: CYLINDER
Organization: University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA
Date: Fri, 3 Jul 1992 03:19:31 GMT



                                   CYLINDER

               the society for the philosophy of tools and space


   We are an interdisciplinary and "multinational" organization,
small but growing, dedicated to thoughtful discussion about and
research into issues concerning tools and space.  Currently, we
maintain a membership list and circulate a short newslwetter.  But
our future plans call for expansion - a number of conferences and
a journal are possible in the next few years. Within the scope of
our society, members have raised diverse and fascinating issues
for consideration, including but not limited to the following:

 - Architectural theory and practice
 - Media theory
 - The role of equipment in Heidegger: the tool and truth in _Sein
    und Zeit_
 - Bergson; Levinas and the concept of hypostasis
 - Baudrillard & Virilio: speed, the simulacrum and "crystal revenge"
 - Marx: from use- to exchange-value; the deterritorializating
    movement of capital and surplus-value
 - Deleuze/Guattari: desiring machines, paranoid machines, miraculating
    machines, celibate machines
 - The mechanics of the dreamwork in psycho-analysis
 - Poetics of space a la Bachelard
 - Figural and rhetorical aspects of the tool in literature; the
    delirious machines of Poe, Kafka, Ballard, and Borges
 - bolo'o'bolo and other political theories of reterritorialization
 - Transit technology and urban planning
 - Infrastructure catastrophies: the Chicago freight tunnel flood
 - The iconology of computers, especially the Macintosh
 - A philosophy of toys
 - The tool/toy of language and its (dys)function: the Zen koan,
    the joke

Now we want what you have to offer...
Membership is free.  Just send your name and address to be placed on our list.

                                   CYLINDER
                         c/o Graham Harman, secretary
                      Philosophy Dept., DePaul University
                                Chicago IL, USA
                                     60614


Cylinder is associated with the National Toolbelt Society:
Marcel E. Yarnow and Raven Zachary, executive co-directors.

 ---
Cylinder inquiries are currently being accepted via email

[e-mail]

Please do not post replies on USENET.  They will not be read.
 ---
.................................................................
From [e-mail] Fri Aug 14 04:06:43 1992
Return-Path: <[e-mail]>
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 92 03:06:19 -0500
From: CYLINDER <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]

CYLINDER

The International Society for the Philosophy of Tools and Space


Cylinder was founded in Chicago in 1992 by a small group of professional
philosophers, computer consultants, and freelance writers.  In the past
few months, interest in our society has soared; we can now boast members
on four continents and in dozens of technical and intellectual fields.
Our aim is to incite a new brand of research into issues concerning the
broadly conceived themes of tools and space.  We seek less to foster
interdisciplinary work than to awaken attention to important general
questions posed by the machine for human life.  Toward this end, however,
our members have raised a multitude of issues for consideration:

Technology and society:  the imminent "supertechnologies" of virtual
reality, superconductivity, gene modification; the dynamic transformative
impact of technological innovation on human society; the liberation of
simulacra and their emergence in social space; the power of the media in
the global village; the onset of the kingdom of information; nightmare
scenarios taken from science fiction- merciless cyborgs, DNA-altering
biological warfare, totalitarian surveillance through the electronic media.

Tools and space: architecture and human dwelling; urban and provincial space,
suburban sprawl; the potential of bullet trains for travel and political
unification; the end of the airport?; the emergence of infrastructure decay
as a major political issue: the Chicago freight tunnel flood; the European
Community, worldwide separatist movements: the crisis of the national border;
traffic control systems and their possible extensions.

Philosophy: the role of equipment in Heidegger: the tool and truth in Sein
und Zeit; phenomenology's theory of meaning as tool in the tradition of
form/matter distinction and Derrida's critique; Bergson; Levinas and the
concept of hypostasis; Paul Virilio on speed and the vision-machine;
Baudrillard: simulacra, seduction and "crystal revenge"; Bachelard's
"poetics of space"; man the machine- theories of mind; a philosophy of toys.

Computer, marriage of simulacrum and machine: the debate surrounding
artificial intelligence; hypertext- the end of the book?; the iconology
of computers, especially the Macintosh; the age of the logo; the theory of
electronic viruses.

Psychology: latent and manifest dream-content, the mechanics of the dreamwork
in psychoanalysis; the sign of the phallus- castration and the feminine;
Lacan's delocalized unconscious; Deleuze/Guattari on desiring machines,
paranoid machines, miraculating machines, celibate machines; technology as
paranoia; the semiotic ecology of "inner" and "outer".

Economics: the deterritorializing adventure of capital, its freedom and its
dissolution; Marx, from use- to exchange-value; the ghost of surplus-value;
the power of international exchange and an "economic world order".

Literature: figural and rhetorical aspects of the tool; the mechanics of
humor; the delirious machines of Poe & Kafka; Borges and the double; J.G.
Ballard's immanent technologies; the tool/toy of language and its (dys)
function: the Zen koan, the joke; beyond reflexive structures in literature-
toward the innocence of new genres.

History: "meaning" in history; reading the ancient historians- avoiding
violence to Thucydides and Tacitus while discovering them anew; military
theory and the question of space: Sun-Tzu on position; Clausewitz and the
birth of "total" warfare; Virilio's reading of the state as war-machine;
paradoxes of Hegel's theory of history; Heidegger's Ereignis and History
of Being, their dimensions and limitations.


Our discussions have been by turns both serious and joking, but all of us
share a distaste for cynicism.  We see "tools and space" as issues that
carry a deep intellectual interest, but also an immense practical weight for
our time.  Like it or not, "tool-being" is our fate: sincerity is in order,
and the objects of discussion deserve the first and last word whatever our
lines of approach.

Currently, we maintain a membership list and circulate a short newsletter.
But our future plans call for expansion- a journal and a number of
conferences are possible within the next few years.  Membership is free.
To be placed on our mailing list, you may simply send your name and address
to our secretary:

CYLINDER
c/o Graham Harman, Secretary
Philosophy Dept., DePaul University
Chicago IL, USA 60614

email inquiries may be directed to Mr. R. Zachary at "[e-mail]"

-----------------------------------------------------------------
 *ALPHAWORKS*

 I am an ex-philosophy graduate student from Bristol and have
written a philosophical monograph called 'Alphaworks'. It is a
defense of Direct Realism plus speculations about the evolution
of language, written in the form of a 'circular' narrative.

   Since the piece is experimental, and since I am no longer
attached to any University, I can't think of anyone to send it
to for critical reactions. Would anyone on the list be
interested in seeing it? No obligation to make comments, of
course, but if you were willing to send me any, I'd be grateful.


   To receive an abstract and/or the whole work, please contact me,
   Jamie Carnie, via the following address:
   [e-mail]1a


-----------------------------------------------------------------
 *LIBRARY OF CONGRESS NEW BOOKS*

 Date: Sun, 10 Nov 91 06:28:00 CST
 Sender: Owner of PHILOS-L <[e-mail]>
 From: Peter Scott/Order Unit/U of Saskatchewan Library <[e-mail]>
 Subject: Lists of forthcoming books from the Library of Congress

 PHILOS-L members might like to know that you can connect to
the FTP machine at Data Research Associates, and download lists
on newly cataloged books from the Library of Congress. Each
file represents an LC classification. New files are added
monthly, and old files are removed. The current files represent
titles to be published in November. I just downloaded the "B"
classification list and edited out all the non-philosophy
titles. Here is a sample:

 ..............................................................
 B20.R48 1991
 REVISIONING PHILOSOPHY / edited by James Ogilvy. -- Albany : State
    University of New York Press, c1991. -- (SUNY series in
    philosophy) ISBN 0-7914-0989-9 ISBN 0-7914-0990-2 (pbk.)
    CIP (Nov. 91)

 B21.B48 1991 vol. 1
 PHILOSOPHY AND THE IDEA OF FREEDOM / Roy Bhaskar. -- Oxford, UK ;
    Cambridge, Mass., USA : B. Blackwell, 1991. -- (Philosophy and
    the eclipse of reason ; v. 1) ISBN 0-631-15911-8 : $40.00 ISBN
    0-631-17082-0 (pbk.) : $11.95 CIP (Nov. 91)

 B21.B48 1991
 PHILOSOPHY AND THE ECLIPSE OF REASON : towards a metacritique of the
    philosophical tradition. -- Oxford, UK ; Cambridge, Mass., USA :
    B. Blackwell, 1991- ISBN 0-631-15911-8 (v. 1) : $40.00 ISBN
    0-631-17082-0 (v. 1 : pbk.) : $11.95  CIP (Nov. 91)
 .................................................................
 CIP stands for "Cataloging-in-Publication" which refers to the
procedure LC has for making temporary pre-publication cataloging
records.

If you have the ability to use FTP on your machine then connect
to DRA.COM, login as anonymous, and move to the NEWBOOKS
directory, where the files reside.

 By the way, the records are only to be used for non-commercial
purposes.

 Peter Scott University of Saskatchewan Libraries


-----------------------------------------------------------------
 *CATALOG OF ELECTRONIC PUBLICATIONS*

 ARL Directory Meets Need for Catalog of Electronic
Publications

 Responding to the library and academic communities increasing
use of and interest in the burgeoning number of electronic
publications, the Association of Research Libraries has
published:


 Directory of Electronic Journals, Newsletters, and Academic
     Discussion Lists
 Compiled by Michael Strangelove and Diane Kovacs;
 Edited by Ann Okerson.
 Washington, DC:  First Edition, July 1991
 ISSN:  1057-1337


 CHOICE OF FORMATS:

 Print-on-paper, 180 pages, 8.5 x 11 inch size
 3.5" diskette, DOS WordPerfect
 3.5" diskette, Microsoft Word (Macintosh)
 Hypertext version in preparation by Peter Scott, University of
 Saskatchewan.

 The ARL directory is derived from widely accessible networked
files maintained by Strangelove and Kovacs.  The directory will
point to these as the principal, continuously updated, and
free- of-charge sources for accessing such materials.

 PRICING:  All orders must be PREPAID

 $10.00 to ARL members
 $20.00 to non-ARL members
 $25.00 US , non-U.S. price, surface mail
 $30.00 US,  non-U.S. price, air mail
 Quantity:  non-members receive a 10% discount for orders of
     more than 5 copies.

 NOTE:  The ARL has only 119 institutional member libraries
that qualify for the $10 subsidized price.  Unfortunately, we
have had to return a great number of orders sent from others --
this delays fulfillment.  We thank you for assuring in advance
that the amount you send is correct.

 ----

 The Association of Research Libraries is a not-for-profit
organization representing 119 research libraries in the United
States and Canada.  Its mission is to identify and influence
forces affecting the future of research libraries in the
process of scholarly communication.  ARL programs and services
promote equitable access to, and effective use of recorded
knowledge in support of teaching, research, scholarship, and
community service. These programs include annual statistical
publications, federal relations and information policy, and
enhancing access to scholarly information resources through
telecommunications, collection development, preservation, and
bibliographic control.

 The ARL Office of Management Services (OMS) provides consulting,
information and training in the management of human and
material resources in libraries.  The Office of Scientific and
Academic Publishing works to identify and influence the forces
affecting the production, dissemination, and use of scholarly
and scientific information.  The Coalition for Networked
Information (CNI), formed by ARL, CAUSE, and EDUCOM, promotes
projects and linkages for the provision of information
resources on existing and future telecommunications networks.

 ----

 The following order form is provided for your convenience.
Feel free to print it and attach it to your check or money
order, payable to ARL.  U.S. Dollars only.  ALL ORDERS MUST BE
PREPAID.

 Office of Scientific & Academic Publishing
 Association of Research Libraries
 1527 New Hampshire Avenue, NW
 Washington, DC  20036    USA

 Name____________________________________________

 Address___________________________________________

 _________________________________________________

 _________________________________________________

 Number of Copies _________  Amount Enclosed _____________


 THANK YOU FOR YOUR ORDER AND INTEREST IN ARL's PUBLICATIONS

 The _Directory of Electronic Journals and Newsletters_ is now
available from the Contex-L fileserver and consists of two
files.  These may be obtained by sending the commands:

 Tell Listserv at UOttawa Get EJournl1 Directry
 Tell Listserv at UOttawa Get EJournl2 Directry

 The files are also available from COMSERVE by sending an electronic
mail message to Comserve@Rpiecs (Bitnet) or Comserve@Vm.
Ecs.Rpi.Edu (Internet) with the following command appearing on
the first line of the message:

 Send Ejournl1 Sources
 Send Ejournl2 Sources

 No other words, punctuation, or symbols should appear in the
electronic mail message.  Comserve is an automated system for
file retrieval;  it will acknowledge receipt of your message
and let you know that the files have been sent to you.   On a
VM/CMS system, you can send the message:

 Tell COMSERVE at RPIECS GET EJOURNL1 SOURCES

 To receive more information about how to search for, retrieve,
or preview files from the database, send the following command
to Comserve:

 Help Topics Database

 The Directory documents over 26 e-journals and 63
e-newsletters.  Special thanks to Ann Okerson at the
Association of Research Libraries for her support and guidance
in this project.

 Association of Research Libraries
 1527 New Hampshire Avenue, NW
 Washington, DC  20036

 For Further Information Contact:
 Ann Okerson
 [e-mail]
 [phone] (voice)
 [phone] (fax)


-----------------------------------------------------------------
 *COMPUTER AIDED COOPERATIVE WORK*

                     **********************
                      NEW JOURNAL FOR 1992
                     **********************

          COMPUTER SUPPORTED COOPERATIVE WORK (CSCW)
                   An International Journal

 Editorial Team:

 LIAM BANNON                            JOHN BOWERS
 Copenhagen Business School              Dept. of Psychology
 Institute of Computer &                 Univ. of Manchester
 Systems Sciences, Denmark               U.K.

 CHARLES GRANTHAM                        MIKE ROBINSON
 Dept. of Organizational Studies         Centre for Innovation&
 Univ. of San Francisco                  Cooperative Technology
 USA                                     Univ. of Amsterdam
                                         The Netherlands

 KJELD SCHMIDT                           SUSAN LEIGH STAR
 Cognitive Systems Group                 Dept. of Sociology &
 Ris~ National Laboratory                Social Anthropology
 Denmark                                 University of Keele
                                         U.K.

 Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW):  An International
Journal  will be devoted to innovative research in Computer
Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW). It will provide an
interdisciplinary forum for the debate and exchange of ideas
concerning theoretical, practical, technical and social issues
in CSCW.

 The journal arises as a timely response to the growing
interest in the design, implementation and use of technical
systems (including computing, information, and communications
technologies) which support people working cooperatively.
Equally, the journal is concerned with studies of the process
of cooperative work itself - studies intended to motivate the
design of new technical systems, and to develop both theory and
praxis in the field. The journal will encourage contributions
from a wide range of disciplines and perspectives within the
social, computing and allied human and information sciences.

 In general, the journal will facilitate the discussion of all
issues which arise in connection with the support requirements
of cooperative work. It is intended that the journal will be of
interest to a wide readership through its coverage of research
related to - inter alia - groupware, socio-technical system
design, theoretical models of cooperative work, computer
mediated communication, human-computer interaction, group
decision support systems (GDSS), coordination systems,
distributed systems, situated action, studies of cooperative
work and practical action, organization theory and design, the
sociology of technology, explorations of innovative design
strategies, management and business science perspectives,
artificial intelligence and distributed AI approaches to
cooperation, library and information sciences, and all manner
of technical innovations devoted to the support of cooperative
work including electronic meeting rooms, teleconferencing
facilities, electronic mail enhancements, real-time and
asynchronous technologies, desk-top conferencing, shared
editors, video and multi-media systems. In addition, we welcome
studies of the social, cultural, moral, legal and political
implications of CSCW systems.

 CALL FOR PAPERS
 Manuscripts (5 Copies) relating to any of the above-mentioned
themes and topics are invited for submission. Manuscripts
should be submitted to the Journals Editorial Office at the
address below:

          Editorial Office (COSU)
          Kluwer Academic Publishers
          P.O. Box 17
          3300 AA Dordrecht
          The Netherlands

 Detailed instructions for authors and other information (such
as submission via email or on disk) can be obtained from the
above address or by electronic mail on: [e-mail] (Please
mark your message CSCW).

 Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW): An International
Journal is edited by an international Editorial Team of
established researchers in the field and also includes a
multi-disciplinary Advisory Board who are committed to the
development of the journal and the enhancement of the field of
CSCW research itself.

..............................................................

 INFORMATION REQUEST FORM
 Please fill in the information form and send to:

 KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS
 Att. M. van der Linden
 P.O.Box 989
 3300 AZ Dordrecht
 The Netherlands
 Email: [e-mail]

 O    Please send me a FREE SAMPLE COPY of Computer Supported
     Cooperative Work

 O    Please send me your brochure listing publications in
     Cognitive Science/Artificial Intelligence

 NAME:_______________________________________________________
 ADDRESS:____________________________________________________
 CITY:________________________________ STATE:________________
 COUNTRY:____________________________________________________
 POSTAL CODE:_________________________ DATE:_________________
 EMAIL:______________________________________________________

             PLEASE TYPE OR PRINT IN BLOCKLETTERS

 IF YOU REPLY BY EMAIL, PLEASE INCLUDE YOUR FULL NAME AND
POSTAL ADDRESS.


-----------------------------------------------------------------
 *HISTORY AND MACINTOSH SOCIETY*

 Date: Thu, 9 Jan 92 09:22:29 PST
 From: "Joe T. Coohill" <[e-mail]>
 Subject: History and Macintosh Society
 To: Kent Duane Palmer <[e-mail]>


 Humanists and Social Scientists who use Macintosh computers
should take note of the History and Macintosh Society, an
Apple-registered user group. "History" is very broadly defined,
and HMS welcomes Art Historians, Literary Scholars,
Philosophers, Political Scientists, etc.

 Members receive a quarterly newsletter and software disk.
Currently HMS is exploring research programs, databases, and
organization tools.  Other activities include reviewing
computer/academic books, teaching and grading programs, and
discussing the place of computers in humanistic and social
research.

 The HMS newsletter package is not available on-line.  For more
information, write:

 HMS
 734 Elkus Walk #201
 Goleta  CA
 93117-4151
 USA

 PS - HMS is always looking for contributors to its newsletter.
 If you've found an interesting and productive way to use the
Mac, let us know!



-----------------------------------------------------------------
 *MIND FIELD*

 Date: Fri, 22 May 92 14:15:12 EDT
 To: [e-mail]
 Subject: Material for Issue 3????

 Hi,     The same day we exchanged mail about ThinkNet, I got a complimentary
 copy of "MindField" (V1#1) in the mail.  I was going to send you the Table
 of Contents and "welcome to..." article, but thought I'd ask first if you
 have already seen it.  Have you?

 It is a paper magazine. I've seen an ad for MindField in a recent issue
of "Magical Blend", so it has probably been advertised elsewhere as well.

    MindField     A Quarterly Source Journal for Consciousness

 [Begin Copyright page]

    Copyright 1992 MindField Publishing

     Each excerpt contained in this issue is protected under
copyright as indicated in the credit contained on the first
page of each excerpt.

    Each excerpt is complete and unabridged except that while
explanatory footnotes have been retained, reference footnotes
have for the most part been omitted.  Readers interested in
sources and references are advised to consult the book from
which the excerpt is taken.

 MindField is published quarterly by
 MindField Publishing     270 Madison Avenue     New York, NY
 Single copy price:  $6.50  One year subscription (four issues):  $19.50
 For Canada and Mexico add $6.00 For other foreign add $7.50 for surface mail
   or $16.50 for air mail
 All payments must be in U.S. Funds
 Exclusive United States distributor:
    Bernhard DeBoer, Inc. 113 East Centre Street Nutley, NJ  07110
 Fax: [phone]

 [End of Copyright page]

 .................................................................

 [Begin Table of Contents]     Vol. 1 -- No. 1 Spring -- 1992

 Welcome to MindField
 What's New About the New Physics? -- Danah Zohar from The Quantum Self
 An Apology -- Lewis Thomas from The Medusa and the Snail
 The Thirsty Mind -- Stephen Levine from Who Dies?
 Newtonian Psychology -- Fritjof Capra     from The Turning Point
 The Golden Alphabet -- Loven Eisley     from The Unexpected Universe
 Is It Serious? -- Alan Watts     from Beyond Theology
 Gnosis:  Self-Knowledge as Knowledge of God -- Elaine Pagels from The Gnostic Gospels

 [End of Table of Contents]

------------------------------------------------------------------
 *MARK TWAIN*

 Date:         Wed, 27 May 1992 07:53:31 CDT
 Reply-To: [e-mail]
 Sender: NEW-LIST - New List Announcements <[e-mail]>
 From: Taylor Roberts <[e-mail]>
 Subject:      NEW LIST: TWAIN-L Mark Twain Forum
 To: Multiple recipients of list NEW-LIST <[e-mail]>

 TWAIN-L  on LISTSERV@YORKVM1         Mark Twain Forum
         or [e-mail]

   The Mark Twain Forum is for persons having a scholarly interest in
   the life and writings of Mark Twain.  Postings may include queries,
   discussion, conference announcements, calls for papers, information
   on new publications, or anything else that is related to Mark Twain
   studies.

   The archives of TWAIN-L files are stored in the TWAIN-L FILELIST.  To
   receive a list of files, send the command INDEX TWAIN-L to
   LISTSERV@YORKVM1 or [e-mail].

   To subscribe to this list, send a mail/note message to LISTSERV@YORKVM1
   or [e-mail] with the one-line command in the BODY of the mail:

      SUBSCRIBE TWAIN-L your-full-name

   For example: SUBSCRIBE TWAIN-L Mulberry Sellers

   VM systems may use the interactive command:

      TELL LISTSERV at YORKVM1 SUBSCRIBE TWAIN-L your-full-name

   Finally, subscribers should be aware that the Forum's database of
   e-mail addresses will be available to the editor of the _Mark Twain
   Circular_, James Leonard ([e-mail]), when updated
   lists of Mark Twain Circle of America members' names and postal
   addresses are prepared for publication.  If there is an alternate
   form of your e-mail address that you think should be published in the
   _Circular_, please advise the list owner at the address below.

   Owner:  Taylor Roberts <TROBERTS@YORKVM1> or <[e-mail]>

------------------------------------------------------------------
 *IDEALISTIC STUDIES*

 Date: Fri, 26 Jun 9209:32:41 -0700
 From: Michael Heim <[e-mail]>
 To: [e-mail] Subject: IS papers


 June 26, 1992

 Philosophical Friend--

 As a contributing editor to IDEALISTIC STUDIES, I want to
inform you of a change in the journal's direction and format
which may interest you or your colleagues.

 IDEALISTIC STUDIES has been publishing philosophy for over
twenty years.  Beginning January 1993, the journal will expand
its scope and introduce a new format.

 The editors believe each generation of philosophers has a
duty to recast and reinterpret the perennial questions of
philosophy in the idiom of its time.  The idiom of our time
speaks to questions now surfacing in virtual reality,
theoretical biology, systems theory, and quantum mechanics.

 IDEALISTIC STUDIES will consequently devote the first issue
of its three annual issues to one of the above topics.  The
premier issue in 1993 will treat Computers and Philosophy, with
an emphasis on cyberspace and the philosophy of software.

 We are interested in ontological and ethical issues
concerning virtual identities, software agents, and cyberspace
entities. Related areas would include the impact on biology of
artificial life forms, the evidential value of computerized
photoimages, the fiduciary requirements of medical expert
systems, and the plausibility of algorithms for deciding moral
situations. Have the computer-born disciplines of chaos theory,
fractal geometry, and artificial life brought forth a genuine
scientific revolution?

 If you have a paper-in-progress on any of these or related
topics or know someone else who does, please contact the
editors. We would be happy to see what approaches are emerging
to these shared questions and would like to find papers that
fit the format of the new IDEALISTIC STUDIES.

 Electronic submissions may be on either IBM or MAC diskettes,
as much as possible within an ASCII pure text format.

 Thank you for your attention.


 ------------------------------------------------------------------
 *HISTORY OF SCIENCE WORKING GROUP*

 Date:          Thu, 11 Jun 1992 13:39:11 EST
 Sender: Philosophy Discussion Forum
         <[e-mail]>
 From: Don Howard <[e-mail]>
 Subject: History of Philosophy of Science Working Group
 To: Multiple recipients of list PHILOSOP
         <[e-mail]>

                 Announcing the Formation of the

       HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE WORKING GROUP (HOPOS)


 The past few years have witnessed a new interest in the
history of the philosophy of science.  Perhaps symptomatic of
the search for new directions in the wake of the breakup of the
"received view, this interest has found expression in a number
of forms, from the various Schlick-Neurath centennial
celebrations of the early 1980s, through the publication of
recent books like Joelle Proust's Questions of Form: Logic and
the Analytic Proposition from Kant to Carnap, and Alberto
Coffa's The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap: To The
Vienna Station, to the recent round of Carnap-Reichenbac
centennial conferences.  Research into the history of the
philosophy of science has been facilitated by the opening of
important collections of documentary materials, such as those
found in the Carnap, Reichenbach, and Ramsey papers in the
Archives of Scientific Philosophy at Pittsburgh and the Schlick
and Neurath papers in the Vienna Circle Archive in the
Netherlands.

 In order to promote continuing high-quality historical
scholarship and to facilitate communication among those working
in the field, a few of us gathered informally at the 1990 PSA
meeting in Minneapolis, deciding there to organize an
international History of Philosophy of Science Working Group
(HOPOS). Various projects for the group were discussed,
including the circulation of a newsletter, the organization of
conference sessions and special meetings on the history of the
philosophy of science, the preparation of bibliographies and
resource guides, and the promotion of efforts to locate and
preserve additional materials relevant to documenting the
history of our discipline.  It was agreed, finally, that the
history of the philosophy of science should be interpreted
rather broadly, to include related issues in the history of
logic, mathematics, and the natural and social sciences, and to
include, as well, diverse methodologies, ranging from more
internalist, history of ideas approaches to more externalist,
social and institutional history.

 We are planning to meet informally once again at the 1992 PSA
meeting in Chicago.  Information about the specific time and
place will be circulated at a later date.  Prior to that
meeting, we would like to invite all who are interested to join
us in our effort to sketch a plan for the further development
of HOPOS.  If you would like to be a part of that effort, or if
you want, merely, to be informed on a continuing basis about the
activities of the group, please complete the following brief
questionnaire and return it (either by regular mail or email)
to:

 Professor Don Howard                     Dr. Alan Richardson
 Department of Philosophy                 Department of Philosophy
 University of Kentucky                   University of Pennsylvania
 Lexington, Kentucky 40506-0027           Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-3325
 tel: [phone]                        tel: [phone]
 fax: [phone]                        fax: [phone]

 email: [e-mail]              email: [e-mail]

 ----------------------------------------------------------------
 *HERMENEUTICS*

Xref: world sci.philosophy.meta:3660 talk.philosophy.misc:4206
      rec.arts.books:36851
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta,talk.philosophy.misc,rec.arts.books
Path: world!uunet!cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr.
      columbia.edu!destroyer!ubc-cs!newsserver.sfu.ca!brougham
From: [e-mail] (Chris Brougham)
Subject: Hermeneutic Discussion Group
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
Organization: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1992 23:30:27 GMT
Lines: 27

Hello

There is a mailing list on the Internet devoted to the discussion
of hermeneutic philosophy. Hermeneutics is the theory and methodology
of interpretation. It can include, but is not limited to, biblical
interpretation (the original form of hermeneutics), literary
criticism, film theory, history, and legal theory. Pretty well
anything that presents itself as a "text."

The concern of the group is not so much interpretation as such, but
with the theoretical issues involved in interpretation.

If this sounds like your cup of tea, then by all means e-mail
me and ask to be put on the list.

[e-mail]

Chris Brougham (list owner) Hermes-Talk.

PS

If you made a request to be put on the list but haven't received
any notes from the list please e-mail me again. I often have trouble
determining people's addresses from the "From:" header, so please
put your e-mail address in the body of the text.

 ----------------------------------------------------------------
 *ONTOLOGY OF INTERNET*

Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Path: world!uunet!usc!sdd.hp.com!mips!mips!munnari.oz.au!uniwa!jdymond
From: [e-mail] (Jason Dymond)
Subject: Ontology of the Internet
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail] (USENET News System)
Nntp-Posting-Host: tartarus.uwa.edu.au
Organization: University of Western Australia
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1992 06:49:39 GMT
Lines: 15

I am currently working on the ontology of the net in the philosophy
dept.here.

I am interested in hearing from other net users as to exactly where they
conceive of the interchange of communication on the net as taking
place. By this I don't mean the physical location of files etc., but the
notional location in terms of the "space" being accessed on the virtual
network.

I would like to correspond by e-mail with anyone who has any thoughts on
this.

Thanx in advance.

Jason.

------------------------------------------------------------------
 FEEDBACK
------------------------------------------------------------------
 Date: Tue, 7 Jan 92 13:05:31 EST
 From: [e-mail] (Mark Jones)
 Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
 To: [e-mail]
 Subject: Thoughtful Communication.

 I would like to say something in "Thinknet", but don't want to
get involved in a pick-picky discussion on the network
philosophy newsgroup. I don't want to have to defend myself.

...................................................................
 The following are some exploratory reflections on a paragraph in
the Thinknet newsletter.

 In the section entitled "Thoughtful Communication", Kent
Palmer writes:

 > ... and we exist for each other only as a series of texts. In that,
 > perhaps temporary restriction to texts there are severe limitations
 > on what can be communicated by the medium. But there is also an
 > opportunity to communicate in earnest and more widely about the
 > problems that face our society and the world. There is a chance that
 > in this dialog, philosophy may become meaningful to society again.

 I am trying to get at some implicit assumptions and attitudes
in this text.

 One hypothesis seems to be that:
  <<The restriction to texts creates an opportunity for more earnestness>>

 -----
 Masks

 I am reminded of Nietsche. We don't have any real
substance--we are such things as dreams are made of--and all we
can ever appear as is as a mask. Thus our restricted textual
interface is like our normal way of interacting with each
other: it is a mask, an aspect of ourselves, not all of us,
only one of our masks.

 ------------------------------
 A mask: "One self, one world"?

 In opposition to this, the word "earnest" is being used in a
sense that there is a true essence to us, and to the world,
and that when we are being earnest, we are acting from our
"true" self and communicating about the "true" world.

 If we were not communicating "in earnest" how would we be communicating?
 - Two people may have similar fantasies about the world, and communicate
  "in earnest" about "the problems" raised by their shared fantasy
   in a meaningful way. - Two people may communicate "in earnest" without
   talking about problems.

 Similarly, the word "problems", is part of an attitude that
there is an external objective non-physical human world ( I am
not referring to the physical world here). This is the
uni-worldly literalist view.

 -----------------------------------
 Do we have to talk about the world?

 Textual communication can be about the world, or it can be
mainly about itself. It can be self referential. The medium is
the message. In the context of Thinknet, we don't need to talk
meaningfully about the world, or be relevant. We can talk
meaningfully about the network, people as texts etc.

 ------------------------------------------------
 Implicit ethic in "serious" attitude:

 The lexicography of the words "earnest" and "problems" are
indicative of a moral attitude; I personally take this attitude
to be:
 - Earnest communication is better than communication which is playful.
 - The world is a place which contains problems to be solved, not a
   place in which to play, or ... .

   How do we respond to something like:
     "You`d better take the possibility of nuclear weapons
being misplaced seriously or we`ll all be blown up".

 -----
 Style

 John Clees said in a radio interview on NPR in 1991, that
many people don't understand the difference between funny and
serious.
 We can be humorous and serious at the same time.
 We can be funny without being serious.
 If we want to be serious we don't have to be solemn.

 Oh dear, this is all so *serious*. The whole serious, earnest,
problem solving attitude has overtaken my writing. I have
succumbed, been overwhelmed by it.

 Let's escape, escape...

 Mark Jones        | "Girls just like to have fun" Madonna.


------------------------------------------------------------------

 Date: 10 Jan 92 04:14:39 EST
 From: "LANCELOT R. FLETCHER" <[e-mail]>
 To: <[e-mail]>
 Subject: .

 ----------
 GE Electronic Mail
 To: K.PALMER2
 Sub: THINKNET & slow reading

 Dear Kent,

 First of all I want to acknowledge you for the initiative
and thoughtfulness you have shown in creating THINKNET, and in
general with your enterprising, innovative and erudite
contributions to the Religion & Ethics RT of GEnie. Please enter
my subscription to THINKNET, or tell me by reply what else I must
do to subscribe.

 I am a novice at this form of telecommunication, so I would
welcome any useful suggestions.  Like you, I am interested in
identifying places "where philosophical discussion is carried
out in a focused manner..."

 The attached was just posted to the Philosophy category.
I was thinking of your material much of the time that
I was writing it, so I decided to forward it to you, rather
than wait for you to come across it in your browsing.

 MESSAGE: (Topic 19 of Philosophy Category, following message 12)

 This is not a direct reply to the preceding, but is posted
here in the hope that it may catch the eye of somebody who
knows Nietzsche's writings well and/or cares deeply about
philosophy.

 Karl Jaspers, somewhere in his book on Nietzsche, quotes
him somewhat as follows:  "I am not a philosopher.  I am a
teacher of slow reading."

 As I recall, Jaspers gave no citation for this remark, and I
have never been able to locate one, so I would be grateful for
any assistance.

 In any event, isn't it a wonderful quote?  I mean, it's
something Nietzsche should have said, regardless of whether or
not he actually wrote it down.  When I was a classroom teacher
I took it as my motto, and I would quote it to my students at
the beginning of every class.  Except what I meant was, for me
philosophy IS the teaching of slow reading.

 The first lesson in slow reading is to develop the capacity
to simply be present to the words on the page; to allow the
words to simply be there, and to take note of the fact that
they are there, before deciding what they mean.

 This is something that most students are completely
unaccustomed to doing.  If you doubt this, make the following
test:  Read a sentence of eight or ten words to a group of
students--to anybody--and ask them to reproduce the sentence word
for word. My experience has been that almost everybody responds
by telling what they thought the sentence meant--in different
words, not the same--and in the process, anything incongruous,
perplexing or ambiguous--anything, in short, which might be an
opening for learning to occur--tends to be disregarded.

 Obviously this is not a lesson that any of us can claim to
have learned sufficiently.  We are so preoccupied with deciding
what the sentences we read and hear mean, and especially with
deciding whether we agree or disagree, whether we approve or
disapprove, that we generally do not pause to take note of what
the sentences say.

 This rush to interpretation and judgment is strongly
encouraged by most of our educational practices.  I imagine it
is just about unavoidable if one is trying to read and reply to
messages on-line.

 The intention of the teaching of slow reading (i.e.
philosophy) is to subvert those practices and afford students
(i.e. those who make us the gift of their listening) some
critical access to their own interpretive activity.  The
purpose, however, is not to leave students with the notion that
the texts means whatever they make it mean.  Quite the
contrary!  By disclosing to students their own ACT of MEANING,
the practice of slow reading gives students access to authorial
intent.  The purpose of the teaching of slow reading is to
enter into a conversation with the authors of great works,
whose distinction is that they afford the opportunity to think things
that are worthy of thought.

 Slow, literal reading does not necessarily imply literal
interpretation.  Sometimes the most literal reading can reverse
the literal interpretation of the tradition.  No one expressed
this more beautifully than Leo Strauss.  In 1962, toward the
end of his long career, Strauss wrote a Preface to the English
translation of his first book, Spinoza's Critique of Religion,
which had been published in German more than thirty years
earlier.  And in the preface, Strauss indicated how his
interpretation of Spinoza had dramatically altered during the
intervening years. This early work of his was, he said, "Based
on the premise, sanctioned by powerful prejudice, that a return
to pre-modern philosophy is impossible."  In subsequent years,
however, various considerations led Strauss to suspect that the
self-destruction of reason, which he observed taking place all
around him, was not the inevitable outcome of rationalism per
se, which is what he and innumerable other European thinkers of
the time had believed. Instead, Strauss tells us, he began to
entertain the  thought that the self-destruction of reason was
in fact only the inevitable outcome of MODERN rationalism, as
distinguished from Jewish-medieval rationalism and its
classical (Aristotelian and Platonic) foundations.  This change
of orientation, he says, "compelled me to engage in a number
of studies in the course of which I became evermore attentive
to the manner in which heterodox thinkers of earlier ages wrote
their books" [Here Strauss is presumably referring to the
articles published under the title Persecution and the Art
of Writing] Strauss then concludes with the following, which is
the point of this long digression: "As a consequence of this, I
now read the Theological-Political Treatise [the book by Spinoza
that was the main subject of Strauss's book] differently than I
read it when I was young.  [At the time this book was written]
I UNDERSTOOD SPINOZA TOO LITERALLY BECAUSE I DID NOT READ HIM
LITERALLY ENOUGH." Here is how I used to approach this sort of
thing in a class.  When I would begin to teach a course on one
of the important texts in philosophy, say Plato's Republic, I
used to begin by saying, "As you read this book, I want you to
assume that it was written by God. "This often caused a certain
amount of consternation and incipient revolt.  Most of the
students would suddenly feel that I was trying to dominate and
control their minds.  "You mean we have to accept what this guy
says, even if we don't agree? Even if we think he is wrong?"
They would ask.

        "Not at all," I would reply.  "The purpose of asking
you to assume that the text for the course is written by God is
to give you the opportunity to learn."

        "How so?"

        "Well, if you are going to learn, and you are going to
learn from the author of this text, then I suppose there must
be something you have to learn from that author.  And what you
have to learn from, say, Plato, must then be something about
which you know less than Plato.  It might even be something
about which you have incorrect opinions or assumptions.  Now,
when you read a passage in a book and you find the passage
unclear or inconsistent with what you already think, do you
immediately say to yourself, "Here is an opportunity for me to
learn?"  Not at all.  What most of us do is to say, "That guy
was confused.  He is just making fallacious arguments."  Of
course, in the abstract, since we all know that knowledge is
supremely desirable, we might suppose that when the opportunity
to acquire knowledge and get rid of some portion of our
ignorance presented itself we would immediately recognize it
like some particularly delicious food which we have long
craved.  In most cases, unfortunately, when the opportunity to
learn is seen close up it looks distinctly unattractive.  It is
bad news, because the opportunity to learn is always
accompanied by the realization that we have been ignorant and
mistaken.  Naturally enough, we tend to avoid such discomfort
by seeking to shift the blame. "It's not my fault--it's the
author who is mistaken."  If the author is God, however, that
becomes a less plausible strategy. So the purpose of inviting
you to assume that Plato's Republic was written by God is not
to control your mind. It is to get you to maximize
your opportunity for being taught." I realize that this post has
become somewhat too lengthy and not altogether appropriate to
its location.  If anyone has read this far, I invite responses to
the question, is there any way that we can use this RT as a
vehicle for slow reading, for genuine philosophical inquiry?

 Lance Fletcher
 ----------

Note from Editor: Lance hosts a slow reading of Plato's
Republic on GEnie in the Philosophy Category of the Religion
and Ethics Bulletin Board. It is a fascinating topic that has
generated a lot of interest and good participation. He is an
excellent teacher of the craft of philosophy. [kdp]

..................................................................


 Date: 03/10/92
 From: [e-mail]
 To: <[e-mail]>
 Subject: LETTER TO THINKNET

 SAO PAULO, MARCH 10, 1992
 DEAR SIR,
 AS A NEW MEMBER OF THE THINKNET I'M SOMEWHAT (OR COMPLETELY)
LOST IN THE MIDST OF SO MANY POSSIBILITIES AND CHALLENGES THAT
THIS LIST OFFERS ME. SO, VERY CAUTIOUSLY... I WOULD LIKE TO ASK
YOU SOME INFORMATION. FOR EXAMPLE, IS THIS LETTER GOING TO THE
WHOLE NET OR TO ITS STAFF? HOW CAN I GET IN TOUCH, SO TO SAY,
PRIVATELY WITH THE LIST ADMINISTRATORS? MY MOST CORDIAL REGARDS
TO ANYONE WHO IS READING THIS MESSAGE. GREETINGS FROM BRAZIL

 AGATTI (INSTITUTE OF PSYCHOLOGY- UNIVERSITY OF SAO PAULO)

 PS- I AM A PSYCHOLOGIST INTERESTED IN THEORETICAL PSYCHOLOGY.
I ENJOYED VERY MUCH YOUR  SAYING OF THE NON ACADEMIC NATURE OF
THINK NET... (AND THAT YOU HOPE) TO ENCOURAGE INDEPENDENT
SCHOLARS TO INTERACT WITH EACH OTHER. I AM INTERESTED IN
EPISTEMOLOGICAL ISSUES AND PRESENTED SEVERAL PAPERS IN
INTERNATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY CONGRESSES (PARIS, LEIPZIG, SYDNEY
(AUSTR), HOLLAND, BUENOS AIRES, ETC) DEALING WITH THEORETICAL
ISSUES.

 From: palmer (Kent D Palmer)
 Subject: Re: LETTER TO THINKNET  - answer
 To: [e-mail]
 Date: Tue, 10 Mar 92 23:45:33 EST


 Howdy---

 You have made contact. I am the thinknet editor. What your you
like to discuss? Your letter is not going to the whole list.
This is a moderated list whose purpose is the distribution of
the newsletter only. I am the list administrator. By the way
What is your first name? How are things in Brazil? What does
theoretical psychology mean to you. I am a theoretical
sociologist. PhD from London School of Economics 1982.
Practicing Software Engineer and armchair philosopher. Primarily
interested in ontology of how new things come into existence. I
have no published papers. What possibilities do you see here
that you are interested in actualizing. Hope you see a few I do
not. I am open to the creative involvement of others. Let me
know what you think.

 ---Kent Palmer---
 Thinknet Editor

 ................................................................

 Date: Thu, 9 Jan 92 10:32:34 EST
 From: [e-mail]
 To: [e-mail]
 Subject: Looking for a group in the philosophy of mathematics.


 I'd be interested in joining groups who are doing discussions
on the philosophy of mathematics. I also have an interest in
starting a group which might be called the philosophy of
computation with an eye on subjecting computers and computer
science to some sort of analysis and criticism.

 Steve
 ===============================================
 D. E. Stevenson
 Department of Computer Science
 Clemson University
 Clemson, SC 29634-1906

 .................................................................
 Date: Thu, 5 Mar 92 22:55:02 -0800
 From: Art Botterell <[e-mail]>
 Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
 To: [e-mail]
 Subject: RE: thinknet e-newsletter issue#2

 Thank you for a fascinating issue, Kent, particularly the
review of MIRROR WORLDS.  Would you mind a bit of feedback on
format?

 Maybe it's a difference between print and e-form.  Maybe it's
just that my brain overloads even faster than it used to.  But
I think ThinkNet might be even more readable if it were of
lesser length, at several levels:

    ISSUES:  The program I use to retrieve ThinkNet from the WELL has a
    nasty habit of truncating files at about 1300 lines.  My eyes start to
    bulge and tear somewhat sooner.  Maybe (in the electronic version,
    anyway) you could send shorter issues, but more often?

[EDITOR: Sorry to say I am having difficulty doing the issues at long
intervals, so shorter issues at shorter intervals is out of the question
at the moment. Remember this is all free. The major problem is the work
that is necessary to maintain the subscription list. However, I have attempted
to break up the material into two separate issues. Let me know if it is
helpful. kdp]

    ITEMS:  This isn't hypertext, of course, but some of the items make
    me wish it were.  I wonder if some of the longer bibliographies and
    other reference material might be published as a supplement, or
    even on request, instead of including everything in the body of the
    newsletter?

[This is a good idea. I might try this in future issues now that I have
an FTP sight and a BBS Conference to work from. kdp]

    PARAGRAPHS:  Paragraph breaks are both restful to the eye and helpful
    to the comprehension.  There are a few epic paragraphs in a couple
    of items which might have benefited from extra strokes of the RETURN
    key.  I realize you don't write all the material, but perhaps you
    could offer your authors some stylistic guidance?

[This too is a good idea. Unfortunately I am given to long complex paragraphs
and have difficulty controling myself. However, I will try to control myself
in the future. kdp]

    LINES:  I had to strip a lot of false paragraph breaks which occurred
    because writers tried to use full 80-column lines.  A number of nets
    and systems have problems with long lines.  Might it be prudent to
    set the margins a little tighter?

[This suggestion I have tried to implement. There are still some long lines
but almost all the lines have been shortened to about 66 characters. kdp]

 Ah, well.  Now all THAT's off my chest, back to reading your
excellent issue.  Thanks for listening, Kent.  On to Number
Three!

 .................................................................

 From: [e-mail] (Mark Klein)
 Subject: First THINKNET issue, and a few comments on the second.
 To: [e-mail]
 Date: Sat, 7 Mar 92 15:28:12 EST

    Kent, I'd appreciate it if you could resend me the first
issue of THINKNET.  I had a hole in my mailbox, or my head:
one of the two.  Just as a quick note, I am a third-year
psychology student at the University of Michigan.  I am *very*
interested in philosophy, but because of my major, have not done
many readings in philosophy--nor have I had time to really
learn about AI or really understand what the Internet is
about--at least in the context that some of the articles in the
second issue of THINKNET are talking about (especially the
article on Mirror Worlds).

    I think that THINKNET may be an excellent opportunity for me
to discuss some issues that I think are very urgent considering
the future of unconstrained analytical thought, as well as
other topics that I find analytically stimulating.  I am
including this information just to let you know, if it had
never occurred to you, how immense the entire "cyberspace"
really is, and how much difficulty I have in accommodating the
new terminology that is used when discussing such--whatever you
want to call it.  Systems theory, cyberspace, thinkSpace--these
are things that are completely new to me, as they would be for
anyone looking for a way to conduct philosophical discussion on
a medium such as the net--just because the net can be an
excellent way of doing it.  People don't want to think, and to
cure this problem, a group of thinkers must work together:  the
net can provide this opportunity.  However, intermixing
philosophy and analytics over the net with metadiscussion about
the net as a communication medium might lead to unending
frustration for people like myself.

    I am going to give this a try, however.  Something has to
be done in this world before the capacity for individualistic
thought, and for considering how to eliminate societal
brainwashing is lost.  I hope that THINKNET will serve as a
tool for considering such issues.

           Mark Klein
 --
 .................................................................

 To: [e-mail]
 Subject: how to find new stuff on the net
 Date: Mon, 09 Mar 92 02:04:25 -0500
 From: Edward Vielmetti <[e-mail]>

 congratulations on thinknet v1n2, good reading.

 i'd like to make a few notes on tools that I use to find out
what's happening out there on the fringes of the net.  these
are ways for people who are interested in what's new,
different, odd, experimental, or otherwise what hasn't been
already decided on for sure to get their two bits in.

 - new mailing lists

 A good way to find out what's new on the net, or to advertise
something new yourself, is to follow the various groups and
mailing lists dedicated to promoting new mailing lists.

 The primary resource is bit.listserv.new-list, aka the
NEW-LIST mailing list, run by Marty Hoag at North Dakota.  He
takes in clippings from netnews and announcements by list
owners, ensures that people really want to have their group
publicized, and ships them out in a predictable format to
NEW-LIST.   You'll catch most of the new BITNET mailing lists
that way and a fair smattering of internet or usenet oriented
groups. Most of the people who are compiling union lists of
mailing lists use Marty's feed as a source.

 Another high-yield source is Dave Lawrence's "news.announce.
newgroups". Usenet newsgroups being what they are it takes
about two months to get one up and running; Dave runs the
moderated list that coordinates voting and calls for
discussion.  The weekly summaries of what's proposed will keep
you informed at a glance.

 It's not available everywhere, but if you can find it (and
construct a kill file for it) the usenet "control" newsgroup
has the nuts and bolts of new group announcements.  This is the
best way to pick up info on new "alt" groups, esp. since the
ritual of first discussing things in "alt.config" is a custom
most honored in the breach.

 Last but not least there's the famously noisy "news.groups"
newsgroup, a sort of training ground for high volume angry and
often pointless discussion mixed in with a few reasonable
voices to suggest new groups. To use news.groups effectively
requires nerves of steel and a thick skin. My recommended
procedure would be to use a good searching tool and go back
through the discussion looking for the phrase "mailing list",
you'll see some fraction of people saying "Not enough people
would ever want to talk about that to justify a newgroup, start
a mailing list!"

 - other sorts of new stuff

 New software and new ftp sites: try "comp.archives", a group
whose moderator filters through netnews looking for
announcements of software available via anonymous FTP.  80-100
articles a week. If you're on the internet definitely use the
WAIS archive server for it to go back and search for stuff too.
 Another source is the updates on ftp.uu.net's index directory
of what's been added to the system in the last week; kind of
short on description but very timely.

 New products: "comp.newprod", a moderated list with new
product announcements and the like.  Tends to the techy side,
and the moderator has fairly fierce standards about what's OK and
what's not OK.

 New networks: there's a mailing list run from Merit (and sorry
I don't have it right handy) with bi-weekly additions to the
NSFnet routing tables.  Good intelligence on who's getting
connected and where, and you can tell from the details of it
which networks are winning the commercial internet market.

 New usenet sites: No real good way to do this right now.  In a
better world you'd have more reports like the news that goes to
"can.uucp" which details new and disappeared UUCP sites; as it
stands you might be best off constructing it yourself out of
the data posted to "comp.mail.maps".

 New words and ideas: No one doing this yet either.  The idea
would be to compile a dictionary of words used on the net in
the past month and then take a look at articles coming in that
used new, novel, blurfl, frangastilistic, or otherwise never
before seen words. You'd need to filter out some of the clutter
that characterizes usenet (message id's and the like) but I
suspect you'd end up with interesting results.

 New clever .signature files: "alt.fan.warlord", with a small
army of volunteers, carefully hunts down the worst in Usenet .
sig files and reposts them here for your amusement and disgust.


 - other hints

 A very fine idea for keeping current with new stuff on the net
is to occasionally dip into a subject which you aren't used to
reading. On most systems that carry upwards of 1000 newsgroups
people don't read more than 10% (and more likely 1%) of the total
set of groups there are.  Reading one unfamiliar group a day
will take only a little while.   (This is a lot harder with
mailing lists since it takes longer to get on and off to fetch
a sample).

 Brute force (if you are lucky enough to have it handy) will
help a lot in locating novel things.  If you have a WAIS server
and a pile of disk space free, index the current traffic in any
newsgroups which you don't quite have time enough to read.  For
instance, you can keep up with a narrow interest in all of the
sci.* Usenet groups by searching the WAIS server running at the
U of North Carolina; a weekly search for the few keywords that
interest you will get you off on your way to finding what you
want without plowing through the 90% of traffic that's off the
mark.

 - final words

 Ah, but the best way to keep informed of what's going on is to
tell other people about what you find once you find it!  Keep
that up over a stream of weeks or months and you'll start to
find people sending you things, quite new or interesting, and
quite unprovoked.  A few choice finds hand-carried between
netnews and mailing lists will generate a lot of good will and
will encourage people to reciprocate.

 --
 Edward Vielmetti, vice president for research, MSEN Inc. [e-mail]
      MSEN Inc., 628 Brooks, Ann Arbor MI  48103 [phone]
     "Things are glued together with spit and bailing wire now."

 To: [e-mail] (Kent D Palmer)
 Subject: Re: how to find new stuff on the net -- answer
 Date: Tue, 10 Mar 92 01:57:01 -0500
 From: Edward Vielmetti <[e-mail]>

 Thanks Kent.  I'm not sure that the article fits in the
philosophical context of thinknet either, but whatever it was
that was in there inspired me to write it.  I sent off a copy
to John Quarterman for his _Matrix News_ where it fits a little
better.

 I look for new stuff because the old stuff gets, well, old
after a while. In many cases the first weeks or months of a
mailing list has most of the interesting traffic as many people
from all sorts of places converge to see if it'll match their
interests.  Systems which are newly connected to the Internet
have often been keeping a local hoard of good and interesting
information not available elsewhere; for instance, when the U of
Toronto first connected to the Internet, I checked out their
FTP site and was quite pleasantly surprised to find a good
collection of user documentation and archives of a number of
mailing lists hard to find elsewhere.

 The techniques for assessing whether something is new or novel
are also useful when going back through old archives of news or
mail and trying to reconstruct the interesting bits of the
discussion.  Often the context of an online exchange is
partially or totally unavailable at a later date, so it takes
some good detective skills to piece together an appropriate
environment in which the discussion tool place.  Rummaging
through wuarchive I located the archives of "msggroup", an ARPANET
mailing list with traffic back to 1975 (!) -- plowing through
that with WAIS yielded a lot of insight into how current day
problems with Internet governance are old hat, harking back to
the days when you could bet cut off from the net by an irate
colonel.

 Back in the olden days :) an inventor could keep pace with the
flow of new ideas just by reading the _Official Patent
Gazette_.  There's nothing like that for the Internet, no
immediate clue where innovation and change is happening
rapidly, and it's a challenge to keep up.

 KP> - what sorts of new things have you found

 In a sense, I hardly every find anything really "new" --
someone else out there is already working on the problem in
order for it to show up when I look for it.  The insight is to
find something in one context (e.g. a standard for multimedia
email) and move that idea over to a different context (a full
text database) & note the effect of the combined ideas.

  KP> The idea of having a program to find new things
  KP> on the nets is very appealing and in part
  KP> this is exactly what Thinknet is designed to do.

 I have applied most of my efforts to trying to pick new (or
even "interesting" though that's a lot harder) things out of
the stream of the multiple megabytes of text that goes through
Usenet every day. There's so much stuff there it should be easy
to find something. It helps if you're really looking for a lot
of different things so that any given article has a chance of
being appealing on some level.

 For 18 months I ran the Usenet newsgroup "comp.archives" and
read through about 100+ messages/day looking for announcements
of new software available for anonymous FTP.  I never did get
an article parser that was good enough to do all the checks and
filters I did by eye, not lazy enough or not a good enough
programmer I guess.  That scanner was fixed on the word "FTP",
which was a reasonably good predictor of announcements of new
software; still I only had about a 10% accuracy rating on
filtering out junk.  That took too much time, so I gave it up
about 9 months ago and have been working since on more general
scanners and full text databases (WAIS) and on ways to
encourage people to do more article markup to increase the
chance that they'll be found (MIME, the multimedia mail
standard-in-progress).

 hope that helps.  feel free to print any of this.

 --
 Edward Vielmetti, vice president for research, MSEN Inc. [e-mail]
      MSEN Inc., 628 Brooks, Ann Arbor MI  48103 [phone]
 "using barbed wire for overhead lines and bottlenecks for insulators"

 ................................................................


 Date: Sun,  8 Mar 92 21:32:38 -0600 (CST)
 From: Brian Capouch <[e-mail]>
 To: [e-mail]
 Subject: Browser for Thinknet

 I'm a grad student who's working on a project that involves
electronic journals.  I have been getting Thinknet and to me it
looks like it would be an ideal testbed for the software that
I'm developing.

 The software presents the reader with the table of contents,
with each article given an ordinal number.  The article can be
immediately gotten to through that number.  Then, one page of
the article at a time is shown to the reader.  A command issued
at the end of each page allows moving to: the table of
contents, next page of the article, previous page, next article
in the category, or previous article in the category.


 Right now the version ready for public release runs on any
system that will allow C arrays to be >32767 bytes.  Versions
that run on PCs, Macs and X windows are also under development.


 If you'd be interested in trying this software, and providing
me with feedback as to its usefulness and user-friendliness,
I'd be glad to process the most recent issue of Thinknet so
that it can be browsed with the software.

 I'll be glad to provide you with further details if you're
interested.

 Brian Capouch
 Grad Student, Dept. of Agricultural Engineering, Purdue University
 Instructor in Computer Science, Saint Joseph's College
 [e-mail]

 .................................................................

 Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1992 19:27 EST
 Subject: Mind-body lists
 To: [e-mail]

 Dear Kent,

      I have read the last two editions of Thinknet with some
interest. I completed an Honors degree in psychology at
Melbourne University last year. Over the next 18 months I will
work - to pay off debts as well as save money towards a PhD I
hope to commence late 1993/early 1994. My main area of interest
is the mind-body problem, and would like to spend the next 18
months filling in some fairly large gaps. Hence I am looking
for a mailing list of a fairly high academic standard, that is
exploring aspects of the mind-body problem, both from the
psychological as well as the philosophical.

 Many thanks,         Patrick
 ------------------------------------------
 Patrick Wilken
 E-mail: [e-mail]
 "The prince of darkness is a gentleman" Shakespeare, King Lear, III, iv.

 .................................................................

 Topic  44:  >>>>>>> THINKNET NEWSLETTER <<<<<<<<<<
 # 43: John Muse (jmuse)      Tue, May  5, '92  (23:57)     116
lines

 I'm responding to the Thinknet newsletters which I recently
(was) infected (by).  The following are provisional remarks.  I
haven't done the infinite and interminable thinking that would
make these remarks rigorous.

 >Thoughtspace

 Are there new implications for this spatialization of
thinking?  Freud's first (Unconscious, preconscious, conscious)
and second (Id, Ego, Super-ego) topologies were maps of the
psyche, maps of libidinal flows and the markings of unconscious
ruptures through repressive barrier/membrane of consciousness.
For Freud the ego was an introjected mapping of the body's
surface.  His models/figures were spatializations that included
media technologies as endopsychic projections: the mystic writing pad,
screen memories, mechanisms of displacement and condensation, etc.

 Hasn't thinking always been marked by figures of limits,
horizons, property, paths, ways etc?  This cyber- landscape
then must already be deeply Heideggerian. Thinkspace is
answering a call that preceded it.  We're on the way to a
being-in-the-world that is fully technologized.  See _Manifesto
for Cyborgs_ by Donna Haraway and _The Telephone Book:
Technology, Schizophrenia, Electric Speech_ by Avital Ronell.
Ok, yes to Thoughtspace if we adhere closely to a non-
Cartesian space, one that is as it opens and is loaded with
desirings and intensities, a Deleuze rhizome that betrays an
unconscious.

 > Memes

 The model/theory offered in the notes to the Journal of Ideas
regarding memes (Richard Dawson, _Selfish Gene_) is provocative
mostly for its productive errors.  If we consider the seriously
the mapping of DNA biochemical processes to the life and viral
properties of memes we find a curious assumption.  This map
would posit algebraic building blocks common to all memes.
These building blocks would be invariant as are the acids that
make up DNA.  Even if we were to consider the very letter of
the text to be the acid, we would have stabilized thinking
around a fully present structure, a possibly identifiable set
of constituent ideas ala Plato: the return of the repressed.
The language-is-a-virus thematics though are powerful and need
full elaboration, but this virus most pose real risks and must
be able to bust the self-identity of Language itself.  Memes are
little clean.  Can we have an abject in Cyberspace or will it
remain Cyberbia?  Can meme-lines ever become extinct?  Aren't
there ghosts haunting thinking?  What would meme engineering
be?

 >McLuhan

 The reference to McLuhan in this section (topic 44, response
30) is necessary and curious.  I've recently reread parts of
_Understanding Media_ and find it very complicated thinking.
If every medium is the medium for another medium and not for a
simple content, then the Email/conferencing is the medium for
print..?  Hot medium.  Well there's an implication of
parasitism between media...?  No medium then can claim to
radically break with those that preceded.  Barthes commenting
on the invention of photography called it "a decisive mutation
of communication technologies."  A mutation!

 >Protocol

 Doing theory on the net seems difficult for the reasons
discussed in the first newsletter.  The community that the net
constitutes is not a community-of-the-question (as Derrida has
called philosophy).  Politesse can be busted by flames and Idle
talk.  But traditional seminar protocols are hierarchical and
silly for thoughtspace... so then what?  I know for instance
that many theorists would refuse to write sound bites for the
"public."  Lit-crit and theory people consider writing and
thinking to be mutually parasitic, and so would write forever
before posting.  But the clumsiness of these communications, by
comparison to telephone communications and face to face, (what
about the Face in Thoughtspace?  Levinas has much to say here)
should be an advantage then, should slow us down. Speed isn't a
mere attribute of our culture. It is our culture. Its ironic
that this technology's primitive status is its promise: at 2400
bps advertising won't bite - yet.  An amber (not dark) ages
tech.  The writers out there who are slow, methodical,
obsessional, will most likely find this environment hostile and
unsafe at any speed?  The pun is off... if warp-speed then the
obsessional neurotic wouldn't have time to indefinitely delay
participation. Nets have one foot in pre-modernity and one foot
in post- modernity: It's a postal system which disrupts the
itinerary of destination.  Many letters are dead.  All letters
are subject to surveillance.

 >Today we assume our interlocutors are other people..

 The text goes on to say that we are already simulating
Knowbots.  Yet hasn't the whole category, "person," been
destabilized by these technologies?  Aren't we Knowbots
already?  Or better yet aren't these Knowbots what we've always
already been, always already desired? Technology is a destiny
(Heidegger), one that arrives to us from the future of our
desires (Freud, Lacan).  Are there specific Thinkspace/Knowbot
pathologies?  Can this space itself be said to be hysterical?
Can it be said to have symptoms of our future rapport to
technology?

 Where are the feminist contributions?  Where are the
interventions in the Phallogocentrism of the philosophy
conference?  Epistemology, Ontology are split by a refusal to
name sexual difference.

 .................................................................

 Date: 30 May 92 00:51:47 EDT
 From: Russ Savage <[e-mail]>
 To: Kent D Palmer <[e-mail]>
 Subject: thinknet letter to the editor

 It's a miracle that you're reading this since I'm new at this
internet stuff - in fact I was scanning thru Compuserv looking
for info on Internet when I stumbled across your first two
issues - lucky me! - interesting ruminations and high hopes -
so I'll experiment and try to write a letter to the editor -
let me know if you get it or I'll keep trying and possibly bury
us both.

 Thinking about what you are attempting and the evolution of
communication led me into an unusual area of consideration -
the communication of emotion in this new world of cyberspace.
I recently read an article describing the different set of
rules that people use when talking on the phone as compared to
face to face conversation. Speaking on the phone, we are
without the face to face visual, nonverbal cues as to emotional
context and so we must use pauses, "ah"s, "um"s and other sound
and pacing techniques to convey messages we don't explicitly
say, such as emotional state and pre-emptive cues for things
like being too busy to do what we suspect the caller is about
to ask for. I know this isn't a new idea - but how is emotion
communicated on a net (beyond smileys and flaming)? Is it an
important issue? Obviously I think it's important or I won't
have brought it up - but I think a philosophical forum might be
an appropriate place to look at the basic questions regarding
the *necessary* means of conveying emotions as well as concepts
when we electronically converse. Perhaps some of the flaming
and general mayhem that sometimes occurs is a result of
misunderstood emotional messages in the medium. When we speak
face to face we convey many nonverbal messages that we are not
even aware of - and we've learned ways to do some of those
things on the phone - how do we do them here?

 Comparing the process to the modes of letter or essay writing
isn't quite right - there is a speaking quality - a phone
message feel to this - but the inflection and pacing of speech
is gone. Well I guess some is there - I realize I've been
writing this in an informal, breezy manner rather than formally
and that conveys something - but there is more - I don't know
how to say it except to show it by including a poem.

 ..........

     Ripple in the Pond
      Phoenix - 4/14/92


 The new boyfriend brought the shotgun
 left it in the hall
 left it leaning against the wall
 warned the kids to stay away

 The natural arc of curiosity
 led the four year old to it
 led the arms to hold it
 to lift it
 to turn to the three year old
 chattering behind

 Like a pebble tossed into a pond
 the gun dropped from those hands
 plopped against the surface
 of the floor
 splashed shot into the air
 shredded the surface of life
 of hope
 tranquillity and faith

 Chalk-faced
 the mother sits
 among the women and girls
 is caressed by them
 and their grief

 The men stand
 bunched
 murmuring

 The boyfriend
 stands alone.

 ..........

 Note that no child will ever die of a gunshot in cyberspace,
but the death of that child must be brought into this
electronic world somehow - as well as into our philosophy.

 Both versions of Star Trek have a rational, unemotional being
to highlight the dirty, messy, emotional elements of being
human - and serving those elements is the purpose of the
holodeck - how do we include them now?


 PS - sign me up - I want future issues. Best of luck.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
THINKNET PUBLICATION DATA REPEATED (Incase issues are separated.)
-----------------------------------------------------------------

 *Scope*

 Thinknet is a review of philosophical debates and discussions
that are ongoing and enabled by computer mediated
communications.  Any meta-theoretical exchanges that border on
philosophy or Systems Theory that are carried out on the
global networks or Bulletin Board Systems are of interest. All
thoughtful discussions within the cyberspace medium are
considered relevant, especially those with an inter-, multi-, or
transdisciplinary character.

 *Sources, Subscriptions & Submissions*

 Thinknet is an occasional publication available in both
electronic and hard copy versions.

 Thinknet is available electronically from the following:

        The WORLD BBS Online Book Initiative Directory

        To access ftp world.std.com
        {telnet address: 192.74.137.5}

        Once connected then login as anonymous,
        use any password (though an e-mail address as a
        password is the custom). Once in just "cd obi"
        (or, specifically for thinknet stuff,
        "cd obi/NewsLetters/Thinknet").

        ....................................................

        The WELL BBS Thinknet Conference
        27 Gate Five Road
        Sausalito, CA 94965
        modem 415-332-6106        voice 415-332-4335

        Must register as a user to gain access. Once on system
        you can look in the phi (philosophy) conference for
        the thinknet topic. For newsletter issues see the thinknet
        conference. Send an email message to the host using
        'mail thinknet' to gain entrance. Once you have been
        let in then look in '/well/info/thinknet' for thinknet files.

        ....................................................

        GEnie BBS
        (Religion and Ethics Bulletin Board -- Philosophy category)
        GEnie Client Services 1-800-638-9636
           The RELIGION BBS has been revamped and the thinknet
        topic there has been eliminated. From now on thinknet
        issues will be uploaded into the library associated
        with the Religion BBS. Look for a file with name
        thinkxxx.zip where 'xxx' is the issue number. For example,
        think003.zip.

        ....................................................

        COMPUSERVE
         Electronic Frontier Foundation reportedly has
         copies of this newsletter in their directory.

        ....................................................

        ALT.CYBERSPACE
         Some one seems to be posting the whole newsletter to
         ALT.CYBERSPACE usenet newsgroup. If this continues you
         may pull it off the net directly.

 You may subscribe electronically to Thinknet by e-mailing to
the following address:

        [e-mail]

 Use the following message format:

        SENT THINKNET YourFullName [e-mail]


 Hardcopy subscriptions are available at a nominal cost to
cover photocopying, postage and handling.  Write the editor for
the current rates at the following address:

        Kent Palmer
        PO BOX 8383
        ORANGE CA 92664-8383
        UNITED STATES

 Thinknet invites individuals to submit information, articles,
and news for possible inclusion.  Send submissions to the same
electronic or postal addresses that appear immediately above
for subscriptions.

 If you would like to become a correspondent reporting on
developments on a particular mailing list or bulletin board
please apply.  We would like to provide summaries of ongoing
developments from time to time.

 Thinknet will mention items it receives that are within its
scope and when appropriate, review them.  Electronic
newsletters, BBS services, books, mailing lists, works in
progress, are all of interest.

 Individuals interested in participating in the preparation
and dissemination of this journal are encouraged to apply to the
Thinknet address above.

 We are a particularly interested in identifying Bulletin
Board systems where philosophical discussion is carried out in
a focused manner, i.e. where philosophy has its own category.
Inspiration for the format and design of this electronic journal
is taken from the ARTCOM electronic art's related newsletter
located on the WELL.

 Thinknet may be distributed freely in electronic form.  It
should be considered as shareware.  Thus the copyright notice
must be preserved and the text copied in its entirety without
changes.  It is not allowed for anyone to charge for Thinknet
newsletter except the original producer.

 Thinknet newsletter copyright 1992 Kent Palmer.  All rights
are reserved.  It may be not be distributed in paper form
without permission of the copyright holder.  Single paper
copies for personal study are allowed to be printed.

 *Staff*

 EDITOR

 Kent D. Palmer   -> [e-mail]

 CORE GROUP

 Peter Cash        -> [e-mail]
 Stephen Clark     -> [e-mail]
 Richard Coburn    -> [e-mail]
 Richard Dunn      -> [e-mail]
 Lance Fletcher    -> [e-mail]
 Brent J. Krawchuk -> [e-mail]
                      [e-mail]
 Elan Moritz       -> [e-mail]
 Mark Peterson     -> [e-mail]
 Frank Schroth     -> [e-mail] (copy editor)
 Bruce Schuman     -> [e-mail]
 Jeff Dooley       -> [e-mail]



|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|||||||    THANK YOU FOR READING THE THINKNET NEWSLETTER   ||||||||
|||||||   ANY COMMENTS YOU MIGHT GIVE WOULD BE APPRECIATED ||||||||
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 All opinions expressed herein are purely those of the individual
 authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the Bulletin
 Board or Network Node on which they reside. Thinknet is not an
 organization but a network of people continuously communicating
 via electronic means. Join in. You are welcome to participate.
 Remember this is for fun. We won't take ourselves too seriously if
 you don't take us, or yourself, too seriously, either. In other
 words we will not participate in arguments and exchange of flames.
=========================END=OF=THINKNET=FILE======================