"Rushkoff, Douglas - Cyberia" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rushkoff Douglas)

validity of an experimental result gets heard and iterated throughout the net.
Ultimately, the personal computer and its associated technologies may be our best
access points to Cyberia. They even serve as a metaphor for cyberians who have nothing to
do with computers but who look to the net as a model for human interaction. It allows for
communication without the limitations of time or space, personality or body, religion or
nationality. The vast computer-communications network is a fractal approach to human
consciousness. It provides the means for complex and immediate feedback and iteration, and
is even self-similar in its construction, with giant networks mirroring BBSs, mirroring users'
own systems, circuit boards, and components that themselves mirror each participant's own
neural biocircuitry. In further self-similarity, the monitors on some of these computers depict
complex fractal patterns mirroring the psychedelics-induced hallucinations of their designers,
and graphing--for the first time--representations of existence as a chaotic system of feedback
and iteration.
The datasphere is a hardwiring of the planet itself, providing ways of distributing and
iterating information throughout the net. To join in, one needs only to link up. Or is it really
that easy?

Arbitrating Anarchy
David Gans, host of The Grateful Dead Hour (the national radio program that our
Columbia University hacker taped a few nights ago) is having a strange week. The proposal
he's writing for his fourth Grateful Dead book is late, he still has to go into the studio to
record his radio show, his band rehearsal didn't get out until close to dawn, and something
odd is occurring on the WELL this morning. Gans generally spends at least several hours a
day sitting in his Oakland studio apartment, logged onto the WELL. A charter member of the
original WELL bulletin board, he's since become host of dozens of conferences and topics
ranging from the Grateful Dead to the Electronic Frontiers Foundation. In any given week,
he's got to help guide hundreds or even thousands of computer interchanges. But this week
there are even more considerations. An annoying new presence has made itself known on the
WELL: a user calling himself Stink.''
Stink showed up late one night in the Grateful Dead conference, insisting to all the
Deadheads that Jerry Garcia stinks.'' In the name of decorum and tolerance, the Deadheads
decided among themselves to ignore the prankster. "Maybe he'll get bored and go away,''
Gans repeatedly suggested. WELLbeings enjoy thinking of the WELL as a loving, anarchic
open house, and resort to blocking someone out completely only if he's truly dangerous.
Stealing passwords or credit card numbers, for example, is a much more excommunicable
deed than merely annoying people with nasty comments.
But today David Gans's electronic mailbox is filled with messages from angry female
WELLbeings. Stink has begun doing sends''--immediate E-mail messages that appear on the
recipient's screen with a "beep,'' interrupting whatever she is doing. People usually use sends
when they notice that a good friend has logged on and want to experience a brief, live''
interchange. No one "sends'' a stranger. But, according to Gans's E-mail, females logged on to
the WELL are receiving messages like Wanna dance?'' or "Your place or mine?'' on their
screens, and have gotten a bit irked. Anonymous phone calls can leave a girl feeling chilly, at
the very least. This is somehow an even greater violation of privacy. From reading the girl's
postings, he knows her name, the topics she enjoys, how she feels about issues; if he's a
hacker, who knows how much more he knows?
David realizes that giving Stink the silent treatment isn't working. But what to do? He
takes it to the WELL staff, who, after discussing the problem with several other distressed
topic hosts, decide to put Stink into a problem shell.'' Whenever he tries to log on to the
WELL, he'll receive a message to call the main office and talk to a staff member. Until he