In 1987, Faustin Bray conducted an interview with William S. Burroughs by phone, mostly using questions suggested by Terence McKenna and R.U. Sirius. Below is the opening exchange, about mind technologies. (more…)
Author: Ken Goffman
-
The Next Fifty Years: Why I’m Optimistic Because Everything Will Be Terrible…
by John Shirley
The following is the complete text of the speech the author had originally planned to give at TEDx in Brussels (November 2011). The speech he gave used high points from this off-the-cuff essay, but, of necessity, only half as long. He prefers this version.
It’s a contradiction in terms—two singularities. But there are two, there’s the fanciful technological singularity of the imagination and the singularity that’s likely to come about. The false singularity, supposed to come between 2035 and 2045, is almost a “supernatural event” in the minds of many people. With its dream of technologically achieved eternal life, it has the reek of religious mythology about it, the unconscious fear of mortality; the second singularity is the real singularity—it is more modest but impressive enough… (more…)
-
Interiorizing The Body, Exteriorizing The Mind
High Frontiers launched in 1984 and was the publication that eventually became MONDO 2000 in 1989 via Reality Hackers.
Interiorizing The Body, Exteriorizing the Mind
by Terence McKenna, from Issue #1 of High Frontiers, 1984
Through electronic circuitry and the building of a global information-system, we are essentially exteriorizing our nervous system, so that it is becoming a patina or a skin around the planet. And when you telephone people, and when you watch TV, when you do all these things, you’re essentially projecting your consciousness over great distances. And as technology becomes more miniaturized, less physically and spatially obtrusive, we are going to naturally lose the distinction between the body-image, and the technical projection of the body-image, which is all this information transfer technology. (more…)
-
First MONDO 2000 Editorial (1989) Annotated (2017)
cover photo by Morgan Russell
MONDO 2000 is here to cover the leading edge in hyperculture. We’ll bring you the latest in human/technological interactive mutational forms as they happen. (COULD PROBABLY RERUN SOME TECH ARTICLES FROM MONDO 2000 MAGAZINE HERE SINCE MOST OF THE THINGS THAT WERE GONNA HAPPEN IN FIVE YEARS ARE STILL GONNA HAPPEN… IN 5 YEARS)
We’re talking Cyber-Chautauqua: bringing cyberculture to the people! Artificial awareness modules. (THE GREAT THING ABOUT 1989 IS THAT YOU COULD JUST SAY STUFF THAT SOUNDS COOL… BECAUSE NOBODY KNEW ANYTHING ABOUT ANY OF THIS SORT OF SHIT) Visual music. Vidscan Magazines. (SOME PROJECT OF ALLAN LUNDELL & TAYLOR BARCROFT ANNOUNCED IN THIS FIRST MONDO ISSUE… IT DIDN’T MAKE IT TO ISSUE #2 … IT’S MEMORIALIZED IN DEAD MEDIA NOW Brain-boosting technologies. (WELL, HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL FOR THINGS LIKE TRANSCRANIAL MAGNETIC STIMULATION … I’D LIKE TO TRY IT!)… William Gibson’s Cyberspace Matrix — fully realized! (SPEAKING OF BILL GIBSON, HIS ATTITUDE TOWARDS INTELLIGENCE INCREASE THROUGH DRUGS AND TECHNOLOGY IS THAT (PARAPHRASING) UNTIL HE SEES SOME IDIOT SUDDENLY WALKING AROUND BEING A GENIUS, HE’S NOT TOO INTERESTED… WHICH REMINDS ME OF LAWNMOWER MAN) (more…)
-
William Gibson & Timothy Leary Discuss Neuromancer Game That Never Was (Audio)
cover photo by Morgan Russell
We were working on our first Mondo 2000 issue. It was going to be the cyberpunk theme issue and we’d gotten interviews with the major cyberpunk SF writers, except William Gibson. Gibson’s management wouldn’t put us in touch with him. And then we heard that he was coming to the Bay Area and we turned up the heat, but his press agent had him set up for interviews with major outlets only and we were nobody and it was just a brick wall. So somehow, publisher Queen Mu wound up on the phone with Timothy Leary complaining about this and Leary offered to let us transcribe a tape of him and Gibson in conversation about ideas for the game spinoff that would accompany the release of the film of Neuromancer — all of this being planned then — back in 1989 (actually, plans began in ’86). Leary was going to lead the development of the game… at least conceptually. (Well, it was all conceptual, ultimately.) (more…)