Get Back in the Box PODCAST

Get Back in the Box will be released in paperback tomorrow. I just did a podcast interview on DuctTapeMarketing.com, applying the principles of the book to marketing, or what I’d prefer to think of as passive marketing of goods and services via the cultures that create and use them.

Upcoming Appearances

I’m doing a www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif href=”http://www.nycomiccon.com”> of public appearances in the NYC area. I thought I should get them down here in case anybody feels like coming! Please do. (I don’t get out enough, these days, and would welcome the contact.)

Feb 23-25:
I’ll be doing signings at the comic-con during the day, and two panels:
1. Vertigo: Looking Ahead
Friday, Feb. 23, 2007, 6:30-7:30pm

2. “Future Shocks: What Imaginative Literature Tells Us About Who We Are and Where We’re Going” is scheduled to take place on Saturday 2/24/2007 at 11:00:00 AM in Room 1E15.

Feb 28: Barnes and Noble, Astor Place. 7pm
Talking about Testament (volume 2) and Get Back in the Box (now in paperback).

Robert Anton Wilson Memorial

from Bob’s daughter and friends:

Join Together at the Robert Anton Wilson Cosmic Meme-Orial & Lasagna Levitation Celebration!

Hail Eris! All Hail Bob!

Celebrate the life, work and continued multi-dimensionality of Robert Anton Wilson by joining us in a giant, jammin’ Translation Celebration and 8th Circuit Soiree!

. Reconnect with old friends. Make new, like-minded friends. Share ideas. Exchange email addresses. (It’s like the Internet, only in person.)
. Be a part of Bob’s Raucous Processionary Send-Off as his ashes sail out of the cove and rejoin his beloved’s in the Pacific!
. Watch continuous video clips of RAW from Deepleaf Production’s “Maybe Logic” documentary and from his numerous Trajectories videos.
. Expand your mind (and your tummy) with hors d’ourvres, soft drinks, and a cash bar.
. Expand your neighbors’ minds by sharing remembrances and anecdotes at the open mic! (Brevity and levity are appreciated!)
. Mingle, nosh, remember, appreciate, celebrate!
. And above all, Keep the Lasagna Flying!

RAW DATA:
Where: The Cocoanut Grove, on the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk in Santa Cruz, CA
www.cocoanutgrovesantacruz.com

When: Sunday, February 18, 2007
Time: 1 – 6 PM
Tickets: $23 each
Limited number available! To purchase tickets, or for additional information, click here:
http://impermanentpress.com/pages2/raw-tix.html

RAQ FAQ: click here

Testament Book Two: West of Eden

It’s out! The second collected set of Testament (Rolling Stone’s “Hot Comic” of the year) is now available at comic shops, bookstores, and links like this one.

This book starts the series over – quite literally, in fact – beginning with the Genesis creation story and its modern parallel: the generation of an AI lifeform by Alan Stern. Of course, the nano-bots all have the shape of the Eye of Horus, and Goddess Astarte manages to insinuate herself into the Garden of Eden as a lovely tree.

The best part of it all is that the volume concludes with a 9000-word set of notes to the entire collection, including the first trade. All the Bible and historical references you need to assure yourself that these stories and their allegories have a basis in exegesis (objective textual and historical study).

This collection offers readers a new entrypoint to the comic, so that it’s not required to have read the first five issues to begin anew here.

Re-Public Interview

I happened upon a website about “re-imagining democracy” called Re-Public that features a recent, short, interview I gave to Pavlos Hatzopolous.

P.H.: Why should we be optimistic about our renaissance? Even though it is characterised by the creation of networks, collaboration, and sharing, these, on could argue, might be used for all sorts of different purposes.

D.R.: They are used for different purposes, all the time. I don’t know that I’m particularly optimistic, myself. But I do think there’s a value in being able to visualize positive, creative scenarios. If we can’t even envision an alternative to the faceless fascism in which we’ve found ourselves, I don’t see any way out of it. By beginning to believe that there might be steps we can take to begin the long hard road back to consciousness and compassion, we bring this journey into the realm of possibility.

And I’d rather live in a world where a reduction in pain, suffering, and stupidity is at least possible.

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Podcast Interview

I just did a talk for a big performing arts conference in NYC, and got interviewed for podcast by Bill Reichblum of KadmusArts, at the big Hilton Hotel in midtown Manhattan.

I was exhausted after a week of travel, talks and interviews, but I may not have been totally incoherent. My favorite part of the interview (I don’t know if they left it in) was when the lights went out in the ballroom where we were talking (some automatic feature when there’s no movement in the room). We kept going as if nothing had happened, but then I started to see spots moving around on the carpet.

At first I figured it was extreme overtiredness playing tricks with my retinas – but then I realized it was actually scores of mice running up and down the aisles between the chairs. I guess they come out when it’s dark.

Robert Anton Wilson, 1932-2007

Forwarded from Olga {at} maybelogic(.)org />
Robert Anton Wilson Defies Medical Experts and leaves his body @4:50 AM on binary date 01/11.
All Hail Eris!

Sock Mobs

The Internet can be a nasty place – particularly online discussions and the comments sections of blogs. But is the recent increase in online hostilities really an indication of some groundswell of American rage, or are there just a few bad eggs determined to make it look that way?

There’s a relatively new phenomenon occurring online these days – an illusion of populist group hostilitiy I’ve come to call “Sock Mobs,” after the “sock puppets” people use to feign multiple identities in online conversations. It works like this:

An anonymous poster picks a fight with his presumed enemy. Whether or not that enemy responds, a number of other posters appear to chime in – agreeing to whatever the accusation might be. “This guy is a commie.” “This doctor is a quack.” “This guy wants Israel to be abolished.” “This professor is corrupting college students.” The accusation comes along with twisted supporting evidence. Every once in a while, an underinformed but real person agrees with the accusations; after all, it appears from the posts that this enemy of all things good and proper really might be a threat. All this makes it look like there’s a lot of upset people.

The accused party might respond, explain, and clarify, but the original poster always ignores the facts presented and reframes the argument to his liking – always polarizing, exaggerating, or even misquoting the defendee. Then, again, all those voices of agreement pile on. Eventually, the defendee goes away – having said pretty much all he or she can say – and the original anonymous angry poster claims victory: see? the accused can’t have an open discussion because he is guilty.

It turns out, however, that many of these “gangs” of seemingly unrelated, individual posters are just one person. In most cases, it’s a shill of a lobby, a “campus protection” organization, or an offshoot of a political party. He logs in from multiple computers, spoofs IP addresses, and sometimes even fakes responses by his target. All in an effort to make it appear that a real grassroots mob of regular folk are taking a stand against the evil communist, market critic, or God-hating evolutionist. College students are hired to troll message boards and engage in this behavior. Of course in other cases it’s just a lonely, obsessed, anti-fan.

That’s right: it’s not a smart mob at all, but a faux mob, constructed for no other purpose than net propaganda. Think “Swift Boat Veterans,” but on a smaller, more diffuse scale. It’s a tactic I’ve seen used in one form or another against Richard Dawkins, Mark Crispin Miller, Naomi Klein, and Tony Kushner, to name just a few. It’s even been tried on me a few times – and i’ve fallen for it more than once, engaging in conversations with mobs of one, who have no desire whatsoever to engage – only to discredit.

It’s nasty, but it’s a cheap, effective way of keeping someone from doing his more important work, and to create an illusion of controversy that might get colleges or other organizations to think twice about letting that person teach or speak. That is, if people really read and respect such anonymous activity from blogs. For the most part, I don’t think they do.

But it’s an interesting lesson and conundrum. And as a media theorist, I feel obliged to help figure out a way to advise others who want to avoid getting entangled in this kind of disinformation. My advice would be:

1 – Unless you’re really a politician or public figure (Obama, et al) – don’t attempt to quash conversations in which you are dissed by anonymous posters. They are simply baiting you.
2 – To avoid people spoofing your identity, only participate in a few public forums, and limit those to ones where you are confident that you can keep track of anything posted in your name, and where the registration process seems rigorous enough to prevent anyone with a Hotmail account from picking a name close to your own.
3 – Don’t engage with people who clearly don’t mean to engage with you. There’s no way to win an argument or, better, get enlightened by engaging with someone who would rather do you harm than change your mind.

For the record, from now on you won’t see me posting to conversations anywhere online except here, John Brockman’s Edge.org and Warren Ellis’s Engine – sites whose owners I trust, and whose administration is secure. And anything else you do see with my name on it in some open online discussion – it isn’t me.

(special thanks to Howard Rheingold and Mark Frauenfelder for helping me come up with a name for this phenomenon)

Rushkoff on NPR, Monday Morning

I’ll be sharing some of my most current ideas about market forces Monday morning on New York’s NPR station, WNYC. It will be simulcast on Brian Lehrer Show web page. My segment will be on at 11:40AM Eastern Time.

Although the “hook” will be my recent brush with a mugger on my front stoop, the topic of my appearance will be the influence of market forces and gentrification on community, segregation, and local values – as well as what is the greater social cost, if any, of participation in real estate market-mania.

This will be the first interview related to a book I’m just beginning to write (the proposal is going out this week, in fact) about the rise of “Corporatism” as America’s value system.

My Discover Column

I’m writing a new column for Discover magazine called “Peer Review.” I’ll post links to them whenever the magazine puts the columns online.

Here’s one from a month or so ago, that led to a lot of email from angry HDTV owners. It wasn’t exactly criticizing the new medium – just trying to point out that TV on HDTV is a different experience. As McLuhan might have said, it transforms television from a cool to a hot medium. Here’s an excerpt:

“It’s no surprise that members of a technology-driven age would yearn for clearer images in all media. This trend began when microscopes revealed that disease-causing “humours” were actually microbes and telescopes deconstructed the constellations of astrology to reveal the galaxies of astronomy. But what happens when we bring the highest-resolution technologies into worlds best left in the realm of myth? This tendency to apply scientific accuracy of observation to literature and even religion may actually strip them of their greater power. Mel Gibson’s computer-generated depiction of Jesus’ every bleeding wound in The Passion of the Christ turned a universal gospel into the literal story of one man’s mutilation and death.”

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