From strick@osc.versant.com Sat Jun 25 00:58:11 1994 Received: from osc.versant.com (gwarn.versant.com [192.70.173.14]) fnord by nando.yak.net (8.6.5/8.6.5) with SMTP id AAA04528 for ; Sat, 25 Jun 1994 00:56:20 -0700 Received: by osc.versant.com (TAZmail-0.0) id AA00640; Sat, 25 Jun 94 00:59:28 PDT Received: from versant.com by osc.com (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA02851; Thu, 23 Jun 94 21:16:20 PDT Received: from well.sf.ca.us by versant.com (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA06330; Thu, 23 Jun 94 21:15:07 PDT Received: (from strick@localhost) by well.sf.ca.us (8.6.9/8.6.9) id VAA12651 for strick; Thu, 23 Jun 1994 21:11:59 -0700 Date: Thu, 23 Jun 1994 21:11:59 -0700 From: Henry Strickland Message-Id: <199406240411.VAA12651@well.sf.ca.us> To: strick@well.sf.ca.us Subject: 044Tech Status: O THE TECHNOLOGY Fully 50% of HOW TO MUTATE & TAKE OVER THE WORLD will deal with technology. There will be % Real technology at the present state of the art, and its likely entensions % New technologies currently in the works. % Logical extrapolations into the near future. Some are fairly certain. Others -- like the "upload your mind into the Net, then freeze your head" ideas of silicon valley -- are possible, and touted by some actual reputable scientists. Probable or not: it's mindstretching fun. % Some playing around with psychological and cultural detonations as technology impacts society % Techniques for adapting technology for specific purposes, which is a euphemism for hi-jacking the given technology -- what high crit calls "dtournement." Hitch-hacking rides for [your message here] on the microwave relays and satellites, intrusions into interesting places, hacking medical and surgical techniques for upgrading one's person. Focused primarily on info/comm technologies, MUTATE also looks at tech ranging from robotics and nanotechnology to smart drugs and plastic surgery. MUTATE will use strategies like FAQs and ordinary email, hacker instruction manuals, surreptitiously taped phone conversations and hacked [pseudo]government communiqus to inform our readers about current and near-future tech developments. Some parts of this book will introduce readers to secrets or semi-secrets in areas still being worked on by leading-edge computerphiles. What follows is a listing of only some of the technologies MUTATE will deal with. In most cases the list will specify the format/medium for the data. % The interlinked computer networks, otherwise known as the "Information Highway" and even "cyberspace" will form the terrain in which much of the action of this book takes place. The current and near-future workings of the Internet will be presented as fragments from an Internet employee handbook passed on to a member of the Underground. Strategies for controlling the online activity, both in terms of censorship of content and commercial payment/proprietary interests will be bashed about. % Through the cypherpunk and crypto-anarchist underground we will learn tactics for overcoming attempts to control action on the net. Cypherpunks (A real group whose name was coined by charter-member St. Jude) and crypto-anarchists (real existing persons, but also a joke name coined by Cypherpunks co-founder Tim May) issue frequent manifestos and communiqus via email. These are usually a mix of humor, ideological and anti-ideological advocacy and hard technical data. This book will use actual downloads, and also mimic their style to provide the readers with all they need to know about the why and how of privacy defense on the Net: encryption schemes, the politics of privacy, schemes for pseudonymous economic networks, ideas for completely anonymous banking and financial transactions, ideas for the implementation of digital cash online, and so forth. These materials will appear frequently throughout the book. Actual rants downloaded from this completely overt underground movement will illustrate use of The Hack to alter and illuminate history. This puts the Cypherpunks at the center of our "Mutate and world takeover" scenario. The Hack is to current cypherpunks and cryptoanarchists what "The Deed" (usually just ruler-assassination) was to anarchists of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The Perfect Hack is audacious, diabolically clever, and exactly apt. The Cypherpunks synergize hard tech and soft. Their goals are political, their means are technical, and they operate brilliantly in both modes. % Media Piracy has a major function in our revolution as well. The why and how of stealing free airtime by surfing the television and radio waves, both before and after these media are merged with the telephone and the Net, will be communicated firstly by an 8-page article in WIRED 2000. These acts will be further detailed in statements released by the pirates, FBI reports on their techniques, and interpersonal dialogue tapped by other pirates and cypherpunks during Underground faction wars. % Extropian technological developments will be peppered throughout the book. Extropianism is a belief system that proposes developing human knowledge and technology to defeat entropy. An Extropian technology might be any development that helps people to live better, longer lives. Major areas of focus for Extropians include drugs, tech and techniques for self-enhancement, cryonics and other strategies for immortality, space colonization, nanotechnology (submolecular manipulation and manufacturing), and medical technologies. An overview of Extropianism is given early in the book, with short descriptions of technologies and the current state of their art in a six-page Extropian newsletter received by R. U. A large section of this newsletter will feature a quick-and-dirty listing of drugs for self-optimization, forwarded instantly to St.Jude for comment. It covers intelligence enhancement, longevity, health, aphrodisiacs, sensory tuning, mood adjustment, mind expansion and creativity, deprogramming and addiction control, bodybuilding, etc -- a paragraph on each detailing uses, handy abuses, chemical structures and basic research data including contraindications, and bibliography. Based in 1994, this will be almost entirely factual, with perhaps one futuristic tweak to keep readers on their toes. These drugs and nutrients may pop up throughout the book, in one case combined with yoga and exercise in the regimen of one of our techno-guerrillas. Still later in the book, self-enhancement gets hardcore, with cybenetic implants, replaceable body parts, and viral phages programmed for release of neurochemicals appropriate to the moment. Nanotechnology will play an important role in the later years, and in fact, ends the book... and the WORLD. Nanotech is introduced to the Underground when the nanotechers are driven underground and their arrival is heralded or denounced by excited revolutionists. Discussion about the pros and cons of nanotech ensue. (CAN it cover the planet with the dreaded grey goo?) Details about nanotechnology are made explicit through the breakthroughs and breakouts mentioned in the plotline. Transcribed audio tapes of highly advanced nanotechies dissolving into pure data along with their laboratory records ought to teach us a great deal about this technology to end all technologies. Cryonics gets the spear when Dr Seagull weepingly describes for Pirate Television the Federal Marshals destroying his crypt. Other strategies for immortality are presented by Dr. Gullixon to a captive audience of radical prisoners, transcribed here for the captive reader. Prisoners, after all, have to do something... _________________________________________________ SAMPLE: From: stjude Date: Thu, 9 Nov 93 12:34:04 EDT To: rusirius Subject: Dyslexics on drugs: GHB aka Grevious Bodily Harm?? I tried that "drug" what supposedly capped the boy moviedude. It's just gamma-hydroxy benzoic acid, which all humans contain. More of it may not have helped me lose weight but it sure made me sleepy. He was either *really* finely tuned for a moviestar -- even for a vegan tree-helping moviestar -- or it wasn't GHB at all. Maybe it was primatesbane -- cocaine -- what with the seizures and death and all. Or maybe Anne Rice's coven raised the cone of power to stop him from conducting the INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE. Horror of horrorshows: and look who is Lestat. Maybe they'll fire it up again and strike Tom Cruise blind or impotent or something. _________________________________________________ % MONDO Vanilli, and its media and performance actions will provide the pretext for explorations of media technology and technique. Current and slightly future media and performance will be deconstructed for your pleasure. MV's business situation and strategies will illuminate the economic impact of nearly-infinite data transmission and storage on the economics of media-based art and entertainment. Using reviews and a feature article in ROLLIN' SPIN magazine, the evolution of computer-based multimedia technology and its links to other forms of media will be explored with the second MONDO Vanilli release, LOTSA STUFF. The sidebar from the ROLLIN' SPIN article gives a quick look at the evolution of computer-based multimedia tech. Issues of uploading to the Net, copyrighting and copylefting of CDs, videos and computer-indigenous media will be touched on later, in a flurry of hacker email regarding the cracking and uploading of LOTSA STUFF. Virtual Reality-oriented technologies come up thrice in MV's entertainment career and each time it prompts excited tech writers to review the current state of the art. MUTATE will attempt realistic predictions for the near-future of this technology that so many people are hot and bothered about. We will learn about state-of-the-art robotics, artificial life, 3D illusionist theatrical technology, and large-auditorium sound and video technology through the diagrams and notes of DChamp, every time MV has to tour. Oh, and don't forget pages torn out of shopping catalogues. We investigate the techniques, and also the ethics and aesthetics of media manipulation, advertising, propaganda, and the possible psychological effects of wraparound TV viewing and VR technology, through the MONDO Vanilli television program and MV performances and also through actions of the media pirates. % Spying and surveillance forms the third strategy of the underground (after crypto-phreaking/computer hacking and media piracy). Those on the creepier end of the revolution insist on providing us with THE UNDERGROUND GUIDE TO SPYING AND SURVEILLANCE. Sampling heavily from old Loompanix and CIA handbooks, augmented with quirky hacks and new technologies, this anonymous underground manual tells what you need to know for knowing what you need to. Contains a survey of modern surveillance equipment and techniques, opportunities and problems of fake identity in the high-tech era, plastic surgery, how to spy back on the government and police agencies, weapons of self-defense and real data on hacking existing spy satellites. Real data! % Playing the online financial market for extraordinary profit with supercomputers using chaos, complexity and virtual reality technology is pivotal to our plotline. "How Zarkov and Gracie Broke the Bank" in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL details some of the techniques. A sidebar by economist Peter Schwartzenkopf provides a brief history of money and the implications of its movement into cyberspace. % Other hacker tricks, including cooking and exterminating viruses, hacking online accounts, and hacking ATM accounts will be described through encrypted intra-underground communication. (It's okay: we'll decrypt it for you first.) The popular hacker strategy known as social engineering, which is nerdtalk for manipulating real people to give you the information you want, becomes central to the "Interpersonal Appropriation" strategy that is important to our revolution. % Biotechnology rears its cute little head several times during this story. Liz Green's "Instruction Book for Desktop Biotechnology," is too lengthy to run in full, but excerpts will certainly help those with a little knowledge do a lot of damage. SAMPLE: _________________________________________________ The Midnight Scientist, October 14, 1995 THIS SOUNDS LIKE A JOB FOR... SUPERCAT! Given the nature of Nature nowadays, it's no wonder that cats have become [hu]man's best friend. They don't care that there is no outdoors left. They don't need to run about in it, excrete on things and yammer at other beings, do they? They share the sedentary habits of their human companions, appreciate long periods of solitude/neglect in an enclosed space, and in all circumstances perfectly illustrate cool. Ah, but cats are far from perfect. For starts, they have attitude problems. Given an optimal size, they would probably eat us. In the1970s breeders tried for a perfected cat. All they came up with was the Rag Doll: big as a dog but doggy, floppy, a feline Barney. Of course, they relied on old time-intensive methods -- mating, kittens, etc. This past June some genetic engineers at UC Berkeley took a summer sabbatical and successfully hacked the Ideal Cat. By mid- September Liz Green and her co-conspirators in the gene mill had an alpha version of Supercat1, sealpoint-siamese model. The supercat is twice as large as the subcat, and its bigger skull holds a big round forebrain, home of the social skills. It actually has Lassie- or Flipper-level language comprehension, and a rudimentary sense of social consequences. This may be only an superior form of cupboard love -- who knows with cats? -- but the supercat appears to like humans. In the proper social context it may embrace its human housemates, rub its whiskers on them, and -- if the attention seems welcome -- even press or stroke their skin with its paws. The supercat may have lovely manners, but it remains a cat. It's inscrutable as hell, more graceful than thou, and intimidates though attitude. Birds up through the size of penguins are in peril, and small dogs are doomed, unless they've been properly introduced. The distribution of supercats is now in startup. SuperCats Forge and Foundry is implementing an emailorder lab. If Federal OKs come through as expected, SF&F will crank out Cats to customer spec in a range of colors, patterns and temperaments. There are rumors that Dr. Green is investigating pygmy elephants. Small enough to fit into a car, husky enough to bear loaded saddlebags for shopping, the pygmy elephant is affectionate and very intelligent. Its skin is reportedly "like warm glove leather." _________________________________________________