timothy-leary-chaos-cyber-culture

THE PIONEERS OF CYBERSPACEThe basic notion of O.O.B. artificial-reality appliances wasintroduced by Myron Kreuger and Ted Nelson in the 1970s. Thenitly-gritty realities of creating and inhabiting digital universes weredescribed in 1985 by William Gibson in his brilliant, epic trilogyNeuromancer, Count Zero, and Mom Lisa Overdrive. Gibsondescribed the "matrix," the dataworlds created by human digitalcommunication. By 1989 cybemauts Uke Jaron Lanier, EricGuUichsen, Joi Ito, Brenda Laurel, and Rebecca Allen were developingcyberspace realities built for two. Or more.REALITIES BUILT FOR TWOMany people are understandably disturbed by the idea thatui the future human beings will be spending more time inPlatoLand than in Flesh Play; piloting their brain-selves inside electronicrealities, interacting with other electronic humans.Like adolescents whose hormones suddenly awaken theprocess and emit electronic signals. The main function of a computeris interpersonal communication.Within ten years many of us will be spending almost all ourscreen time actively zooming around digital oceans interacting andre-creating with other tri-brains.Some industrial-age cynics say that humans are too lazy.They would rather sit back as sedentary couch slugs than be active.But we've been through these tech-jumps before in history.Before Henry Ford, only big-shot engineers and captainsemployed by corporations drove mass-media vehicles such as trainsand steamboats. Now we recognize (and often deplore) this geneticcompulsion to grab the steering wheel, smoke rubber, and freelyauto-mobilize that sweeps over every member of our species atpuberty.In ten years most of our daily operations occupational,educational, recreational will transpire in ScreenLands. Commonsense suggests that we are more likely to fmd compatible brainmatesif we are not restricted to local geography.unused sexual circuits of their brains, we tri-brains are just now discoveringthat the brain is an info-organ wired, fired, and inspired toI TIMOTHY lEAlY CHAOS i CVIEI (UlTUIE.