From owner-ax@listserv.nwlink.com Mon May 24 17:29:11 1999 Return-Path: Delivered-To: fenwick@sonic.net Received: (qmail 369 invoked from network); 24 May 1999 17:29:11 -0000 Received: from listserv.nwlink.com (209.20.130.70) by buzz.sonic.net with SMTP; 24 May 1999 17:29:11 -0000 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by listserv.nwlink.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id KAA55688 for ax-outgoing; Mon, 24 May 1999 10:26:22 -0700 (PDT) Received: from pop.nwlink.com (pop.nwlink.com [209.20.130.39]) by listserv.nwlink.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id RAA55684 for ; Mon, 24 May 1999 17:26:19 GMT Received: from mongoose.slip.net (mongoose.slip.net [207.171.193.14]) by pop.nwlink.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id KAA26375 for ; Mon, 24 May 1999 10:26:18 -0700 (PDT) Received: from slip-3 ([207.171.193.17] helo=slip-3.slip.net) by mongoose.slip.net with smtp (Exim 2.12 #4) id 10lyUL-0000f2-00; Mon, 24 May 1999 10:26:09 -0700 Date: Mon, 24 May 1999 10:26:08 -0700 (PDT) From: Joseph To: kutscher@netline.cl cc: ax@nwlink.com Subject: Re: for thee psybersphere, psychosphere, noosphere, chaosphere (fwd) In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19990523231436.006a2b8c@pop.netline.cl> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-ax@listserv.nwlink.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: Joseph Status: RO X-Status: Phillip Farber -- late as usual... The participants in the TIAMAT list created a "psychosphere" working back in 1994 (two years before the copyright date on this posting.) In fact the effects were astounding. The idea was simply to summon and then "banish" whatever Internet "demons" were in existence. As there was no research on the nature of such demons available, it was a rather open ended experiment. It was devised by myself and Ashton (whom some old hands here might remember) and based on a banishing rite out of Simon's Necronomicon. Particpants were "stationed" around the globe: western US, Australia, Greece, England, eastern US and central US as I recall. In this way we sent an incantation "around" the earth seven times: each "relay station" forwarded the incantation to the next, adding a line of the spell in the process. Each station also forwarded each portion to a randomly chosen Usenet group. As the spell neared completion, the Internet suffered serious "breakdowns", including a crash of the main ISP service in Australia and a massive -- and still unexplained -- power failure in Califronia that knocked out both the UC Berkeley-based UUCP backbone AND the Netcom ISP. It also caused my ISP service, who's Sysop happened to monitor what we were doing one evening, to pull my service account for "abuse of the service contract." (I got another account and continued the working...) We theorized that our working "disturbed" the demons of the Internet and they reacted like any other entity that is being slowly tortured to death -- violently trying to stop us from what we were doing. If anyone can find Ashton these days, he archived the postings and a synopsis of the results. I suppose I'm somewhat dismissive of Mr. Farber and his published works, but everything I've read by him has been disappointing. His "Future Magick" was touted unendingly in Usenet postings and upon reading it it turns out to be nothing more than that same old Thelemic/Hermetic rituals and paradigms given a few fancy new labels. Not that the article posted by Aloas doesn't have a few useful ideas... ...but it's been done! - J:.M:.555 --------------------------------------------------------- In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as being a bad move..... -- Douglas Adams ---------------------------------------------------------