|
*issue
9.0
|
 |
|
|
|
|
| *subscribe
|
|
|
|
| |
The
World Wide Web has turned upside down the process of expanding
human consciousness. People meeting in carpenter sheds, discussing
common human experiences, suddenly burst into light on the Internet.
I
spent five years writing a 400-page book on verbal self-defense,
printed a hundred copies, then sold them out of my San Francisco
taxicab. Another year for the second edition. Another year for the
third edition. Bookstores wouldn't touch it, and people kept buying
it. I knew something was fishy.
The
institutions have gatekeepers, and for the most part, the gatekeepers
are sons-of-bitches. Even if a gatekeeper accepts a refereed article
(which I wrote when I was a computer scientist), the article has
its day in the sun for a few months, then gets archived. Even if
a gatekeeper accepts a popular article (which I wrote for Creative
Computing, which is no longer with us), the entire process of
writing becomes dry, brittle and frozen by the printing press.
Articles
and Books, and even E-mail, get frozen in the river of time, launched
by a final "carriage return," then sent downstream. Other people
pick up the carcasses of ideas floating past, argue about them,
then launch rebuttals, almost dead before they hit the water.
Everything
changes on the World Wide Web, which is like a lens magnifying intelligence.
I work on a Daily Web Site,
www.taxi1010.com. entitled "Non-escalating Verbal Self-Defense"--
its aim being to turn the tables on mean people by broadcasting
(on demand, to the entire planet) the absurd things zombies say
to vulnerable human beings, along with the most playful, powerful
and intelligent responses anyone can muster, all because people
all over the planet contribute daily. Already our website has an
emotional IQ greater than any one person, and this is just the beginning.
Mean
people are never, ever original, and that is their Achilles Heel.
A researcher, such as myself, can write down sentences phony people
say, sentences which have evolved to bypass the intellect, sentences
such as, "Don't you people have anything better to do?" or "Why
were you late?" and can do research on each and every one of them
in search of responses befitting both royalty and the rogue on the
street. For instance, no one would ever ask the Crown Prince of
Norway, or the Thief of Baghdad, why he or she was late, and they
shouldn't ask you.
If
people with an imitation life do ask the Prince--or the thief--such
a question, you can only assume they have each had a certain education....
The
World Wide Web is like a theater company coming into town before
the invention of the printing press: each performance plays to the
strengths of its actors, reflects the hopes, dreams, and sensibilities
of its audiences, and the production changes. Its ideas blossom
and grow, its feelings live and communicate, its consciousness breathes.
Copyright
© 2000 Richard Ames Hart. All Rights Reserved
comment?
discuss this article on our discussion
board
|
|
