<nettime> Re: Anti-Technoenvironmentism

[Gerard Van der Leun <gerard.vanderleun@generalmedia.com>]

Newmedia (AKA Mark Boorman) wrote a bunch of crap some of which
is included here so fair warning:

> Whew!  Helping to get Technorealism (TR) off the ground has been a trip.

Yup, everything is pretty much of a flashback for you is it not?

> Keeping my mouth shut has been a trip too.  But, I'm learning.  Slowly. 

But obvbiously not quickly enough. Instead of being a second-rate mind,
be a second-rate rental car company and try harder.

> I've deliberately stayed out of the fray on TR so that I wouldn't be
> mistaken as the spokesguy for TR.  I'm not. 

What, other than a self-image inflated by years of self-abusive blather
would convince you or anyone else that you would be so mistaken? 

>There are 12 founders 

(Count 'em 12! Just think what Jesus did with
an organization that size!)

> and many supporters

About what? 150-200 signers at last count. Wow!

> and I'm just one of them.  Just a face in the crowd.  Big mouth, small 
> face.

Smaller brain.
 
> I hope that this is the last "explanation" that I post for a while on all of
> this.  

And so say we all.

>Technorealism is committed to doing its work and that means not
> defending itself or replying to the same old (one month is very old nowadays,
> as ya'll know) stuff.  

No. Wrong. One month is *not* very old news. Wake up.

> The latest extended rant on TR -Gerard Vanderleun's "Technoblatherism -has
> yielded two very interesting pieces of data:
> Gerard (as no doubt many of you knew) apparently wrote "RULES OF THE NET:
> Online Operating Instructions for Human Beings" with Tom Mandel and

Well, you got that right even though you have not -- as is clear from
the rest of your substandard blather -- read the book. If you had you would 
know that the book's *real* take on RULES is completely opposite from
what you have assumed. So, knowing that you do not know what you are
talking about one would assume you would just shut the fuck up. But
nooooo!
You are a stahlman and a compulsive blatherite of the first water so
you just blather right along.

> I don't know Gerard (yet) buy I knew Tom Mandel.  My last meeting with Mandel
> was two weeks before he died.  I hate to speak ill of the dead but Tom was a
> son-of-a-bitch.  He was a mean-ass, game-playing, tricky-dicky controller of
> environments.  He was a "meta" who came from someplace else to play with the
> kids on the Net.  Too harsh?  Well, that's the Mandel that I personally knew
> and, I suspect, that's the Mandel that many others personally knew as well.

Well, MARK, you are welcome to your opinion except for the fact that it is
so wide of the mark that almost nothing in it makes anysense except when
one reflects that Mandel, unlike yourself, actually had a brain and that
brain had very little tolerance for poseurs and self-inflated gasbags like
yourself. Mandel did not, unlike the Net, suffer fools gladly and no doubt
you felt the sting of his withering and justified criticism of your
endlessly moronic postings more than once. The only people I every met
that didn't like mandel were, without exception, stupid and
self-aggrandizing individuals. You fit right in. 
 
> Don't like my language?  Read Katie Hafner's long article on the WELL in
> WIRED.  Tom *was* the WELL.  He set the rules for the environment according to
> Katie.  And, by extension, he set the rules for all the other environments
> which spun off of the WELL.  Where has the flak been coming from targetting
> TR?  The WELL.  Hmmm . . .

Yet another Stahlman paranoia. Could it be that the flak that has been
coming at TR is related not to the Well but to the fact that the whole
slimesoaked "manifesto" is so obviously boneheaded and desperate and
shameful that it stooped low enough to include you in the founders? Could
it be that TR is a manifestly weak and corrupt attempt to suck up to
various sources of funding and publicity put together without a lot of
real thought and deep committment?  Could it be that a lot of people just
view TR as utterly bogus and are not shy about saying so? 
 
> Who was Tom Mandel?  He was a Stanford Research Institute (SRI) Futurist.  OK,
> that's interesting.

Not outside the fevered little weasel brain of a Stahlman.
 
> Who came before him at SRI?  Peter Schwartz (founder/leader of the Global
> Business Network) of the "Long Boom" fame.  And, before that?  Well Peter goes
> back to Royal Dutch Shell and Pierre Wack and they both go back to G.I.
> Gurdjieff in Paris.  Very interesting.

No. It is not interesting. Nobody with half a brain gives a flying fuck.
Get a half and you will understand.

> But, how about before Peter at SRI?  Peter took Willis Harmon's office at SRI.
> Willis Harmon wound up as the head of the Institute for Noetic Sciences
> (launched around astronaut Edgar Mitchell's vision of God on his back from the
> moon on his Apollo mission).  Willis was also the sometimes SRI mentor to
> Captain Al Hubbard (the Johnny Appleseed of LSD) and it was Hubbard (Harmon's
> SRI protege) who Tim Leary called "that marvelous triple agent."  Very
> interesting, indeed.

How long have you been a blither idiot? From birth or did the visions
start after years of heroin suppository abuse? 
 
> Tom (and possibly Gerard) was/is a controller.  He thought that way.  He would
> be exactly the right guy to set up the RULES OF THE NET.  Perfect.  Control
> the environment by setting up its rules.  Then make it seem like you are just
> codifying the rules that everyone has "democratically" agreed to.  Clever.
> Meta.

Mark, if you can indeed perform the mental function known as *reading*
read the book. Do it in private so we don't have to watch your lips move. 

> Now, I ask you, dear reader, is it a matter of hollow conceit and pretension
> to set up the RULES OF THE NET or to break them?  Isn't it obvious?

Well, since you did ask me, the answer is shoes.
 
> I have long considered nettime to be an anti-technoenvironment.  Whereas all
> the places I went to in the U.S. (New York's ECHO and the now defunct Electric
> Minds) were all spinoffs of the WELL, nettime isn't.  It was created outside
> the RULES OF THE NET.

Mark, just handing out free psychic blow-jobs to people on this list
won't make them think any differently of you than they already do.
  
> Anti-environment or, more specifically, anti-
> technoenvironment.  That's why the environment (the WELL) has to monitor
> closely the anti-environment (nettime).  That's why Bruce Sterling runs his
> parasitic list on the WELL to deal with nettime.  Watching.  Always watching.
> Clever. Meta.

What I suggest is that you go out into the world and get some real
enemies. That might clear your head.

> Hopefully, technorealism will also develop into an anti-environment.  

Sorry. What it will do is just fade away and become a footnote to a
footnote. It has not impact potential. It is DOA and was pronouced so at
birth. 

> Enough of that.
> Thanks for your patience,
 
> [I expressly forbid Bruce Sterling or anyone else from re-posting this note to
> the WELL or any other related electronic hottub.]

Oh, get stuffed. I just sent it to most of the Well members.

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