Old Email Archive

digest 1996-08-15 #001



11:24 PM 8/14/96 -0700
From: "Society for Literature & Science" 

Daily SLS Email Digest
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Date: 14 Aug 1996 06:34:30 -0700
From: Don Zilversmit 
Subject: Re: earliest concept of "cyberspace?"
I received four messages like the one below.
Is something wrong with the server at your site?
At 04:52 PM 8/13/96 -0400, you wrote:
>At 10:06 AM 8/6/96, C. Jason Smith wrote:
>>A quick addition to the "cyberspace" Q&A.  The
Internet was already being
>>formed when Gibson wrote Neuromancer, so the ide of
"space" in the
>>Internet was already in place.  What Gibson did was to combine
the concept
>>of the Internet (and interconnected memory/storage space) with
>>another concept: virtual reality.  Cyberspace in Gibson's terms,
then, is
>>Internet plus virtual reality.  The question, then, becomes
whether or not
>>there was a concept such as this Internet+ before Gibson.  From
the
>>literary side Gibson credits Burroughs (and he does call his
cyberspace a
>>"concensual halucination").
>>
>>Jason.
>
>
>I think Gibson was ignorant of the Internet. I believe he was
extending
>imaginatively the idea of the interface - especially the click and
shoot
>iconic interface which was, in 1984, an innovation - to its
hypertrophic
>conclusion involving all the senses and the body. And by the way,
>although I'm not one to correct anyone else's spelling, it's
>' consensual ' hallucination.
>
>Other precursors to cyberspace?
>
>E.M. Forster's THE MACHINE STOPS (1911?)
>
>Just about any sacred space of an integrated (what used to be
called
>primitive) culture, where inscriptions or tokens or icons or
architextual
>arrangements are deployed to inscribe a transcendent space.
>
>The Talmud (as a hypertextual open symposium across time and space
>quite analogous to the Internet)
>
>David Porush
>
>
>
>
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Date: 14 Aug 1996 06:52:21 -0700
From: caroline nachman 
Subject: Re: frankenstein and pinocchio
dear david,
thanks, will try to get at the coover book.  best wishes,
caroline
|| FREE SquareNote3.5 organizes notes, contacts, keeps daily journal.
|| Browse "http://sqn.com or email "sqn35net@sqn.com". 
Enjoy!
At 02:59 PM 1996-07-15 -0400, you wrote:
>suggest you talk to Robert Coover and look at his novel
>about Pinocchio
>
>
>
>
>David Porush, Professor of Literature
>Executive Director, Electronic Media, Arts & Communication
>Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
>Troy, New York 12180 USA
>e-mail:  porusd@rpi.edu
>tel: (518) 276-8262
>
>*****************************************************
>Nature was finished when it invented the human brain
>*****************************************************
>
>
>
>
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Date: 14 Aug 1996 11:50:28 -0700
From: "C. Jason Smith" 
Subject: Re: earliest concept of "cyberspace?"
Still following the Cyberspace thread:
"Consensual"--my apologies for the typo, but a significant one
which
needed to be corrected.  Without getting too deep into questions of
authorial intention, is it not still significant that the formation of
the Internet predates/coresponds with publication of Neuromancer?
If we are able to speak of a cultural field and strengthening nodes of
discourse (which also may serve as analog to cyberspace as well, no?),
then surely "Internet" and "Cyberspace" have that
connection at
least.
Jason Smith
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Date: 14 Aug 1996 11:51:23 -0700
From: "C. Jason Smith" 
Subject: Re: earliest concept of "cyberspace?"
Still following the Cyberspace thread:
"Consensual"--my apologies for the typo, but a significant one
which
needed to be corrected.  Without getting too deep into questions of
authorial intention, is it not still significant that the formation of
the Internet predates/coresponds with publication of Neuromancer?
If we are able to speak of a cultural field and strengthening nodes of
discourse (which also may serve as analog to cyberspace as well, no?),
then surely "Internet" and "Cyberspace" have that
connection at
least.
Jason Smith
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Date: 14 Aug 1996 16:10:09 -0700
From: "Wayne Miller" 
Subject: Duplicate messages....
Hi,
Sorry about the barrage of multiple messages of late. Some messages have
cc'ed
the old list address, and those messages have been forwarded to the new
list,
causing at the very least duplication. We've stopped the forwarding of
the old
address to the new, and that should reduce the burden on your
emailboxes.
Let me also repeat the conventional wisdom about checking who is in the
To: or
CC: field after you "reply" to a message. As we all know, it's
all too easy to
send private responses to a list, or multiply the recipients
needlessly.
Thanks -
Wayne
/-------------------------------------------------------/
Wayne Miller                     waynem@humnet.ucla.edu
Germanic Languages               2326 Murphy Hall, UCLA
Humanities Computing Facility    343 Kinsey Hall,  UCLA
(310) 206-2004                   FAX:    (310) 825-7428                 

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