chip the glasses

in the glow of the monitors the basement was bright as day

Wed May 15 2013 05:18:54 GMT+0000 (UTC)

i stared and he smiled.
from his belly extended
shafts of light, yet he
looked mundane, with delicate
features and thinning hair.

he gathered up the trailing wire.
the data was neatly filed on the net
since papyrus was perishable.

behind the wheel,
moral questions run
together like gunfire.

they traced the wires into the windowless room

Tue May 14 2013 16:14:36 GMT+0000 (UTC)

she used her ISDN connection
because it meant taking that risk.
pausing to suck grime from her fingers
she did not understand what she herself had created.

his bones were pulled out, but
he still had his anger, fast
and ragged over the wet cobble
of a giant pump assembly.

it was black here, and riddled with tunnels.
the coleopter whimpers in metallic pain
to the distant throbbing of music:
a wave of grief and exultation.

seventy dead colonists

Sun May 12 2013 00:18:38 GMT+0000 (UTC)

an icon of liberation:
broken bottles and
styrofoam containers.

there was a silence,
an abdication of the pioneer,
and pieces of a korean pickup.

for a while, they were right,
after splattered dripping drinks
and a jittered laser track.

the alley was empty again
and i must not port
the sick lurch of my thoughts

or see the holo of the princess
that posed a danger
to the other power nations.

cyberpunk prophecy haiku

Sat May 11 2013 07:24:35 GMT+0000 (UTC)

"what's that mean?"
bundled like ganglia,
she sat beside him.

--

austerely thin and
riddled with cranial plugs:
he bent the console.

--

Danbala's a program
exhausted by the strain
prickling down her arms

--

to make a feast of her,
plenty of capacity:
a maas neotek

all of the tripwires make flesh

Fri May 10 2013 06:09:56 GMT+0000 (UTC)

he looked at the mushrooms,
and of the drug in the jacket
and of the derm in the cabinet.

someone who matters,
assertive air of ersatz authority,
they used that stuff.

security at the morrisey.
with his other hand
singapore is a phone call away

in our own way, afraid, and in the dark

Sat May 04 2013 19:41:34 GMT+0000 (UTC)

By way of Lady Grantham,
Ghouls came here often,
Seeing not with any eyes.

You have invited Strallan:
But life is a game, and we must appear ridiculous
With our starts of horror at our cosmic voyages.

I will ask Thomas.
No matter what comes,
Consciousness will manifest:
It is the frightened meeping of a ghoul.

This was not Jimmy's idea;
I like a man of strong beliefs,
But against my will he carried me
Beyond the last rim of the galaxy.

_{directed cutup with prosaic</a> using Downton Abbey subtitles and selected Lovecraft works.}

pre-web social networking

Tue Apr 16 2013 14:38:12 GMT+0000 (UTC)

I recently finished reading a book from 1996 called The Internet Instant Reference.
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Source: Uploaded by user</a> via Nathaniel</a> on Pinterest</a></div>

One thing in particular stuck out to me. Throughout many of the entries in the book Unix servers were mentioned. This book was written in a time when access to the internet was as simple (?) as dialing a phone number that connected your modem to a Unix server running somewhere like a University or business. This server was connected to the Internet's backbone and from there you could use a variety of programs--telnet, elm, www, gopher, ftp--and access the rest of the world.
In order to connect to one of these Unix servers you needed a user account. Accompanying this account was a personal space for files (like /home/<username></code>, some information about yourself (accessed via finger <username></code>, and an email address (like <username>@<servername></code>).
Once logged in a user shared a server with many other people: perhaps hundreds. One could see who else was logged in (who -a</code>), send them a local email (mail <username></code>), and even instant message with other users (talk <username></code>).
But what of users on other Unix servers? How did you know who was where? Using the whois</code> command one could search for users on other machines. Once located, they could use telnet</code> to access that machine (if allowed) and chat with them; or send them email.
This is reminiscent of our 21st century social networks like Facebook and Myspace as well as our late 20th century super-BBSs like AOL or CompuServe. Yet there are some key differences:
Decentralized. The structure of this pre-web social network was the very structure of the internet itself. This is a pleasing a kind of homoiconicity.</li> Federated. With telnet, jumping in between servers was trivial.</li> Not monetized. While some of the Unix servers in use was most certainly part of commercial organizations, the access itself and the social interactions was not the product. Further, the users were not a product. The trend so perfected by Twitter, Facebook and friends began with AOL.</li> Unpoliced. This has, obviously, an upside and a downside. On the upside, there were no onerous terms of service or privacy policies weaponized for use in advertising nor any copyright legal play^{1. On the downside, there was basically zero security besides what users set up for themselves (this is arguably an upside compared to the illusion of safety one's Facebook password confers).</li> </ul> So what is there to learn from this historical delving? Most glaringly, I feel it exposes a number of lies that we have as a society been accepting for over a decade now: that the Web is the only way to interact with the Internet; that social activities require centralization; that advertising is necessary to support Internet/Web activities; and that only corporations know best how to govern human interaction online. This is not much of a conspiracy theory. As my father taught me when considering such things, one must only "follow the money" to deduce reasonable motivations for similar situations. For corporations, centralized and web-based social networking means they can commoditize private information and sesll it to advertising firms. For users, web-based social networking simply means convenience and perceived ease-of-use. I posit that by taking the lessons from pre-web social networking we can build simpler Unix-style networking tools that provide all of the non-corporate social networking advantages enumerated above but with a friendlier user interface by leveraging the Web as little more than a GUI toolkit. _{[1]: There were, however, Acceptable Use Policies that governed how one could use a server. AUPs remain a farcry from the modern Terms of Use.}}
dream: public transit trail of tears Fri Apr 12 2013 17:17:14 GMT+0000 (UTC) I'm trying to take MARTA to a coffeeshop to do some work. Things are more or less normal except that King Memorial is covered in rickety old-timey scaffolding. I climb up it and just barely squeeze through the doors as the train is leaving. I don't pay much attention to where we are but then the train grinds to a halt. The doors are thrown open. There is no driver: it was robot controlled the whole time. The riders (of which there are many: this train is twice as long as your average rush-hour blue line) stumble out into a barren, tundra-laden, wild-russia landscape. We must walk to the next station; and it is a long journey. We consult the winds and decide the next station is probably Edgewood/Candler Park. For some reason I am elected head of our public transit trail of tears. Many fall. We forge into huge snowdrifts and I am nearly lost to slush quicksand on the edge of a frozen river hidden under feet of snow. We continue. The weather warms up some and the surroundings become more pleasant. There is birdsong. Many have died in our wake. I see a great hill that is mostly exposed dirt and rock. I decide that surely, the next MARTA station is just over that ridge! I run for the hill and forget about my people. Old women die of cancer as I run and they lie prostrate all around me. I feel awful for them but I HAVE TO GET TO EDGEWOOD/CANDLER PARK STATION. I scale the hill; it leaves me exhauste. At the top there is a road. I follow it but instead of going anywhere helpful it instead goes into a strange little town that has been left unchanged since 1876. I play some shitty boring game involving a wooden ball with some sooty 19th century kids and then I wake up. dream: the north korean states of america of warcraft Thu Apr 04 2013 18:09:29 GMT+0000 (UTC) I am in a meeting on the 18th floor of the Equitable building in downtown atlanta. The meeting is very boring. I am there with A___. The sound of whistling missiles interrupts us and we see explosions all over downtown. North Korean armies are parachuting (Red Dawn style) all over. A___ and I flee into the men's bathroom and climb up into the ceiling to hide; A___ has a rifle. We listen as soldiers bust into the 18th floor and begin arresting/shooting everyone. An armored and armed female soldier kicks in the bathroom door and starts checking the stalls. We probably should have stayed hidden but A___ attempts to shoot the soldier through the ceiling. It is a near miss and a terrifying fight ensues. We win. We prepare to try and work our way through the building via the duct network but I need to urinate. I climb down and use the toilet and several soldiers hear me and burst in. A___ flees as I'm taken into custody (I did not blame him). I'm marched in front of a high-ranking and wealthy older North Korean couple who are sitting down to a very traditional Korean meal. They're about to decide which labor camp to send me to when I ask if they're eating kimchi and say that it smells delicious. The couple is delighted that I know anything about Korean anything and they tell the guards to leave and invite me to eat with them. I begin an in depth conversation with the husband about how rad dictatorships are and how awful America has become. We agree that in principle democracy sounds nice but at the end of the day it takes good ol' fascism to keep citizens/countries in line. I become carried away with the act and start going on about how three things ruin every republic: assholes, alcoholics, and stupid people (I was just making shit up at this point). Suddenly the husband and wife become very quiet. I realize that their son is, in fact, a stupid person (he looks like a teen-age Kim Jong Un and is sitting in the corner playing gameboy with a vacant look). The mother bursts into tears and runs out of the room. The father slowly begins to tell me about how seriously they take stupidity. That he loves his son even though is is stupid. The mother comes back and offers me dessert but the father says no, it's time to send him to his labor assignment. I'm marched out of the building and into the streets. They are crumbling and on fire. There are corpses everywhere. I march in a column of prisoners for blocks and blocks, miles and miles. I pass by a little cafe the soldiers set up; A___ is sitting there hidden in a tattered hooded robe sipping coffee keeping and eye on things. Eventually I'm pushed down into a filthy basement. The floor is covered in wires: USB, ethernet, some exposed copper. There are bare motherboards on every surface and VR rigs scattered about. I'm force-fed a drug that messes with time and makes it appear to go by much faster. It turns out our "labor" is to strap into the VR rigs and gold-farm in WoW 20 hours/day for the rest of our lives. We are fed through a tube. commenting system Wed Apr 03 2013 20:46:57 GMT+0000 (UTC) i'm pleased to announce that this blog is now 21st century and supports comments. it is really more of a guestbook system. to leave a comment, please telnet chiptheglasses.com 60557 </code></pre> and speak with the wizard. caveats:</h3> the comments only appear on the homepage</li> comments may disappear any time without reason</li> sometimes the wizard is not home</li> </ul> dream: mass grave Wed Apr 03 2013 16:34:31 GMT+0000 (UTC) i am watching a documentary about mass grave pits. the pits have been excavated with a large cylindrical hole straight down their center and a camera on a robot arm thing is slowly traveling up and down the walls of the hole revealing a cross section of the grave. the soil is thick with bog people corpses. among the rot there are occasional aspects of life; they seem to have been planted by the film makers. these are little clusters of rich purple berries, nests with little baby birds, bright fl and bustling insect colonies. there is voice over narration but it is just mumbles. the voice morphs from vaguely female to vaguely male and back but is always unintelligible. the dream simply went on like this.