Re: <nettime> KaliFUD

[Kali Tal <kali@kalital.com>]

On Oct 11, 2006, at 7:23 AM, Wayne Myers wrote:

> Suppose Kali Tal were just Sondheim playing.

Well, if you can't beat 'em, occupy their subjectivity. (Wait...  
wasn't that what started this conversation?)

In the glory days of Tech(No)Culture-L in the early 90s, in the  
middle of a raging flame war about gender, George Landow decided I  
couldn't possibly be a real person.  He wrote a very long post,  
proving his case point-by-point. He went on for about twenty screens  
and honestly, by the end of the process, I was pretty sure he was  
right, his argument was so sincere and convincing.

It was (as more than one TNC-er noted) a rather mean-spirited joke.   
I laughed my ass off when Joe Amato, Stuart Moulthrop, Mike Joyce,  
and several others responded by claiming to be me, George, each  
other, and imitations of themselves.  I penned a lengthy confessional  
-- I was guilty of all charges; I was really a Ph.D. dissertation  
project in the UC Santa Cruz History of Consciousness Department.  
Some fancy Harvard doc/psychiatrist went ballistic and in all  
seriousness threatened to report the imaginary women who had cobbled  
me together to an ethics board, hauled up on charges of human subject  
rights violations.... Ah, yes, those were the days... when the  
internet felt new and exciting and full of possibility...

I'm perfectly happy to stand by and let others drive the Kali-bot.  
Please turn the motor off and let the bot cool down if it starts to  
overheat. And be careful. A lot of people can't safely handle a  
machine with that much power. It's all fun and games until someone  
loses an eye.

KALI [STAMP: OBSOLETE MODEL, NOW RETIRED]


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