11 Reader Responses

1. Ace of Disks Says:
   November 14th, 2006 at 8:32 pm

   1. Ask Rushkoff about his occult dabbling. I’ve never seen him mention it, really, though he talks about it tangentially.
   2. Will the Director’s cut of Club Zero-G, with the missing 400 pages, ever be released?
   3. What trends does he seeing as being most prominent in the future (”Global climate change” is not an answer) & how will it affect us, etc., particularly, media technology? E.g., what’s his take on the effect of the increasing documentation of our lives online despite the internet being something of a time-sink and impersonal medium, the gradual loss of secrecy, etc…

2. Tim Boucher Says:
   November 14th, 2006 at 8:57 pm

   occult dabbling. I’ve never seen him mention it, really, though he talks about it tangentially.

   Anywhere in particular you have seen him mention it tangentially?

3. brekin Says:
   November 14th, 2006 at 9:12 pm

   I’d be curious to know, if he hasn’t spoke to it before, his thoughts on Abbusters and similiar ilk and whether they are really an “alternative” to anything. Also if he’s been ifluenced by the Situationists at all. Thanks.

4. Tim Boucher Says:
   November 14th, 2006 at 9:17 pm

   So sort of exploring the idea of culture-jamming, media hacking, detournement, etc? Good thought!

5. skip wiley Says:
   November 15th, 2006 at 10:05 am

   He mentioned in a lecture once how the Israelites (or Hebrews?) were destined to be a “nation of Priests,” a title which has been debated much (about what exactly that means). To Rushkoff, it means that no longer is the main tool for storytelling — ie, writing — possessed only by the elite. He brings up heiroglyphics, which he defines as “priestly writing.” No longer, he says, is the collective mythology/story going to be told and manipulated only by the elite priests…. everyone will now have that power (to write their own story, as it were). Everyone will be priests, in a sense.

   I haven’t read Rushkoff’s “Nothing Sacred,” but as I understand it he is a champion of the idea that the Torah was meant to be changed, updated, modified, etc by new generations. In short — now that we can all write, we’re all encouraged to tell our own story and so forth.

   Taking this a step further comes to what I’d ask him (though in a formal interview, I’d have no idea how to word this, as it is very jumbled and unformed): the idea of “microformats and mythology.” Microformats (which I have only the most crude understanding of), simply defined, are “simple data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards.” Relating to mythology, I love the idea of these “simple data formats” (archetypes?) finding different types of output — yet all working together and recognizing each other’s role, worth, and purpose.

   From an individual level to a collective level, then, stories are being crafted — yet (in the future) I see these very different stories (on the outside) having the same core — as stories have always had — yet this is finally recognized by all, and the diversity is encouraged and celebrated. Personally, I suppose this is the direction I’d love institutionalized religion to go… to maintain their respective differences, yet recognize the similar aspects in each other without the tongue-in-cheek condescension.

6. Tim Boucher Says:
   November 15th, 2006 at 12:59 pm

   Did you read the microformats thing somewhere or is that a word you’re coining?

7. Francis Scully Says:
   November 15th, 2006 at 7:29 pm

   Microformats, to the best of my knowledge, are ways of organizing common information (data-formats) using xml; be it contacts/profiles, calendars/events, reviews and xfn(friends-networks), among others. xml supposedly being a more open-source accessible version of html; but more akin to a text-database of sorts. The idea behind microformats is to add more dynamic features to the internet, turning “inaccessible” information into accessible information organized to a common standard. Or, put another way, slightly deconstructing proprietary systems and turning them into open-networks that are able to be collectivized.

   For instance, if I wrote a review of a movie on a blog, and included various microformats (such as name of the movie, rating of movie, etc), organized the code in a particular common way that had been voluntarily agreed-upon at microformats.org as not the best way, but the most common way that already exists. Then the supposed pay off would be browsers &/or search-engines (or something yet to be) could sift through all of this data and display/share it in more dynamic ways.

   There’s pretty much two more-commonly used microformats existing today (though had come into being before microformats). One of them was RSS which is also based on xml. The other is tagging blog articles with particular keywords, and then search engines like technorati collect it all, organize the common data formats (tags) and outputs the decentralization into a separate networked-collective.

   Oh yeah, this is supposed to be about questions; I’ll try to think of some. In the meantime, here’s an audio recording I found awhile back when rushkoff had published Nothing Sacred: http://h2k2.net/media/rushkoff.mp3

8. Tim Boucher Says:
   November 15th, 2006 at 7:35 pm

   Oh, XML. Yeah I know all about XML, having worked a number of tech jobs over the years. That’s different from what I thought Skip was trying to say. Maybe not though

9. Ace of Disks Says:
   November 15th, 2006 at 9:45 pm

   re: your earlier question, Ruskoff frequently uses the term “sigil”, like in the final pages of the disinfo Club Zero-G and titled a blog post “The Sigil Begins” when he started working on Get Back in the Box.

   Another question I have is how serious he is about the biblical criticism he’s espoused: e.g., talking about how the bible is full of space alien invasions (like Gen. 6), that the authors *intend* for Sarah and others to be understood as temple prostitutes, there’s an interview w/ some comic magazine where he says “a man shall not lie with a man as he would with a woman” is a coded statement explaining that only men were allowed to have sex facing each other during ritual acts, etc. While I’m into those interpretations because they’re absolutely wild, I question whether he’s saying them to increase the number of interpretations and the method involved–”No, really guys, the Bible has Space Aliens and I really, really believe that! [wink, wink, ‘this is easy and everyone should do it’]”–or whether it’s an honest sentiment.

10. Francis Scully Says:
    November 16th, 2006 at 12:34 am

    One of the catchphrases on the microformats website was cited by Skip; “simple data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards.” Though, definitely was leaning more towards grasping the metaphorical aspects inherent in microformats; so I thought I’d chunk-down into the definition to see if there were more metaphors available when I’d chunk-up.

    One metaphor that comes to mind is that metaphors themselves are a sort of microformat. I recall Richard Bandler in an interview late last year, saying that the way in which architects think about bridges, is the way in which we think about making permanent changes. Just like they don’t want bridges to fall apart, he doesn’t want permanent changes in people to fall apart.

    Perhapse there are some metaphorical aspects of microformats that can be applied to society, culture, or consciousness itself, that could infer benefits in new ways of changing &/or sharing between once disjointed-systems. Certainly archetypes &/or group-consciousness are one way to look at it; though that may mereley be the equivalent of the xfn(friends-network) while perhapse there are many more wares of potentiality.

11. skip sievert Says:
    November 17th, 2006 at 11:31 am

    I am just wondering how Rushkoff feels about his own self image as a kind of radical media person. Does he consider himself to be a creative person, or more a recycler of pop culture garbage , as a way to turn a buck. ?

    Does he really believe that he himself is saying anything profound or interesting , or does he consider himself more of an entertainer , similar to say a George Carlin, or Jackie Mason. ?
    I have found his philosophical muddlings mostly boring. To me myself he does not seem a creative thinker at all , but more a whining complainer, or a rah rah person for some imaginary group of mostly drug influenced dreamers.