- William Gibson, author of Neuromancer,is credited with the creation
of the term/concept “cyberspace.” He is also responsible for
Johnny
Mnemonic, a great science fiction story that he and Robert Longo made into a
cheerfully bad SF film. - Gardner Dozois is the editor os Asimov’s SF magazine. He attends Amadillocon
every year and hangs out with a crowd of SF writers and editors responsible
for the genesis of “cyberpunk.” - Reality Hackers was the precursor to the slick cyberculture magazine
Mondo 2000. - Secret Masters of Fandom (SMOF) was a BBS in Austin operated for SF fans by
Earl Cooley, who uses the handle “shiva.” He’s one of the Armadillocon
organizers from way back, and he was trying to create an ongoing, online SF
convention. SMOF users included Bruce Sterling, EFF counsel Mike Godwin (still
at UT Law during his SMOF days), Lew Shiner, Steve Jackson, and yours truly.
Bruce, Mike, and I all went on to the WELL; Bruce and I, with Linda Castellani,
now have a conference on the WELL called “Mirror Shades.” Linda, incidentally,
was the subject of one of Philip K. Dick’s short stories. - I was influenced by Ivan Illich’s book Deschooling Society which my
wife was reading in 1973 when I was an undergrad at UT. Illich was critical of
the socialization process inherent in the system of educational institutions,
and this appealed to my anarchistic spirit. - Suzuki-Roshi was a zen master and abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center. He
is also the author of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, a classic work on
meditation. Soto zen is a sort of a stripped down zen, emphasizing sitting
meditiation, sitting and counting breaths, or just sitting. It’s usually
contrasted to Rinzai zen, which takes an approach less muscular, slightly more
intellectual. - Sandy Stone, aka Allucquere Rosanne Stone, is quite famous in academic
circles, her subjects being media, transgender theory (she used to be a he),
performance, virtual community, et al. She was a recording engineer for
Jimi Hendrix, too, and is currently the director of UT’s Interactive Media Lab,
Actlab. - Howard Rheingold is the author of books on virtual reality and virtual
community, former editor of Whole Earth Review, and editor of the
Millennium Whole Earth Catalog for which I was editor of a subdomain on
“consciousness,” (about five pages worth). Howard lives in the Bay Area and is
famous for his painted shoes. - Joseph Rowe is an Austin native who lives and works in Paris, France. He’s
married to singer Catherine Braslavsky and they do music together — mostly
based on Gregorian chant. (See http://www.well.com/~paramod for info on their
album which I reviewed for Wired several months ago.) Joseph and I met
when he was spending time in Austin. We were trading e-mail on the WELL and
didn’t realize at first that we were only a few miles from each other. Joseph
is also an eclectic writer and professional translator. - Rudy Rucker is a SF writer, math professor, and cyberculture theorist. Another
of the authors responsible for “cyberpunk,” his novel Software was the
first and best example of the subgenre. - Senator J. James Exon [D-NE] sponsored the bill that later became the
Communications Decency Act, which in regard to the Internet was recently ruled
unconstitutional.
— Jon Lebkowsky
This article appears in August 2 • 1996 and August 2 • 1996 (Cover).