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Fame (part I) --Burn Hollywood Burn

It's 12:00 a.m. and I've been trying to get into the SF State Internet server for literally four hours. Busy signal every time. And I'm persistent, man.

Half a bottle of wine gone, homework well-forgotten, and still I'm staring at my sparse black desktop. It's just a bit blurrier now than it was a few hours ago.

I blame Hollywood most of all.

Were it not for movies being made about my livelihood, and all that incessant talk peppered with catch-phrases about which the proponents have only the most tertiary understanding, I'd have read my email by now. And I'd have been informed about the meetings I have to attend, the stuff I need to cover, the assignments I have to have in, story ideas, you name it.

At 12:20 a.m. the all-too-familiar sound of a connecting 14.4 wafts down the hall from my housemate's room. Commercial server. Cheap too.

Lucky bastard.

Fame (part II) -- Reluctant Reporting

The Warhol modems are here!

On Sept. 21, Technophile received the following message from Computing Services:

"Computing Services is pleased to announce that eight high speed modems (28.8 kbs) have been placed into a fifteen minute 'express' modem pool cluster. This is intended to maximize their use for customers with short term connect requirements. Dial 338-FAME (338-3263) to access this pool which when [sic] into production on September 20, 1995."

In plain English, students can set their home modems to dial 338-3263 and connect for 15 minutes before an abrupt descent back into electronic obscurity when it's automatically disconnected.

The intent is to relieve the ever-busy 338-6666 from its current overload, and thus ease the frustration of those trying for, say, four hours, to check their email.

And it works too. For now, that is.

Between the time of notification of the new service and publication, Technophile used FAME extensively. There's enough time to read even my bulging inbox and respond to a letter or two.

If you give your mail a miss, Technophile found it possible to peruse an average of three graphically-intensive Web sites before being cut off. And never was there that irritating busy signal.

But keep an eye on your watch. There's no notification of disconnect, not even when using the text-only Lynx system. And don't bother trying to download anything but the most simple document or program, stay within a 500k range.

I can't blame Hollywood anymore. It's all my fault now.

The "Web Club" is a go

As Technophile dutifully reported last time, Computing Services was tossing around the idea of finally linking self-published student's Web pages to the university's homepage. It looks like that may happen.

According to CS' WWW specialist Julianne Tolson, who has volunteered to be the academic advisor, approval has been granted by CS to go ahead with the idea. Tolson said she spearheaded the cause because of the overwhelming number of requests by students to have their pages linked to the main page.

"Usually it works the other way around," she said. "Usually it's a group of students who propose an idea and take it to the administration, not the other way around." But weary of getting so many requests, Tolson decided to go ahead with the idea herself. Since clearing it with the administration, Tolson has handed off all organizing responsibility to SF State student Frank Rizzo, who is in charge of getting interested people together before the project goes any further.

"It's that connection thing that's got to happen," Tolson said.

Rizzo did not return a Technophile request for an interview.

Tolson said the project will now have to go before Student Activities before any money is allocated to the "club." She expects that the paperwork would be filed with SA by the end of this week.

Stay tuned....

A look in the mirror

He's the target of the most extensive manhunt in the history of the FBI, yet he's everywhere you look: in the paper, in magazines, on TV, the radio, online.

Regardless of what anyone thinks about the Unabomber, his ideas or his tactics, he's currently one of the most popular people in the country.

And a more perfect indictment of our society couldn't be made. Maybe Oliver Stone hit closer to the mark with "Natural Born Killers" than I had originally gave him credit for.

But there is something more here. This guy's got ideas.

The Unabomber's central message is that the industrial-technological system under which we live -- and has subsequently birthed this column -- is a psychological, social and environmental disaster for humanity. We're literally killing ourselves with technology, he says.

"If the use of a new item of technology is INITIALLY optional, it does not necessarily REMAIN optional, because new technology tends to change society in such a way that it becomes difficult or impossible for an individual to function without using that technology," he wrote.

Sonoma State's Assured Access program. SF State's 200 new Internet accounts a day. We've all jumped on the technology train. The wheels are already in motion, and no one is going to stop it. But has anyone stopped to think about what all this really means?

The Unabomber thinks technophiles are "hopelessly naive," that we are unaware or in denial that technological changes, "even seemingly beneficial ones...lead to a long sequence of other changes, most of which are difficult to predict. In fact, technology has been creating new problems for society far more rapidly than it has been solving old ones."

It's not a new concept by any means, but it is crucial to understand. And just for perspective, the Fifth Estate -- a small Detroit-based anarchist paper with which I was once loosely affiliated -- has been printing treatises about the inherent evils of technology for the past 30 years. They used to lay out the magazine by hand. Now they use a Macintosh.

The Unabomber has some good points, if you're up to reading the opus. His tactics are debatable. But the scariest thing about the Unabomber's ideas is that he just might be right.

Technophile gleefully accepts hate mail.
He can be reached either here or there.

[ Golden Gater Online September 26, 1995 ]

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