Running Very Fast to Stay in Place
For 18 months I ran a small, fortnightly computer magazine. I commissioned articles, wrote some myself, helped sell advertising and tried to find a direction. It was at the geeky end of technical - the kind of mag you'd read to know the latest motherboards coming out of Taiwan, how to calibrate a 24-inch CRT monitor, which containerload of random techno-junk was hitting the country next week. Engadget on paper, sorta.
I knew the daily RAM price fluctuations. I had a desk full of obscure oddities, including a digital calorie-measuring ice cream scoop. I could tell you why DDR-400 wasn't going to be of any real use for another three months. And I was drowning.
As I tried to keep up, I found myself repeatedly hitting the brick wall of I Don't Give a Fuck Anymore. I got that distinct and horrible kind of nausea that comes when you realize something's never going to stop. And I lost all sense of wonder or surprise or weirdness at the science fiction things happening every day. Google's going to map the DNA of every creature on Earth and carve it onto an asteroid, which we'll then blow up with dark matter so it seeds the entire galaxy with tuataras? Meh.
To my friends - gadget, tech and idea junkies just like I'd been - it looked like a great gig. I'd tell them there's a difference between eating chocolate and having your entire bloodstream replaced by adrenaline-laced white sugar.
"Hey, great idea," they'd say. "Let's do that."
Weird Science vs. Modern Science
Eight story titles from E.C. Comics' Weird Science, 1950-54:
- "Lost in the Microcosm"
- "The Conquerors of the Moon!"
- "...The Man Who Raced Time"
- "The Gray Cloud of Death!"
- "Outcast of the Stars"
- "The Slave of Evil!"
- "Monster from the Fourth Dimension"
- "The Last War on Earth"
Five apparently genuine sci/tech news stories (with thanks to Warren Ellis):
- The United Kingdom plans to end its program of submarine goat decompression experiments
- Deep-brain hypothalamus stimulation can trigger Deja Vu
- There will be a robotic Chinese telescope on the deepest darkest plateau of Antarctica (How does H.P. Lovecraft feel about this?)
- There are seriously strange things under the sea off the East Coast of New Zealand
- Researchers have created workable Cyborg insects
I changed jobs. I came to a government/corporate environment. And there, finally, I found the really weird shit.
Richard Feynman Interview, Take 2
[in progress]
RF: Most of the people I ever worked with or admired and I saw journalists as rubes, boobs and shit-shovelers. What's so difficult about telling the truth?
CR: Yeah, well, I remember Mururoa.
RF: What?
CR: Mururoa. South Seas island where the French did their nuclear testing. Or Bikini Atoll? Congratulations on the military-industrial complex, with our Pacific neighborhood as its atomic crash test dummy.
RF: You have no idea what I went through after Trinity. And what, you'd rather be part of this religious-marketing-wordkiller nexus I see everywhere?
CR: What?
RF: The "science" of cynicism, of self-involvement, of public relations over reality. Demagogue technology sharing between marketing firms, corporations, governments and religions. You've seen it. I know you have.
CR: Back off, you old bastard. I'm a journalist. I carry the sword of truth and the shield of investigative coverage.
