I shouldn't be here you know, writing like this. I'm on holiday,
goddammit.
"Where did you go?"
they'll very reasonably ask. But what can you say? How can they possibly understand?
"Oh, I explored more of Cyberspace" I could reply. "I held hands
and laughed and loved!"
They'll appreciate that - except
my friends were thousands of miles away.
OK, so the hand-holding bit was
a lie, but still we did laugh and love, ignoring the body's normal requirements for
wussy things like food and sleep.
Put them on hold, and seize the
night, for tomorrow we may die. Carpe noctem, dude.
Yes, I'm afraid it's been another Cyberbender. But not - NOT -
like the one we so gloriously describe in Netsex. No, that was childish, that. Years ago,
wasn't it? And my feet swelled up.
No, these past five days have been spent on the website, typing,
formatting, cutting, rearranging. Everything except writing, which is why, somewhat
nervously, we're here again with you now. After all, this was never supposed to be merely
a Guardian scrap book with pretty new backgrounds. No - my readers flock to hear what WE
have to say!
Side note: The BBC early morning newsreaders don't half look weird after
you've spent a night on the wilder shores of the USA. Banging on about mortgages I think
they were this morning.
And how the Serial Adulterer,
(Robin Cook) who can't seem to keep peace even in his own home, is lecturing this group
and that tribe about how they should all be friends.
Eat yer heart out Clinton - we
got our own CockDude8 right here.
But it wasn't all Website. Oh no - a boy's gotta have fun sometime. We got
our Channel back again last night. (IRC Chat Channel). For three days and nights it'd been
invaded and held hostage by bashers. This is called a take-over.
Gingerly I picked my way through the rubble-strewn
streets - the bloody aftermath of this three day war - desperate to hear any faint
sounds of life. In total I rescued two old ladies (Mother Theresa type), one
young marine (Kevin Dillon type), and a newly-orphaned 12 year old boy (too
young to type).
"What are you talking about magnificat?" they said to me on
the Channel.
"Oh sorry dudes! In Europe
when we have a war there's always rubble and survivors. Got to be, or what would the News put on? Happens quite a lot, in
fact."
"Oh," they said,
unconvinced, and got back to trying to have sex with people. Booooring.
Last night on the Undernet I was invited to a class. An advanced users'
class. God knows how they select for this - maybe Telewest tells them how much I spend on
phone bills. More out of curiosity than anything I hauled my ass over there and went in.
God it was full. About 200
students and 5 staff - Cynthia the teacher, and 4 tutors to take your questions. And
it was utterly engrossing.
For over an hour Cynthia lectured on present day life in Cyberworld. You
see, unlike the Compuserve we wrote about elsewhere, IRC is a jungle. No - worse than a jungle, much worse than that - a
post- industrial wasteland of innocent citizens ranged against marauding gangs of
hackers, bashers and virus-writers.
It's a bit like Mad Max, really - except you get to choose what
everything looks like. But I assure you there's nothing imaginary about the gangs -
the High Priests of Fundamentalist intolerance, screaming their hate against blacks, against Jews, and of course against Filthy Diseased Faggot Scum. They are very
real. And very frightening.
Be warned, the first time you see this, whether it's live on IRC, or
asynchronous on Usenet Newsgroups, it stabs like a hot knife in the heart, and then you
thank society for the literal civility of our print and broadcast regulations. We
just don't have that sort of thing over here, do we Mr Lawrence?
But out there, there is no censorship. There is
no goodness. There is no law.
Spending so much of our lives among the dancing digits and spinning
discs of IRC programming, we have to retaliate. Or chaos would surely follow.
For every hate-filled American
trailer-trash polishing his shotgun by day and his virus codes by night, there are others
who write good code - flood protections, virus scanners and of course the silent,
ever-faithful "bots" - those trusty little Cyber-robots guarding the Channels -
24/7.
Well, again I was quite nervous sitting down to you
after more than a week off, and four days and nights of less than healthy living. But it
was OK. Tomorrow, back to links and images. We're getting there.
So where did I go for my holiday? "Oh...it was good. I saw
most of the USA, this time...and met a red-hot dude down in South Africa. Plus I went on a
fascinating course at the very limits of consciousness." I'll smile then, knowingly.
"Yep, it was great. You should go there some time."
