Paulina Borsook's Memorable Memes

on digital art:

We know Art when we see it-- and we don't necessarily want it to be morphable. If it can become anything, be changed by anyone, be presented in any format, then what's its point?

on nabbing an outlaw in the
Wild Wild Web:

Ok, so you've exchanged smoky glances at a CFP bar BOF. Mutual friends forwarded an absolutely adorable post he made to one of the cypherpunk lists. And he sent you a deliciously inviting postcard from his favorite impoverished Caribbean island, where he hopes to set up an anonymous-remailer offshore banking paradise! So what do you do to tease, please, and capture the heart of your technolibertarian?

Sex and the Single URL

The Goddess In Every Woman's Machine

on proposed comedy,
'beverly_hills.com':

Loving over the wires! Join our group of cool Gen-X kids as they cruise the data superhighway in search of adventure and romance! Every week, netsurf along with roommates ALICE and XENIA and laugh at the antics of their wild assortment of friends. Melrose Place meets cyberculture! Max Headroom mellows out by the sea!

on technopaganism:

in the goddess-based versions of technopaganism, every incarnation of the divine can be symbolized by female personae: here there are brainiacs and artists and powermongers, in addition to the more traditional archetypes of sexpot and baby-maker and provider of harvests. Unlike [in] the great world religions--Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism--in goddess-based spiritual practice, women can express their latent sense of potency without feeling they have to be crypto-male.

guilty! digital animations shake up the courtroom

on digital
evidence:

Beautiful computer-created drawings show, in three gorgeous dimensions, how pollution plumes spread into underground aquifers. Computer-generated re-enactments demonstrate, with the simplicity of a Roadrunner cartoon, how two planes trying to land at one airport ram into each other. Computer-aided diagrams detail how one intricate patentable technology may illegally copy another. Welcome to the magic kingdom of forensic animation.

on real democracy:

The Internet, perhaps the greatest instantiation of self-organization the planet has ever seen, evolves in its fractious decentralized way through the Internet Engineering Task Force, the IETF. Which means, in the cyber '90s, that the True Masters of the Universe are not freemasons, mergers-and-acquisitions specialists, or venture capitalists but the members of a voluntary association of tech wizards that create and oversee the technological future of the Internet.... In the IETF, there's a kind of direct, populist democracy that most of us have never experienced: Not in democratically elected government, where too many layers of pols and polls and image and handling intervene. Not in radical politics, where too often, the same old alpha-male/top-dog politics prevail despite the countercultural objectives pursued. And not in the feminist collective world, where so much time is spent establishing total consensus and dealing with the concerns of process queens that little gets done. The IETF provides a counter-example of true grass-roots political process that few of us have ever had the privilege to participate in, outside of the backstories about member planets of the Star Trek Federation. IETF group process succeeds because of a profound connection with, and understanding of, the real world of networking.

How Anarchy Works: On Location With the Masters of the Metaverse, the Internet Engineering Task Force