Did cut this piece into 3 parts, cant give it away via http in the moment,
its splitted -l 510 or something like that, hope, it doesnt crash your
mailboxes, voila, part 1:
THE ELECTRONIC REVOLUTION
BY
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
1970 Expanded Media Editions
Published by Bresche Publikationen
Germany
(To my knowlege, no longer in print)
Text transcription By Flesh
01/16/92
FEEDBACK FROM WATERGATE TO THE GARDEN OF EDEN
In the beginning was the word and the word was god and has remained one
of the mysteries ever since. The word was God and the word was flesh we are
told. In the beginning of what exactly was this beginning word? In the
beginning of WRITTEN history. It is generally assumed that spoken word came
before the written word. I suggest that the spoken word as we know it came
after the written word. In the beginning was the word and the word was God
and the word was flesh ... human flesh ... In the beginning of WRITING.
Animals talk and convey information but they do not write. They cannot make
information available to future generations or to animals outside the range
of their communication system. This is the crucial distinction between men
and other animals. WRITING. Korzybski, who developed the concept of General
Semantics, the meaning of meaning, has pointed out this human distinction
and described man as 'the time binding animal'. He can make information to
other men over a length of time through writing. Animals talk. They dont
write. Now a wise old rat may know a lot about traps and poison but he cannot
write a text book on DEATH TRAPS IN YOUR WAREHOUSE for the Reader's Digest
with tactics for ganging up on digs and ferrets and taking care of wise guys
who stuff steel wool up our holes. It is doubtful if the spoke word would
have ever evolved beyond the animal stage without the written word. The
written word ist inferential in HUMAN speech. It would not occur to our wise
old rat to assemble the young rats and pass his knowledge along in an aural
tradition BECAUSE THE WHOLE CONCEPT OF TIME BINDING COULD NOT OCCUR WITHOUT
THE WRITTEN WORD. The written word is of course a symbol for something and
in the case of hieroglyphic language writing like Egyptian it may be a symbol
for itself that is a picture of what it represents. This is not true of an
alphabet language like English. The word leg has no pictorial resemblance to
a leg. It refers to the SPOKEN word leg. so we may forget that a written word
IS AN IMAGE and that written words are images in sequence that is to say
MOVING PICTURES. So any hieroglyphic sequence gives us an immediate working
definition for spoken words. Spoken words are verbal units that refer to this
pictorial sequence. And what then is the written word? My basis theory is
that the written word was literally a virus that made spoken word possible.
The word has not been recognized as a virus because it has achieved a state
of stable symbiosis with the host...(This symbiotic relationship is now
breaking down for reasons I will suggest later.)
I quote from MECHANISMS OF VIRUS INFECTION edited by Mr. Wilson Smith, a
scientist who really thinks about his subject instead of merely correlating
data. He thinks, that is, about the ultimate intentions of the virus
organism. In an article entitled VIRUS ADAPTIBILITY AND HOST RESISTANCE by
G. Belyavin, speculations as to the biologic goal of the virus species
are enlarged ... 'Viruses are obligatory cellular parasites and are thus
wholly dependant upon the integrity of the cellular systems they parasitize
for their survival in an active state. It is something of a paradox that
many viruses ultimately destroy the cells in which they are living..."
And I may add the environment necessary for any cellular structure they
could parasitize to survive. Is the virus then simply a time bomb left on
this planet to be activated by remote control? An extermination program in
fact? In its path from full virulence to its ultimate goal of symbiosis will
any human creature survive? Is the white race, which would seem to be more
under virus control than the black yellow and brown races, giving any
indication of workable symbiosis?
'Taking the virus eye view, the ideal situation would appear to be one in
which the virus replicates in cells without in any way disturbing their
normal metabolism.'
This has been suggested as the ideal biological situation toward which all
viruses are slowly evolving...'
Would you offer violence to a well intentioned virus on its slow
road to symbiosis?
'It is worth noting that if a virus were to attain a state of wholly benign
equilibrium with its host cell it is unlikely that its presence would be
readily detected OR THAT IT WOULD NECESSARILY BE RECOGNIZED AS A VIRUS. I
suggest that the word is just such a virus. Doktor Kurt Unruh von Steinplatz
has put forth an interesting theory as to the origins and history of this
word virus. He postulates that the word was a virus of what he calls BIOLOGIC
MUTATION effecting the biologic change in its host which was then genetically
conveyed. One reason that apes cant talk is because the structure of their
inner throats is simply not designed to formulate words. He postulates that
alteration in inner throat structure were occasioned by virus illness ...
And not occasion ... This illness may well have had a high rate of mortality
but some female apes must have survived to give birth to the wunder kindern.
The illness perhaps assumed a more malignant form in the male because of his
more developed and rigid muscular structure causing death through
strangulation and vertebral fracture. Since the virus in both male and
female precipitates sexual frenzy through irritation of sex centers in the
brain the males impregnated the females in their death spasms and the
altered throat structured was genetically conveyed. Having effected
alterations in the host's structure that resulted in a new species specially
designed to accomodate the virus the virus can now replicate without
disturbing the metabolism and without being recognized a virus. A symbiotic
relationship has now been established and the virus is now built into the
host which sees the virus as a useful part of itself. This successful virus
can now sneer at gangster viruses like small pox and turn them in to The
Pasteur Institute. Ach jungen what a scene is here ... the apes are moulting
fur steaming off them females whimpering and slobbering over dying males like
cows with aftosa and so a stink musky sweet rotten metal stink of the
forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden...
The creation of Adam, the Garden of Eden, Adam's fainting spell during
which God made Eva from his body, the forbidden fruit which was of course
knowledge of the whole stinking thing and might be termed the first Watergate
scandal, all slots neatly into Doc Steinplatz's theory. And this was a white
myth. This leads to the supposition that the word virus assumed a specially
malignant and lethal form in the white race. What then accounts for this
special malignance of the white word virus? Most likely a virus mutation
occasioned by radioactivity .All animal and insect experiments so far carried
out indicate that mutations resulting from radiation are unfavorable that is
not conductive to survival. These experiments relate to the effects of
radiation on autonomous creatures. What about the effects of radiation on
viruses? Are there not perhaps some so classified and secret experiments
hiding behind national security? Virus mutations occasioned by radiation may
be quite favorable for the virus. And such a virus might well violate the
equilibrium with the host cell. So now with the tape recorders of Watergate
and the fall out from atomic testing the virus stirs uneasy in all your white
throats. It was a killer virus once. It could become a killer virus again and
rage through cities of the world like a topping forest fire.
"It is the beginning of the end." That was the reaction of a science
attache' at one of Washington's major embassies to reports that a synthetic
gene particle had been produced in the laboratory ..."Any small country can
now make a virus for which there is no cure. It would only take a small
laboratory. Any small country with good biochemists could do it."
And presumeably any big country could do it quicker and better.
In the Electronic Revolution I advance the theory that a virus
IS a very small unit of word and image. I have suggested now such units
can be biologically activated to act as communicable virus strains. Let
us start with three tape recorders in The Garden of Eden. Tape recorder 1 is
Adam. Tape recorder 2 is Eve. Tape recorder 3 is God, who deteriorated after
Hiroshima into the Ugly American. Or to return to our primevil scene: Tape
recorder 1 is the male ape in a helpless sexual frenzy as the virus strangles
him. Tape recorder 2 is a cooing female ape who straddles him. Tape recorder
3 is DEATH.
Steinplatz postulates that the virus of biologic mutation, which he calls
Virus B-23, is contained in the word. Unloosing this virus from the word
could be more deadly that loosing the power of the atom. Because all hate
all pain all fear all lust is contained in the word. Perhaps we have here in
these three tape recorders the virus of biologic mutation which once gave
us the word and has hidden behind the word ever since. And perhaps three
tape recorders and some good biochemists can unloose this force. Now look at these
three tape recorders and think in terms of the virus particle. Recorder 1 is
the perspective host for an influenza virus. Tape recorder number 2 is the
means by which the virus gains access to the host, in the case of a flu virus
by disolving a hole in cells of the host's respiratory tract. Number 2, having
gained access to the cell. leads in number 3. Number 3 is the effect
produced in the host by the virus: coughing, fever, inflamation. NUMBER 3 IS
OBJECTIVE REALITY PRODUCED BY THE VIRUS IN THE HOST Viruses make themselves
real. It's a way viruses have. We now have three tape recorders. So we will
make a simple word virus. Let us suppose that our target is a rival
politician. On tape recorder 1 we will record speeches and conversation
carefully editing in stammers mispronouncing, inept phrases ... the worst
number 1 can assemble. now on tape recorder 2 we will make so a love tape
by bugging his bed room. We can potentiate this tape by splicing it in with
a sexual object that is inadmissible or inaccessible or both, say the
senator's teen age daughter. On tape recorder 3 we will record hateful
disapproving voices and splice the three recordings together at very short
intervals and play them back to the senator and his constituents. This
cutting and playback can be very complex involving speech scramblers and
batteries of tape recorders but THE BASIC PRINCIPAL IS SIMPLY SPLICING SEX
TAPE AND DISAPPROVAL TAPES IN TOGETHER. Once the associations lines are
established they are activated every time the senator's speech centres are
activated which is all the time heavan help that sorry bestard if anything
happened to his big mouth. So his teen age daughter crawls all over him while
Texas rangers and decent church going women rise from tape recorder 3
screaming "WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN FRONT OF DECENT PEOPLE."
The teen age daughter is just a refinement. Basically all you need is sex
recordings on number 2 and hostile recordings on number 3. With this simple
formula any CIA sonofabitch can become God that is tape tape recorder 3.
Notice the emphasis on sexual material in burglaries and bugging in the
Watergate cess pool ...Bugging Martin Luther King's bed room ...Kiss Kiss
bang bang ...A deadly assassination technique. At the very least sure to
unerve and put opponents at a disadvantage. So the real scandal of Watergate
that has not come out yet is not that bed rooms were bugged and the
offices of psychiatrists ransaked but THE PRECISE USE THAT WAS AND IS
MADE OF THIS SEXUAL MATERIAL. This formula works best on a closed circit.
If sexual recordings and film are widespread, tolerated and publicaly
shown tape recorder 3 losses ist power. Which perhaps explains why the Nixon
administration is out to close down set films and reestablish censorship on
all films and books. to keep close circit on tape recorder 3.
And this brings us to the subject of SEX. In the words of the late John
O'Hara I'm glad you came to me instead of one of those quacks on the top
floor ...Psychiatrists, priests whatever they call themselves they want
to turn in off and keep tape recorder 3 in business. Let's turn it on. All
you swingers use video cameras and tape recorders to record and photograph
your sessions. Now go over the session and pick out the sexiest pieces you
know when it really HAPPENS. Reich built a machine with electrodes
attached to the penis to measure this orgasm charge. Here is
unpleasurable orgasm sagging ominously as tape recorder 3 cuts in. He just
made it. And here is a pleasurable orgasm way up on the graph. So take the
best of your sessions and invite the nabors to see it. Its the naborly thing
to do. Try cutting them in together alternating 24 frames per second. Try
slow downs and speed ups.
Build and experiment with orgone accumulators. Its simply a box of any
shape or size lined with iron. Your intrepid reporter at age 37 achieved
spontaneous orgasm no hands in an orgone accumulator built in an orange grove
in Pharr/Texas. It was the small direct application accumulator that did the
trick. That's what every red blooded boy and girl should be doing in their
basement work shop. The orgone accumulator could be greatly potentiated by
using MAGNETIZED IRON which sends a powerful magnetic field through the body.
And small accumulators like ray guns.
There is Two Gun Maggee going off in his pants. The gun falls from his hand.
Quick as he was he was not quick enough.
For a small directional accumulator obtain six powerful magnets. Arrange
your magnetized squares so they form a box. In one end of the box drill a
hole and insert an iron tube. Now cover the box and tube with any organic
material ...rubber,leather,cloth. Now train the tube on your privates and the
privates of your friends and nabors. Its good for young and old man and beast
and is known as SEX. It is also known to have a direct connection with what
is known as LIFE. Let's get St. Paul off our backs and take off the bible
belt. And tell tape recorder 3 to cover his own dirty thing. It stinks from
the garden of Eden to Watergate.
I have said that the real scandal of Watergate is the use made of
recordings. And what is this use? Having made the recordings as described
what then do they do with them?
ANSWER: THEY PLAY THEM BACK ON LOCATION.
They play these recordings back to the target himself is the target is an
individual from passing cars and agents that walk by him in the street. They
play these recordings back in his naborhood. Finally they play them back in
subways, restaurants, air ports and other public places.
PLAYBACK is the essential ingredient.
I have made a number of experiments with street recordings and playback
over a period of years and the startling fact emerges THAT YOU DO NOT NEED
SEX RECORDINGS OR EVEN DOCTORED TAPES TO PRODUCE EFFECTS BY PLAYBACK. ANY
RECORDINGS PLAYED BACK ON LOCATION IN THE MANNER I WILL NOW DESCRIBE CAN
PRODUCE EFFECTS. No doubt sexual and doctored tapes would be more powerful.
But some of the power in the word is released by simple playback as anyone
can verify who will take the time to experiment ...I quote from some notes
on these playback experiments.
Friday July 28, 1972 ...Plan 28 at a glance ...First some remarks on the
tape recorder experiments started by Ian Sommerville in 196. these involved
not only street, pub, party, subway recordings but also PLAYBACK on location.
when I returned to London from the States in 1966 he had already accumulated
a considerable body of data and developed a technology. He had discovered
that playback on location can produce definite effects. Playing back
recordings of an accident can produce another accident. In 1966 I was staying
at the Rushmore Hotel, 11 Trebovir Road, Earl's Court, and we carried out a
number of these operations: street recordings, cut in of other material,
playback in the streets ...(I recall I had cut in fire engines and while
playing this tape back in the street fire engines passed.) These experiments
were summarized in THE INVISIBLE GENERATION ... ( I wonder if anybody but
CIA agents read this article or thought of putting these techniques into
actual operation) Anybody who carries out similar experiments over a period
of time will turn up more 'coincidences' than the law of averages allows. The
tech can be extended by taking still or moving pictures during playback. I
have frequently observed this operation: make recordings and take pictures of
some location you wish to discomode or destroy, now play recordings back and
take more pictures, will result in accidents, fires, removals. especially the
latter The target moves. We carried out this operation with the Scientology
Center at 37 Fitzroy Street. Some months later they moved to 68 Tottenham
Court Road, where a similar operation was carried out...
Here is a sample operation carried out against The Moka Bar at 29 Frith
Street London W1 beginning on August 3, 1972 ...Reverse Thursday ...Reason
for operation was outrageous and unprovoked discourtesy and poisoned cheese
cake...
Now to close in on The Moka Bar. Record. Take pictures. Stand around
outside. Let them see me. They are seething around in there. The horrible old
proprietor, his frizzy haired wife and slack jawed son, the snarling
counter man. I have them and they know it.
"You boys have a rep for making trouble. Well come on out and make some.
Pull a camera breaking act and I'll call a Bobby. I gotta right to do what I
like in the public street."
If it came to that I would explain to the policeman that I was taking
street recordings and making a documentary of Soho. This was after all
London's First Expresso Bar was it not? I was doing them a favor. They
couldnt say what both of us knew without being ridiculous...
"He's not making any documentary. He's trying to blow up the coffee
machine, start a fire in the kitchen, start fights in here, get us a citation
from the Board of Health."
Yes I had them and they knew it. I looked in at the old Prop and smiled as
if he would like what I was doing. Playback would come later with more
pictures. I took my time and strolled over to the Brewer Street Market where
I recorded a three card Monte Game. Now you see it now you dont.
Playback was carried out a number of times with more pictures. Their
business fell off. They kept shorter and shorter hours. October 30, 1972 The
Moka Bar closed. The location was taken over by The Queens Snack Bar.
Now to apply the 3 tape recorder analogy to this simple operation. Tape
recorder 1 is the Moka Bar itself it is pristine condition. Tape recorder 2
is MY RECORDINGS of the Moka Bar vicinity. These recordings are ACCESS. Tape
recorder 2 in the Garden of Eden was Eve made from Adam. So a recording made
from the Moka Bar is a piece of the Moka Bar. The recording once made, this
piece becomes autonomous and out of their control. Tape recorder 3 is
PLAYBACK. Adam experiences shame when his DISCRACEFUL BEHAVIOR IS PLAYED BACK
TO HIM BY tape recorder 3 which is God. By playing back my recordings to the
Moka Bar when I want and with any changes I wish to make in the recordings, I
become God for this local. I effect them. They cannot effect me. And what
part do photos take in this operation? Recall what I said earlier about
written and sopken word. THE WRITTEN WORD IS AN IMAGE IS A PICTURE . The
spoken word could be defined as any verbal units that correspond to these
pictures and could be in fact be extended to ANY SOUND UNITS THAT CORRESPOND
to to the pictures ...Recordings and pictures are tape recorder 2 which is
access. Tape recorder 3 is playback and 'reality'. For example suppose your
bathroom and bed room are bugged and rigged with hidden infra red cameras.
These pictures and recordings give access. You may not experience shame
during defecation and intercourse but you may well experience shame when
these recordings are played back to a disapproving audience.
Now let us consider the arena of politics and the applications of bugging
in this area. Of course any number of recordings are immediately available
since politicians make speeches on TV. However, these recordings do not give
access. The man who is making a speech is not really there. Consequently more
intimate or at least private recordings are needed which is why the Watergate
conspirators had to resort to burgulary. A presidential candidate is not a
sitting duck like a Moka Bar. He can make any number of recordings of his
opponents. So the game is complex and competitive with recordings made by
both sides. This leads to more sophisticated techniques the details of which
have yet to come out.
The basic operation of recording pictures, more pictures and playback can
be carried out by anyone with a recorder and a camera. Any number can play.
Millions of people could nullify the control system which those who are
behind Watergate and Nixon are attempting to impose. Like all control systems
it depends on maintaining a monopoly position. If anybody can be tape
recorder 3 then tape recorder 3 loses power. God must be THE GOD.
ELECTRONIC REVOLUTION
In THE INVISIBLE GENERATION first published in IT and in the Los Angeles
Free Press in 1966 and reprinted in THE JOB, I consider the potential of
thousands of people with recorders, portable and stationary, messages passed
along like signal drums, a parody of the President's speech up and down the
balconies, in and out open windows, through walls, over courtyards, taken
up by barking dogs, muttering bums, music, traffic down windy streets, across
parks and soccer fields. Illusion is a revolutionary weapon:
TO SPREAD RUMORS
Put ten operators with carefully prepared recordings out at rush hour and
see how quick the words get around. People don't know where they heard it but
they heard it.
TO DISCREDIT OPPONENTS
Take a recorded Wallace speech, cut in stammering coughs sneezes hiccoughs
snarls pain screams fear whimperings apoplectic sputterings slobbering
drooling idiot noises sex and animal sound effects and play it back in the
streets subway stations parks political rallies.
AS A FRONT LINE WEAPON TO PRODUCE AND ESCALATE RIOTS
There is nothing mystical about this operation. Riot sound effects can
produce an actual riot in a riot situation. RECORDED POLICE WISTLES WILL DRAW
COPS. RECORDED GUNSHOTS, AND THEIR GUNS ARE OUT.
"MY GOD, THEY'E KILLING US."
A guardsman said later: "I heard and saw my buddy go down, his face covered
in blood (turned out he'd been hit by a stone from a sling shot) and I
thought, well this is it." BLOODY WEDNESDAY. A DAZED AMERICA COUNTED 23 DEAD
AND 32 WOUNDED, 6 CRITICALLY.
Here is a run of the mill, pre-riot situation. Protestors have been urged
to demonstrate peacefully, police and guardsmen to exercise restraint. Ten
tape recorders strapped under their coats, playback, and record controlled
from lapel buttons. They have pre-recorded riot sound effects from Chicago,
Paris, Mexico City, Kent/Ohio. If they adjust sound levels of recordings to
surrounding sound levels, they will not be detected. Police scuffle with the
demonstrators. The operators converge. turn on Chicago record, play back,
move on to the next scuffles, record playback, keep moving. Things are
hotting up, a cop is down groaning. shrill chorus of recorded pig squeals and
parody groans.
Could you cool a riot by recording the calmest cop and the most reasonable
demonstrator? Maybe! However, it's a lot easier to start trouble that to stop
it. Just pointing out that cut/ups on the tape recorder can be used as a
weapon. You'll observe that the operators are making a cutup as they go. They
are cutting in Chicago, Paris, Mexico City, Kent Ohio with the present sound
effects at random and that is a cutup.
AS A LONG RANGE WEAPON TO SCRAMBLE AND NULLIFY ASSOCIATIONAL LINES PUT DOWN
BY MASS MEDIA
The control of the mass media depends on laying down lines of association.
When the lines are cut the associational connections are broken.
President Johnson burst into a swank apartment, held three girls at
gunpoint, 26 miles north of Saigon yesterday.
you can cut the mutter line of the mass media and put the altered mutter
line out in the streets with a tape recorder. Consider the mutter line of the
daily press. It goes up with the morning papers, millions of people read the
same words. In different ways, of course. A motion praising Mr. Callaghan's
action in banning the South African Cricket Tour has spoiled the colonel's
breakfast. All reacting one way or another to the paper world or unseen
events which becomes an integral part of your reality. You will notice that
this process is continually subject to random juxtapostation. Just what sign
did you see in the Green Park station as you glanced up from the PEOPLE?
Just who called as you were reading your letter in the TIMES? What were you
reading when your wife broke a dish in the kitchen? An unreal paper world
and yet completely real because it is actually happening. Mutter line of
the EVENING NEWS, TV. Fix yourself on millions of people all watching Jesse
James or the Virginian at the same time. International mutter line of the
weekly news magazine always dated a week ahead. Have you noticed it's the
kiss of death to be on the front cover of TIME. Madam Nhu was there when her
husband was killed and her government fell. Verwoerd was on the front cover
of TIME when a demon tapeworm gave the order for his death through a
messenger of the same. Read the Bible, kept to himself, no bad habits,
you know the type. Old reliable, read all about it.
So stir in news stories, TV plays, stock market quotations, adverts and put
the altered mutter line out in the streets.
The underground press serves as the only effective counter to a growing
power and more sophisticated technique used by establishment mass media to
falsify, misrepresent, misquote, rule out of consideration as a PRIORI
ridiculous or simply ignore and blot out of existence: data, books,
discoveries that they consider prejudicial to establishment interest.
I suggest that the underground press could perform this function much more
effectively by the use of cut/up techniques. For example, prepare cut/ups of
the ugliest reactionary statements you can find and surround them with the
ugliest pictures. Now give it the drool, slobber, animal noise treatment and
put it out on the mutter line with recorders. Run a scramble page in every
issue of a transcribed tape recorded cut/up of news, radio and TV. Put the
recordings out on the mutter line before the paper hits the stand. It gives
you a funny feeling to see a headline that's been going round and round
inside your head. The underground press could add a mutter line to their
adverts and provide a unique advertising service. Cut the product in with
pop tunes, cut the product in with advertising slogans and jingles of other
products and syphon off the sales. Anybody that doubts that these techniques
work has only to put them to the test. The techniques here described are in
use by the CIA and agents of other countries ...Ten years ago they were
making systematic street recordings in every district of Paris. I recall the
Voice of America man in Tangir and a room full of tape recorders and you
could hear some strange sounds through the wall. Kept to himself, hello in
the hall. Nobody was ever allowed in that room, not even a fatima. Of course,
there are many technical elaborations like long-range directional mikes.
When cutting the prayer call in with hog grunts it doesn't pay to be walking
around the market place with a portable tape recorder.
An article in NEW SCIENTIST June 4, 1970, page 470, entitled ' Electronic
Arts of Noncommunication ' by Richard C French gives the clue for more
precise technical instructions.
In 1968, with the help of Ian Sommerville and Anthony Balch, I took a
short passage of my recorded voice and cut it into intervals of one
