--- F R E N D Z of martian --- ----- Original Message ----- From: "Thomas Keenan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, June 14, 2000 3:13 AM Subject: <nettime> Howl.com > > Howl.com (with apologies to Allen Ginsberg) > > By Thomas Scoville March 22, 2000 > > I saw the best minds of my occupation destroyed by venture capital, > burned-out, paranoid, postal, dragging themselves through the > Cappuccino streets of Palo Alto at Dawn looking for an > equity-sharing, stock option fix, HTML-headed Web-sters coding for > the infinite broadband connection to that undiscovered e-commerce > mother lode in the airy reaches of IP namespace, > > who poverty and ripped Yahoo tee shirts, cubicle-eyed and wired on > Starbucks sat up surfing in the virtual ether of one-million-dollar, > one-bathroom condos next to the railroad tracks, skipping across the > links of killer Web sites contemplating ... Java, > > who rammed their brains into compilers and saw Intel angels > staggering on microchips under the insane weight of investor > expectation, > > who blew off the search for Truth for as-yet-undreamed New Economy > scams, business models hallucinating infocapitalist messiahs on > clouds of market cap, > > who abandoned lucid dreams of a Better Way for Shockwave fluff and > RealAudio baubles dangling from the buggy venality of digital > commerce, > > who, while haunted by the scowling ghosts of hackers past -? > Stallman, Nelson, Engelbart ?- auctioned their immortal souls on > eBay, with documentation and a full year of support included, of > course, > > who got busted in their spotless Nike cross-trainers traveling > through cyberspace with a file of illegal crypto for Open Source, > > who ate sushi in Austin or drank microbrews in Silicon Alley, > jousting with bad mojo funk of layoffs, Chapter 11, or diluted > company stock night after night, > > who chained themselves to start-ups for the endless ride from San > Jose to Wall Street on adrenaline and Evian, laptop batteries flaming > out over Oklahoma, no more vegetarian entrees, sir, would you like > the latex omelet instead? endless nights of keyboard grinding and > corporate microwave popcorn and Jolt Cola until the noise of their > own deadlines brought them down, gawping, convulsing, mute, crushed > beneath their own project plans, > > who talked continuously about convergence and distributed control and > cluetrains and Y2K and extropians and Libertarians and Microsoft and > Linux and slashdot and wouldn't fucking shut up, > > who pointed their browsers at Red Herring and Slate and Salon.com > hoping against hope that somebody might be able to make sense of the > infinitely perverse, ball-busting, soul-scorching, silicon-supernova > black hole that kept them awake all night every night and wouldn't > let them alone long enough to find dates in this lifetime, > > who tattoo'd and pierced and dyed and branded themselves in a > desperate act of self-mutilating cyber-hepster cool, all the while > wearing a suit and tie on the inside they could never, ever take off, > and praying nobody would find out about the MBA, > > who renounced the smokestack relics, the old guard and their father's > Oldsmobile only to find that they had been replaced by artifacts even > less substantial, > > who chanted the free market mantras of laissez-faire and > techno-darwinism and Adam Smith's invisible hand-job except when Big > Bad Bill the Bully Gates-of-hell came to take away their lunch.com -- > and became Socialists of Convenience.org, > > who stalked investment bankers through Bistros and wine bars and > martini lounges, begging pleading groveling for one more hit of > funding from the luminous check-book oh please oh please oh please > > ahh, Bill, you are not safe, I am not safe, and now we languish in > the dot com pressure cooker hoping for one last buzz of the old > hallucinations. > > The wrecked avenues, the sullied conduits, the pinched pipes of a > quadrillion dropped and ruined packets. > > The world wide waits, the denials of service, the infinite hosts of > hardcore farm-animal boredom, ghoulish domain-name squatters jumping > out from behind every virtual tree. > > These failed revolutions, these paradigms lost, the end of Web Time, > and P/E ratios good to last the next thousand years. > > Dot com! Dot com! Dot com! forever, and ever, ka-Ching > > ========================================================================== > > # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission > # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, > # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets > # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body > # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Sent to you via the frendz list at marsbard.com The archive is at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
