Software 2000

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Text File | 1990-01-15 | 18.3 KB | 599 lines

*********************** EXPLORING ********************** HHH HHH HHH HHH HHHHHHH HHHHHHHHHH HHHHHHH. HHH HHH HHH HHH HHHHHHHHH. HHHHHHHHHH HHHHHHHHH HHHHHHHHHH HHH HHH HHH HHH HHH______ HHH HHH HHHHHHHHHH 'HHH' HHHHHHHHH HHHHHHHHH HHHHHHHHH HHH HHH HHH HHHHHHH' HHH HHHHHHH' HHH HHH HHH HHH HHHHHHHHHH HHH HHH HHH HHH HHH HHH HHHHHHHHHH HHH HHH. .HHHHHHHH HHHHHHH. HHH .HHHHHHH HHHHHHHHH HHHHHHHHHH HHHHHHHHH. HHHHH HHHHHHHHH HHHHHHHHH HHH_____ HHH HHH HHH HHH HHH' HHH_____ HHHHHHHH HHHHHHHHH HHH___HHH (HH( HHHHHHHH HHH HHHHHHH' HHHHHHHHHHH HHH. HHH HHHHHHHHH HHH HHH HHH HHHHHHHHH HHHHHHHHH HHHHHHHH' HHH .HHH HHH. 'HHHHHHH HHHHHHHHH in ********************* EVERYDAY LIFE ******************** by T.B. PAWLICKI ______________________________ I I I (C) COPYRIGHT 1988 I I by I I T.B. Pawlicki I I 843 FORT STREET I I VICTORIA, BRITISH COLUMBIA I I V8W 1H6 I I CANADA I I______________________________I ********************** FORWARD ********************** Thank you for participating in a pioneering publishing venture. Mass communication has progressed through four major transformations. The first revolution separated the author from his audience by means of writing; the LITERATI became a secret society of COGNOSCENTI that used its exclusive knowledge to dominate the ignorant masses. Modern democracy began when movable type made it possible for a message to be received by everyone who could read. Recently, radio broadcasting countered the first and second revolutions by delivering messages to everyone who can't read; television is likely to be the MATADOR of democracy. The capital cost of printing plants and broadcasting studios limits the messengers to parties of power and wealth, whose messages are determined to maintain the STATUS QUO --- natcherly --- especially their own status plus all the more quid they can quo. The tragic consequence of mass communications has been the dissemination of tendencious knowledge to enslave the minds of mankind, rather than free us to experience our own ignorance until we learn better. A truly free press for truly free minds could not exist until the personal home photocopier brought publishing within the economic capacity of every person with a message and postage. As well as reducing the cost of copying to a few pennies per kilowatt hour, the computer completes the revolution of mass communications by restoring audience feedback. As camels and soups show, quality goes down as participation increases, but participation is better for the participators; eventually, participators support higher standards. Since authors began to write, instead of speaking directly to their audience, ideas have flowed in one direction, only. It is, however, as impossible to teach without learning as it is to learn without teaching, which is why so little is learned from reading books. For the first time since the advent of writing, the computer makes it possible for readers to contribute to the discourse and transform a lecture into a dialogue, a conversation, a seminar, a workshop, a global town meeting. Finding a publisher for my first book, How To Build A -------------- Flying Saucer, took nearly ten years; nearly ten more years ------------- passed while my market grew to critical mass by word of mouth. Now people are reading my first book as if the ideas were as hot as tomorrow's news, but a whole generation has grown up to drinking age --- and another generation has died of cirrhotic livers --- since I was working out those early insights. My ideas develop so rapidly that I had to rewrite the manuscript every year until it was published. Once printed, however, the printing plates are as immutable as graven stone. As soon as I began to write my personal correspondence on computer, I realized that this electronic medium keeps discoveries alive and growing through pooling contributions in ways not feasible by any other means of communication. The entire industry is built by fielding half-baked ideas and then improving them with consumer feedback, as it goes along; no other industry advances so fast, and in no other industry do the suppliers lag behind the advances made by their own demanders. And thus it came to pass as I was speaking to the Global Sciences Congress, held at Denver in August, l987, that the idea came to me to offer my audience my current manuscripts explaining HYPERSPACE to ---------- everyone who would participate by also sharing their ideas on computer discs. Ideally, a book of this nature should be transmitted over wires to be downloaded by Special Interest Groups on international networks. In the present state of the art, however, computers still cannot replace paper. This unrealistically jealous industry has not yet made files universally readable, like sound and film tapes, and it is still impractical to transmit text formats and illustrations through wires. Even after the computer industry gets its parameters together, all of us early worms will remain stuck with our capital investments. Therefore, I have decided to print my manuscripts onto discs for postal distribution to the computers being used now. --- This enterprise will succeed only if each reader will make at least two copies and pass them on. Some readers may not know three other people with compatible computers, so it is hoped that readers with the most popular computer models will pass on to their computing friends as many copies as they feel this publication is worth. If anyone can make conversions to unpopular computers, a copy returned to me will be passed on to other readers out in left field. This brings us to the matter of copyrights. Most people ---------- believe that anyone may freely copy published material in any numbers for any purpose as long as the copies are not sold for a profit (*1). If legal process were not so expensive, a lot of copycats would learn how very mistaken they are. Copyright entitles the author to assign legal permission to make copies and set the conditions of contract. Although I am assigning all my readers the right to make copies and distribute this literature freely, the formal copyright remains mine. Any party enterprising enough to reproduce these discs by the hundred for sale at a profit will very likely interest my attorney to offer a royalty contract as a more attractive alternative to a court ordered remedy. Any party that fails to include my byline and copyright notice will be taken to task for the more serious offense of plagiarism. ---------- Heckling is a part of all public speaking, and most of the fun. If hecklers had a fair chance to give their opinions, many of them would have more to say than the speakers, and some may have better ideas. The only way a reader can add his two bits worth to a discourse is by scribbling in the margins of public library books. Anything that can be done will be done, so hecklers will always be with us, and so will graffiti, along with carefully considered letters to editors. Since it is so easy to add and subtract opinions to a magnetic publication, a lot of opinionated readers are going to do it. The main purpose of this venture is to turn audience feedback into an advantage --- for everyone --- by encouraging constructive criticism guided by rules for fair comment within the laws governing copyright and public utterance. By the nature of this medium, this publication is going to be shared by an unknown number of readers. Those who want to give us the benefit of their superior information are asked to follow these rules. On those matters that readers can wait for, please append your comments to the end of the file. If you feel that your information needs to be interjected, then mark the beginning and end of your contribution with lines or stars. Please include your name and the date so that we know whom to credit. If you find mistakes of fact, your immediate correction is eagerly asked for. Critics looking for an argument improve their chances by including their addresses. If you are so offended by some statements that you are compelled to make deletions, please mark your censorship with a notice of the amount of text you deleted, in numbers of lines or bytes, and include your name and date to prove the courage of your convictions. Anyone who wants to retain his copyright on contributions is advised to include notice of their legal claim so that no one will assume that all commentaries and contributions are in the public domain. Expect disputes; democracy is not for weak stomachs and faint hearts. Depending on the number of readers who distribute more copies, and the number of contributions added --- not to mention subtracted --- my original text will be unrecognizable by the time this print passes through a dozen recopies. There is no way to know whether all contributors have marked the changes they make. Neither is there any way to know whether they have their facts correct, unless they cite their sources for reference. Furthermore, these discs are communicated person-to-person through private, first-class mail, making the message into a conversation between acquaintances rather than a publication to strangers; it is permissible to say things in private and personal mail that is regarded as unethical, if not illegal, in public utterance. Therefore, all readers must always remember and bear in mind that the copy they are reading is a BOUILLABAISSE stirred by many cooks, not a FILET MIGNON SAUTEED by a chef. Unless you receive a copy that you can certify as unaltered from the original, do not believe anything that offends your common sense and don't hold the original author or signed contributors responsible for statements and/or context that may have been altered by hecklers who prefer to remain anonymous (*2). My own editors have altered my manuscripts until I could hardly recognize my publications as my own compositions --- usually for the better. If some party suffers personal injury from this special interest group disc, everyone who receives it becomes suspect. This is an utterly novel kind of case for the courts to rule on, not quite so much privileged privacy as a closed computer conference but still a one-on-one private correspondence. I dare say that honest mistakes will be excused with a pointed finger, but deliberate malice producing suffering to an identifiable person, when proven unjustified in these litiginous times, will be liable to legal penalties. We may protect ourselves from slanderous or obscene remarks by scanning each disc immediately before mailing, to check that no one else has run the copy and added comments disgraceful to polite company. I have enough discoveries in my head to keep me writing full time for ten years --- I should live so long. In the likelihood that my insurance is vastly underrated, I am curtailing my research and graphic design in order to put as much of my time as I can into getting my ideas written. Unfortunately, the charter members of this publishing revolution will receive bare bones of text, a dearth shared by everyone who buys Version 1.0 of any program. The economy of electronic publication, however, enables me to update my text whenever I get a break, add animated illustrations in colour, and enliven the text with creative layouts in future editions. Most important of all, as copies eventually find their way back to me with accumulated reader input, new editions can be issued with the latest and most extensive information --- better than anything I can do. This publication can be considered as a book written by its best qualified readers. In order to receive updates and new books, all readers will have to send me their names and addresses, regardless whence they received their copies. Please bear in mind that my resources are exceedingly limited, and expect to wait like a Christian for me to follow up in my spare time. I expect this enterprise to be taken over by more resourceful enthusiasts. The definitive version of this disc book will be written on an APPLE IIc, in ASCII files; the animated illustrations will be rendered with DAZZLE DRAW and FANTAVISION --- if I can't find more practical graphics programs. I invested in the APPLE system because I believed all the press reports that the computer field has more APPLE trees planted than anything else. I am deceived; MS-DOS is the most widely used operating system on this scene. This original version, however, is written on a KAYPRO II operated by CP/M 2.2 in WORDSTAR 3.3. files. It will take me time to convert WORDSTAR files to ASCII, and then convert both to MS-DOS. The few graphics included on this disc are drawn with keyboard characters. Since the ASCII code is standardized only for alphanumeric characters, computers using different keyboard codes will produce surprising characters --- the trouble is not in the disk or your computer. As long as computers remain inconvenient to read in bed or on public transportation, I shall concurrently try to find publishers for paper versions of my disc books. These discs hold the beginning of a 75,000 word paper book, heavily illustrated with animated illustrations included on disc, under the title TIME TRAVEL --- The Secret Science of The UFOs. Availing myself ----------- ------------------------------ of the impermanent and quasiconversational nature of magnetic correspondence, I have included many speculations and tangents on these disks to stimulate response; these unessential essays will be deleted from the paper version. The heaviest reading is the Second Chapter; once you establish the theoretical foundation laid in my repetitive manner of logic, the rest of the book is freeway, much like the First Chapter. For the first time, the theory and engineering of time travel are explained in sufficient practical detail for young physicists to begin constructing their own Philadelphia Experiments in their home workshops; at least one researcher I know is doing it already, in California. Let me know whether you are willing to buy TIME TRAVEL --- The Secret Science of The UFOs at a prepublication ----------- ------------------------------ price of $10 or a postpublication price of $16. Send no money. I only want to know whether there is a market for a paper book before I invest more than I can afford to print it. I apologize for my inability to acknowlege subscribers to this paper book by individual letters, as they are received; at a dollar a letter, the cost of mailing is prohibitive. Subscribers will be notified individually to write their cheques when the response is sufficient to underwrite publication. In the meantime, enquiries from royalty publishers are welcome. Zees is a bootstrap production, Dollink --- my apologies to Zsa Zsa. END OF FORWARD *1 This is the belief taken by the Government of the United States, especially its Public Broadcasting System. Assuredly, what the lord hath given us starving authors with one hand, he taketh away by truckloads driven by the other. With legal protection like we got, we are better off with our pirates. Unless you are a government authorized freebooter, however, the first hand lays down the law. Readers who copy programs published in magazines are subject to the same legal strictures. The magazine publishers do not assign its readers the right to make copies of their text to give to their friends, much less sell. --------------------------------------------------------------- *2 The most heavily edited and censored book in the world is the Holy Bible, yet its readers are convinced every copy is the original and every last Word of God. Evidently, God has afterthoughts --- The New Testament. The Holy Koran is an even later Word of the very same God compiled from the very same orginal Scriptures. And don't forget the equally Holy Book of Mormon. I can relate to Him; I am also compelled to rewrite my original words innumerable times as I get my act together. I believe the Bible; it is the publishers I question. I have no doubt that God inspires all His chosen publishers, but I wonder whether He chose every publisher; after all, the Bible is in public domain. If God inspired the American Constitution, in which I believe more than the Bible, He is the Source of the First Amendment --- entitling Larry Flint to turn a dollar in the pre-eminently profitable religious market. It isn't belief in the Bible that fomented the most vicious wars, but belief in the infallible veracity of the publishers.