Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts… a graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding…
When the Internet Archive asked me to do a megamix of their archive of recordings from their data files, I was a bit overwhelmed. There’s no way any human being could comb through even the way they’ve whatsapp lead documented just the web, let alone the material they have asked people to upload.Where to start? Sir Tim Bern ers-Lee’s speech inaugurating the internet back when he came up with the term the “Semantic Web?” The first recordings from Edison? That could be cool.
Maybe mix that with GW Bush’s State of the Union speech inaugurating the invasion of Iraq? Why not. Take Hedy Lamar’s original blueprints for spread spectrum “secret communications systems” and mix that with recordings of William S. Burrough and Malcolm X, with a beat made from open source 1920’s jazz and 1950’s New Orleans blues? Why not. talking about the upcoming war on open computing and mix it with Parliament Funkadelic? Sure. Take the first “sound heard around the world,” the telemetry signals guiding the Sputnik satellite as it swirled around planet Earth to become our first orbital artificial moon? Cool. Why not? Take a speech from Margaret Sanger, the woman who started Planned Parenthood, and mix it with Public Enemy? Cool. Take D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation” and re-score it with the Quincy Jones theme from “Fat Albert?” That would actually be kind of cool, but would require a lot of editing.