G21 TRIO: A Series of Voices
TRIO Twenty-five: Rod Amis
G21 Editor & Publisher
Dangerous Visions: Lone Gunman 3
To read this article in Deutsch, Francaise, Italiano, Portuguese, Espanol, copy and paste the complete URL("http://www.g21.net/trio25.html") and enter it in the box after you click through.
SAN FRANCISCO - Three years ago, in another web magazine, called "nrv8," I wrote an article entitled "The Lone Gunman." It was a reference to the `zine published by television's Agent Mulder's("X-Files") geeky friends, and to the more chilling phenomenon of modern American rage. But my subject was our culture of isolation, that so much of the civic dialogue was happening from cubicles, and small rooms, before Memory Machines like the one you are using to visit this magazine. It was a dangerous vision which touched a cord with many people here in the ether.
Since then, especially when leading with themes like the one we chose for this week's issue, I've learned what a rich stew of insight, thoughtful challenges, and radical theory can be brought to a topic if you have the right minds to contribute. Still there is an underlying sense of dissonance, and anxiety, which we did not directly address.
Let's face it, when you are constantly bombarded with the assertion that the economy(at least of the U.S. and most of Europe) is doing wonderfully, that it's boom time, you begin to wonder why it hasn't registered on your own personal Misery Index. I know a lot of people, and not one of them is having a boom time. Anecdotal evidence is unreliable, of course, but does it not seem strange that you probably don't know anyone in Boom Time America, either? Shouldn't you know a few people who are prospering beyond their wildest dreams of six years ago?
Thomas Hart asserted earlier this week that we are delusional. Fliss Ussher writes about being speechless with stress. Adam Smith says Americans have lost their sense of personal soveriegnty. This is dissonance. This is a disconnect between our personal experience and what we are being told to think.
My housemate, Anji, has a refrigerator magnet which reads:
STRESS - The confusion which arises when one's mind overrides the body's basic desire to choke the living shit out of some Ass-hole who desperately needs it.
Dissonance.
For the working wounded of the techno/cyber/multi-media-ghetto, there are dolls of Louis Rosetto on dresser tops with large pins through their hearts, there are tales of serfdom and low or no pay; Yahoo's stock goes through the roof; Netly News implodes, Word is cancelled, the Gabocorp site uses Macromedia Shockwave Flash to make the web look even more like web-TV; Blockbuster foists a year old Web phenom(The Dancing Baby) on an unsuspecting, blase and passe consuming public("Kewl!") and the nerve over my left eye begins to twitch!
Dissonance.
If you don't come to this medium, the World Wide Web, with a certain degree of skepticism, humor, and objectivity, you might actually believe some of its self-referential hype, and libertarian posing. The truth hasn't changed much: we're all figuring out how to attract enough eyeballs to sell soap and corn-flakes. The dazzle has stalled. We're in a doldrum. The Next Big Thing has been awaited for about six months now(two Web Years!) and nobody has found it. Slate retrenches to test Microsoft's business model, we push for the browsers to rationalize a presentation standard, we watch attrition on the outskirts and wonder who gets sucked down by the SHAKEOUT that's been predicted for the last year but hasn't materialized.
Corporations rush on-board.
Cosmic Dissonance.
Let's step out on a limb: close with a prediction. The GENERATOR 21 will be here with you, examing the entrails, week-after-week. You need one thing you can depend on.
+++ The Previous TRIO +++ The NEXT TRIO +++
Copyright, 1998, GENERATOR 21.
E-mail your comments. Send your snide remarks to Our Editor.
The MAIN EVENT
TRIO: ROD AMIS has Dangerous Visions in "Lone Gunman 3."
FLISS USSHER delivers a second Dangerous Vision! LONDON CALLING! "Stress."
IRISH EYES: before 9 April, JOE O'NEILL offered a special editorial "DEADLINE FOR PEACE."
POWERSBOOKS looks at the Dangerous Visions available from a number of books and "PRIVATE THOUGHTS."
POETRY: NATHAN BLACK - "Rationalizations of The Hermit"
BARE KNUCKLES: JEFF WINBUSH kicks off the Dangerous Visions Issue with "REGGIE WHITE GOES DOWN."
G21 ASIA RAOUL TESLA reports from Angeles, the Philippines.
JENNIFER BLUE's PLANETARY MADNESS looks at YOUR influences!