What came first, R.U.'s stroke or the Omicron surge? They discussed the founding of that influential cyberculture magazine after R.U. fell ill with his own strain. The wordcypherpunk was coining for an early crytography-friendly group co-founded by EFF pioneer John Gilmore. When asked about the magazine's original vision, he said that he was diverted by Timothy Leary and Robert Wilson's playful, hopeful futurisms.
I needed something to get me out of bed at the end of the 1970s. I mean, punk was great – rock and roll was great – but it wasn't inspiring any action. I remember my friends stole some giant lettering from a sign at a gas station and some of it hung behind the couch in our living room where we took whatever drugs were around and tossed glib nihilisms back and forth. The letters read "ROT".... I couldn't sink any deeper into that couch, so there was nowhere to go except up into outer space.
The surrealism and so forth were influences that travelled with me when I moved to California to create this new thing based on psychedelics, technology, and incorrigible irreverence that eventually became Mondo 2000.
The only thing most people below a certain age have ever seen from a magazine is a Cyberpunk page. The conversation came back to the question of cyberpunk.
The internet is home to many eyes, rabbit holes, and agents of algorithmic manipulation. Cyberpunk culture is alive and well today. Are you still engaged in cyberpunk as a means of exploring radical possibilities and ideas? The cyberpunk movement is not really a cyberpunk movement. An anguished control freak named André Breton maintained the movement of surrealism for a number of years. If we had that person, they would have been laughed out of the room for the attempt. I will continue to be influenced by playful spontaneity from ancient 20th-century moments not because of any dedication, but because that is the only way I was ever going to be able to write or create. I declared it a sign of death because I lacked rigor.
At the end of the interview, Sirius jokes that it's a mistake because the world is bloated with people opinionizing.
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