From extropians-request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Sun Jun 6 11:07:21 1993 Return-Path: Received: from usc.edu by chaph.usc.edu (4.1/SMI-4.1+ucs-3.0) id AA02717; Sun, 6 Jun 93 11:07:12 PDT Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Received: from wookumz.gnu.ai.mit.edu by usc.edu (4.1/SMI-3.0DEV3-USC+3.1) id AA08559; Sun, 6 Jun 93 11:07:05 PDT Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Received: by wookumz.gnu.ai.mit.edu (5.65/4.0) id ; Sun, 6 Jun 93 14:01:24 -0400 Message-Id: <9306061801.AA01393@wookumz.gnu.ai.mit.edu> To: ExI-Daily@gnu.ai.mit.edu Date: Sun, 6 Jun 93 14:00:35 -0400 X-Original-Message-Id: <9306061800.AA01383@wookumz.gnu.ai.mit.edu> X-Original-To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu From: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Subject: Extropians Digest V93 #0302 X-Extropian-Date: Remailed on June 6, 373 P.N.O. [18:01:22 UTC] Reply-To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Status: OR Extropians Digest Sun, 6 Jun 93 Volume 93 : Issue 0302 Today's Topics: Cool concept... [1 msgs] Forward: Tech articles [1 msgs] Administrivia: This is the digested version of the Extropian mailing list. Please remember that this list is private; messages must not be forwarded without their author's permission. To send mail to the list/digest, address your posts to: extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu To send add/drop requests for this digest, address your post to: exi-daily-request@gnu.ai.mit.edu To make a formal complaint or an administrative request, address your posts to: extropians-request@gnu.ai.mit.edu If your mail reader is operating correctly, replies to this message will be automatically addressed to the entire list [extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu] - please avoid long quotes! The Extropian mailing list is brought to you by the Extropy Institute, through hardware, generously provided, by the Free Software Foundation - neither is responsible for its content. Forward, Onward, Outward - Harry Shapiro (habs) List Administrator. Approximate Size: 108244 bytes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 6 Jun 1993 10:23:25 -0400 (EDT) From: habs@gnu.ai.mit.edu Subject: Cool concept... Here is the Info you requested. I have NOT added you. /harry In response to your request, your address has been added to the Extropians mailing list. Welcome! I hope you will find the information you receive through the list to be useful and enlightening, or at least amusing and harmless. The unifying characteristic of the list recipients is their interest in libertarian politics, and techniques of life extension (including cryonics), the technological extension of human intelligence and perception, nanotechnology, spontaneous orders, memetics, and a number of other related ideas. We are also interested in the relationship between the previous ideas. If these topics seem to you to be naturally related and mutually consistent, you might already be an Extropian. This list is considered private. That means that we have a number of rules about how you may use material you get from your membership to the list, and how you interact with the list. Your continued subscription indicates your acceptance of these rules. In Extropian terms, this list is governed by a poly-centric legal code [Or a Privately Produced Law (PPL). While the having such detailed rules may seem odd or even strange to you, the code/rules are used here for three (3) reasons. 1) I believe in testing Extropian Theory. The use of a poly-centric legal code for this list is such a test. 2) Various Extropians place different property values on what they write. Some wish to retain all rights to the material, others wish to make their posts freely available. The rules will hopefully insure that everyone's material will be treated in the manner they desire. 3) Peoples time is valuable and to keep as many people active and reading the list as possible, we need to respect them by keeping the signal to noise ratio as high as possible. I suggest you read the postings for a while before you begin to post. In that way you will have a better idea of how the list works. Also, topics vary from week to week, and month to month; sometimes we are very technical other times very political. Please note, again, that communication to the Extropian mailing list is *private*. It must *not* be forwarded to third parties without explicit permission from the author. Each reader of the list must have an active subscription or be registered with the list administrator (e.g., you can register your spouse so you can share messages). You are welcome to keep archival copies of list traffic you receive for personal use. 1) Formal complaints and administrative requests MUST be sent to: Extropians-request@gnu.ai.mit.edu To join or discontinue the digest version send a request to: exi-daily-request@gnu.ai.mit.edu To join or discontinue the real time version send a request to: Extropians-request@gnu.ai.mit.edu 1a) Please allow up to 3 to 5 business days for your requests to be processed. Please note that most requests are handled with 12 to 32 hours. The handling of requests on the days just prior to and after holidays maybe completely deferred or greatly delayed. 2a) Mail to the list should be sent to: extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu 2b) The software that processes traffic on the list alters the mail headers so that all correctly working mail readers will automatically address replies BACK to the LIST. [reply-to: extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu] 2c) If you want to reply to an individual poster you should manually address a reply. If the post does not have a signature line, viewing the message in a text editor should help you determine the sender's address. 2d) It is strongly recommend but not required that all list members use a signature file containing their e-mail address. 3) Due to the volume of list traffic and the cost of disk storage, please restrain yourself from over-quoting previous posts -- just a couple of lines to re-cap for those who weren't paying attention is usually sufficient. 4) The list is conceived as a forum for the exchange of new information and techniques, and not as a forum for debating the basics. We do have our disagreements -- often quite lively ones -- but rarely about really basic issues. Arguments in favor of socialized medicine or dying a natural death at age sixty are, judging by past experience, likely to be refuted, and finally ignored. 5) Traffic on this mailing list can run quite high, sometimes more than fifty messages per day. We like to keep the signal- to-noise ratio as high as we can, so please restrain the impulse to post "me-too" messages or ad hominem flames to the list at large. If you cannot resist engaging in such discourse, please do so in private e-mail. 5b) Posts about the list, or its rules, MUST have the pre-fix "Meta:" All other posts should have a prefix indicating their contents examples include, PHIL:, MATH:, SCI:, CHAT:, etc. 5c) Several times a year ExI may hold on-line pledge drives, these posts will have the "PLEDGE:" prefix. 5d) Polls being submitted to list members will have the "POLL:" prefix. 5e) Use your imagination and define your own meaningful prefixes. 5f) Rules about fighting and insulting; fighting and insulting are n o t allowed! 5g) If someone starts a fight with you what should you do ?; we have a private legal code set-up to handle such disputes which includes a judge (me) and a adjudicator to handle appeals any of the following) 1) Nothing - give no response 2) Respond OFF the list 5) Make a formal complaint to me asking for a judgment against Person X 5h) What if you just have to respond to "up hold your honor" or to set the "facts/record straight," or to tell the entire list why you will not be speaking or reading posts or messages from the person who offended you. D O N ' T; we consider such responses flames in their own right and you would be taking the law into your own hands; you might also be censured or removed from the list. Remember Don't contribute to or continue a fight once one has started. doing so places you in violation of the list rules. That includes meta communication, which includes posts with an angry tone, or voice. 6) Don't be afraid to ask questions. This is a forum for the interchange of information... speak up! Many of the answers, though, can be found in just a handful of books: "Engines of Creation" and "Unbounding the Future" by K. Eric Drexler "The Machinery of Freedom" by David Friedman "Smart Drugs and Nutrients" by John Morgenthaler and Ward Dean "Maximum Life Span" and "The 120-Year Diet" by Roy Walford "Life Extension: A Practical Scientific Approach" by Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw "The Selfish Gene," "The Extended Phenotype," and "The Blind Watchmaker" by Richard Dawkins in EXTROPY magazine, Rates as of 1/1/93 Extropy P.O. Box 57306, Los Angeles, CA 90057-0306. Tel: 213-484-6383 Internet: more@usc.edu SUBSCRIPTION RATES for a year/three issues: USA: $13.50 ($30 institutions) Canada and Mexico: $15 (Institutions $33) Overseas: $22 (airmail) $16 (surface) (Institutions $45) BACK ISSUES: #9, 8, 7, $4.50; #6: #1, 2, 4,, 5, 6: $4. and in our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list, which will be available eventually. With regard to "required reading," list member Hal Finney makes the following worthwhile points: "I disagree that familiarity with Eric Drexler's books on nanotechnology is necessary before beginning discussions on this list. "Extropianism is a philosophy of life. Max More, editor of Extropy the journal of transhuman thought, has identified five Extropian principles: - Boundless Expansion - Self Transformation - Dynamic Optimism - Intelligent Technology - Spontaneous Order You should join the Extropy Institute at $30 per year (Students $25), $40 (overseas) which includes a subscription to Extropy. "But I think you can see that the basic point is a belief that the future will allow virtually unlimited expansion in the possibilities for our own personal lives. Extropians reject limits imposed by outsiders on what we can do and what we can become. We embrace the future, with all of its awe-inspiring possibilities. "The role of Drexler's books, and other books such as David Friedman's "The Machinery of Freedom", is to show that these aren't just idle musings and hopes, but are well-grounded expectations about what we are going to have to work with in the next century. Without having read those books, such common-place Extropian ideas as immortality or a world without governments might seem absurd. "If you haven't read these books but want to ask questions about these and other Extropian ideas, the problem is that the answer is usually going to be, first read the book. You can't answer a question about the possibility for immortality in a page or two, not in any kind of convincing way. "Now, after you've read some of these books, you still may not agree that all of these ideas are practical, but at least you can discuss them on common ground with other list members. That kind of discussion is practical, helpful, and informative. Extropians are not dogmatists. If there are practical problems standing in the way of the realization of their hopes and ideals, we should be discussing them now, so that solutions can be found. "Of course, some people will be opposed to Extropian ideas not because they seem impractical, but because they seem immoral. Re-read the list of Extropian principles above. If you don't agree with them, if you don't agree that we should attempt to break through all the limits that constrain us today, then you probably won't benefit from discussion with Extropians. "The Extropian list is not meant to proselytize, to gain converts. Most people either find the ideas instinctively attractive, or they find them abhorrent. It's a waste of everyone's time to come on the list and to argue that governments are really good for us and that death is desirable. Those are the kinds of messages that lead to serious flaming, and no one benefits from them. "To sum up, the Extropians lists welcome members who share an interest in the exciting, optimistic, future-oriented philosophy of Extropianism. If you're new to these ideas, they can offer suggestions to help you find books, authors, and other resources to learn more about what we can and will become. If you're more experienced, they offer discussion and feedback with a high level of quality and responsiveness. The future is coming, and the Extropian lists offer you a chance to get ready for the fantastic opportunities that await us all." There are two other "official" Extropian communication activities. There is now the ExI Essay list. It is dedicated to the presentation of essays, monographs, reviews, abstracts and details of current research, etc. Posts are expected to be scholarly, academic, or at least well thought-out within the frame work of Extropian principles (see below) Original research is especially welcome. It is very low volume. Subscriptions can be made by sending a request to: exi-essay-request@gnu.ai.mit.edu There is now a private exi conf. on the Well. If you are a member of the Well send mail to habs for entry to the conference. This conference contains all the posts made to the essay list. It is also used for discussing Extropian topics. It is just getting off the ground. End quote. Hope you have a pleasant stay. Harry Shapiro Manager of the Extropian Mailing List The ExI-Essay mailing list is made possible by the generosity of the Free Software Foundation, which is *not* responsible for its content. ____ Here are the Extropian Principles version 2.01 _____ THE EXTROPIAN PRINCIPLES V. 2.01 August 7 1992 Max More Executive Director, Extropy Institute 1. BOUNDLESS EXPANSION - Seeking more intelligence, wisdom, and personal power, an unlimited life span, and removal of natural, social, biological, and psychological limits to self-actualization and self-realization. Overcoming limits on our personal and social progress and possibilities. Expansion into the universe and infinite existence. 2. SELF-TRANSFORMATION - A commitment to continual moral, intellectual, and physical self-improvement, using reason and critical thinking, personal responsibility, and experimentation. Biological and neurological augmentation. 3. INTELLIGENT TECHNOLOGY - Applying science and technology to transcend "natural" limits imposed by our biological heritage and environment. 4. SPONTANEOUS ORDER - Promotion of decentralized, voluntaristic social coordination mechanisms. Fostering of tolerance, diversity, long-term planning, individual incentives and personal liberties. 5. DYNAMIC OPTIMISM - Positive expectations to fuel dynamic action. Promotion of a positive, empowering attitude towards our individual future and that of all intelligent beings. Rejection both of blind faith and stagnant pessimism. These principles are further explicated below. In depth treatments can be found in various issues of EXTROPY: The Journal of Transhumanist Thought. (Spontaneous Order in #7, Dynamic Optimism in #8, and Self-Transformation in the forthcoming #10.) 1. BOUNDLESS EXPANSION Beginning as mindless matter, parts of nature developed in a slow evolutionary advance which produced progressively more powerful brains. Chemical reactions generated tropistic behavior, which was superseded by instinctual and Skinnerian stimulus-response behavior, and then by conscious learning and experimentation. With the advent of the conceptual consciousness of humankind, the rate of advancement sharply accelerated as intelligence, technology, and the scientific method could be applied to our condition. Extropians seek the continuation and fostering of this process, transcending biological and psychological limits as we proceed into posthumanity. In aspiring to transhumanity, and beyond to posthumanity, we reject natural and traditional limitations on our possibilities. We champion the rational use of science and technology to void limits on life span, intelligence, personal power, freedom, and experience. We are immortalists because we recognize the absurdity of accepting "natural" limits to our lives. For many the future will bring an exodus from Earth - the womb of human and transhuman intelligence - expanding the frontiers of humanity (and posthumanity) to include space habitats, other planets and this solar system, neighboring systems, and beyond. By the end of the 21st Century, more people may be living off-planet than on Earth Resource limits are not immutable. The market price system encourages conservation, substitution and innovation, preventing any need for a brake on growth and progress. Expansion into space will vastly expand the energy and resources for our civilization. Living extended transhuman lifespans will foster intelligent use of resources and environment. Extropians affirm a rational, market-mediated environmentalism aimed at maintaining and enhancing our biospheres (whether terrestrial or extra-terrestrial). We oppose apocalyptic environmentalism, which hallucinates catastrophes, issues a stream of doomsday predictions, and attempts to strangle our continued evolution. No mysteries are sacrosanct, no limits unquestionable; the unknown must yield to the intelligent mind. We seek to understand and to master reality up to and beyond any currently foreseen limits. 2. SELF-TRANSFORMATION We affirm reason, critical inquiry, intellectual independence, and intellectual honesty. We reject blind faith and passive, comfortable thinking that leads to dogmatism, religion, and conformity. A commitment to positive self-transformation requires us to critically analyze our current beliefs, behaviors, and strategies. Extropians therefore choose to place their self-value in continued development rather than "being right". We prefer analytical thought to fuzzy but comfortable delusion, empiricism to mysticism, and independent evaluation to conformity. Extropians affirm a philosophy of life but distance themselves from religious thinking because of its blind faith, debasement of human dignity, and systematized irrationality. Perpetual self-improvement - physical, intellectual, psychological, and ethical - requires us to continually re-examine our lives. Extropians seek to better themselves, yet without denying their current worth. The desire to improve should not be confused with the belief that one is lacking in current value. But valuing oneself in the present cannot mean self-satisfaction, since an intelligent and probing mind can always envisage a superior self in the future. Extropians are committed to expanding wisdom, fine-tuning understanding of rational behavior, and enhancing physical and intellectual capacities. Extropians are neophiles and experimentalists. We are neophiles because we track the latest research for more efficient means of achieving our goals. We are experimentalists because we are willing to explore and test the novel means of self-transformation that we uncover. In our quest for advancement to the tranhuman stage, we rely on our own judgment, seek our own path, and reject both blind conformity and mindless rebellion. Extropians frequently diverge from the mainstream because they do not allow themselves to be chained by dogmas, whether religious, political, or social. Extropians choose their values and behavior reflexively, standing firm when required but responding flexibly to novel conditions. Personal responsibility and self-determination goes hand-in-hand with neophilic self-experimentation. Extropians take responsibility for the consequences of our choices, refusing to blame others for the risks involved in our free choices. Experimentation and self-transformation require risks; Extropians wish to be free to evaluate the risks and potential benefits for ourselves, applying our own judgment and wisdom, and assuming responsibility for the outcome. We neither wish others to force standards upon us through legal regulation, nor do we wish to force others to follow our path. Personal-responsibility and self-determination are incompatible with authoritarian centralized control, which stifles the free choices and spontaneous ordering of autonomous persons. External coercion, whether for the purported "good of the whole" or the paternalistic protection of the individual, is unacceptable to us. Compulsion breeds ignorance and weakens the connection between personal choice and personal outcome, thereby destroying personal responsibility. The proliferation of outrageous liability lawsuits, governmental safety regulations, and the rights-destroying drug war result from ignoring these facts of life. Extropians are rational individualists, living by their own judgment, making critical, informed, and free choices, and accepting responsibility for those choices. As neophiles, Extropians study advanced, emerging, and future technologies for their self-transformative potential in enhancing our abilities and freedom. We support biomedical research with the goal of understanding and controlling the aging process. We are interested in any plausible means of conquering death, including interim measures like biostasis/cryonics, and long-term possibilities such as migration out of biological bodies into superior vehicles ("uploading"). We practice and plan for biological and neurological augmentation through means such as effective cognitive enhancers or "smart drugs", computers and electronic networks, General Semantics and other guides to effective thinking, meditation and visualization techniques, accelerated learning strategies, and applied cognitive psychology, and soon neural-computer integration. We do not accept the limits imposed on us by our natural heritage, instead we apply the evolutionary gift of our rational, empirical intelligence in order to surpass human limits and enter the transhuman and posthuman stages of the future. 3. INTELLIGENT TECHNOLOGY Extropians do not denigrate technology, no matter how radically different from historical norms, as "unnatural". The term `natural' is largely devoid of meaning. We might say that any technological means of altering the environment or the human body is unnatural since it changes the previously existing state of nature. But we can also say that applying our intelligence through technology is natural to humans, and so changing both outside nature and our own biological nature can be regarded as natural. Extropians affirm the necessity and desirability of science and technology. Practical means should be used to promote our goals of immortality, expanding intelligence, and greater physical abilities, rather than the wishful thinking, ignorant mysticism, and credulity, so common to the New Agers. Science and technology, as disciplined forms of intelligence, should be fostered, and we should seek to employ them in eradicating the limits to our Extropian visions. We do not share common cultural fears of technology, such as those embodied in the story of Frankenstein and the myth of the Tower of Babel. We favor careful and cautious development of powerful technologies, but refuse to attempt to stifle development on the basis of fear of the unknown. Extropians therefore oppose the anti-human "Back to the Pleistocene", anti-civilization rhetoric of the extreme environmentalists. Going backwards means death for billions and stagnation and oppression for the rest. Intelligent use of biotechnology, nanotechnology, space and other technologies, in conjunction with a market system, can remove resource constraints and discharge environmental pressures. We see technological development not as an end in itself, but as a means to the achievement and development of our values, ideals and visions. We seek to employ science and technology to remove limits to growth, and to radically transform both the internal and external conditions of existence. We see the coming years and decades as being a time of enormous changes, changes which will vastly expand our opportunities, our freedom, and our abilities. Genetic engineering, interventive gerontology (life extension), space migration, smart drugs, more powerful computers and smarter programming, neural-computer interfaces, virtual reality, swift electronic communications, artificial intelligence, neural networks, artificial life, neuroscience, and nanotechnology will contribute to accelerating change. 4. SPONTANEOUS ORDER Spontaneous orders are self-generating, organic orders and differ from constructed, centrally directed orders. Both types of order have their place, but spontaneous orders are vital in our social interactions. Spontaneous orders have properties that make them especially conducive to Extropian goals and values and spontaneous ordering processes can be found at work in many fields. The evolution of complex biological forms is one example; others include the adjustment of ecosystems, artificial life demonstrations, memetics (the study of replicating information patterns), computational markets (agoric open systems), brain function and neurocomputation, The principle of spontaneous order is embodied in the free market system - a system that does not yet exist in a pure form. The free market allows complex institutions to develop, encourages innovation, rewards individual initiative and reinforces personal responsibility, fosters diversity, and safeguards political freedom. Market economies ensure the technological and social progress essential to the Extropian philosophy. We reject the technocratic idea of central control by self-proclaimed experts. No group of experts can understand and control the endless complexity of an economy and society. Expert knowledge is best harnessed and transmitted through the superbly efficient mediation of the free market's price signals - signals that embody more information than any person or group could ever gather. Sustained progress and intelligent, rational decision-making requires the diverse sources of information and differing perspectives made possible by spontaneous orders. Central direction constrains exploration, diversity, freedom, and dissenting opinion. Respecting spontaneous order means supporting voluntaristic, autonomy-maximizing institutions as opposed to rigidly hierarchical, authoritarian groupings with their bureaucratic structure, suppression of innovation and diversity, and smothering of individual incentives. Understanding spontaneous orders makes us highly suspicious of "authorities" where these are imposed on us, and skeptical of coercive leaders, unquestioning obedience, and unexamined traditions. Making effective use of a spontaneously ordering social system requires us to be tolerant and peaceful, allowing others to pursue their lives as they see fit, just as we expect to be left to follow our own paths. We can best achieve mutual progress by interacting cooperatively and benevolently toward all who do not threaten our lives, and by supporting diversity of opinion and behavior. Respecting diversity and disagreement requires us to maintain control of our impulses and to uphold high standards of rational personal behavior. Extropians are guided in their actions by studying the fields of strategy, decision theory and game theory. These make clear to us the benefits of cooperation and encourage the long-term thinking appropriate to persons seeking an unlimited life span. 5. DYNAMIC OPTIMISM We espouse a positive, dynamic, empowering attitude. To successfully pursue our values and live our lives we must reject gloom, defeatism, and the common cultural focus on negatives. Problems - technical, social, psychological, ecological - should be acknowledged but not allowed to dominate our thinking and our direction. We respond to gloom and nay-saying by exploration and promotion of new possibilities. Extropians hold to both short and long-term optimism: In the short term we can cultivate our lives and enhance ourselves; in the long term the positive potentials for intelligent beings are virtually limitless. We question limits that others take for granted. We look at the acceleration in scientific and technical knowledge, ascending standards of living, and social and moral evolution and project further advances. More researchers today than in all past history strive to understand aging, control disease, upgrade computers, and develop biotechnology and nanotechnology. Technological and social evolution continue to accelerate, leading, some of us expect, to a Singularity - a future time when many of the rules of life will so radically diverge from those familiar to us, and progress will be so rapid, that we cannot now comprehend that time. Extropians will maintain the acceleration of progress and encourage it in beneficial directions. Adopting dynamic optimism means focusing on possibilities and opportunities, and being alert to solutions and potentialities. And it means refusing to whine about what cannot be avoided, learning from mistakes rather than dwelling on them in a victimizing, punishing manner. Dynamic optimism requires us to take the initiative, to jump up and plough into our difficulties with an attitude that says we can achieve our goals, rather than to sit back and immerse ourselves in defeatist thinking. Dynamic optimism is not compatible with passive faith. Faith in a better future is confidence that an external force, whether God, State or society, will solve our problems. Faith, or the Polyanna/Dr. Pangloss variety of optimism, breeds passivity by encouraging the belief that progress will be effected by others. Faith requires a determined belief in external forces and so encourages dogmatism and irrational rigidity of belief and behavior. Dynamic optimism fosters activity and intelligence, telling us that we are capable of improving life through our own efforts. Opportunities and possibilities are everywhere, waiting for us to seize them and create new ones. To achieve our goals, we must believe in ourselves, work hard, and be open to revise our strategies. Where others see difficulties, we see challenges. Where others give up, we move forward. Where others say enough is enough, we say: Forward! Upward! Outward! We espouse personal, social, and technological evolution into ever higher forms. Extropians see too far and change too rapidly to feel future shock. Let us advance the wave of evolutionary progress. Extropianism is a Transhumanist philosophy: Like humanism it values reason and sees no ground for believing in supernatural external forces controlling our destiny. But transhumanism goes further in calling us to push beyond the simply human stage of evolution. As physicist Freeman Dyson said: "Humanity looks to me like a magnificent beginning but not the final word." Religion has traditionally provided a sense of meaning and purpose in life, but it also suppressed intelligence and stifled progress. The Extropian philosophy provides an inspiring and uplifting meaning and direction to our individual and social existence, while remaining flexible and firmly founded in science, reason, and the boundless search for improvement. READINGS These books are listed because they embody Extropian ideas. However, appearance on this list should not be taken to imply full agreement of the author with the Extropian Principles, or vice versa. Harry Browne: How I Found Freedom in An Unfree World Paul M. Churchland: Matter and Consciousness Paul M. Churchland: A Neurocomputational Perspective Mike Darwin & Brian Wowk: Cryonics: Reaching For Tomorrow Richard Dawkins: The Selfish Gene The Blind Watchmaker The Extended Phenotype Ward Dean and John Morgenthaler: Smart Drugs and Nutrients Freeman Dyson: Infinite in all Directions K. Eric Drexler: Engines of Creation Nanosystems: Molecular, Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation K. Eric Drexler, C. Peterson with Gayle Pergamit: Unbounding the Future: The Nanotechnology Revolution Robert Ettinger: The Prospect of Immortality Man Into Superman F.M. Esfandiary: Optimism One Up-Wingers Telespheres FM-2030: Are You A Transhuman? Grant Fjermedal: The Tomorrow Makers David Friedman: The Machinery of Freedom David Gauthier: Morals By Agreement Alan Harrington: The Immortalist Timothy Leary: Info-Psychology J.L. Mackie: The Miracle of Theism Hans Moravec: Mind Children: The Future of Human and Robotic Intelligence Jan Narveson: The Libertarian Idea Jerry Pournelle: A Step Farther Out Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers: Order Out of Chaos W. Duncan Reekie: Markets, Entrenpreneurs and Liberty Ed Regis: Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition Albert Rosenfeld: Prolongevity II Julian Simon: The Ultimate Resource Julian Simon and Herman Kahn (eds): The Resourceful Earth Alvin Toffler: Powershift Robert Anton Wilson: Prometheus Rising The New Inquisition Ronald Hamowy The Scottish Enlightenment and the Theory of Spontaneous Order Michael Rothschild Bionomics Fiction: Roger MacBride Allen: The Modular Man Robert Heinlein: Methusaleh's Children Time Enough for Love James P. Hogan: Voyage To Yesteryear Charles Platt: The Silicon Man Ayn Rand: Atlas Shrugged Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson: Illuminatus! (3 vols.) L. Neil Smith: The Probability Breach Bruce Sterling: Schizmatrix Marc Stiegler: The Gentle Seduction. Vernor Vinge: True Names "The Ungoverned" in True Names... and Other Dangers ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 6 Jun 1993 12:59:22 -0400 (EDT) From: Harry Shapiro Subject: Forward: Tech articles The following text is presented for personal educational use only. It is not to be copied or otherwise used in a manner which violates rights of its copyright holders. This letter serves only as private communication to readers of the Extropian Mailing List. _________________________________________________________________ Here is some articles about technology, including an interesting one about the Batman ride at 6 flags. /hawk Copyright 1993 The New York Times Company The New York Times June 4, 1993, Friday, Late Edition - Final SECTION: Section D; Page 1; Column 1; Financial Desk LENGTH: 356 words HEADLINE: Cable Rivals Agree to Seek Standard for Interactive TV BYLINE: By Reuters BODY: Tele-Communications Inc. and Time Warner Inc., cable television's two biggest rivals, said yesterday that they had reached a potentially far-reaching agreement to press for industry standards for interactive television. The companies said they would form a joint venture to invest in the development of compatible hardware and software so that customers using their rival interactive networks would have the capacity to communicate with each other. Time Warner and Tele-Communications have "a shared vision" of the technology that can be used to form "the foundation of the future of information, entertainment and telecommunications services," said Joseph J. Collins, the chairman of Time Warner Cable. John C. Malone, the chief executive of Tele-Communications, said it was critical that networks be compatible so homes and businesses across the country could "use them to simply and conveniently access the services we will offer." The cable giants are pushing for compatibility as both rush to develop competing fiber-optic-based systems that offer subscribers services like movies, video games and on-screen home shopping. The agreement between the two companies covers a variety of products involved in interactive television, like operating system software and set-top hardware design including microprocessor elements. A Time Warner spokeswoman, Lynn Yaeger, said the agreement would seek compatible elements so that "a business looking at data could communicate with a partner on another net" or that someone could click on a video game and be able to "play with a partner across town." The aim, she said, was to eliminate problems of the kind that took place during the development of videocasette recorders, when consumers could not buy machines that were compatible with different types of videotape. "We're trying to prevent what happened with Beta and VHS," Ms. Yaeger said. Mr. Malone said the companies would work with "a broad range of suppliers to encourage the creation of a full range of hardware, software and services that will be compatible as these networks proliferate across the country." The New York Times, June 4, 1993 SUBJECT: TELEVISION; CABLE TELEVISION; STANDARDS AND STANDARDIZATION; INTERACTIVE (TWO-WAY) TELEVISION; NEW MODELS, DESIGN AND PRODUCTS; JOINT VENTURES AND CONSORTIUMS ORGANIZATION: TELE-COMMUNICATIONS INC; TIME WARNER INC CO: TELE-COMMUNICATIONS INC; TIME WARNER INC; TS: TCOM (NASDAQ); TWX (NYSE); IND: 462 CATV SYSTEMS; 412 PERIODICALS; Copyright 1993 The New York Times Company The New York Times June 4, 1993, Friday, Late Edition - Final SECTION: Section D; Page 3; Column 1; Financial Desk LENGTH: 122 words HEADLINE: COMPANY NEWS; PRODIGY BID TO DEVELOP INTERACTIVE TELEVISION SERVICES BYLINE: Reuters BODY: The Prodigy Services Company, the home computer network owned by I.B.M. and Sears, Roebuck & Company, joined the race to develop interactive television yesterday by offering its national network as a linkup for cable television operators and programmers. Prodigy, based in White Plains, also said it had developed a prototype of its own interactive TV services that would be made available to consumers via cable. More than 2 million personal computers use Prodigy's games, electronic shopping, news, bulletin board and other services. On Wednesday, Viacom International Inc. and A.T.& T. said they would test an interactive system near San Francisco in 1994. Time Warner Inc.is building a similar project in Orlando, Fla. SUBJECT: TELEVISION; INTERACTIVE (TWO-WAY) TELEVISION; NEW MODELS, DESIGN AND PRODUCTS; CABLE TELEVISION ORGANIZATION: PRODIGY SERVICES CO CO: PRODIGY SERVICES CO; Copyright 1993 The New York Times Company The New York Times June 2, 1993, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final SECTION: Section A; Page 1; Column 1; Financial Desk LENGTH: 1128 words HEADLINE: Macy to Start Cable TV Channel, Taking Stores Into Living Rooms BYLINE: By STEPHANIE STROM BODY: Insomniacs and shopaholics take heart. In a little over a year, Macy's will be open day and night, 365 days a year, via cable television. Turning a month's worth of rampant speculation about its plans into fact, R. H. Macy & Company announced yesterday that it would start a cable television channel in the fall of 1994 devoted to selling some of the merchandise carried in its Macy's and Bullock's department stores. Macy will hold a controlling stake in a joint venture to develop the home shopping channel, called TV Macy's. The other partners are the Cablevision Systems Corporation, which operates cable systems in 11 states; Don Hewitt, the executive producer of the CBS News program "60 Minutes," and Thomas F. Leahy, a former CBS executive who is now president of the Theater Development Fund. "A department store is like a TV studio," said Myron E. Ullman 3d, Macy's chairman and chief executive. "TV Macy's will be a 24-hour- a-day seven-day-a-week department store in your living room." Mr. Ullman refused to say how much Macy was investing or how much it would cost to start the channel. He said the company, which is operating under the protection of Federal bankruptcy court, would make a minimal capital investment that would not require it to exceed its $150 million annual budget for capital spending. Expertise and Merchandise Macy will supply merchandising expertise from its buying and planning staff to the channel, and many of the goods featured will be the same as those available in Macy's and Bullock's stores. "We'll be primarily investing time and energy and the value of our franchise," Mr. Ullman said. Retail consultants said the venture called to mind the Macy's of yore, when the retailer was known for taking chances on new concepts. "They have to get out from under the expense-cutting posture they've been in since the bankruptcy and start looking for growth," said Isaac Lagnado, principal of Tactical Retail Solutions Inc., a retail consulting firm that has done a brief analysis of what it would take to get TV Macy's to work. "This is growth. Whether it sticks or not after the initial novelty wears off is the great unanswered question." Mr. Lagnado speculated that starting the venture could cost about $50 million. He said the channel could add $250 million to Macy's revenue stream over four years, increasing sales at a faster clip than the company could by opening new stores. The first challenge for Macy will be attracting cable operators -- and the homes their systems reach -- to carry the channel, perhaps by offering equity in the venture to cable operators. Charles F. Dolan, chairman and chief executive of Cablevision, said yesterday that he believed TV Macy's would reach 20 million subscribers initially, but many consultants and analysts view that number as overly optimistic. "That's a pretty high goal," said Craig Bibb, an industry analyst at Paine Webber. He said the QVC shopping network had spent years extending its reach to about 44 million subscribers, while Home Shopping Network now reaches about 28 million customers. Those two networks currently control about 98 percent of the television- shopping market. Seeking Out Viewers Cablevision has 2.1 million subscribers, more than a million of whom live in the New York metropolitan area, and Mr. Bibb said Mr. Dolan's contacts in the cable industry would help Macy get its channel on other systems. Edward Adler, a spokesman for Time Warner Inc., the nation's second-largest operator of cable systems, said the company was always interested in new cable programming. "We'd like to see how it looks, how it develops, and then there's always the question of whether our systems have enough room for a new channel," he said. While many retailers and manufacturers are testing the idea of selling their goods on cable these days, TV Macy's will go beyond what companies like Saks Fifth Avenue, the Dayton Hudson Corporation and Liz Claiborne Inc. have tried so far. They have typically bought blocks of time on existing networks, turning over roughly 40 percent of the revenues they generate to the network in exchange for the time and programming help. Mr. Hewitt, who will be making an investment in TV Macy's, built his reputation in news programming rather than entertainment. But he said he had dreamed of putting a department store on television ever since his wife mentioned it five years ago. He said the Macy's channel would try to take the department store flavor into the home, with sets that would duplicate store departments. Live segments, like special appearances by chefs or designers, could be broadcast from a store. 'Like the Super Bowl' "A department store is a happening, like the Super Bowl or the World Series," said Mr. Hewitt, who described his role in the venture as that of a creative consultant. He will remain as executive producer of "60 Minutes." Charles F. Dolan, chairman and chief executive of Cablevision, said several operators have expressed an interest in carrying TV Macy's. The notion of shopping by television is still in its infancy. Although Home Shopping Network and QVC, the two dominant players in the business, each sell about $1 billion worth of merchandise a year, many people remain skeptical about the potential of electronic retailing. Leslie Wexner, the chairman and chief executive of the Limited Inc. specialty-stores company, is regarded within the retail industry as having a good nose for hot concepts. At his company's annual meeting two weeks ago, he said he was not yet convinced that home shopping would become a substantial channel of distribution. Nevertheless, over the last several months, prestigious but troubled department and large specialty chains have taken another look at cable in their search for new ways to sell merchandise. Nordstrom and Bloomingdale's have said they are exploring the format, and Saks Fifth Avenue said it sold $570,000 worth of its private-label Real Clothes on QVC last month. People in the apparel industry who supply Saks say that returns of the merchandise are running between 30 percent and 40 percent. But Anne Keenes, senior vice president and general merchandise manager at Saks who is spearheading the cable experiment, said that because the merchandise sold on the show had just been shipped, it was too early to know. "Obviously there will be returns," she said, "but I'm not expecting anywhere near that. Mr. Dolan said the Macy's name, which has become part of national folklore thanks to the Thanksgiving Day parade and the movie "Miracle on 34th Street," would help win customers' trust and confidence. In fact, to evoke the movie, TV Macy's is hoping to be assigned to channel 34. GRAPHIC: Photo: The announcement of the 24-hour cable television service featuring merchandise from R. H. Macy & Company was made by, from left, Myron E. Ullman 3d, chairman and chief executive; Don Hewitt, the executive producer of the CBS News program "60 Minutes," and Charles F. Dolan, chairman and chief executive of Cablevision. (Associated Press) (pg. D4) Chart: "Venturing Gingerly Into Home Shopping" How some companies have tested the home-shopping waters. Saks Fifth Avenue (retailer): Agreed to test four hourlong blocks of time on QVC. The first was broadcast on May 22. J.C. Penney Company (retailer): Began a service called Telaction in 1989, but abandoned it 18 months later for lack of sales. Dayton Hudson Corporation (retailer, woner of Dayton's, Hudson's and Marshall Field stores): Experimented with television shopping in the mid-1980's but did not pursue the project. Liz Claiborne (manufacturer): Bought one block of time last month to sell women's clothing on the Fashion Channel, a unit of QVC. Sears, Roebuck & Company (retailer): Started selling surplus catalogue merchandise and tools on QVC in 1988 but has scaled back to a program featuring Craftsman tools. (pg. D4) SUBJECT: TELEVISION; CABLE TELEVISION; RETAIL STORES AND TRADE ; JOINT VENTURES AND CONSORTIUMS ORGANIZATION: MACY, R H, & CO INC; BULLOCK'S; TV MACY'S; CABLEVISION SYSTEMS CORP; CBS INC NAME: STROM, STEPHANIE; HEWITT, DON; LEAHY, THOMAS F ; DOLAN, CHARLES F; ULLMAN, MYRON E 3D CO: CABLEVISION SYSTEMS CORP; CBS BROADCAST GROUP; CBS INC; R H MACY & CO INC; TS: CVC (AMEX); CBS (NYSE); IND: 462 CATV SYSTEMS; 461 BROADCASTING; Copyright 1993 The New York Times Company The New York Times June 2, 1993, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final SECTION: Section D; Page 1; Column 6; Financial Desk LENGTH: 709 words HEADLINE: BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY; Market Test Of New Video Technology BYLINE: By EDMUND L. ANDREWS BODY: Hoping to stake out claims in the interactive television land rush, A.T.& T. and Viacom International will announce a market test of new technology today that is intended to deliver movies on demand, as well as games and shopping services over cable- television networks. The technology, developed at A.T.& T.'s Bell Laboratories, is emblematic of a kind of broad architecture that will feature advanced switches for routing information and large computers for storing and retrieving movies and other programs. Viacom operates cable systems with 1.1 million subscribers and owns cable entertainment channels like MTV and Showtime. Neither company would discuss the collaboration, but people familiar with the plan confirmed the details. The alliance joins a race in the communications industry to merge two-way telephone network capability with the high-capacity information conduits cable companies control. Just two weeks ago, U S West announced that it would invest $2.5 billion with Time Warner to build advanced cable and information networks that would offer a range of services similar to those proposed by A.T.& T. and Viacom. Time Warner and U S West are now assessing the technical challenges. [Page D5.] Tele-Communications Inc., the largest cable company, is spending $2 billion on fiber optic technology and several hundred million dollars on digital-compression techniques to create a 500-channel cable system -- which will require some sort of two-way communications capability. American Telephone and Telegraph has been hungering for a piece of this market. Its strategists expect advanced video services to eventually become an important source of revenue for its long- distance network. In time, company officials are convinced, a long- distance interactive video-communications network will emerge, distributing programming to local networks around the world. A.T.& T., which is known to have been holding talks with most of the major cable companies as well as other possible allies, may find itself competing in part with the International Business Machines Corporation, which has developed its own computers to supply video on demand. I.B.M. announced yesterday that it plans to demonstrate its technology at the cable-industry show next week in San Francisco. For Viacom, the main goal is to keep pace with other big companies. With cable, phone and computer concerns forming new alliances almost weekly, almost every competitor is under pressure to position itself in the emerging marketplace. Details of the A.T.& T.-Viacom collaboration are expected to be explained at a news briefing in New York today. People familiar with the plans said the market test would begin next year in Castro Valley, Calif., aimed at finding out what customers are willing to pay for. The technology developed by A.T.& T. includes an advanced telephone network switch that uses a technology called asynchronous transfer mode, as well as a big computer called a server that can store and dispense movies and other entertainment in digital form. Demonstrated recently at Bell Labs, the technology resembles other video-on-demand systems being developed at Time Warner and U S West. By clicking a remote-control device toward a menu on the screen, viewers can browse through movies and information services, play games and potentially order PC software. The main difference between A.T.& T.'s approach and that of other companies is that the A.T.& T. system is to be built as part of a much broader constellation of networks, so that customers would be able to retrieve material from server computers as far as thousands of miles away. As envisioned, customers would eventually be able to tap into local, regional and national computers. Local shopping services or television programs that most customers may want as part of basic service could be available on a local server at a relatively low charge. Unusual offerings might be accessible through a specialized computer elsewhere. "There are many issues that need to be answered," said Edward Surkowsky, Bell Labs' head of interactive research. "What do consumers want? What are they willing to pay for? Until we know the answers to those questions, we are flying blind." SUBJECT: TELEVISION; NEW MODELS, DESIGN AND PRODUCTS; CABLE TELEVISION; MARKETING AND MERCHANDISING; STATIONS AND NETWORKS; MOTION PICTURES; JOINT VENTURES AND CONSORTIUMS; INTERACTIVE (TWO-WAY) TELEVISION ; TELEPHONES AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS ORGANIZATION: AMERICAN TELEPHONE & TELEGRAPH CO INC (AT&T); VIACOM INTERNATIONAL INC NAME: ANDREWS, EDMUND L CO: AMERICAN TELEPHONE & TELEGRAPH CO INC; VIACOM INTERNATIONAL INC; TS: T (NYSE); IND: 111 COMMUNICATIONS; Copyright 1993 The New York Times Company The New York Times June 2, 1993, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final SECTION: Section D; Page 5; Column 1; Financial Desk LENGTH: 1465 words HEADLINE: BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY; Ambition vs. Practicality in Cable-Phone Link BYLINE: By EDMUND L. ANDREWS BODY: In theory, the recently announced Time Warner -U S West deal is the perfect marriage. Time Warner's cable television system already has the potential to deliver hundreds of channels of programming. U S West is an expert in building telephone networks that can instantly route millions of phone calls at the same time. Want to order up a video how-to guide on repairing your car or building a deck? Click the remote control. Want to choose from a long list of movies, and specify when they will be shown? Just click again, and put the bill on a credit card. Want to make a plain old phone call? The new networks planned by Time Warner and U S West would do that, too. But now comes the hard part. While experts say the core principles for such a network are firmly established, the technology is still so new that a multitude of glitches are inevitable and many crucial components are not yet commercially available. Time Warner and U S West hope to have an experimental new-age cable system operating in Orlando, Fla., by early next year. And the two allies hope to begin providing advanced services in other cities as early as 1995. But that timetable could prove difficult. "To make a cable network perform like a telephone company doesn't require any new science," said Charles M. Lillis, executive vice president and chief planning officer at U S West."The issue is: how will this era of video-on-demand and multimedia evolve? How do you get movies from a video storage and stream it through a network to a person's home to produce video-on-demand? There are no switches that can do that now, as we speak." High-speed "switches" that can simultaneously route voice, video and computer data are only beginning to be used in corporate private networks and have never been built for this kind of job. Likewise, nobody has yet begun to sell the giant electronic jukeboxes -- computers known as servers -- to store thousands of movies in digital code and distribute them to thousands of customers on a moment's notice. Some experts have also raised questions about the technology that Time Warner plans to use for two-way communications -- from making phone calls to ordering videos. Finally, the most devilish problems may be the human ones: designing consumer-friendly software that allows even technophobic viewers to navigate a maze of offerings without becoming intimidated or hostile. Potentially, the networks will bring much more than just a smorgasbord of video services. Indeed, the most immediate beneficiaries may well be long-distance telephone companies, whose stocks jumped after the two companies announced their plans. Why? Because the cable networks will link long-distance companies to their large business customers, cutting back on the steep access charges imposed by local phone companies. Ultimately, Time Warner and U S West hope to set the standard for a global network that can deliver any kind of information and entertainment. "What we're really doing is putting a tremendous amount of band width in people's homes with an almost infinite amount of switching in the network," said James Chiddix, senior vice president of engineering and technology at the Time Warner Cable unit. "Someday we hope to see this as part of a global network." Time Warner's current systems transmit over coaxial cables. These cables have huge theoretical capacity, but the signals need to be amplified at frequent intervals and the practical capacity is limited over distances greater than a mile. To deal with that, Time Warner intends to install hair-thin optical fibers along the main arteries of its network and let the older cable carry signals from a neighborhood hub to homes. Most cable companies are pursuing similar plans to give their networks huge untapped capacity. Time Warner and companies like Tele-Communications Inc., the nation's biggest cable company, are also planning to adopt digital compression technologies to pack as many as 10 channels into space now occupied by one. Advanced Switches What sets the Time Warner design apart is the incorporation of an advanced telephone switching technology called asynchronous transfer mode, or A.T.M. In such switches, all information is transmitted in small electronic packets that contain the ones and zeroes of computer code. These packets are like little trains of data that chug through the network. The "engine" at the front end has five bytes of address information to tell the computer where the data should go. The "cars" that trail behind carry an additional 48 bytes of actual content -- the equivalent of half a dozen typewritten words. While packet networks are not new, they have never been capable of blending streams of video and voice information with bursts of computer data. The reason is that the older packet networks simplify the job of routing packets by making them long. That is fine for computer files, but it is unworkable for voice and video signals that would sound garbled if key packets were delayed by being trapped behind a bulky computer file. An A.T.M. network eliminates this problem because it keeps all packets to a uniformly short length that makes it possible to blend the streams without unacceptable delays. This requires extremely high-speed processing by the switch, which acts like a railroad switchman that identifies and routes millions of trains every second. So far, A.T.M. switches have been installed only for specialized purposes -- like routing huge volumes of voice and computer data on private corporate networks. Using them to distribute voice and video over a public cable or telephone network requires that they be modified. That can be done, but the machines Time Warner starts with will be among the first off the assembly line. The American Telephone and Telegraph Company has won a contract to supply the switch for the Orlando system. The network's other major component is the "server," the computer that stores and dispenses the programs in digital form. Servers essentially perform as jukeboxes do, and are now routinely used as data bases for networks of personal computers. But no one has built machines to work on a scale to serve so much data to so many people at one time. "Right now, servers are limited as to the total amount of data they can pass in and out at any given moment," said Neal Hill, a senior analyst at the Yankee Group, a market research firm in Boston. "They are fine for the ones and zeroes of computer files, but handling pictures and sound is much more difficult." Companies like International Business Machines, A.T.& T., Silicon Graphics and Sun Microsystems are racing to meet that challenge. Indeed, A.T.& T. announced yesterday that it hopes to begin selling such a server by this fall, and it is expected to announce today that the cable company Viacom will use the machine in a market test. Time Warner has not selected a server vendor yet for its prototype system. Mr. Chiddix of Time Warner said the technology already existed and just needed to be adapted. "We don't think we have to invent the wheel," he said. "There are arrays of hardware available that already store many trillions of bytes of information." Time Warner has in the meantime outlined a plan for "reverse" traffic -- the signals from individual customers back to the main switch -- that is new for the cable industry. Traditional cable television systems set aside a small band of relatively low frequencies so that the boxes on top of the set can signal the network for ordering pay-per-view programs and other limited forms of interactive television. Time Warner and U S West will allocate a big chunk of fairly high frequencies for telephone calls, data communications and other uses. This provides room for fairly high-powered services, but it also poses challenges. Because the frequencies are quite high, the signal amplifiers are more delicate, and cable strung above ground on utility poles is vulnerable to disruption. Some Key Questions "It's really on the bleeding edge of work," remarked Edward Surkowski, who heads interactive television research at the Bell Laboratories of A.T.& T. "I think it's manageable. The question is whether its deployable and economic." The network, which may also be used for wireless phones, will ultimately need a huge amount of advanced software -- to retrieve data rapidly, to manage billing issues, to preserve security and privacy, and to make the system so easy to use that ordinary Americans will be willing to participate. The business is potentially huge, but the market is still ill defined. Despite the uncertainties, Mr. Chiddix hopes to begin service in Orlando by early next year. Will most of the bugs be worked out? Stay tuned. GRAPHIC: Photo: "To make a cable network perform like a telephone company doesn't require any new science," said Charles M. Lillis, executive vice president and chief planning officer at U S West. "The issue is: how will this era of video-on-demand and multimedia evolve?" (Steve Zavodny/Denver) Diagram: "A Network of the Future" The joint venture between Time Warner and US West to build advanced communications networks will use technology so new that many parts are not yet available. Her is how it maywork. Video Service The VIDEO SERVER is a large computer capable of storing thousands of movies. It is linked by a FIBER OPTIC CABLE to the SWITCH, the brains of the network. Fiber optic lines continue and stop at NEIGHBORHOOD NODES. The nodes transfer the fiber optic signals to the COAXIAL CABLE TV lines to each home. Business Service FIBER OPTIC CABLES from the SWITCH are connected directly to LARGE-BUSINESS customers. Heavy long-distance users, like banks or brokerage firms, save large sums of money by reaching their carrier without paying access charges to a local phone company. Wireless Phone Service The COAXIAL CABLE Lines threading through neighborhoods have RADIO RECEIVERS at regular intervals, which can be used to transmit signals from wireless telephones and portable computers. (Source: Time Warner) SUBJECT: TELEPHONES AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS; NEW MODELS, DESIGN AND PRODUCTS; TELEVISION; STATIONS AND NETWORKS; JOINT VENTURES AND CONSORTIUMS; CABLE TELEVISION; SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY ORGANIZATION: TIME WARNER INC; US WEST INC NAME: ANDREWS, EDMUND L TITLE: BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY PAGE (NYT) CO: TIME WARNER INC; US WEST INC; TS: TWX (NYSE); USW (NYSE); IND: 412 PERIODICALS; 111 COMMUNICATIONS; Copyright 1993 The New York Times Company The New York Times May 31, 1993, Monday, Late Edition - Final SECTION: Section 1; Page 41; Column 4; Financial Desk LENGTH: 98 words HEADLINE: THE MEDIA BUSINESS; Video Home Delivery BYLINE: Reuters DATELINE: STAMFORD, Conn., May 30 BODY: Time Warner Cable plans to test a new system offering 4,000 subscribers an at-home video store, the company says. Upper- income neighborhoods around Orlando, Fla., were picked for what the cable company announced in January as the Full Service Network. A spokesman, Michael Luftman, said on Friday that viewers would be able to view their choice immediately and be able to pause or fast-forward at any time. He said prices had not yet been set but "would be competitive with a video store." The company said it hoped to complete construction of the initial phase by the end of the year. SUBJECT: TELEVISION; RECORDINGS (VIDEO); CABLE TELEVISION ORGANIZATION: TIME WARNER CABLE GROUP; FULL SERVICE NETWORK CO: TIME WARNER CABLE GROUP; Copyright 1993 The New York Times Company The New York Times May 30, 1993, Sunday, Late Edition - Final SECTION: Section 3; Page 10; Column 1; Financial Desk LENGTH: 2154 words HEADLINE: A Rush to Stake Claims on the Multimedia Frontier BYLINE: By LAWRENCE M. FISHER DATELINE: SAN FRANCISCO BODY: THE rush to produce "new media" products combining computers, telecommunications and entertainment is creating a bewildering array of corporate alliances: cable companies teaming with video- game producers, movie studios with computer makers, telephone companies with software developers. Among the goals: software and hardware that will connect consumers seamlessly to services, information and entertainment, with two-way communications that facilitate the interaction. The new products would allow users to shop from home, summon any movie at any time, respond to political polls or join a global video game with hundreds or thousands of players. Most of the companies forming alliances are huge players in existing industries. Some analysts say such mass is critical to staking a claim on this new frontier, and doubt that start-up companies will play a role beyond supplying the behemoths with games, electronic magazines and movies. But others point to the birth of the personal computer industry, when no one predicted that the biggest winner would be a little company called Microsoft. "This is going to be a staggeringly disappointing business until these guys appear," said Mark Stahlman, president of New Media Associates, a consulting firm in New York. "But I'm glad to report that the garages are full." The swirl of activity makes following the nascent industry a formidable task. "It's sort of like being in a foggy harbor with lots of ships coming in from different directions, in the night, at top speed, with no instruments, no admiral, and a collection of captains who make the chap on the Exxon Valdez seem reasonable," said Marc Porat, co-founder and chief executive of General Magic, an alliance of Apple Computer, A.T.& T., Matsushita, Motorola, Philips and Sony. Indeed, any listing of alliances is bound to be incomplete as soon as it appears. But here are a half dozen high-profile enterprises, with an update on their goals and their progress. Pushing Toward Interactive TV Nearly every alliance would like to be to the new media what Microsoft and Intel have been to the personal computer: dominant suppliers and standard bearers. In this emerging business, Microsoft and Intel are supplying essential software and hardware to General Instrument, the largest maker of set-top control boxes for cable television. Digital technology will allow cable operators to provide hundreds of channels over the existing coaxial cable, and will later enable two- way "interactive" communications. But navigating the plethora of choices will require both an improved user interface -- Microsoft's forte -- and processing power -- a natural for Intel. "We see the ability, even in traditional cable, to improve the user interface and allow some applications even with the one-way technology we have today, if you can put some of the intelligence that has been on desktops into set-tops," said Craig Mundie, Microsoft's general manager of advanced consumer technology. General Instrument intends to produce set-top boxes incorporating Microsoft-Intel technology in volume next year. These would range from simple devices with no computing capability at about $150, to advanced programmable models at about $300. One of the first services the boxes will provide is on-screen electronic program guides. The interface "is designed so the really naive user can get intuitive use of the full functions without having to read manuals," Mr. Mundie said. General Instrument, Intel and Microsoft do not describe their link as an alliance, or indeed as anything more than a standard relationship between vendor and supplier, but then that is how the relationship between Intel, Microsoft and I.B.M. was described, too. Microsoft's "alliance with I.B.M. and other companies established the foundation of the PC industry in such a way that Microsoft walked off with a lot of the goodies," Mr. Stahlman said. 'Terminator' Chip May Invade Homes The biggest challenge to the Microsoft-General Instrument-Intel standard will probably come from Time Warner Cable, which is developing a two-way network in Orlando, Fla. Few details of the network have been disclosed. The one piece acknowledged is that Scientific-Atlanta Inc. will develop the set-top converter. That converter, according to Electronic Engineering Times, a trade publication, will be built by Toshiba and based on the Mips chip Silicon Graphics Inc. developed for its work stations. Silicon Graphics' work stations are widely used by movie producers for special effects like the apparent transformation of Arnold Schwarzenegger's nemesis into mercury in "Terminator 2: Judgment Day." Silicon Graphics is reported to be providing both software and hardware for the network. None of the companies would comment. Another Time Warner alliance, however, has been publicly acknowledged, and will begin bringing a form of interactive media into cable subscribers' homes soon. The Sega Channel is a joint venture of Sega of America Inc., the Time Warner Entertainment Company and Tele-Communications Inc., that will give owners of the Sega Genesis video game machines access to a large library of video games over cable television. Video games may be a more modest form of interactive media than some of the grand visions discussed by industry gurus, but the numbers are compelling. With more than $6 billion in annual sales, video games are a bigger business than movies. "We believe that by the end of the year, there will be somewhere over 12 million Sega Genesis machines" in the United States, said Stanley B. Thomas, chief executive and president of the Sega Channel. "Somewhere over 70 percent of these owners also subscribe to cable." The Sega Channel will work by transferring game software over the cable into a special cartridge, but play will be identical to that of games purchased at retail. The channel intends to offer a number of games aimed at adults, as well as premiering new games before they reach the retail stores. Pilot systems will begin operating in 15 markets by summer. Putting the Force Behind Production While most partners in new-media alliances are suppliers of hardware, software or delivery systems, like cable or phone lines, Lucasfilm Ltd. plans to take a different tack. Lucasfilm supplies films, television shows, games and multimedia educational materials, as well as production services. Lucas has entered alliances with Silicon Graphics and Avid Technology, both aimed at improving, and setting standards for, digital film production. Lucas has used Silicon Graphics work stations for six years in the creation of special effects, and uses Avid Technology's digital editing systems in film and television editing. The alliance with Silicon Graphics, called the Joint Environment for Digital Imaging, or Jedi (the name of a character from the "Star Wars" films of George Lucas, the chairman of Lucasfilm), will be a production unit and a media laboratory for advancing technology. Similarly, Lucas and Avid will develop editing products in a production setting. Rewriting the Script For Multimedia In the absence of the robust networks that cable and telephone companies are only talking about providing, most interactive media have been delivered on CD-ROM -- compact disks that store graphics and limited video in addition to sound. But the market has been hamstrung by a lack of standards. Unlike music CD's, which can be heard on any make of player, CD- ROM disks are created for a specific system, whether the Apple Macintosh, Multimedia PC (made by a number of companies), Sony MMCD or Philips CD-I, and cannot be played on another. Enter Kaleida, founded in May 1992 by Apple and I.B.M. to create a standard for software used in devices that combine text, sound, video and graphics. Kaleida's core product is ScriptX, a programming language that would allow multimedia software developers to create one version of a title that could run on many systems. It is designed to work with CD-ROM initially, but would be readily adaptable to any of the network interactive services being contemplated. ScriptX is also intended to make it easier to create attractive multimedia products. "The artists who are going to create the great titles of the future are still not working in multimedia," said Nat Goldhaber, Kaleida's chief executive and president. "It is hard, hard, hard, to make a good multimedia title," he said. One reason: the tools to do the programming "are incredibly cumbersome." The best analogy for ScriptX is Postscript, Adobe's page description language, which is embedded in many laser printers and some computer displays. Just as programmers rarely work directly in Postscript, but instead work with software tools that can put out Postscript code, Mr. Goldhaber expects most multimedia developers to work with products from other companies that will in turn support ScriptX. Macromedia, the leading supplier of multimedia software tools, has announced it will cooperate with Kaleida. But software is nowhere without hardware, and Kaleida will need the producers of multimedia machines to support ScriptX. Last week it got a boost as Mitsubishi, Hitachi, Toshiba and Creative Technology joined Apple and I.B.M. in the alliance. Kaleida also needs to deliver a product, and it is running late. A Macintosh version of ScriptX was promised for the third quarter, but will not appear until the first quarter of 1994, together with a version for Microsoft Windows. Adding Intelligence To Communications While Kaleida hopes to create a standard language for multimedia programs, General Magic has taken on an even more formidable task: the creation of a common language and other technologies to add intelligence to communications. Although General Magic is initially pursuing opportunities traditionally associated with the telephone, like messaging, its technology is also applicable to interactive information or video services. Conceived at Apple, General Magic was spun out as a separate corporation in 1990 after John Sculley, Apple's chairman and chief executive, determined that the unit's goals transcended one company. Ending two years of speculation, General Magic in February announced the members of its alliance -- Apple, A.T.& T., Matsushita, Motorola, Philips and Sony -- and disclosed its two technologies, Magic Cap and Telescript. Magic Cap, for communicating applications platform, allows developers to create software for a new kind of device called a personal intelligent communicator that would combine the capabilities of a cellular telephone, pager and fax, and would offer remote access to information services. Sony, Motorola and Philips are building devices using Magic Cap. Telescript, which is included in Magic Cap but is available separately, is a programming language designed to add intelligence to communications applications like electronic mail. Smart E-mail, for example, could know to forward itself to someone else if the addressee did not pick it up within an hour. A.T.& T. is building a consumer messaging network incorporating Telescript. General Magic has yet to demonstrate its technology publicly, and is vague about delivery dates. "All of our technologies are running," said Mr. Porat, General Magic's chief executive. "We are now at the stage of polishing and making products ready for industrial deployment." A Way to Broaden At-Home Services Analysts say Hewlett-Packard is holding more than it is showing. Hewlett-Packard has announced one alliance in interactive media, but is expected to disclose other links soon. In February 1992, Hewlett-Packard announced it would collaborate with TV Answer Inc. to develop the first national interactive television system. The product will let viewers use their televisions to shop, bank, pay bills and order food and other services. The device, a specialized computer that would employ a digital- transmission system similar to that of cellular telephones, could also be used for educational training, participation in game shows, news polls and promotional contests. Hewlett-Packard expects the product to be priced under $700, or less than early versions of videocassette recorders, and plans to make 1.5 million units in the first year on the market. A pilot program will begin in the Washington suburbs this summer. The TV Answer alliance addresses the market for wireless communications; subsequent deals will involve cable and telecommunications, said Laurie Frick, Hewlett-Packard's marketing manager for interactive television appliances. One challenge is to create hardware for software that has not yet been established. "We have some ideas without knowing exactly what the content is or what shape it will take," Ms. Frick said. Such parameters as how fast, how interactive and how many users are still to be determined. GRAPHIC: Drawings SUBJECT: COMMUNICATIONS AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS; DATA PROCESSING (COMPUTERS); NEW MODELS, DESIGN AND PRODUCTS; JOINT VENTURES AND CONSORTIUMS; ELECTRONICS NAME: FISHER, LAWRENCE M Copyright 1993 The New York Times Company The New York Times May 30, 1993, Sunday, Late Edition - Final SECTION: Section 3; Page 1; Column 5; Financial Desk LENGTH: 1794 words HEADLINE: The King of Cable Reaches for More BYLINE: By GERALDINE FABRIKANT DATELINE: ENGLEWOOD, Colo. BODY: JOHN C. MALONE'S personal life has all the markings of a more genteel, slower time. Most days, he drives home from the office for lunch. And each year about this time, he leaves the Denver area to spend the summer at his retreat in Maine or on his sailboat. He usually makes the long trip to Maine by car because his wife, Leslie, does not like to fly. But in his business life, as head of Tele-Communications Inc., Dr. Malone is anything but genteel. "This is not touch football, this is tackle," he said in a recent interview in his office here. And he is almost always the fastest player on the field. Dr. Malone (he holds a Ph.D. in industrial engineering from Johns Hopkins) has already built T.C.I. into the nation's biggest operator of cable systems. Two years ago, he spun off most of T.C.I.'s cable programming services into another powerhouse that he heads, the Liberty Media Corporation. Somewhere along the line, he became known to the industry -- if not the public -- as the brilliant and sometimes brutal king of cable TV who has the clout to call many of the industry's shots. "He is the gatekeeper," said a rival executive, who would comment only if promised anonymity. "He is allowed to decide what people see and don't see." But that was just for openers. Television is on the brink of a technological revolution that promises to change what Americans watch and how they watch it -- and the 52-year-old Dr. Malone is positioning himself to be at all the right spots to lay claim to a new reign as the once and future king of all of TV. Going Interactive Thanks to fiber optics and digital transmission, the television viewer is being pulled into the world of computers and high-speed two- way communications. Hundreds of channels are on the horizon, along with a trove of "interactive services." Viewers will be able to call up movies on demand, for example, or stroll through video libraries. Home shoppers will flip through electronic catalogues, pressing buttons for a taped demonstration of fly-casting equipment, say, or to see a model wearing lingerie. And video-game players will spar on screen with opponents across the street or on the other side of the country. With so much up for grabs, the battle to get control of the new wires and programming heading for American homes is roiling the communications industry. Alliances among cable operators, telephone companies, broadcast networks and video-game makers are being announced willy-nilly as jittery companies fear missing out on one new gold mine or another. [Page 10.] Judging by the number and breadth of the deals Dr. Malone has been striking in recent months, it seems clear that he does not want to miss out on anything. On the one hand, he is spending billions of dollars to upgrade his cable systems to deliver TV's exotic new products in this country and to expand that delivery to viewers around the world. On the other hand, he is buying and developing programming of all kinds, anticipating the insatiable appetite of all those new channels. There is an economic calculus at work as well. Washington is regulating cable with new vigor, making its basic services more like a utility with less upside potential. In repositioning himself technologically, Dr. Malone is also moving aggressively into cable's high-end premium services, which face less regulation. But there is no guarantee that consumers will pay for all the new goodies. If they don't, T.C.I.'s cash flow could be severely affected. And as Dr. Malone's empire continues to grow, he risks regulatory reaction. For the moment, Federal rules do not address the question of the breadth of his control over the industry, but some competitors are hoping desperately that Washington will eventually curb his power. In any event, a sampling of deals and spending plans shows how fast Dr. Malone has been going: * Last December, T.C.I. said it would introduce data-compression technology -- a way to squeeze vast amounts of information through existing cables. The technology could be employed as early as next year, ultimately allowing viewers to receive 500 channels, 10 times more than the current limit. * In April, the company said it would spend $2 billion to lay fiber optic cable in more than 400 communities across the country by 1996. Such cable, which has virtually unlimited capacity, is the vehicle for an "information superhighway." * In recent months, Liberty Media has been consolidating its hold on the home-shopping industry. It has taken voting control of the Home Shopping Network and is part of a group that now controls rival QVC, in which it previously held a stake. * As part of the QVC deal, Dr. Malone joined forces with Barry Diller, the highly respected former head of Fox Inc. Mr. Diller, who now runs QVC, is not expected to be content selling cubic zirconia rings or baseballs autographed by Pete Rose. His ambitious plans go beyond electronic shopping catalogues to encompass travel services (choosing a hotel by "walking" around the premises on screen) and other upscale products. But they also extend to interactive news programs (with viewers requesting particular stories) and entertainment shows. There is talk of merging QVC with the Home Shopping Network -- and even of launching a fifth broadcasting network with Mr. Diller at the helm. * Eager to have access to a film library, T.C.I. invested $100 million in April in troubled Carolco Pictures in exchange for the right to run its films on pay-per-view TV at the same time they open in movie theaters. * Weeks later, T.C.I. joined with Sega of America and Time Warner to develop a channel that will bring video games into the home via cable. * And just last week, one of Liberty's pay TV services, Encore, announced six new theme-oriented channels for older films and still another channel for new movies. Jockeying for Position Dr. Malone is hardly alone in trying to prepare for the future. Last month, Time Warner, the country's second-biggest cable operator, announced a joint venture with U S West to develop sophisticated cable systems. The alliance represents the biggest deal so far that tries to marry a cable company's programming expertise with a phone company's strengths in two-way communication. "U S West and Time Warner temporarily moved ahead on the board in terms of strategic position," said Paul Kagan, a telecommunications consultant. It could be a tenuous lead, however. For one thing, rumors have been circulating about a grand alliance between the American Telephone and Telegraph Company and T.C.I. Neither side will comment. For another, T.C.I. has critical mass: it has 10.4 million cable subscribers, or roughly 18 percent of the domestic market. Last year, T.C.I. generated an extremely strong cash flow of $1.6 billion. What's more, T.C.I. has Dr. Malone, who is more than willing to use his company's size -- and his own elbows -- to get what he wants. A decision by him to carry a programming service on his cable systems is almost a guarantee of success -- and a decision to ignore or drop one is a virtual death warrant, which helps explain why he is feared by so many in the industry. "We play within the rules, but we play hard," he said in the recent interview. But he is sometimes accused of playing outside the rules as well. There has been a string of disputes and court battles with the cities and towns served by his cable systems over complaints about poor service and rising rates. And there have been tangles with competitors. Last year, for example, T.C.I. was accused of antitrust violations by Data Broadcasting over the 1991 sale of the Learning Channel to the Discovery Channel, which Dr. Malone controls with partners. The suit, which was dismissed in November, accused T.C.I. of depressing the sales price by threatening to take the channel off its systems. In the interview, Dr. Malone seemed to relish his reputation as a tough guy. Alluding to various rivalries with the broadcast networks and their cable operations, he said: "When T.C.I. tells General Electric that it won't pay two cents a month more to carry CNBC, that is T.C.I. playing hardball. I mean, give me a break. We are supposed to have a lot of sympathy for NBC, for Capital Cities, for Larry Tisch?" To succeed, he said, an entrepreneur has to be tough. "Big corporations put together teams to work on things and the teams are worried about getting out of the office by 5 P.M. They don't invent much. I.B.M. likes to look back and see itself as a bunch of sweet, nice guys. When they were building I.B.M., they were sons of bitches. As a result they got huge market share, got very rich -- and then forgot how they got there." John Malone got there by taking a chance on T.C.I. in 1972. Graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Yale, he began his career with Bell Labs. After a stint as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company, he joined the General Instrument Corporation, quickly becoming president of its Jerrold cable equipment division. As a supplier to cable systems operators, he caught the eye of Steven J. Ross, head of Warner Communications, who offered him the top job at his fledgling cable operation. Wanting to move his family out of New York and looking for something more entrepreneurial, he turned Mr. Ross down. Instead, he signed on with Bob J. Magness, the man who began building T.C.I. in the 1950's. Dr. Malone has since made hundreds of deals to cobble T.C.I. together, recognizing early that being the largest operator gave him enormous leverage in getting programming. But owning even big systems was not enough to dominate the industry. For that, Dr. Malone needed to own the programming directly, setting off a new buying spree. Now, as the industry enters its new phase, he is wearing his dealmaker hat again. "T.C.I. wants the dominant market share of interactive subscribers," said Frank Biondi, president of Viacom International, another major cable operator and the parent company of MTV and Showtime. "That will give them tremendous say over what interactive programming gets on." Eventually, Dr. Malone hopes to offer his programming on cable systems around the world. He recently announced a joint venture to provide cable services in Latin America, following similar deals in Europe. "Cable programmers will be like Hollywood studios," Dr. Malone said. If they want to deliver high-quality programming, "they will need world-wide distribution to make the economics work." As he extends his reach, he is not likely to become any less combative, however, judging by the particularly Darwinian note he sounded in a recent speech about the industry's prospects. "It is every man for himself," he said. GRAPHIC: Photos: Cable TV's gatekeeper: John C. Malone, head of Tele-Communications Inc. and Liberty Media. (Richard Shock) (pg. 1); QVC's Barry Diller (Bart Bartholomew) (pg. 6) Graphs: Twin Peaks: John Malone's Magic Kingdom" shows stock prices for Tele-Communications Inc. and Liberty Media Corp. from '91 to '93 (pg. 6) TYPE: Biography SUBJECT: TELEVISION; CABLE TELEVISION; TELEVISION PROGRAMS ORGANIZATION: TELE-COMMUNICATIONS INC; LIBERTY MEDIA CORP NAME: FABRIKANT, GERALDINE; MALONE, JOHN C (DR) CO: LIBERTY MEDIA CORP; TELE-COMMUNICATIONS INC; TS: LBTY (NASDAQ); TCOM (NASDAQ); IND: 462 CATV SYSTEMS; Copyright 1993 The New York Times Company The New York Times May 28, 1993, Friday, Late Edition - Final SECTION: Section C; Page 1; Column 1; Weekend Desk LENGTH: 753 words HEADLINE: Holy Gut-Wrencher! Batman the Ride! BYLINE: By JON PARELES DATELINE: JACKSON, N.J. BODY: IT lasts only two minutes: a 30-second climb and then a diving, looping, veering, tilting descent. That descent, on the well-hyped new Batman the Ride, at Six Flags Great Adventure theme park here, is a thrill-rider's delight. Smooth but sudden twists, unlikely curves and 360-degree rotations both vertical and horizontal wreak havoc not with something as prosaic as the stomach, but as delicate as the ear's semicircular canals: it leaves your head spinning. But Batman the Ride seeks to be something more than a highly evolved roller coaster. It orchestrates its inevitable waiting time -- likely to be considerably more than an hour on a weekend afternoon -- toward two goals. One is praising the Time Warner conglomerate that owns Six Flags and that generated "Batman" and "Batman Returns"; on the way in to the ride is a memorial plaque to Steve Ross, the architect of the Time Warner merger. (As Six Flags looks over its shoulder at Disneyland and Disney World, the rivals it cites in its ubiquitious advertising, Batman and Bugs Bunny become Time Warner operatives the way Mickey and Donald symbolize Disney.) The ride's other objective is to revive the sense of foreboding urban squalor that made the "Batman" films seem so familiar to a New Yorker. Beyond its vertiginous thrills, the Batman ride aims for psychological effects. During the wait, claustrophobia builds up. The first half of the maze is set in "Gotham Park," with quaint but gallowslike lampposts and a convoluted path, enforced by black iron railings, that mirrors the twists of the brooding black structure looming above. Because the ride's cars hang down from a monorail, the passengers' legs dangle, making the train look like a helpless centipede as it zooms by overhead. The "Batman" soundtrack (a Time Warner product) of Danny Elfman's romantic orchestral swells and Prince's dance tunes, along with selected dialogue and gunfire from the films, plays on speakers, growing ever louder during the wait. Part 2, about 25 minutes' worth, moves under the ride. Between black chain-link fences, topped with barbless barbed wire, and under an industrial ceiling of exposed black pipes, passengers-to-be view an art-directed urban wasteland: a police car smashed into a gushing hydrant, a scrap yard of metal parts and used tires, a graffiti-covered wall. Just outside, screaming riders regularly whiz by, a close-up preview. The final approach is through a corrugated tin tunnel, toward a human- size fan, then up a narrow stairway. The ride, then, is deliverance back to open sky, even as the orange safety harness is clunked down over your shoulders and an attendant gives the short seat belt a tug. The ascent provides a nice view of the flume ride and the trees surrounding Great Adventure. And then the view doesn't matter anymore. An upside-down loop shows you your own legs; a left, a right, a twist, another vertical loop, a turn on the axis and what's billed as a simulated zero-gravity roll bring severe disorientation to your internal gyroscope. Because you're hanging under the track, you can't see what's coming, only feel the angles and watch blue sky give way to black metal, again and again, until the vehicle coasts back to its starting point. Unharnessed, you wobble dizzily past a photo booth that may have captured your centrifugal grimace, toward the HBO Commissary and the Time Warner gift shop. Batman the Ride isn't as tall (105 feet), fast (50 miles per hour maximum) or long (2,700 feet of track covered over 2 minutes) as the park's other star roller coaster, the Great American Scream Machine (173 feet, 70 m.p.h., 3,900 feet, 2 and a half minutes). Yet the Scream Machine, with the more conventional cars atop a track, is not only unromantic -- you watch television and look at flags on the way in -- but also uncomfortable, with nasty sideways jerks that bang your chest into the harness. The Batman ride, by contrast, allows no distractions from its central missions: suspense and vertigo. It works. To Get Dizzy . . . Six Flags Great Adventure, the theme park in Jackson, N.J., can be reached from the New Jersey Turnpike, Exit 7A, or the Garden State Parkway, Exit 98. The park is open Monday through Friday, 10 A.M. to 8 P.M.; Saturday and Sunday, 10 A.M. to 10 P.M. Admission to the park, which includes all rides and the safari, is $29.95; $20 for children 54 inches and shorter; $14.98 for the elderly; free for children under 3. Parking: $5. Information: (908) 928-1821. GRAPHIC: Photo: Thrills and chills: Daring passengers go up against the sky and gravity. (Bill LaForce for The New York Times) (pg. C1) Map shows the location of Six Flags Great Adventure. (pg. C17) SUBJECT: Terms not available Copyright 1993 The New York Times Company The New York Times May 24, 1993, Monday, Late Edition - Final SECTION: Section D; Page 8; Column 1; Financial Desk LENGTH: 544 words HEADLINE: Cult Film Is a First On Internet BYLINE: By JOHN MARKOFF, Special to The New York Times DATELINE: SAN FRANCISCO, May 23 BODY: As historic moments go, this one, it could be argued, was closer to "Watson, come here!" than to another Saturday night at the movies. A small audience scattered among a few dozen computer laboratories gathered Saturday evening to watch the first movie to be transmitted on the Internet -- the global computer network that connects millions of scientists and academic researchers and hitherto has been a medium for swapping research notes and an occasional still image. Yes, the cult movie, "Wax: Or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees," had to be reduced from full color to a blurry black and white. And true, the spotty audio occasionally went silent. But coming as companies in the cable TV, telephone and computer industries are hot on the trail of 500-channel, all-digital TV, let history record that Saturday night marked the first baby steps in that direction. The movie, an 85-minute feature by David Blair about a beekeeper who ends up being kept by the bees, has attracted a cult following since its release in 1992. Mr. Blair transmitted it Saturday night from a film production studio in midtown Manhattan. He played it on a VCR and fed it into a computer that converted it into digital form and fed it into the Internet. Promises, Promises Mr. Blair's effort demonstrated that while information industry giants like Tele-Communications Inc., A.T.& T. and Time Warner are tantalizing the nation with promises of hundreds of channels of ultra-high-resolution interactive pictures transmitted via fiber-optic superhighways, the technology is still in its infancy. Indeed, it was not until halfway through the digital network premier of "Wax" that the engineers gathered at an office of Sun Microsystems Inc. in Mountain View, Calif., were even able to find the movie signal in the Internet datastream and direct it to play on their color work stations. And when it finally flickered into view on an eight-inch window within a computer screen, it was clear that digital broadcasting was not yet ready for prime time. In part because of limited data- carrying capacity of the Internet, the movie had only about half the resolution of a normal television image. Surrealer Than Surreal Even more disorienting, the movie was broadcast at the dream-like rate of two frames a second, instead of the broadcast standard of 24, giving it an even more surreal quality than the big-screen original. The soundtrack came through haltingly, frequently broken up by what the engineers called "packet drop out" when the Internet became too congested with other data traffic. Despite the flaws, the engineers at Sun Microsystems said they considered the premier a success. "We really don't understand the problem of sending thousands of simultaneous digital video signals yet," said Tom Kessler, a Sun software engineer. "Come back in six months and this stuff will be working flawlessly." Indeed, digital video broadcasting over the Internet is now being developed independently by small groups of researchers at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center, the Information Sciences Institute in Los Angeles and the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in California, and at the corporate laboratories of Bolt Beranek and Newman in Cambridge, Mass. GRAPHIC: Photo: Internet, a global computer network, carried its first movie Saturday, "Wax: Or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees." Watching at Sun Microsystems in Mountain View, Calif., were, from left, Mukesh Kacker, an engineer; Baird Lloyd, a banker, and Neal Nuckolls and Tom Kessler, engineers. (Terrence McCarthy for The New York Times) SUBJECT: MOTION PICTURES; RESEARCH; DATA PROCESSING (COMPUTERS) ORGANIZATION: INTERNET NAME: MARKOFF, JOHN TITLE: WAX, OR THE DISCOVERY OF TELEVISION AMONG THE BEES (MOVIE) Copyright 1993 The New York Times Company The New York Times May 23, 1993, Sunday, Late Edition - Final SECTION: Section 1; Page 29; Column 2; Metropolitan Desk LENGTH: 1503 words HEADLINE: Forum for Bigotry? Fringe Groups on TV BYLINE: By JOSEPH BERGER, Special to The New York Times DATELINE: MAMARONECK, N.Y., May 21 BODY: On a recent Friday night, drowsy Westchester residents gliding through their cable television channels for something soothing and soporific were startled awake by what they saw on one public- access program. A colorfully garbed man named Ta-Har who calls himself a high priest of the Black Israelites was brandishing a baseball bat. "We're going to be beating the hell out of you white people," he proclaimed. Then, lacing his threats with Bible passages, he warned: "We're going to take your little children and dash them against the stones," and "We're also going to rape and ravish your white women." According to organizations who track hate groups, public access cable channels, originally intended as a kind of electronic soapbox, have become a growing forum for preachers of racial and religious animosities, including those who encourage violence. Cable companies, including TCI Cable of Westchester, say that Federal laws give them little choice but to broadcast these messages. Ta-Har, whose group prophesies a racial war in which blacks will avenge their enslavement, can be seen every other Friday at midnight. In Manhattan on Thursday night, cable viewers could have watched Herbert Poinsett, a swastika-sleeved neo-Nazi, preside over a talk show in which he urged the deportationof blacks to Africa and described the Holocaust as a fiction. Ku Klux Klan leaders have produced regularly scheduled shows in Kansas City, and the White Aryan Resistance puts on popular program in California. These shows are televised by cable companies operated by such corporate giants as Time Warner Inc. and Tele-Communication Inc. In a 1991 report, the Anti-Defamation League identified 57 such programs in 24 of the 100 largest cable markets. A 1984 Federal law guarantees free time slots on public-access channels to any person or group on a first-come first-served basis and forbids censorship. Last year Congress revised the law to authorize cable operators to ban "obscene materials, sexually explicit conduct or material promoting or soliciting unlawful conduct." But on May 7 the United States Court of Appeals blocked the Federal Communications Commission from enforcing the law until the courts resolved a constitutional challenge by a group advocating unfettered access, the Alliance for Community Media. In pondering the legal issues in such a challenge, lawyers for the New York Civil Liberties Union doubt that even Ta-Har's threats of violence against women and children can be banned because they do not pose the kind of imminent threat of violence that, lawyers say, is the only grounds for prohibition under Supreme Court interpretations of the First Amendment. "These folks have a right to express their views regardless of how offensive, repugnant, bizarre or wrong-minded they are," said Norman Siegel, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. "The best protection is don't listen to it." A Video Hyde Park Public access, says Todd Gitlin, a sociology professor at the University of California at Berkeley who writes regularly about media, was designed as a kind of video Hyde Park corner to give people in a cable operator's community the chance to air their views and stage their whimsies. The privilege of one or two designated public-access channels was a tradeoff for the monopolies cable operators were given. For the most part, public access consists of sometimes amateurish entertainment and often lifeless talk, with a handful of compelling programs that have captured a loyal audience. But in recent years, says Thomas Halpern, a researcher for the Anti-Defamation League, white supremacists, right-wing extremists and other hate groups have exploited public access and other "sophisticated propaganda techniques" like computer bulletin boards, satellite-dish television and direct telephone lines. These groups have found that such technologies can reach far more people than can street-corner leaflets, he said. Starting in January Mr. Poinsett, a Florida-based neo-Nazi, began appearing every Thursday on Time Warner's Manhattan Cable Television. A local sponsor, whom officials said they are barred from identifying, had applied for programming time on his behalf and the program was scheduled at 6:30 P.M. Obscenity the Only Ground Alexander M. Quinn, executive director for Manhattan Neighborhood Network, the nonprofit corporation that administers public access programs for Manhattan Cable and Paragon Cable, said he could not exercise any control of content unless a program met a narrow and murky definition of obscenity. The Poinsett program, one of 800 on Manhattan's four public access channels, inspired two or three complaints a week until a local television news program last week, and subsequent newspaper articles, featured the program. Then, the cable company received more than 100 angry telephone calls. "Once it was covered by newspapers and the media it brought that much more attention to it ," Mr. Quinn said. On Friday, the program's local sponsor withdrew it without explanation, Mr. Quinn said. Even so, if Mr. Poinsett wants to keep it broadcasting in Manhattan, all he needs is a single city resident to agree to be a sponsor. Still, the outcry, he said, has prompted the 13 members of the network's board to consider scheduling inflammatory or hate-mongering shows late at night. The hourlong show "It's Time to Wake Up" is a mixture of apocalyptic prophecy, snippets of history and archeology and street talk, buttressed by quotations from the Bible. It is produced by members of the Israeli School of Universal Practical Knowledge, whose office is at 1 West 125th Street in Manhattan and whose members preach in Harlem and Times Square. Lane Young, the show's producer, said his group was not affiliated with other Black Israelite groups that have gained prominence in recent years. The Lost Tribes His group claims that American blacks, West Indians, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans and others are descendants of lost tribes of Israel and make up the true "chosen people," and says Jews are imposters. At one point in Ta-Har's April 3 show, Mr. Young, one of two sidekicks flanking Ta-Har, used a whip to lash a Hanukkah poster published by the Lubavitch Hasidim that showed a smiling father and son lighting a menorah. As he lashed away, Mr. Young shouted "Imposters!" and "the real Jews are black." The show also slurred homosexuals. In a telephone interview, Mr. Young said he was a 35-year-old resident of White Plains who works in a law-enforcement branch that he declined to specify. He told of producing his show with some painted plywood sets and a videocamera at the Israel School and at his house. He maintained that he was not urging viewers to commit violence, though, he predicted, violence would happen. "The one who everyone calls God is orchestrating it," he said. "If some deranged person goes out and does that, then the Lord, the one we call the Most High, put that idea into his head." Protests to TCI Lisanne Powers, programming manager for TCI Cable of Westchester, a division of Tele-Communication whose cables enter 83,000 homes in 20 Westchester communities, said the baseball bat telecast brought a half-dozen protests, a number she said was large for the lightly viewed public access shows. She asked the parent company's lawyers to screen Lane Young's shows, and they decided they still could not bar future telecasts. However, TCI decided to switch the program from Saturday morning, when children might view it, to Friday at midnight. In some areas, Ms. Powers said, TCI broadcast a program with a countervailing message by the American Jewish Committee, either before or after "It's Time to Wake Up." Some leaders of the towns and villages that grant TCI a franchise are incensed at the cable operator for showing "It's Time to Wake Up." "For them actively to promote rape and violence and anti-Semitism is outrageous," said Paul Noto, Mayor of the village of Mamaroneck. "Clearly advocating criminal behavior should not be on public TV and TCI could get the program taken off the air or toned down." Brave a Lawsuit If the law bars censorship, he argued, then TCI should ban the show anyway and brave a lawsuit. "To the extent the show is actively promoting violence, they should take them to court to show they care enough and let a judge tell them they have to run it," he said. TCI, he noted, is renegotiating its contract, and he warned that continued showings might become an issue. "Their rates are too high, their service has deterioriated and this just adds insult to injury," he said. Federal and state officials who monitor cable TV say they can do nothing under current laws. The New York State Commission on Cable Television has no censorship authority, said Steven A. Shaye, an official with the commission. If someone's statements constitute a criminal offense, he said, then it is up to a district attorney to prosecute. SUBJECT: TELEVISION; CABLE TELEVISION; CENSORSHIP; FREEDOM OF SPEECH; LAW AND LEGISLATION ; REGULATION AND DEREGULATION OF INDUSTRY; NEO- NAZI GROUPS; BLACKS (IN US) NAME: TA-HAR (PERSON); BERGER, JOSEPH; POINSETT, HERB GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK CITY; WESTCHESTER COUNTY (NY); UNITED STATES ------------------------------ End of Extropians Digest V93 Issue #0302 ****************************************