Interesting — some thinking about the net, blogs, etc. on Biroco.com meanders into a mail from Hakim Bey:
(…) I’m utterly not responsible for the plethora of Netishness that coagulates around my work. Personally I never ‘uploaded’ a word. Others do it, mostly without my permission and w/out even bothering to inform me. Some of it isn’t even mine – forgeries & often dis-info are rife. The Net is a pathology.
I not only don’t own a computer – I’ve ‘taken agin’ ’em’ & have become a cyber-curmudgeon. Basically I’m only interested in things that don’t have websites. I refuse – or rather am incapable of – compensation for the demise of the physical world (you know what I mean) by losing myself in ‘the terminal state of screenal involution’ to quote a line that came in-somnia last nite.
Joel goes on to say:
Most who have read Hakim Bey seem to imagine that he regards the web as a TAZ (Temporary Autonomous Zone), but in fact he doesn’t, since the physical component is missing, virtuality is not physical, at most all the web can be is an organisational mouthpiece for a TAZ but not a TAZ in itself. I agree with him, but myself, despite chucking my TV in the bin over a decade ago and Zen wanderings away from this medium, I got ensnared in the web nonetheless and do sometimes wonder whether it is indeed ‘compensation for the demise of the physical world’. We’ll see, at present I regard it as a curious assemblage project and a potential widening out of creativity.