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Foreword: T.B. Pawlicki's Hyperspace
*********************** EXPLORING **********************
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in
********************* EVERYDAY LIFE ********************
by
T.B. PAWLICKI
______________________________
I I
I (C) COPYRIGHT 1988 I
I by I
I T.B. Pawlicki I
I 843 FORT STREET I
I VICTORIA, BRITISH COLUMBIA I
I V8W 1H6 I
I CANADA I
I______________________________I
********************** FORWARD **********************
Thank you for participating in a pioneering publishing
venture.
Mass communication has progressed through four major
transformations. The first revolution separated the author from
his audience by means of writing; the LITERATI became a secret
society of COGNOSCENTI that used its exclusive knowledge to
dominate the ignorant masses. Modern democracy began when movable
type made it possible for a message to be received by everyone
who could read. Recently, radio broadcasting countered the first
and second revolutions by delivering messages to everyone who
can't read; television is likely to be the MATADOR of democracy.
The capital cost of printing plants and broadcasting studios
limits the messengers to parties of power and wealth, whose
messages are determined to maintain the STATUS QUO --- natcherly
--- especially their own status plus all the more quid they can
quo. The tragic consequence of mass communications has been the
dissemination of tendencious knowledge to enslave the minds of
mankind, rather than free us to experience our own ignorance
until we learn better. A truly free press for truly free minds
could not exist until the personal home photocopier brought
publishing within the economic capacity of every person with a
message and postage. As well as reducing the cost of copying to a
few pennies per kilowatt hour, the computer completes the
revolution of mass communications by restoring audience feedback.
As camels and soups show, quality goes down as participation
increases, but participation is better for the participators;
eventually, participators support higher standards.
Since authors began to write, instead of speaking directly
to their audience, ideas have flowed in one direction, only. It
is, however, as impossible to teach without learning as it is to
learn without teaching, which is why so little is learned from
reading books. For the first time since the advent of writing,
the computer makes it possible for readers to contribute to the
discourse and transform a lecture into a dialogue, a
conversation, a seminar, a workshop, a global town meeting.
Finding a publisher for my first book, How To Build A
--------------
Flying Saucer, took nearly ten years; nearly ten more years
-------------
passed while my market grew to critical mass by word of mouth.
Now people are reading my first book as if the ideas were as hot
as tomorrow's news, but a whole generation has grown up to
drinking age --- and another generation has died of cirrhotic
livers --- since I was working out those early insights. My
ideas develop so rapidly that I had to rewrite the manuscript
every year until it was published. Once printed, however, the
printing plates are as immutable as graven stone. As soon as I
began to write my personal correspondence on computer, I
realized that this electronic medium keeps discoveries alive and
growing through pooling contributions in ways not feasible by
any other means of communication. The entire industry is built
by fielding half-baked ideas and then improving them with
consumer feedback, as it goes along; no other industry advances
so fast, and in no other industry do the suppliers lag behind
the advances made by their own demanders. And thus it came to
pass as I was speaking to the Global Sciences Congress, held at
Denver in August, l987, that the idea came to me to offer my
audience my current manuscripts explaining HYPERSPACE to
----------
everyone who would participate by also sharing their ideas on
computer discs.
Ideally, a book of this nature should be transmitted over
wires to be downloaded by Special Interest Groups on
international networks. In the present state of the art,
however, computers still cannot replace paper. This
unrealistically jealous industry has not yet made files
universally readable, like sound and film tapes, and it is still
impractical to transmit text formats and illustrations through
wires. Even after the computer industry gets its parameters
together, all of us early worms will remain stuck with our
capital investments. Therefore, I have decided to print my
manuscripts onto discs for postal distribution to the computers
being used now.
---
This enterprise will succeed only if each reader will make
at least two copies and pass them on. Some readers may not know
three other people with compatible computers, so it is hoped
that readers with the most popular computer models will pass on
to their computing friends as many copies as they feel this
publication is worth. If anyone can make conversions to
unpopular computers, a copy returned to me will be passed on to
other readers out in left field.
This brings us to the matter of copyrights. Most people
----------
believe that anyone may freely copy published material in any
numbers for any purpose as long as the copies are not sold for a
profit (*1). If legal process were not so expensive, a lot of
copycats would learn how very mistaken they are. Copyright
entitles the author to assign legal permission to make copies and
set the conditions of contract. Although I am assigning all my
readers the right to make copies and distribute this literature
freely, the formal copyright remains mine. Any party enterprising
enough to reproduce these discs by the hundred for sale at a
profit will very likely interest my attorney to offer a royalty
contract as a more attractive alternative to a court ordered
remedy. Any party that fails to include my byline and copyright
notice will be taken to task for the more serious offense of
plagiarism.
----------
Heckling is a part of all public speaking, and most of the
fun. If hecklers had a fair chance to give their opinions, many
of them would have more to say than the speakers, and some may
have better ideas. The only way a reader can add his two bits
worth to a discourse is by scribbling in the margins of public
library books. Anything that can be done will be done, so
hecklers will always be with us, and so will graffiti, along
with carefully considered letters to editors. Since it is so
easy to add and subtract opinions to a magnetic publication, a
lot of opinionated readers are going to do it. The main purpose
of this venture is to turn audience feedback into an advantage
--- for everyone --- by encouraging constructive criticism
guided by rules for fair comment within the laws governing
copyright and public utterance.
By the nature of this medium, this publication is going to
be shared by an unknown number of readers. Those who want to
give us the benefit of their superior information are asked to
follow these rules. On those matters that readers can wait for,
please append your comments to the end of the file. If you feel
that your information needs to be interjected, then mark the
beginning and end of your contribution with lines or stars.
Please include your name and the date so that we know whom to
credit. If you find mistakes of fact, your immediate correction
is eagerly asked for. Critics looking for an argument improve
their chances by including their addresses. If you are so
offended by some statements that you are compelled to make
deletions, please mark your censorship with a notice of the
amount of text you deleted, in numbers of lines or bytes, and
include your name and date to prove the courage of your
convictions. Anyone who wants to retain his copyright on
contributions is advised to include notice of their legal claim
so that no one will assume that all commentaries and
contributions are in the public domain. Expect disputes;
democracy is not for weak stomachs and faint hearts.
Depending on the number of readers who distribute more
copies, and the number of contributions added --- not to mention
subtracted --- my original text will be unrecognizable by the
time this print passes through a dozen recopies. There is no way
to know whether all contributors have marked the changes they
make. Neither is there any way to know whether they have their
facts correct, unless they cite their sources for reference.
Furthermore, these discs are communicated person-to-person
through private, first-class mail, making the message into a
conversation between acquaintances rather than a publication to
strangers; it is permissible to say things in private and
personal mail that is regarded as unethical, if not illegal, in
public utterance. Therefore, all readers must always remember
and bear in mind that the copy they are reading is a
BOUILLABAISSE stirred by many cooks, not a FILET MIGNON SAUTEED
by a chef. Unless you receive a copy that you can certify as
unaltered from the original, do not believe anything that
offends your common sense and don't hold the original author or
signed contributors responsible for statements and/or context
that may have been altered by hecklers who prefer to remain
anonymous (*2). My own editors have altered my manuscripts until
I could hardly recognize my publications as my own compositions
--- usually for the better. If some party suffers personal
injury from this special interest group disc, everyone who
receives it becomes suspect. This is an utterly novel kind of
case for the courts to rule on, not quite so much privileged
privacy as a closed computer conference but still a one-on-one
private correspondence. I dare say that honest mistakes will be
excused with a pointed finger, but deliberate malice producing
suffering to an identifiable person, when proven unjustified in
these litiginous times, will be liable to legal penalties. We may
protect ourselves from slanderous or obscene remarks by scanning
each disc immediately before mailing, to check that no one else
has run the copy and added comments disgraceful to polite
company.
I have enough discoveries in my head to keep me writing
full time for ten years --- I should live so long. In the
likelihood that my insurance is vastly underrated, I am
curtailing my research and graphic design in order to put as
much of my time as I can into getting my ideas written.
Unfortunately, the charter members of this publishing revolution
will receive bare bones of text, a dearth shared by everyone who
buys Version 1.0 of any program. The economy of electronic
publication, however, enables me to update my text whenever I
get a break, add animated illustrations in colour, and enliven
the text with creative layouts in future editions. Most
important of all, as copies eventually find their way back to me
with accumulated reader input, new editions can be issued with
the latest and most extensive information --- better than
anything I can do. This publication can be considered as a book
written by its best qualified readers. In order to receive
updates and new books, all readers will have to send me their
names and addresses, regardless whence they received their
copies. Please bear in mind that my resources are exceedingly
limited, and expect to wait like a Christian for me to follow up
in my spare time. I expect this enterprise to be taken over by
more resourceful enthusiasts.
The definitive version of this disc book will be written on
an APPLE IIc, in ASCII files; the animated illustrations will be
rendered with DAZZLE DRAW and FANTAVISION --- if I can't find
more practical graphics programs. I invested in the APPLE system
because I believed all the press reports that the computer field
has more APPLE trees planted than anything else. I am deceived;
MS-DOS is the most widely used operating system on this scene.
This original version, however, is written on a KAYPRO II
operated by CP/M 2.2 in WORDSTAR 3.3. files. It will take me
time to convert WORDSTAR files to ASCII, and then convert both
to MS-DOS. The few graphics included on this disc are drawn with
keyboard characters. Since the ASCII code is standardized only
for alphanumeric characters, computers using different keyboard
codes will produce surprising characters --- the trouble is not
in the disk or your computer.
As long as computers remain inconvenient to read in bed or
on public transportation, I shall concurrently try to find
publishers for paper versions of my disc books. These discs hold
the beginning of a 75,000 word paper book, heavily illustrated
with animated illustrations included on disc, under the title
TIME TRAVEL --- The Secret Science of The UFOs. Availing myself
----------- ------------------------------
of the impermanent and quasiconversational nature of magnetic
correspondence, I have included many speculations and tangents
on these disks to stimulate response; these unessential essays
will be deleted from the paper version. The heaviest reading is
the Second Chapter; once you establish the theoretical
foundation laid in my repetitive manner of logic, the rest of
the book is freeway, much like the First Chapter. For the first
time, the theory and engineering of time travel are explained in
sufficient practical detail for young physicists to begin
constructing their own Philadelphia Experiments in their home
workshops; at least one researcher I know is doing it already,
in California. Let me know whether you are willing to buy
TIME TRAVEL --- The Secret Science of The UFOs at a prepublication
----------- ------------------------------
price of $10 or a postpublication price of $16. Send no money. I
only want to know whether there is a market for a paper book
before I invest more than I can afford to print it. I apologize
for my inability to acknowlege subscribers to this paper book by
individual letters, as they are received; at a dollar a letter,
the cost of mailing is prohibitive. Subscribers will be notified
individually to write their cheques when the response is
sufficient to underwrite publication. In the meantime, enquiries
from royalty publishers are welcome. Zees is a bootstrap
production, Dollink --- my apologies to Zsa Zsa.
END OF FORWARD
*1 This is the belief taken by the Government of the United
States, especially its Public Broadcasting System. Assuredly,
what the lord hath given us starving authors with one hand, he
taketh away by truckloads driven by the other. With legal
protection like we got, we are better off with our pirates.
Unless you are a government authorized freebooter, however, the
first hand lays down the law.
Readers who copy programs published in magazines are
subject to the same legal strictures. The magazine publishers do
not assign its readers the right to make copies of their text to
give to their friends, much less sell.
---------------------------------------------------------------
*2 The most heavily edited and censored book in the world is
the Holy Bible, yet its readers are convinced every copy is the
original and every last Word of God. Evidently, God has
afterthoughts --- The New Testament. The Holy Koran is an even
later Word of the very same God compiled from the very same
orginal Scriptures. And don't forget the equally Holy Book of
Mormon. I can relate to Him; I am also compelled to rewrite my
original words innumerable times as I get my act together.
I believe the Bible; it is the publishers I question. I
have no doubt that God inspires all His chosen publishers, but I
wonder whether He chose every publisher; after all, the Bible is
in public domain. If God inspired the American Constitution, in
which I believe more than the Bible, He is the Source of the
First Amendment --- entitling Larry Flint to turn a dollar in
the pre-eminently profitable religious market. It isn't belief
in the Bible that fomented the most vicious wars, but belief in
the infallible veracity of the publishers.
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