November 16, 2003 Header

ArtLung.com 101: Retirement

The following has been on my site a long time. Time to retire it. But I’m putting it in the blog for posterity. I’m making the FAQ a real FAQ. So here goes…

First timer, eh? Hmm… I’m usually suspicious of newcomers … but I’m glad you came.

You’re welcome to stay as long as you like. Peruse my portfolio and resume, you can also see the lab. If you want to offer me work, drop me a note via feedback. Don’t be shy! There are old versions of the site to look at. I have an area I call the smorgasborg – where I keep detritus and gems. If you have ANY problems, send me feedback

I’m Joe Crawford. It’s my site. I take all the blame AND all the credit.

I like the web. Ever since my first site, on geocities, my presence on the net has been growing. In that way I’m gas-like, expanding to fill the volume of my container. [Fun Fact: The three main phases of matter: solid, liquid, gas].

The internet is an incredible resource, despite what neo-luddites like Clifford Stoll may have to say. He’s a personal hero of mine, but I disagree with him about the implications of web. I enjoy surfing the web aka the matrix aka information superhighway aka infobahn aka the net. My favorite term of all is “Cyberspace.” Here’s its source, a bit of pulp that revolutionized the way I see the world:

“Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts…A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data, like city lights, receding….”

This was written in 1984. It’s from a book called Neuromancer by an American expatriate living in Canada. He is William Gibson.

I’ve attended two book signings of Mr. Gibson’s. I was as giddy as a schoolgirl (a scary thought, really) each time. The first was in 1988, when he was signing Mona Lisa Overdrive. My good pal Chris Greazel was with me. [An aside: Chris is an unrecognized genius living in Orange County, California. You can check out some more of his work if you like. Now, back to my main thread]: It was at this fateful signing that Gibson recommended the book Islands in the Net.

This book, by Bruce Sterling, was and remains astonishingly prescient. He’s got quite a presence on the net, and for me, his books are a “must-read.”

Some years later, I was fortunate enough to have Mr. Sterling sign that copy of Islands. When I told him of how I found him through Gibson, he recommended Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash to me. That book blew me away too. I am always in search of interesting reading. Reading has been the means of my education.

I’m not sure that all that was useful, what do you think?

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