I am pleased and honored to contribute to the new Mondo 2000
I missed Mondo 2000. The internet wasn’t a thing in the late eighties, and I lived in Europe (still do). I didn’t miss Wired — I immediately subscribed after stumbling upon the first printed issue — but I didn’t realize that it was a watered-down commercial version of something more interesting.
Now our esteemed host is bringing Mondo back, and I hope this new online magazine will be as epoch-making as the original printed Mondo. In the meantime, we can find PDFs of some old Mondo issue collected in the Mondo 2000 History Project and other archives.
So begins my first story for the resurrected Mondo 2000.
See also “Mondo 2000: A User’s Guide to the New Edge,” co-edited by Rudy Rucker. In his autobiography “Nested Scrolls,” Rudy says:
“One might then have expected Mondo 2000 to become a successful magazine about the emerging computer culture. But it didn’t work out… In short order, some gimlet-eyed yuppies showed up and ate Mondo’s lunch. Thus was born Wired magazine. They covered the same kinds of topics as Mondo, but they were tightly organized — and they slanted their articles to appeal to entrepreneurs rather than to stoners.”
I wish I had found Mondo before Wired. I left a career in the public service to became a tech entrepreneur, and even made a little money, but though I haven’t done drugs in decades I’m really a stoner at heart.
The re-launch of Mondo has been praised by Boing Boing, Slashdot, Motherboard, and many other voices. I hope the new web-only Mondo will be as good as the old one, more popular, and commercially viable.
Because, you see, the world needs irreverent, subversive, boldly optimist voices, and we must raise the middle finger at the thought polices of all colors and shades. We need Tim Leary. The world needs Mondo.
There are many popular and successful web magazines. I write for some. “Commercially viable” works like this: Wannabe successful magazines pay writers reasonably (that means $50 plus for 500 words) or well (that means $250 plus per 500 words), and have enough money to pay for ten good stories a day or more waiting for breakeven in a couple of years.
When I asked Ken aka R.U. Sirius if maybe perhaps he would pay a buck or two to writers, he answered:
“NOT A CENT”
That does NOT seem a good start for a new media project that wants to change the world. But I want to be optimistic (bold daring optimism is precisely what today’s sad world has lost and should recover, or else) and suspend disbelief.
Legendary mathematician and former Mondo contributor Ralph Abraham says that we need another miracle, and I think the new Mondo could help. Therefore, I am contributing for free, and so should you.
Radical assaults on the limits of biology, gravity and time
I think Mondo should offer unique, radical and subversive content (and quality of course) that readers just don’t find elsewhere. Today everyone is on the internet and the unique content of Mondo of old is all over the mainstream press, but there are still radical niches. For example, imagination is subversive, and common sense too.
What has been the closest Mondo equivalent in the “modern” world (say, after 9/11)? Not Wired, and not the many semi-mainstream tech-oriented tech zines. It can be argued that the closest equivalent has been 4chan.
Read Mondo’s “(Excerpt) Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars From 4Chan And Tumblr To Trump And The Alt-Right” (and read also the book, it’s a short page turner that you can read cover to cover in a couple of hours) to see the point. Beware, the book harshly criticizes both sides.
4chan isn’t a good model because there’s too much trolling, too much partisan “politics,” not enough quality content, and too much bullshit. I think Mondo can do better. The “First MONDO 2000 Editorial (1989) Annotated (2017)” is a good manifesto for unique Mondo content. Some snippets:
Our scouts are out there on the frontier sniffing the breeze (ACTUALLY, OUR SCOUTS WERE SNIFFING OTHER THINGS!)… Total Possibilities. (TRANSHUMANISTS STILL BELIEVE. I GIVE IT ABOUT A 2% CHANCE.) Radical assaults on the limits of biology, gravity and time.
I am a transhumanist who still believes in total possibilities, yet like Ken I give about 2% chances (actually less) to total possibilities becoming realities in my own lifetime. But planning radical assaults on the limits of biology, gravity and time is FUN, and our grandchildren or their grandchildren (no hurry, the universe is young) will live in a fairy tale. Or perhaps in a scary witch story, who knows. But they’ll have an interesting life.
My stories in Mondo fo far:
- Mathemagician Ralph Abraham: We Need Another Miracle
- Technological Resurrection by Jonathan Jones Reviewed
- Mad Scientists Wanted for Research on Irrational Mechanics
I also have a draft titled “Forget ‘cultural Marxism’ — Marx was a prolethean badass and a pre-transhumanist,” but it seems too unPC even for Ken! Perhaps I’ll publish it in my website, but maybe not, I really prefer to stay in the pristine higher dimensional world of weird ideas and keep a distance from what passes for politics these days.
Some new stories I would like to write for Mondo:
- Higher dimensions and differential theology
- String theory is ten-dimensional Kabbalistic cosmology plus some maths
- The Akashic blockchain beyond space and time
- Colonize space with the middle finger raised all the way up to the stars
These stories would be about weird sci/tech and even weirder theology, which is my thing.
So, what are the stories that YOU would like to write for Mondo? Mondo means “world” in Italian, and both need you.
Image from Mondo 2000.
