Date: Sat, 22 Jun 1996 21:53:13 -0400
From: uzs106-AT-IBM.rhrz.uni-bonn.de


http://www.uni-koeln.de/themen/cmc/burroughs.70.txt, if somebody
wants to read the whole text. What is fluxus etc compared to this.....??

Maybe, there are some kind of fluxus inspirations in it. If not Beckett etc..


Here is a snippet:







               THE ELECTRONIC REVOLUTION 
                         BY 
                  WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS 

              1970 Expanded Media Editions  
             Published by Bresche Publikationen 
                       Germany 
           (To my knowlege, no longer in print) 
              Text transcription By Flesh 
                        01/16/92



         FEEDBACK FROM WATERGATE TO THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

  In the beginning was the word and the word was god and has remained one  
of the mysteries ever since. The word was God and the word was flesh we are 
told. In the beginning of what exactly was this beginning word? In the  
beginning of WRITTEN history. It is generally assumed that spoken word came 
before the written word. I suggest that the spoken word as we know it came 
after the written word. In the beginning was the word and the word was God 
and the word was flesh ... human flesh ... In the beginning of WRITING. 
Animals talk and convey information but they do not write. They cannot make 
information available to future generations or to animals outside the range 
of their communication system. This is the crucial distinction between men 
and other animals. WRITING. Korzybski, who developed the concept of General 
Semantics, the meaning of meaning, has pointed out  this human distinction  
and  described man as 'the time binding animal'. He can make information  to
other men over a length of time through writing. Animals talk. They dont 
write. Now a wise old rat may know a lot about traps and poison but he cannot
write a text book  on DEATH TRAPS IN  YOUR WAREHOUSE for the Reader's Digest
with tactics for ganging up on digs and ferrets and taking care of wise guys 
who stuff steel wool up our holes. It  is doubtful if the spoke word would 
have ever evolved beyond the animal stage without the written word. The 
written word ist inferential in HUMAN speech. It would not occur to our wise 
old rat to assemble the young rats and pass his knowledge  along in an aural 
tradition BECAUSE THE WHOLE CONCEPT OF TIME BINDING COULD NOT OCCUR WITHOUT
THE WRITTEN WORD. The written word is of course a symbol for something and 
in the case of hieroglyphic language writing like Egyptian it may be a symbol
for itself that is a picture of what it represents. This is not true of an 
alphabet language like English. The word leg has no pictorial resemblance to
a leg. It refers to the SPOKEN word leg. so we may forget that a written word
IS AN IMAGE and that written words are images in sequence that is to say 
MOVING PICTURES.  So any hieroglyphic sequence gives  us an immediate working
definition for spoken words. Spoken words are verbal units that refer to this
pictorial sequence. And what then is the written word? My basis theory is 
that the written word was literally a virus that made spoken word possible.
The  word has not been recognized as a virus because it has achieved a state
of stable symbiosis with the host...(This  symbiotic relationship is now 
breaking down for reasons I will suggest later.) 


<schnipp>

The basic operation of recording pictures, more pictures and playback can 
be carried out by anyone with a recorder and a camera. Any number can play. 
Millions of people could nullify the control system which those who are 
behind Watergate and Nixon are attempting to impose. Like all control systems 
it depends on maintaining a monopoly position. If anybody can be tape 
recorder 3 then tape recorder 3 loses power. God must be THE GOD. 
   





          
          
          
                          ELECTRONIC REVOLUTION 

































  In THE INVISIBLE GENERATION first published in IT and in the Los Angeles 
Free Press in 1966 and reprinted in THE JOB, I consider the potential of 
thousands of people with recorders, portable and stationary, messages passed 
along like signal drums, a parody of the President's speech up and down the 
balconies, in and out open windows, through walls, over courtyards, taken 
up by barking dogs, muttering bums, music, traffic down windy streets, across 
parks and soccer fields. Illusion is a revolutionary weapon:


TO SPREAD RUMORS 
  Put ten operators with carefully prepared recordings out at rush hour and 
see how quick the words get around. People don't know where they heard it but 
they heard it. 

TO DISCREDIT OPPONENTS 
  Take a recorded Wallace speech, cut in stammering coughs sneezes hiccoughs 
snarls pain screams fear whimperings apoplectic sputterings slobbering  
drooling idiot noises sex and animal sound effects and play it back in the  
streets subway stations parks political rallies. 

AS A FRONT LINE WEAPON TO PRODUCE AND ESCALATE RIOTS 
  There is nothing mystical about this operation. Riot sound effects can  
produce an actual riot in a riot situation. RECORDED POLICE WISTLES WILL DRAW 
COPS. RECORDED GUNSHOTS, AND THEIR GUNS ARE OUT. 

"MY GOD, THEY'E KILLING US." 
  A guardsman said later: "I heard and saw my buddy go down, his face covered  
in blood (turned out he'd been hit by a stone from a sling shot) and I 
thought, well this is it." BLOODY WEDNESDAY. A DAZED AMERICA COUNTED 23 DEAD 
AND 32 WOUNDED, 6 CRITICALLY. 

  Here is a run of the mill, pre-riot situation. Protestors have been urged  
to demonstrate peacefully, police and guardsmen to exercise restraint. Ten 
tape recorders strapped under their coats, playback, and record controlled 
>from lapel buttons. They have pre-recorded riot sound effects from Chicago, 
Paris, Mexico City, Kent/Ohio. If they adjust sound levels of recordings to 
surrounding sound levels, they will not be detected. Police scuffle with the 
demonstrators. The operators converge. turn on Chicago record, play back, 
move on to the next scuffles, record playback, keep moving. Things are 
hotting up, a cop is down groaning. shrill chorus of recorded pig squeals and 
parody groans. 

  Could you cool a riot by recording the calmest cop and the most reasonable 
demonstrator? Maybe! However, it's a lot easier to start trouble that to stop 
it. Just pointing out that cut/ups on the tape recorder can be used as a 
weapon. You'll observe that the operators are making a cutup as they go. They 
are cutting in Chicago, Paris, Mexico City, Kent Ohio with the present sound
effects at random and that is a cutup. 

AS A LONG RANGE WEAPON TO SCRAMBLE AND NULLIFY ASSOCIATIONAL LINES PUT DOWN 
BY MASS MEDIA 

  The control of the mass media depends on laying down lines of association.  




 <schnipp>





  I have described here a number of weapons and tactics in  the  war  game.  
Weapons  that  change  consciousness could call the war game in question. All
games are hostile. Basically there is only one game from here to eternity. 
Mr Hubbard says that Scientology is a game where everybody wins. There are no 
games where everybody wins. That's what games are all about, winning and  
losing ... The  Versailles Treaty ... Hitler dances the Occupation Jig ... 
War criminals hang at Nuremberg ...It is a rule of this game that there can 
be no final  victory since this mean the end of the war game. Yet every 
player must believe   in final victory and strive for it with all his  power.
Faced by the nightmare of final defeat he has no alternative. So all 
technologies with escalating efficiency produce more and more total weapons
until we have the atom bomb which could end the game by destroying all
players. Now mock up a miracle. The so stupid players decide to save the 
game. They sit down around a big table and draw up a plan for the immediate
deactivation and eventual destruction of all atomic weapons. Why stop there?
Conventional bombs are unnecessarily destructive if nobody has them hein?  
Let's turn back the war clock back to 1917: 
  Keep the home fires burning 
  Through the hearts are yearning 

  There's a long, long trail awinding ... . 

  Back to the American Civil War... 

  "He has loosed  the  fatal  lightning  of  this  terrible  swift sword."   
His  fatal lightning didn't cost as much in those days. Save a lot on the 
defence budget this way on back to flintlocks, matchlocks, swords, armour, 
lances, bows and arrows, spears, stone axes and clubs. Why stop there? Why 
not grow teeth and claws, poison fangs, stingers, spines, quills, beaks
and suckers and stink glands and fight in out in the muck hein? 

  That is what this revolution is about. End of game. New games?
There are no new games from here to eternity. 


END OF THE WAR GAME. 


Williams Burroughs 
Williams Burroughs 


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