Terence McKenna - On Computers, the Internet and Technology lyrics

Technology is the production... is the you could think of it as the residue of the workings of the imagination and the imagination is not, is under the control of the super-ego, or the over-mind. So that I think technology has a weird way of always escaping the intentions of those who are working with it. A perfect example would be the chip, which makes possible the personal computer. That thing was developed under contract to the Air Force by I think (?) and when it was finally finished it didn't work right, it was far too slow. They wanted it for guidance systems of missiles and this kind of thing so this thing is a thousand times too slow, it's just baloney, it's worthless, toss it in the waste basket but somebody said but wait a minute "Do you know what you could do with this?" And created you know an information revolution that must be absolutely appalling to the forces that wish to control. I have an Apple 2 computer and a $350 modem and I can access the defense department databases, I can access all the complete shelf list of the Library of Congress, all chemical abstracts; in short, all information in the world I can access from my living room in Sonoma County and so can anyone else who buys $1000 worth of equipment. This was not part of the plan. This is in fact a terrifying and my god, these computer networks where... as an example a few years ago someone invented a device, this is an anecdote that will give you the idea: Someone invented a little device which looked like a ballpoint pen and it was a small cybernetic device that could be programmed with a category like let's say stamp collector or sadomasochist and when you wore this pen if you got near anyone else who was wearing a similar device programmed with the same word your pen would begin flashing a little light. The notion was that these things could be sold to people who hang out in singles bars and would create a dimension neither public nor private, a new dimension where people of similar interests could get together completely... isn't that interesting? And this thing had a range of 20 feet, okay? So now comes the $1000 worth of cybernetic equipment, and the telephone - and it's the same device, it doesn't clip into your shirt pocket, but we've extended the range to include the entire planet. Audience member: They even had a search program on it, too. You do. You go into these computer networks and you say "Who listed that they were interested in: mushrooms, psychedelics, psilocybin, consciousness-altering d**, hallucinogens?" And then out of 70,000 users on the network in 4 and a half seconds it tells you that 12 people listed one or some of those words. You immediately type a little letter to each one, shoot it off through the system and you're in contact with those people. This makes conspiracy on a level almost impossible to conceive. A form of liberation and these kinds of hardwired technologies are simply patriarchal follow-ons to the feminizing of consciousness that is happening in d**. In other words, you can almost think of d** as the software and cybernetics as the hardware of what is being done but vast areas are being opened up for human interaction completely unregulated by any kind of institution and these will create new kinds of social realities. Audience member: Can a computer have a psychedelic experience? It is a psychedelic, it's a hardwired psychedelic experience. People tend to think of computers as masculine, I guess because the first generation of people who built them were male but what they actually are, are the mysterious mama-matrix of information. It is like the unconscious made conscious. The unconscious is ceasing to be unconscious. All information is rising into this dimension of accessibility so that you need not wonder how many people died of tuberculosis in western Nepal last year, you just key into the bimetallical index and you find out. So, and this seems to me you know... and the word psychedelic has been attached to the d** and confined but many things are psychedelic, any thing which expands, atom-breaks(?), aids and supports consciousness is psychedelic if we take the word down to it's Greek roots. So this is very exciting.