X-Personal_Name: Marty Cyber
Subject: Request for Guidance in Developing CYBEReal World/Project
Dear Francis:
Hope all goes well for you, Cliff, Valentin and the PCP
gang, creators of probably the most interesting and valuable
website on the Net.
I haven't surfaced around PCP lately; the last time you
may have noticed me was when I injected some ideas about
using cybernetic theory in the realm of politics, specifically
the Mayoralty race in Miami Beach. I did attract a few flames
for the ideas, and you diplomatically interceded to get us
all to chill out.
I'm still interested in political apps of cybernetics
and cyberspace --- as apparently are several of the candidates
for the American presidency in 1996. But at this time I want
your guidance in some economic development and urban-regional
planning apps of cybeernetics and cyberspace.
As I'm sure you are aware, several big players in
the computer-communications-networking industry have announced
new "network-centric" strategic directions in which Internet,
Web, and Cyberspace arenas will be attracting heavy resource
inputs. Of course, most of these are business firms with
the profit motive as their guiding light. For example, the
recent strategic announcements of IBM, Microsoft, Sun, Netscape,
Oracle and others who see the JavaScript language and developing
interactive Internet-based, multimedia applications.
There is a crying need to inject some of the PCP approach
and philosophy into the "goldrush" scene that is now developing
around cyberspace; few are aware of the tremendous power of
harnessing cybernetic theories, models and techniques in representing,
tracking and participating in the newly emerging worldwide societal
arenas of business, politics, education and community that are
trying to find some navigational tools and strategies in cyberspace
to insure their viability and growth.
I am now doing some consulting and planning for a group
called STRATEGIC ALLIANCE: CYBERSPACE BEACH (SACB) that is hoping
to mirror in the small South Florida/Greater Miami Beach urban
region most of the guiding principles of your PCP initiative.
Philosophy and economic development may seem like
strange bedfellows, even in decadently-Deco South Miami Beach,
which will be the physical home to our SACB initiative.
Miami Beach will also be the home-base for the 5th
season of a popular MTV television series called "The Real
World." This show's previous 4 highly successful seasons
were shot in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and,
currently on the air, London. It's format is to select
a world-class city, find 7 young people between 18-26
who would like to live rent-free for 6 months, and who
will have their real-lives of work, love, partying, or
studying videotaped for later worldwide cable tv distribution
over the MTV network to 250 million homes.
Usually the show is themeless, and the 7 young adults
have no purpose, direction or philosophy of their lives. Perhaps
they resonate strongly with much of the world's youth these
days, and they try to find out the meaning of life while living
it out surrounded by media and inner city turmoil that communicate
more of the philosphies of Beavis and Butthead than of Norbert
Wiener and Stafford Beer (or Heylighen, Turchin and Josslyn).
However, the "Real World" show's 1996 season in Miami
Beach will have an interesting theme-twist injected into it:
the 7 selected roomates will also have to become entrepreneurs,
and work together to plan, build, operate and jointly own their
own small business of their choice. Besides the free rent, they
will also receive $300 per week in grocery money, $50,000
in seed capital from MTV, and an older, experienced Miami business
man (or team) to support their business start-up activities and
oversee the $50,000.
Apple Computer has jumped into supporting the show's
computer needs, donating 2 laptops and 2 desktops, in exchange
for featuring their equipment on the show, and a few credit lines
in the end titles. Sony has donated some tv sets. Other firms
will contribute furniture, air transportation, cars, etc., to
help prepare the roommate-entrepreneurs for their challenge.
I have been supplying some consulting guidance to the
show, advising them on potential housing locations for the
cast and crew, local business advisors (including possibly
myself plus a team of 12 other business school deans, chamber
of commerce types, entrepreneurial experts, and even some
banks and venture capitalists. (The $50,000 may not go very
far; perhaps MTV wants to assign an impossibly difficult
task to create drama, conflict, and suspense. Will the kids
get the business viable or will they fail? Tune in next week
and find out what happens!)
I feel that the idea of bring 7 (or more) people together
in real-time/space or cyberspace on the Net to collaborate in
the search for new knowledge, fun, or profit is quite interesting,
whether you're videotaped for tv or not. And if in the process
of moving to a strange new city and put in close proximity to
7 or more interesting people of different socio-economic back-
grounds, sexes, races, and mind-sets, you might want to ask
yourselves and each other some pertinent philosophical questions
such as who am I? Where do I come from? What is truth?
What are good and evil? What's the meaning of life? And what's
love got to do with it all? Of course, these last questions are
of interest to people from time immemorial, and are asserted
as partial drivers of your own Principia Cybernetica Project.
I intend to design and build, in real-time/space and
cyberspace on the Net and the Web, up to 64 parallel
entrepreneurial projects that will parallel MTV's Real World-
Miami 1996 series, and perhaps communicate with, and support
their endeavours. I haven't yet worked out the mission,
vision, strategy and structure and participants for the non-
MTV ventures, but I call them CYBEReal Worlds. Perhaps they
will be tasked with "entrepreneurial" missions of answering
(or at least discussing) some of the philosophical questions
that PCP seems interested in exploring, about identity,
the construction of persons, truth, good and evil, life,
and even love.
I deeply believe that systems science, cybernetics,
and the general sciences of organization and communication
could be usefully applied in structuring and strategizing
the MTV Real World tv series project as well as my own
CYBEReal World initiative, and I'm seeking ideas and support
to flesh out a research, development and education project-set
to create insightful experiments in these realms.
Certainly, I will be creating numerous interlinked
Websites on the Net, and intranet sites, using VRML, the
new JavaScript language, and MUDs, MOOs and other simulation
techniques with cybernetic avatars able to be controlled by
the "player-entrepreneur-researcher-philophers" and with the
capability of moving between cyberspace and real-time/space.
As Vint Cerf, one of the Fathers of the Internet mentioned
to me at a recent Telecommunications and Education conference
held in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, "what happens in cyberspace
can have tremendous impacts in the real world."
Francis, would you be kind enough to:
1. E-mail copies of this message to Cliff and Valentin.
2. Post it to your PCP listserver.
3. E-mail me personally with some of your thoughts,
references to literature, people, and ideas about
these concepts, and whether they might form the gist
of a paper I might submit to one of the cybernetics
conferences you are involved with.
Hope the holidays find you well, and that the winter weather
in Brussels is not too cold. You are always welcome to visit
me here in warm and toasty Miami Beach, and occupy the PCP suite
in the small 8 unit apartment building I own and have my home-office
in. I would also lie your advice in going about raising a $ 1 mil-
ion grant or loan to fund not only the CYBEReal World initiative,
but the larger Strategic Alliance: Cyberspace Beach effort which
has as its mission the formation of a South Florida regional
consortium of education, government, business and the community
to work together through the use of cybernetic principles and
cyberspace networks.
Email or phone me.
Thanks for your consideration and feedback.
Marty
Dr. Marty Cyber
CEO: Cyber Systems Group
Director: Miami Device Project
Internet e-mail: cyb@gate.net
phone: (305)672-2273
snail-mail: 1329 Penn. Ave./Suite 6
Miami Beach, FL 33139-4025
"Oklahoma, where the wind comes right behind the rain ..."
lyrics from song "Oklahoma"
"CyberCity, where the net comes right behind the bomb ..."
lyrics from song "CyberCity" and new musical
<TO LIVE EFFECTIVELY IS TO LIVE WITH ADEQUATE INFORMATION>
---Norbert Wiener, Father of Cybernetics
PS: Please e-mail me back a copy of this message; I couldn't
send myself one. MC