Excellent article. Also I owned the Mondo 2000 with that R.U. a Cyberpunk? ad. I remember William Gibson (I think?) commenting on it years later that people didn't understand that it was a joke.
I vaguely remember Michael Synergy being a Thing. To me his act just seemed all rolled up with the general vibe of parody and amusement and truth-warping and reality hacking and etcetera. People *wanted* to believe outlandish ideas and imagine that others (or themselves? their friends?) were exciting and three-letter-agency adjacent and on drugs and big time hackers/phreaks and whatnot. It was, in a word: fun.
Personally? It was said I was a hacker, which I might've been in the least technological, most jokey-gender-goofy and underground-alterna way imaginable, but ridiculous in the context of hacking/phreaking. OK I had a red box that didn't really work. OK when I was living in a third-world country in the late 1980s I figured out how to make phone calls on a pay phone by jiggling the receiver-thingy just right. OK I know like two dozen Unix commands, maybe three or four. That was it! That was all! Yet folks were happy to project all kinds of interesting stuff on me. I can imagine a "Michael Synergy" just walking in and doing his tap-dance and watching the audience clap and throw quarters in his hat.
I mean, I don't know that I think he was /entirely/ unique. I see him as fairly representative. Who among us didn't easily BS our way into tech jobs in the 90s? But also, his versions feel wildly extreme and him being Mondo's "resident hacker" feels apropos because (as you know) they were all faking /everything/.
I'm not willing to let the term synergy go. I first encountered the term while reading Ruth Benedict. (I even thought she invented the term.) She developed it while trying to find a term for the societies she felt drawn to. I find her definition extremely useful. High synergy societies match individual interest with collective issues. Making up a story about hunting. A high synergy society would let a successful hunter brag about his or her prowess and get first choice of shares before the rest is divided up. Low synergy societies would either give the hunter all of it or divide it up equally among everyone with no acknowledgment of the hunter's accomplishment...both are low synergy systems. I used this insight when I had a small department at a Berkeley hippie backpacking company. We'd discuss company goals and personal goals and work at performance objectives that advanced both.
Excellent article. Also I owned the Mondo 2000 with that R.U. a Cyberpunk? ad. I remember William Gibson (I think?) commenting on it years later that people didn't understand that it was a joke.
Same with the Cyberpunk Handbook (Fakebook) by Jude, R.U., & Bart! If you look at the reviews it's clear that there were people not in on the joke...
Aw c'mon, it was all pretty adorable...
I mean the cover girl ... š
I vaguely remember Michael Synergy being a Thing. To me his act just seemed all rolled up with the general vibe of parody and amusement and truth-warping and reality hacking and etcetera. People *wanted* to believe outlandish ideas and imagine that others (or themselves? their friends?) were exciting and three-letter-agency adjacent and on drugs and big time hackers/phreaks and whatnot. It was, in a word: fun.
Personally? It was said I was a hacker, which I might've been in the least technological, most jokey-gender-goofy and underground-alterna way imaginable, but ridiculous in the context of hacking/phreaking. OK I had a red box that didn't really work. OK when I was living in a third-world country in the late 1980s I figured out how to make phone calls on a pay phone by jiggling the receiver-thingy just right. OK I know like two dozen Unix commands, maybe three or four. That was it! That was all! Yet folks were happy to project all kinds of interesting stuff on me. I can imagine a "Michael Synergy" just walking in and doing his tap-dance and watching the audience clap and throw quarters in his hat.
I mean, I don't know that I think he was /entirely/ unique. I see him as fairly representative. Who among us didn't easily BS our way into tech jobs in the 90s? But also, his versions feel wildly extreme and him being Mondo's "resident hacker" feels apropos because (as you know) they were all faking /everything/.
I'm not willing to let the term synergy go. I first encountered the term while reading Ruth Benedict. (I even thought she invented the term.) She developed it while trying to find a term for the societies she felt drawn to. I find her definition extremely useful. High synergy societies match individual interest with collective issues. Making up a story about hunting. A high synergy society would let a successful hunter brag about his or her prowess and get first choice of shares before the rest is divided up. Low synergy societies would either give the hunter all of it or divide it up equally among everyone with no acknowledgment of the hunter's accomplishment...both are low synergy systems. I used this insight when I had a small department at a Berkeley hippie backpacking company. We'd discuss company goals and personal goals and work at performance objectives that advanced both.
I actually do think the word "synergy" has value but its use certainly got swallowed up in middle management garbage...
One supposes he and Robert Anton Wilson walked so that ontological assassins could fly
ha!