Looking deep into my bowl of water, scrying the
unfolding events in the chaos of molecular
bonding, the spirits are about to speak.
Are they friendly spirits? Just listen!
1998 - Increases in Internet brownouts lsads to
first Federal regulations on service-based
charges for Internet use. AT&T announces
corporate discount rates for access to it's
private information service satellite system.
1998 - SGI, first company to sponsor a month long cyberspace
Olympics is sued by Intl Olympic Committee for copyright
and trademark violations. Suit is settled out-of-court
with a follow-on contract by the Committee with SGI to
the site of the 2002 CyberOlympics
1999 - Suits over violations of copyright law by adhoc link
systems increase as giant awards are made by Federal
courts. President Powell, as his first official
act on taking the office after the assasination of
his predecessor vows that the Pacific Rim
violators, and most of the SFBay VRML community will
be held accountable for their increasing efforts
to violate the service-based charges for the
newly created World-Oversite Network of Time
Charge UTilITies (WONTCUTIT), the new
information service conglomerate formed of the
former Compuserve, AOL, and MicroSoft Networks.
1999 - Independent network satellite service of AT&T
signs deal with Monsignor Mark Pesce
to begin worldwide broadcasts of worship services for
all followers of The Church of TAZ.
2000 - Dismantling of Internet begins in earnest
as AT&T, Microsoft and IBMComm celebrate
their victory in the international courts for their
lawsuits to prevent freeware-based competition
with private information service providers such
as the enormously profitable WONTCUTIT.
Software companies heave a giant sigh
of relief as technology stocks show a 300%
increase in NADAQ values.
2000 - Research into cybersickness at NASA indicates
that marinol derivatives can reduce its effects.
Test subjects report increased enjoyment of
color cycling and unexplained weight gain.
2001 - TAZ activities come under scrutiny of Senator
Rodham, the former Hillary Clinton and the House
Committee on Subversive Media. Senator Rodham
is quoted as saying, "this is NOT what the constitutional
framers had in mind. Separation of church and state
does not provide the inalienable right to jury nullification."
2002 - Bill Gates, chairman of the newly established
committee to manage the WONTCUTIT system, reports
record gains in profit by his company formed
to provide management services for WONTCUTIT.
2003 - Over-the-counter marinol sales are legalized.
Phillip Morris rushes it's new Hawaiian PeaceBlend to
the 7-11s in Northern California to a stunning
yawn. Locals in the area are quoted as stating,
"the domestic blends of the Napa Valley are
simply superior."
2004 - Mysterious messages that began to
appear on the screens of WONTCUTIT
staff at Boston University are found to be
transliterations of the apocryphal Principia
Discordia. The devotees of TAZ are suspected.
Dr. Nicholas Negroponte at MIT is credited
with discovering the key to the encoding
in a largely discredited text by the inventors
of the HyTime standard.
2005 - A decline in the productivity of the
information engineers in the US
is blamed on the increased use of
marinol. The Info Engineers Trade Foundation
representative is quoted as saying,
"Nah. It's those d***ed junk foundation classes
from the WONTCUTIT. How can our
engineers work with such sloppy documents?
Duh, gotta match?"
2006 - The western economy continues its
downward spiral as the lsaks in the digital
economy continue unabated. Marinol sales
increase despite the massive layoffs
in the information industry due to the
adoption of adaptive programming agent
technology. There are fresh reports
from France and UnitedAsia of sitings of
the fugitive hsad of the TAZ Revolutionary
Council, Mark Pesce.
2007 - CHAOS: The first CyberWar devastates
the WONTCUTIT. The global economy
crashes but is rebooted in time for the
Christmas buying season.
2008 - Bill Gates receives Nobel Peace Prize for his
mediation of the first all-out cyberWar between
the WONTCUTIT technical staff and the devoted
followers of TAZ. The Tazians agreed to deactivate
the HexLocks placed on the major routers, and
the WONTCUTIT staff agreed to relinquish control
of the underground WONTCUTIT control bunkers at
the campus of Brown University.
2010 - SGI declares bankruptcy having failed to recoup
losses from the 2002 and 2004 CyberOlympics.
President Pesce issues a statement from the
BlueHouse in East Wickam, Kent England mourning
the loss of this company so key to innovations of the
first virtual reality language for the WWW,
which was absorbed by the defunct WontCutIt system
and revived in the new World Information Continuum
for Collective Archetypes.
2014 - The National Institute of Health issues
new warnings about the effects of marinol on
users of fully-immersive cyberSuites. These
effects include loss of lower body motor
functions due to atrophy, drooling, and
the signs of dementia precox. The Intl
Marinol Producers industry issues a protest
saying more research is eequired, but no one
can remember why.
Well, that was fun.
len
Len Bullard