Notice/Disclaimer

Christopher Wright — Thu, 26 May 2005 22:05:02 -0500

This site uses webcomics created by other Keenspot cartoonists as part of its content. The comics reproduced on this site are used with the permission of their creators.

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Mission Statement

Christopher Wright — Wed, 25 May 2005 21:54:34 -0500

eviscerate.
1. To remove the entrails of; disembowel.

2. To take away a vital or essential part of.
(Dictionary.com)

digerati. See also: charlatan, snake oil peddler.
1. Opinion leaders who, through their writings, promoted a vision of digital technology and the Internet as a transformational element in society.

2. People regarded as celebrities within the Silicon Valley computer subculture, particularly during the dot-com boom years.

3. Anyone regarded as influential within the digital technology community.
(Wikipedia)

eviscerati.
Anyone who will not rest until every stupid idea put forth by corporate stooges, political flaks and self-important twits has been exposed as empty, meaningless drivel.
(Eviscerati.org)

Somewhere on the internet a columnist who specializes in writing about the internet is busy pontificating about how the internet is going to change your life in roughly five to ten years... when they finally fix it so that it works, you know, the way he thinks it should.

Somewhere else on the internet a new advertising campaign for a large technology company is trumpeting the advent of a new revolution in computer electronics. Or software. It doesn't matter. This new revolutionary technology is guaranteed to change your life, as long as you're willing to ignore the fact that it doesn't actually work. Or if it does work, to ignore the fact that they didn't actually invent it.

Somewhere else on the internet a company is waging a public and nasty war against a new technology that does work, and works well, and is actually useful to people because, well, it also makes it that much harder for the company to turn a profit.

And somewhere else -- not on the internet, this time -- a politician is complaining about how everyone on the internet is a child pornogropher, or a software pirate, or a liberal, or a communist... and how something really "needs to be done about that." And so, in order to protect the children, he demands that you give up your ability to make decisions as an adult.

... yes Virginia, the industry has definately lost that new car smell.

There's still plenty of interesting stuff going on out there. There are webcomics and there's free and legal music and there's Free Software and Open Source Software and far more online gaming and discussion communities than I can mention. But every time someone thinks of something interesting to do with a tool, someone else tries to think of a way to make it:

More difficult to use.
More expensive to use.
Less satisfying to use.

...and all the while they keep trying to convince you that their way is "better."

Nine times out of ten, their way is not better. That tenth time? That's usually when you've been doing it their way all along.

If you clicked on this link hoping to find out what Eviscerati.org was, well, consider the following my mission statement:

I want to recognize the true heroes of the Information Age. This goes out to all the iconoclasts of the information superhighway.

You know who you are. You're a lot like I am -- you're sick and tired of all these smug-looking, Starbucks-swilling techno elitist psuedo-intellectuals who are being quoted in magazines and newspapers, talking about rubbish like "digital convergence" and "the new e-conomy." You get sick -- physically ill, sometimes -- when some yutz makes sweeping statements about why the tech bubble burst.

You're tired of hearing about the "new revolution," because you thought that some of the older revolutions actually had a lot of promise, if only people had stuck to them, and this new revolution looks more like a shiny, slickly produced 30 second music video than anything else.

You hate the word "meme." You hate people who use the word "meme." You hate people who refer to people who use the word "meme" as "visionaries."

You have seen the silicon god, and turned away. What used to be a shining future of hope and promise has been replaced by the blaring, brassy sound of two-bit shysters selling snake oil and swamp muck, promising that this time, your life really will be better, when in fact all your life will be is a patent that someone else owns and is leasing back to you, at an exorbitant price.

So you're looking for the soft underbelly of this so-called "enlightened" age, and you've got a very sharp stick. While the white hats are out there finding ways around onerous encryption restrictions, and doing everything they can to defeat the technical impediments to our freedom, you are out there trying to knock down the social ones. I know you guys (and ladies) and I salute you. You are not the digerati -- those shysters, those prophets of a false god called "computing." You are the eviscerati, and you will not rest until every stupid idea put forth by corporate stooges, political flaks and self-important twits has been exposed as empty, meaningless drivel. And you'll do it in the most painful, scathing, and sarcastic way possible, because you understand that we've been so beaten down by this idiotic culture that the only sensation that will get past our defenses is the sweet mixture of irony and pain.

All Hail the Eviscerati!
Posted on Ubersoft.net, 20 August 2001

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Mission Statement