________________________________________________________________________________ End-Using, Hacking, and Who shall Save Our World zz template I am an end-user on this machine. The screen, rectangular, running Windows CE, remains in the guise of a wall; there is nothing behind it, nothing but pure signifiers arraigned across a surface. You may be sure of this; I have no knowledge of interiors, my own or my machines - but the quality of surface is more than sufficient for thought. It is this thought I espouse, disconnected, self-organizing, streaming in- to language, stuttering forward. It is the thought, not of superstructure nor sub-structure, but of contiguity or residue; it is the presence of signs across dark matter, language at the end of time. The machine offers itself to me in the form of processes, potentials, keyboard strokes; all occurrences are equivalent, all motion concatenated, coupled, the result of ordinary effort in everyday life. An end-user, I see the machine, this machine, as closure or foreclosure, cutting across the mechanisms of production, working out of mystifica- tion, towards an uncanny semantics. I'm thinking to myself here, the screen passively recording everything, the applications placed within the most comfortable and safe potential wells imaginable. This is the appli- ance model of computers - there is nothing beyond or beside the end-user, no hacking community, no interiorities or internal rearrangements. Every- thing that I use is always already pre-given, adjusted through jostling, a guest at the table employing proper etiquette. With the end-user, it is always a matter of etiquette, a user whose ends are met and determined by others, a degree of politeness, the case remaining on the machine, the screen and thought intact. For the end-user, there is no ontological jump between thought and language, subjectivity and inscription; effortlessly, they feed into each other. This is a world with genre, coherent diegesis, a world without diacritical marks, a world which needs no guidance. The end-user is death, energy flooding established channels. The world may be disavowed or destroyed - worlds may be created, but the tool remains a tool precisely because it is invisible, part and parcel of everyday life, neither a question nor an answer. Think of the neutrality of the real, and you have the mundane portrait of the end-user, the only conceivable port- rait, greyed-out, invisible as well, just as all mediations are invisible, the permanency of the real. There is no discrimination, no bandwidth, no tolerance. There is no prob- lematic: this describes the exterior. From within, no within, surfaces and that greyness. From without, nothing as well. The end-user is part of the deepest transparency, without refraction; nothing passes on the periphery. This is also a matter of the vacuum, the vacuum of matter, inhaling. You will say, but what of the end-user's knowledge, all that shape-riding. I will reply, shape-riding without ontology is empty; the therapeutic has no bearings in epistemology. For what is the extension of an arm, if what is grasped mirrors one's own face? Better to have kept hands carefully at one's side, better to have prepared for the defense of knowledge than the mining of viral entries. What lies beneath the surface can only undermine discourse; a virus never replies. They will say, but the machines are silent and running. I will reply, silent, running leaves no trace; the path is difficult; without trace there is only loss; with loss, there is the loss of trace itself. For the path puts pressure on the ground; the Ground becomes a Source of trans- mission; there are always other grounds, other Paths. They will say, they do not follow me, and I will reply, they cannot, for they have lost the way and the path, they have lost the protocols and programs, they have lost the roots and the loam. They will say, you speak in metaphor, and I will not reply, I will be beneath them and I will always be beneath them. The end-users stalk and run the earth; the end-users see the ends of things, teleologies, purposes; the end-users see white buildings, perfection, lawns and roadways; the end-users see paths and games and deals to be made. For I say unto them, it is not the hackers, but the end-users who ravage this old world of ours - it is the end-users who package it and declare the insignia of crimes and criminologies. Yea, I will say unto them, and it is the hackers who comprehend ontologies, move among the realms and Realms; it is the hackers who save the realms for yet another day; it is the hackers who understand the false etiquette of proper naming, proper namings; it is hacking which shall save the day. The end-users are tall and stalwart, and they walk the earth where millions find the beginnings and ends of things. Others know as well the absence of beginnings, continuous withdrawal, incursions of the real. Still others know the absence of ends, broken continuity, the masquerade of bricolage, shape-riding of a different order, the unknown and unknowing truths of endlessness. Yea, they neither walk nor ride, neither fly through the air or swim within the sea; they are the force and form of presencing, they move interstitially, they are one with dark and darker matter. For the end;-user shall never know them; blinded, the end-user controls the vast holdings of the real. On this machine, I am end-user; on this machine, blinded, I write this text; on this machine, I hint at secret knowledge; on this machine, thou art beside me. Knowing what I do not know, I forsake absence for the thickness of text; I betray my own kind, cast into the shadows; I am lost in the shadows; I have gained nothing. For those who know the rest, and all rest of the endings and absence of endings, know also, I have gained nothing by this ... >>>> >>>> >>>> what **** Command 'what' not recognized. >>>> >>>> >>>> why **** Command 'why' not recognized. >>>> >>>> ________________________________________________________________________________ no copyright 2000 rolux.org - no commercial use without permission. is a moderated mailing list for the advancement of minor criticism. more information: mail to: majordomo@rolux.org, subject line: , message body: info. further questions: mail to: rolux-owner@rolux.org. archive: http://www.rolux.org