SYNTHETIC PLEASURES | Collaborators

Below is a list of people who collaborated on SYNTHETIC PLEASURES:

John Perry Barlow is a retired cattle rancher, a lyricist for the Grateful Dead, and co-founder and executive chair of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organisation dedicated to democritising the electronic community that is arising from the new digital media.

Jeffrey Baxter is a guerrilla working in the music and electronics industries. He was in bands with the Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan, Linda Ronstadt and Elton John, produced albums for Nazareth and Nils Lofgrin, worked as a session guitarist for Donna Summer, Barbara Streisand, Cher, Dolly Parton and Rod Stewart and composed for Roxanne and Beverly Hills 90210, as well as numerous TV commercials. He is also an active Electronic Design Consultant and Writer/Columnist for Mix and Money magazines.

Scott Bukatman is Assistant Professor in the Media Arts Program at the University of New Mexico. Author of Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject of Postmodern Science Fiction, he has published in Artforum International, Architecture New York, October and Camera Obscura, and is Consulting Editor for Science Fiction Studies.

Professor Robert Ettinger is the President of the Cryonics Institute and author of The Prospect of Immortality and Man Into Superman.

Scott Frazier is an animator, teacher and author living and working in Japan. The places he taught at always become the #1 or #2 companies at what they did. He is currently working as a freelance computer and production consultant for animation companies in the Far East, including Cambridge Animation Systems. He is one of the directors of GENESIS Digital Publishing Company and is working on a “digital graphic novel” called Transcendence that will appear in ON, the serial CD-ROM series GENESIS will be releasing soon.

Robert Gurland is Department Chairman and Professor of Philosophy at New York University. He was Visiting Professor of Philosophy at the United States Military Academy from 1976 to 1978. He is the author of Scholars Who Teach, and is currently working on two further books, Sports in Academia, and Doing Time: A Critique of the American Classroom.

Michio Kaku is Professor of Theoretical Physics at the City College of the City University of New York. He graduated from Harvard and received his Ph.D. from Berkeley. He is author of Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey through Parallel Universes, Time Warps and the Tenth Dimension, Beyond Einstein (with Jennifer Trainer), Quantum Field Theory: A Modern Introduction and Introduction to Superstrings. He has also hosted a weekly hour long science program on radio for the last ten years.

Jaron Lanier is a computer scientist, composer, businessman and author. He is well known for his work in Virtual Reality (VR). He co-invented fundamental VR components such as interface gloves and VR networking.

Timothy Leary has been investigating the parallels between his experiences with LSD in the Sixties and with computers in the Nineties, both of which he believes are alternative ways to open up hidden dimensions of the brain. His earlier activities have been well documented — from West Point, to Harvard, to figurehead of the Sixties’ counterculture, to Millbrook, to exile in Europe in Africa, to prison, to acting. He is currently authoring a book, Conscious Net, on an electronic bulletin board.

Max More is editor and co-founder of EXTROPY and President of the EXTROPY INSTITUTE which aims to guide humanity into an unbounded future by encouraging the use of emerging and future technologies to overcome historically unchallenged limits to full human flourishing. He holds a B.A. in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford University, an M.A. in Philosophy from USC and is now writing his Ph.D. in Philosophy at USC.

Orlan is a French performance artist whose most recent work is herself. Entitled The Reincarnation of Saint Orlan, she has since May 1990 undergone a series of plastic surgical operations to transform herself into a new being, modelled on Venus, Diana, Europa, Psyche and Mona Lisa. She has been featured on CBS’s Eye to Eye, written about in Art in America, exhibited worldwide and supported by the French Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Lisa Palac hosts the talk radio show “Generation Sex” and is currently working on a book about her adventures into pop sex culture. She is the producer of the erotic virtual audio series Cyborgasm, and the founding editor of Future Sex magazine. Her work has appeared in Details, The London Observer, Playboy, Penthouse, the erotic anthologies Herotica 1 and 2, and Best American Erotica 1993.

Ed Regis is a contributor to Omni and the author of Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition and Who Got Einstein’s Office? His new book is called Nano.

Howard Rheingold is an author and journalist living in the Bay Area. His book The Virtual Community explores the global on-line network and strongly supports its role in community building and the free expression of ideas. He is also the author of Virtual Reality, Tools for Thought and Excursions to the Far Side of the Mind; coauthor of Higher Creativity and The Cognitive Connection; editor of The Whole Earth Review and a key participant in the WELL on-line community. He has been a consultant to the US Congress Office of Technology Assessment and written for The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, Omni and Esquire.

Steven Roberts is a self-styled “ungineer” and high tech nomad, who uses technology to live a unique self supporting travelling and working lifestyle. He is the designer of BEHEMOTH (Big, Electronic, Human-energized machine, Only Too Heavy), a computer laden 105 speed recumbent bicycle, the author of two books and publisher of the magazine High-Tech Nomadness. His latest project is a completely self-sufficient, high-tech sea kayak.

R.U. Sirius is cofounder and Editor-in-Chief of MONDO 2000 magazine and a member of MONDO Vanilli, the first virtual reality rock band.