The name Dr. Timothy Leary is certainly a household word to any one belonging to the Baby Boom generation. During the 60's, Leary became famous for the phrase "Tune in, Turn on, and Drop out," while advocating experimenting with the effects of LSD. Leary has turned to new ways to expand the mind including the development of computer software and the pursuit of "Artificial Reality (VR)."
In this interview conducted on America Online, a new electronic communications service from Quantum Computer Services in Vienna, Virginia, Leary talks about his new book and "VR" with members of a roundtable discussion.
Each month HARDCOPY will present to our readers an edited version of interviews with people in the news.
Dr. Leary also authored "Mind Mirror" which is marketed by Electronic Arts, and has published "What Does Woman Want?"
QUESTION: A friend asked me to find out where Mr. Leary's books can be found. He's been looking for them here in Denver for years...
Tim Leary : OK. My autobiography, "Flashbacks", is now in the book stores. If you cannot find it, there is a number: 800-221-7945. "Flashbacks" also exists in a computer program. Instead of passively reading, you can PERFORM the book. It also exists in an audio tape/book. Anyone who wants to contact me, about anything, should write me at 11288 Ventura Blvd, Suite 702 Studio City CA 91604 Now that the details are out of the way, we can talk!
QUESTION: What is "Headcoach"?
Tim Leary : Headcoach is a software program that allows you to digitize any thought and compare it with other thoughts, your own or with others. It is an intercommunication device, linking up you and your mind, or your mind with other minds. We also bundle books with "Headcoach." The first publication is "Flashbacks". More are in the pipeline. This program and another program, "Interscreen," are being used as required text at Penn State University. We're out to increase the intelligence of PENN college students!!
QUESTION: Could you elucidate on the thrust of your "software projects," and what specifically you might have in mind for the Apple Mac?
Tim Leary : Our software converts the computer into an intercom device so that you can exchange text, graphics or sounds with others. Our aim is to make education and communication an exciting and GROWTHful experience.
I have also been actively involved in the Virtual Reality or Artificial Reality movement. This counter-culture is as exciting as the consciousness movement of the 1960's. I am in touch with Jaron Lanier, Eric Gullichsen, Ted Nelson and other pioneers. I predict that within ten years, most of us will be spending several hours a day interacting, meeting, working and playing in electronic realities that WE construct. The Wall Street Journal, Feb. 2nd, and Forbes Magazine, Feb. 5th, wrote glowing articles about Artificial Reality. How much more main line can you get?
QUESTION: Word processors "Digitize" thought. What is so different about Headcoach?
Tim Leary : Word processors do NOT process THOUGHTS. They process WORDS! The problem is that for each person a word is a directory code that opens up a file for that word, which can be very different from the file that word boots up in YOUR mind. For example, the word drug opens up a file in MY mind very different from a file in Nancy Reagan's mind (if any.) If I am to communicate with Nancy Reagan, we must both define, digitally, the attributes of the word DRUGS. All of our programs are multilinqual. I can use HEAD COACH to communicate with a Japanese person who knows no English, and in two minutes we have grid patterns and profiles which tell us, each in our own language, what each of us means by the word "drug" or the word "Reagan" or the word "SONY".
QUESTION: What do you think about the situation in Russia now?
Tim Leary : The student revolution of 89-90 was begun by young people in America from 1960 to 1980. When 1 million Chinese students massed in Tienanmen Square and the gleam in their eye, the peace signs they flashed, the head bands they wore, the attitudes they possessed came RIGHT FROM WOODSTOCK, 1969! This glorious explosion of freedom which has covered eastern Europe as well as the Soviet Union, is a globalization of the peace and freedom movement transmitted by John Lennon, Bob Dylan and the rest of our jolly crew from the 1960's. Alas.
There are only two countries which are resisting the youth movement and want to continue the cold war and the police state. Those countries are China and America. It is no accident that George Bush is doing everything he can to support the Chinese dictatorship. George Bush's nightmare would be to see that movement reappear in America.
QUESTION: Dr. Leary, at the end of the new movie Flashback with Dennis Hopper, he says the 90's are going to make the 60's look like the 50's. Do you agree?
Tim Leary : Yes, basically I agree. My publisher was pleased to see that in the last scene of that movie, Dennis Hopper is standing in front of a book store window crammed with copies of the book "Flashback." Then Dennis Hopper climbed in his white limousine and drove away. This is my publisher's wildest wet dream.
QUESTION: What is the main goal of Virtual Reality, and is there a real world practical application?
Tim Leary : In the last ten years, advances in psychopharmacology and electronic technology (mainly computers) have defined two new levels of reality. Now there is material reality, brain reality, and electronic reality. In the future, we will know how to boot up and activate our brains, we'll communicate our brain work with 1000 times more speed and facility and we will use the electronic reality as our "Homebase" of habitation.
As for the practical applications, autodesk is now producing a Virtual Reality program which allows architects and clients to walk around a building that is being blue printed. Doctors will be able to paddle up the fallopian tube of the patient to diagnose problems. Anything that you can THINK, IMAGINE can now be expressed directly in the electronic form.
A new vocabulary, by the way, is emerging. A big word is HARDWEAR. In the morning we will get up, shower, and climb into our computer clothing. We'll adjust our high definition TV goggles and be able to travel to Tokyo for a meeting, play tennis with Lendl in Paris, have a flirtatious lunch with Four attractive people in Moscow, Madrid, etc., accomplish Four days' work in FOUR HOURS without leaving home or the front lawn. Then, having accomplished work that would have required 100,000 miles of polluting jet fuel travel, with the expenditure of a few electric impulses, we will take off our cyberwear, turn off our softwear, and then use the human body for what it is designed: acts of physical grace, sport, sensual communication, personal service, intimate conversation. In the future we will not use our bodies to work. After all, we are not beasts of burden. Or futile serfs, or robot cogs in a factory. We are HUMAN BEINGS! Homosapiens. To be forced to use the body to work, would be like using the tongue for cleaning the table or using the penis to hammer a nail.
QUESTION: This week's Time magazine had an article concerning the use of computers by the elderly. What special effect will virtual reality have with regard to the elderly?
Tim Leary : Well, the applications are many! Imagine a handyCAPABLE person taking a VIRTUAL trip to the beach, or Skiing down Mt. Blanc! Or involving a seven person orgy (at age 88!) in Bangkok! Or, for more practical applications, a visit to the doctor could (and WILL) be accomplished without ever leaving the home. The elderly will simply don their VIRTUAL REALITY CLOTHING, and take a VIRTUAL trip for that physical, that renewed prescription or even just to to chat! The implications for young people, particularly deprived third world or inner city youth, who will don their HARDWEAR, they'll be able to experience the world! It's thrilling, clear and shimmering high definition REALITY! The walls of material reality which are the brilliant walls which have imprisoned human beings, particularly the poor, the old, the young, these walls will crumble!
QUESTION: Can the student movement reappear in America?
Tim Leary : It is the destiny of America, in the 20th century, to be the advanced scouts of the human species. We will not go back to massing 500,000 people in demonstrations. The use of intercommunication software, computer nets, virtual reality appliances, will produce a VIRTUAL DEMOCRACY! We could have 100,000 people linked up in exciting demonstrations! Numbers and freedom power could be accomplished without leaving home! My company, FUTIQUE, is developing software that will allow us to edit and change what comes on our TV screen. World War III is now being fought on your living room TV screen. At the moment, big brother George is fabricating the realities which we inhabit.
Interpersonal software will allow us to individualize, personalize, what goes on our screens.
QUESTION: What will the future of software hold?
Tim Leary : The future of software - by the year 2000, only 10 years away, we will be wearing softWEAR and we will be spending perhaps a third of our waking hours in exciting virtual reality ventures including; dinners, dancing, etc., with exciting people around the world! Our products are called "Tele-Screen Ware." These programs allow you to communicate with others, not in words or sound, but with the full multi-colored icon-rich, sound-rich dimensions that the Apple and Mac computers can provide! Just as the Chinese students learn about our youth revolution through rock and roll records, MTV and TV, and just as they communicated their behavior to the rest of China through computers and FAX machines, so in a few years we will be inhabiting what Marshall McLuhan called the "Global Village". McLuhan gave us the most powerful motto in the history of human philosophy: The MEDIUM is the message. If you communicate by chipping commandments on a marble tablet, you create a reality that is rigid, solid and unchanging. Namely: Biblical Christianity. If your MEDIUM is mass produced books, you produce an industrialized society of good, conforming, clones of Dan Quayle. ONCE we start communicating with electronic patterns and multidimensional digital clusters transmitted at the speed of light, we will inhabit the next reality. It's going to be a smart and happy place to be.
•America Online is a commercial online service that provides telecomunication services to the general public for a small hourly fee. Anyone with a personal computer, modem, and telephone can have access to the Apple and Mac computing forums, news and stocks, educational pursuits, hobby and special interest sections , and be able to download thousands of public domain software programs. For more information about America Online, call 1-800-227-6364
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America Online:
An Interview with Dr. Timothy Leary,
Edited by Don Rittner
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HARDCOPY ON COMMUNICATIONS
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Within ten years, most of us will be spending several hours a day interacting, meeting, working and playing in electronic realities that WE construct.
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