From bOING bOING Issue 1: Robert Anton Wilson interview

bOING bOING was a zine that my wife Carla and I launched in 1988 to cover comic books, cyberpunk science fiction, consciousness technology, curious phenomena, and whatever else surprised and delighted us. That zine, which ran for 15 issues until 1997, evolved into the very website you're reading right now.

We've made available a free anthology of some of our favorite interviews from bOING bOING, the zine. You can access it for free with Microsoft's Office Web Apps on SkyDrive, whose sponsorship has made this project possible.

The anthology, called bOING bOING: History of the Future! is a collection of interviews with and articles by some of our favorite writers and thinkers - Robert Anton Wilson, Rudy Rucker, William Gibson, Kevin Kelly, Marc Laidlaw, and Bruce Sterling.

In the coming weeks, we'll be running posts about the articles included in the bOING bOING: History of the Future anthology. Last week, I wrote about bOING bOING's interview with author William Gibson. This week, I'd like to introduce the interview Carla and I conducted with author and stand-up philosopher Robert Anton Wilson, who was (and still is) one of my favorite people. His blend of optimism and skepticism shaped the way I look at the world more than any other writer. (For a good introduction to Wilson's work, check out one of his lesser-known books, "Right Where You Are Sitting Now: Further Tales of the Illuminati.")

The interview with Wilson ran in the first issue of bOING bOING came out in 1989. The issue was 32 pages long and also contained reviews of Rudy Rucker's novel, Wetware, K Eric Drexler's book about nanotechnology, Engines of Creation, and a biography of Aleister Crowley by Colin Wilson. It also had reviews of comic books and interview with Jack Dean, the 1988 California Libertarian candidate for the U.S. Senate, and an article about cryptography by Chuck Hammill.

The document is in Microsoft Word format and you can view it for free with Office Web Apps on SkyDrive whether you have Word on your computer or not. And if you'd like to download it for local perusal or printing and don't have a recent version of Microsoft Word or one of the many other applications that can open the document, you can use the free Word Viewer for Windows or Quick Look built into Mac OS X.

The History of the Future! A free anthology of articles from the bOING bOING print 'zine 1989-1997 (SkyDrive)

• [Rob Knop]

  Is imagination a standardized file format?

  It’s certainly non-proprietary. It’s also available to all regardless of their choice of platform.

• [RebNachum]

  Mark speaks for many of us when he talks about RAW’s influence. At the risk of shamelessly plugging, I’d like to offer further proof of RAW’s kindness to budding mutants — he let me interview him in 199x for the world’s most obscure publication (but declined to share any recipes). The transcribed half-page in question is at http://metaphorager.net/raw/.

  • [David Pescovitz]

    Thanks for sharing that, RebNachum! And Far Corner is such a great name for a mutant ‘zine.

• [Rob Knop]

  …well, OK. I said that imagination is non-proprietary. That is, unless you have an idea that somebody else had before and got a patent on. Then, you’re in deep trouble.

• [Gulliver]

  Boing Boing, please don’t be a tool of Microsoft!

  Yes, Boing Boing, please be a tool of Mac instead.

  Just kidding.

  Be a tool of Linux.

  That one I’m not kidding about. Seriously.

• [enkiv2]

  Rehosted on scribd: http://www.scribd.com/doc/56288741/bbHistoryOfTheFuture2011
  Grab and rehost the pdf asap. Scribd has an itchy dmca finger. (They took down my copy of Society of the Spectacle fed through disassociated press, once, claiming that they had received a takedown notice for it)

• [Urban Garlic]

  FYI, it is not necessary to run any Microsoft software at all to view this content — I just went to the site in my Chrome browser on Ubuntu, and could view the content without difficulty. There’s a “download” link which works, and the resulting saved .docx file opens up just fine in LibreOffice.

• [nixiebunny]

  I need to use a shiny new Microsoft app to view this?

  No thanks, I’ll use my imagination instead.

  My high school kid complains that he needs a computer with Windows 7 and Office 2011 to do his school assignments, as they are teaching the features of those products. Sheesh! Have they no shame?

• [Rob Beschizza]

  Is imagination a standardized file format?

  • [nixiebunny]

    Imagination takes many fewer megabytes of proprietary software to use, that’s for sure.

    I feel like you’re dangling a carrot in front of us to get us to download the latest Microsoft attempt at controlling the content of the world.

    Boing Boing, please don’t be a tool of Microsoft!