Timothy Leary and David Byrne from Mondo 2000 (c.1992)

As part of his Mondo 2000 History Project, Mondo founder RU Sirius is posting classic excerpts from the hugely influential cyberculture magazine of the 1990s. For example, David Byrne in conversation with Timothy Leary:

Timothy Leary: You say you didn’t want to be a scientist because you liked the graffiti in the art department better. If you had been a scientist what would you have been?

David Byrne: At the time I was attracted to pure science — physics — where you could speculate and be creative. It’s equivalent to being an artist. If you get the chance, and the cards fall right, there’s no difference. The intellectual play and spirit are the same.

TL: Nature is that way — it’s basically playful. Murray Gelman, who is one of America’s greatest quantum physicists, used the word “quark” to describe the basic element from a funny line from James Joyce, “three quarks from Muster Mark.”

DB: I had a math teacher in high school who included Lewis Carroll and Alice in Wonderland in his higher math studies. I thought, “This guy knows what he’s doing.”

TL: Dodgson, the fellow who wrote it, knew what he was doing. That metaphor of through the looking glass on the other side of the screen. Talk about your Yoruba gods and goddesses. Talk about Yarzan and Shango. Alice is the Goddess of the Electronic Age.

"Did The CIA Kill JFK Over LSD?, Reproduced Authentic, & Two Heads Talking: David Byrne In Conversation With Timothy Leary" (Acceler8or)

• [Kathy M.]

  I loved that magazine, even though most of it made no sense to me! 

  • [Tim Wayne]

    I liked it, too. I never bought a subscription, but I always made a point to buy it whenever I saw one. Strangest articles and photos. 

• [Ambiguity]

  I liked the content and used to pick it up on occasion, but whenever I did I always got the sneaking suspicion that it was, in fact, just as marketing rag for the nootropics industry. Or at least would have been, in that alternative universe — that Mondo seemed to inhabit, or at least wish for — where nootropics were a billion dollar industry.

• [show me]

  The physicist dude who named the quark is named Murray Gell-Mann. Just sayin’.

• [Ito Kagehisa]

  I recall the style and layout of Mondo 2000 being a major impediment to comprehension, and I was the only person I knew that bought it.

  • [Ambiguity]

    I recall the style and layout of Mondo 2000 being a major impediment to comprehension…

    It was the Wired of the early 90′s.

• [RightReverendRex]

  I still have half a dozen issues which I treasure. I recall when Wired™ came out they tried to imitate a lot of the inventive type/styling and failed miserably. When I couldn’t read something in M2000 it didn’t matter as much because often the experience > words. The only other magazines that I felt were transcendental to this degree were Mad and WigWag (in their own methods).

  I recall one flight I was on where I was reading M2k and flipping through a fashion spread and this tall dark flight attendant who reminded me a bit of Grace Jones stopped, looked down and said “Wow- that dress looks like a labia piercing.” One of the few times in my life I was at a loss for words.

  magical.

• [tristan eldritch]

  I knew nothing about Mondo 2000 when it was actually current.  Read about it years after the fact and th0ught “”Wow, that’s so cool, can’t believe I knew nothing about that at the time.”  I only discovered all the cool stuff about the 90s after the 90s – during the actual decade itself, all I knew was grunge, Britpop, Friends, and effing Pierce Brosnan as Bond.  At some point later, I read Mark Dery’s book Escape Velocity, and realized some cool shit actually happened in the 90s.

• [Erik Sayle]

  I got the 1st issue of Mondo 2000 in a Safeway in Mill Valley of all places. Blew my mind. I inhaled that magazine. Every issue. They even had a special issue “Guide to cyberspace” or something. They got alot of stuff right and better than Wired at first. But they imploded. Heard a rumor the Publisher got a Giggolo and went to Brazil and Ayuhasca ceremonies too much….. just a rumor.

  Also, my high school teacher used Alice to illustrate logic and Geometry. I loved that way of thinking. I got it and it really changed my whole perception of math and the sciences. I started to visualize logic. Those Carrol poems were mathematical formulas. 

  And as Wolfram thinks and other increasingly, the whole poem of nature and everything is just formulas writ large then that light bulb that went off was very grand indeed.