crunch@well.UUCP (John Draper) (06/01/89)
An interesting event is coming up that relates to computer conferencing,
the USSR, and Space bridges. It is fairly long, so I put my Email
address in front, so you can save it and read it later. I welcome all
comments, so please send them to:
John Draper:
uunet!hoptoad!well!crunch
"ONE MILLION POINTS OF LIGHT"
Computer Conference Discussion
Being Distributed to Networks Around the World
Item 188 29-MAY-89 20:24 Gordon Cook June 21st Soviet-American
Space Bridge (please Port FREELY)
I'd like to bring news of a potentially very important event to
Metanet members and to members of other nets to which I hope this
announcement will be ported. I have met the Soviet visionary and publicist
Joseph Goldin at the ENA Meeting here in Allentown. Joe is determined to
stage, at Avery Fisher Hall in Lincoln Center on June 21st, a multimedia
Space Bridge linked live via satelite and the San Francisco Moscow
teleport to Moscow and Armenia.
JOSEPH GOLDIN: SOVIET VISIONARY AND CITIZEN DIPLOMAT
While I will come to the details of the program in a moment, let me give
some background about Joe. He has been close friends with many of
the most important Soviet intellectuals including dissidents in the last
decades. We hit it off immediately when I told him that I did my doctoral
work on Petr Iakovlevich Chaadaev, a member of the early 19th century
intelligentsia, to whom Alexandre Pushkin (brilliant Russian poet and
creator of the modern literal language) devoted his Ode and verses, and
whose gloomy diagnosis of Russian culture resembles the period before
*glasnost*. In 1829 Chaadaev wrote a mournful Philosophical Letter
Addressed to a Lady.
"You would think that with one elbow resting on China and the other
on western Europe, we would have combined in our own culture the greatest
strengths of the Eastern and the Western traditions. But no, our past and
history are empty and our future barren. We are aliens in our own houses
and cities. The nomads in the desert are more attached to their tents and
the shifting sands than we to our homes." Chaadaev wrote 'for the desk
drawer' but seven years later he gave the manuscript to the editor of the
journal *Telescope* who tricked the censor into approving the Letter for
publication. When it came out in October 1836 it caused a furor. The
Chief of the Secret Police said to Tsar Nicholas: "Chaadaev has taken
leave of his senses. No one in his right mind could have written such
slander about the Motherland." Chaadaev was declared insane, placed under
house arrest for a year and forced to undergo weekly visits by a drunken
army physician. Thus began the Russian dissident psychiatric tradition.
In 1982 Joe Goldin staged in Moscow the first successful Space Bridge
between our two nations. In 1983 Joe met Senator Tim Wirth of Colorado
who, through his Washington office, enlisted the cooperation of the
University of California-San Diego in the staging of a very successful
Space Bridge - 1983 with Moscow Film Festival.
The American media praised Joe for his "great achievement" and
suddenly, a week after the Festival ended, Joe found a uniformed "doctor"
knocking at his door. He was an involuntary resident of Kaschenko
Psychiatric Hospital, or a "psikushka". His stay was short only because
academician Evgenii Velikhov, now Gorbachev's science advisor, principal
force for the computerization of the Soviet Union, and Chairman of the
International Foundation for the Survival and Development of Humanity
joined forces with a Soviet and American network of space bridge
supporters to focus attention on his plight and bring about his release.
But how times change! Today Joe is on an extended visa to the US with
the goal of exploring and building citizen links between the two countries
written explicitly into his Soviet Passport: "private visitor to discuss
telebridges and other communications issues". Today he is the recipient
of a $10,000 grant from the Soros-USSR Foundation. (This foundation was
written up in the op ed page of the *New York Times* within the last few
months.) He has also received one of only seven grants given out so far
by the International Foundation for the Survival and Development of
Humanity, whose directors include Jerome Weisner, John Scully and Robert
McNamara on the American side and Andrei Sakharov on the Soviet side. The
grant was given to stage a successful space bridge performance of the
Beethoven 9th Symphony to many American cities and throughout the world on
December 12, 1988. As part of the performance, the American Red Cross
collected the first contributions for Armenian relief from participants
around America.
THE JUNE 21ST LINCOLN CENTER MOSCOW SPACE BRIDGE FOR ARMENIA
He has rented Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City on
June 21 for a global workshop entitled "One Million Points of Life". The
purpose is to build citizen-to-citizen communication focused on the
question of Armenian reconstruction, and has already attracted the
attention of Senator Tim Wirth of Colorado and Rep. George Brown of
California, New York's Apollo Theater, the United Nations Symphony
Orchestra, author Norman Mailer, dean of San Francisco University's School
of Creative Arts August Coppola, architectural firm Lozano, White and
Associates specializing in earthquake reconstruction. (Eduardo Lozano,
former professor of architecture at Harvard and Princeton was the first
American architect to support Joe's vision of a football-sized model of
the future city of Leninakan which will be announced and discussed at the
June 21st event.)
The program - which is evolving - may include:
o a visual display of scenes of the earthquake and public discussion
of an experiment with the future: creation of the physical model among
the ruins of the devastated city,
o both rock and classical music as a natural environment for the
future city,
o an in-person presentation by Colorado's Computer Cowboy Dave Hughes
outlining a plan to rebuild those first (and ultimately ALL) the buildings
in such a way as to take fullest advantage of the complete range of
information age technologies,
o a global appeal for contributions to aid in the reconstruction of
the city of Leninakan including games and auctions,
o a real-time exchange of video and computer messages from members of
the audience and citizens at Moscow State University, and downlinks to
major American universities and sites throughout the world,
o the participation of New York City which will be celebrating Fete de
la Musique day and night, and
o a finale featuring the Beethoven 9th on Lincoln Center's plaza and a
televised view of the sunrise from the ancient observatory Hagar Quim on
the Mediterranean island Malta at 11:45 p.m. EST (5:45 a.m. Maltese time)
Using funds received by Joe Goldin from the Soros-USSR Cultural
Foundation, Eduardo Lozano visited Leninakan in April in order to estimate
the cost of rebuilding the city. American companies Fuller Building
Company, Cardinal Industries, and others are in the process of negotiation
for developing a three- year $350 million joint venture for the
reconstruction of the entire city. Most of the necessary conditions have
been met except for the final signature of the Soviet Construction
Ministry - another problem to be discussed at the global workshop.
While general admission to Avery Fisher Hall and to all the downlink
sites scattered throughout America and beyond is $1, (and Joe hopes that 1
million people will purchase those tickets), special sponsorship cards
have been engraved for larger contributions: copper for $100, silver for
$1,000, and gold for $10,000.
Joe anticipates that the American construction firms and those in
other countries who are interested in Armenian perestroika will purchase
several cards and receive in return access to participate in electronic
multimedia hotline exchanges during the workshop with among others: Boris
Yeltsin, the hugely popular Muscovite politician who is also former
(effective May 30, 1989) Deputy Minister of the State Construction
Ministry, academician Yevgeny Velikhov, President Gorbachev's science
adviser, and President Gorbachev himself - to remove the last remaining
obstacles standing in the way of the beginning of Armenian reconstruction!
REFLECTIONS ON POLITICAL CYBERNETICS
With the June 21st "One Million Points of Light" global workshop at
Lincoln Center, Joe Goldin hopes to start a critical mass that will enable
him to produce Space Bridge events approximately every 90 days. As a
Russian historian, I believe that this activity can play a very important
means of encouraging continued political and economic liberalization in
Russia (including the increased importation and distribution of personal
computers and modems). The current period in Russia is both unprecedented
and very fragile. We all need to help him to do everything imaginable to
make it impossible to turn back the clock.
I hope that the computer networks of this country can be a carrier of
the event in attracting interest before hand and spreading news of the
impact afterwards. There are within Joe's grasp possibilities that Soviet
intellectuals could only dream about for the past 70 years. Because of
this, he is a driven man and one who wants to drive others. He has an
account on the Well (goldin1), PeaceNet (megavision), and SFMT
(megavision) and will be checking in frequently in the coming weeks. Let
us hope that we can assist him and that he in turn will check in regularly
with us in order to get our feedback on how he is doing.
Though we must remind him of Ghandi's idea that a leader's
effectiveness depends in no small part on his ability not to get too far
out in front of those whom he would lead, we should understand ourselves
that only we - computer networkers - have the force to move visionaries
and their global projects to creative fruition.
Citizen diplomacy, together with the tools of the Information Age,
hold out the promise of linking the Soviet Union firmly to the community
of man and in so doing, ending the isolation which Chaadaev lamented more
than 150 years ago.
Gordon Cook is science editor at a major New Jersey-based computer
research center and has a doctorate in Russian History. This item reflects
his personal views; he invites you to contribute to this exciting event.
The bank account for global workshop contributions is at the Apple
Bank for Savings, 2100 Broadway (73rd Street), New York, NY 10023,
#7210002056 "Sun Vision". This is a special account established for this
event by the Symphony For United Nations Foundation. All contributions
are tax-deductible. To receive a special engraved sponsorship card for
$100, $1,000, and $10,000 with all the benefits described above including
access to an electronic hotline direct to Soviet leaders and people
throughout the world, please call Ms. Eliane Reinhold at (212) 580-3744.
Let's start the global workshop now!