Subscribe"Joe Firmage - the Fox Mulder of Silicon Valley- resigned yesterday from the firm [USWeb] he founded so he could promote his belief that many of today's high-tech advancements, including semiconductors, fiber optics and lasers, came from aliens."
"Firmage's subsequent departure from USWeb -- which, at the time, was merging with CKS, another prominent Web design firm -- was swift; the media coverage of his book ['The Truth'] was not kind. Words like "nuts" and "crazy" followed his every move.
Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and, to coin one at random, "memex" will do. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.As We May Think by Vannevar Bush, July 1945.
It consists of a desk, and while it can presumably be operated from a distance, it is primarily the piece of furniture at which he works. On the top are slanting translucent screens, on which material can be projected for convenient reading. There is a keyboard, and sets of buttons and levers. Otherwise it looks like an ordinary desk.
"In 1998, Joe Firmage took the risky step of disclosing a visionary experience that convinced him of a connection between the world's religions and high-tech advances and visitors from outer space.Read more from CNET News.com's 2003 interview with Joe Firmage.
The furor surrounding Firmage's revelations coincided with the young multimillionaire entrepreneur's resignation from his position as chief executive of USWeb/CKS. Firmage subsequently became associated with Ann Druyan, a respected science writer and the widow of famed astronomer Carl Sagan, and withdrew from public scrutiny to devise what he and Druyan described as a science-based entertainment portal."
"“Two and a half years ago, Joe Firmage (famous for founding USWeb, infamous for some of his views about visitors from outer space) gave an interview with News.com about his latest project -- and was barely comprehensible. Even the interviewer interrupts him halfway through to say he's not sure what he's talking about. In it, he discusses how commercialization is destroying ‘the architectural efficacy of navigation,’ along with the idea of self-sustaining 3D portals of information supported by ‘a new caching system for the Mozilla browser that lets you present Xbox-quality experiences on a dial-up modem’ using ‘a natural taxonomy where we use nature, as described by science, to describe what's inside, and what is related to what.’ As for how it would be financially viable, he expected to partner with ISPs to sell... um... ISP service that would let people access his new 3D portals. It's not clear why they would do this, but he seemed to believe that being associated with his company would ‘be a Good Housekeeping seal of approval.’ In the past two and a half years, it appears they've spent some time refining the idea, and are are now set to launch under the Digital Universe brand -- though, the message has changed somewhat. There are still some similarities to that early ‘vision,’ ….Instead, it's morphed into a Wikipedia wannabe with certain articles in certain portals approved by experts (apparently having a PhD. qualifies you). The plan still seems to be to support it by selling ISP services -- but now the plan is to sell branded ISP services through various non-profits. Of course, nowhere is it explained why people will want to buy ISP service from a non-profit.”
"[His] book will reveal, Firmage says, the most 'astonishing' proof to date that extraterrestrial beings have been making cameo appearances on Earth for about the last 2,000 years, and that 51 years ago the 'teachers,' as he calls them, revealed themselves to the U.S. government in the New Mexico desert, planting the seeds of the digital age. Firmage says that most of what we here in Silicon Valley have 'created' and innovated was originally derived from an alien spaceship crash in Roswell, N.M., the wreckage of which was 'reverse engineered'and released to select companies by the government over the last 50 years."
« Older Jurgen Habermas and the Public Sphere.... | Almost exactly 40 years ago, o... Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
That's the interesting thing about truly open-source knowledge bases. As w/ open-source software, if one project is widely perceived as unreliable or even a little buggy, someone else can come along and take the best of it to create something better.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 8:31 PM on December 20, 2005