Cyber Pioneers -- In Mondo 2000, Judith Milhon And Ken Goffman Trafficked In High-Tech Hype

Can there be such a thing as "digital Druids"? Souls so drenched in hype over the technological future that merely uttering nouns like "cyberspace" and "cyberpunk" has brought them a new religion?

The answer is yes, for I'm sitting here with two of them: Berkeley-based Ken Goffman and Judith Milhon. Each is costumed top to toe in black jeans and leather - Edward Scissorhands meets Anne Rice (a comparison seems somewhat fitting, since each proves an expert name-dropper and self-dramatist).

Under the pseudonyms "St. Jude" and "R.U. Sirius," these are two of new technology's original hypesters. In 1989, Goffman helped found a magazine, a glossy, hybrid update of oracles such as Omni, which brought nerds their own sex, drugs and recognition. It had the catchy title Mondo 2000, and in three years its circulation skyrocketed.

Mondo 2000 caught a new wave, one of New Age thinking crossed with high technology. This happy accident altered its readership: from 12,000 souls to more than 100,000.

By 1993, Mondo made the cover of Time, and was spinning off books from its star contributors with titles like "The Cyperpunk Handbook" and "Mondo 2000: A User's Guide to the New Edge." R.U. Sirius and St. Jude made them happen - and used these, too, as self-promotional tools. Goffman hit the talk-show circuit, where for the likes of Donahue he happily spouted off on the future, Mondo-style ("techno-paganism" to "cybersex").

This came easily to the goofy-looking Goffman, a Brooklyn-born savant and college English major. Says he, "There were three things I wanted out of life. Start a magazine, start a rock band, and run for president."

In 1982, already a music veteran, he moved to California and published High Frontiers. It was a modest, small-circulation fanzine, but one whose ambitions were revealed in a subtitle ("Psychedelics, Science, Human Potential, Irreverence & Modern Art.")

Frontiers mutated into Reality Hackers, which covered virtual reality, "high-tech pagans," fractals, "psychoactive foods" and Brian Eno. But its moment was just short of arrival. News distributors, recalls Goffman, "thought it was a cult magazine about cutting up people."

By 1989, though, there was Mondo, stuffed with sci-fi, shock tech and "weird science."

Art-directed by the talented Ben Nagel - and with a logo by the German artist Brummbar - Mondo quickly gained a reputation. It boasted features on trepanation (the technical term for drilling a hole in your head), tarantula venom and "cyberpunk." And it seized on drugs as the "techno edge," which happened to please many of Mondo's famous contributors: acid gurus Albert Hoffman, Terence McKenna and Timothy Leary, plus the Grateful Dead camp's John Perry Barlow.

Even though its publisher would not use one, Mondo knew computers were changing the world. So it loudly trumpeted virtual this and techno that. But some concepts were so virtual they were actually fake. Goffman: "Even with the technical stuff, we made things up. I mean, we oversold the cyberpunk thing like crazy! We wanted hippies and punks and bohos to get technical."

Mondo also had wild design strategies, an in-your-face attempt to obscure its actual text. Later magazines - from Wired to Raygun - would use this tactic.

But it was Mondo that grabbed a shapeless moment, right before high tech received lifestyle savvy. Luckily, its motley "staff" was raised on the previews: science-fiction and emerging New Age texts. To them, Bill Burroughs meant more than Bill Gates. And pop from The Shamen said more than the work of Erwin Schrodinger - who helped make those "quantum leaps" they loved to cite.

"They saw the computer as a drug," said one of the magazine's earliest consultants. "Being in Mondo," Goffman adds, "was being a rock star."

He is right, for critics quickly bought into the hype. Newsweek called the magazine "an idea time bomb"; Entertainment Weekly, "a weird new world." It was not read by too many scientists - and perhaps not even by many hackers. But, says Goffman, Mondo concerned the culture. "I'm a media boy! We're all fiction writers! We weren't telling people what software to buy."

In short, it was techno-jive for the coffee table.

But Jude Milhon brought it hacker credibility. A "Marine Corps brat" who had lived all across America, she did commercial work as a UNIX programmer. Milhon brought hard skills and some hacker cronies - and she saw a gap in communications. "I don't like hippies, I don't like hippie culture. And the magazine had a lot of New Age language. Outside that was just the hacker slang, and the somewhat abstruse technical terms."

There was no common language for potential readers.

Milhon: "So we had to forge a new vernacular. We created metaphors which would work for us. We used hacker slang but then we extended it." She now speaks of Mondo as "neologistic": filled with user-friendly synonyms for techie thought.

Sample: "The coalescence of a computer `culture' is expressed in self-aware computer music, art, virtual communities, and a hacker/street tech subculture . . . The computer nerd image is passe, and people are not ashamed anymore about the role the computer has in this subculture. The computer is a cool tool, a friend, important human augmentation.

"We're becoming cyborgs. Our tech is getting smaller, closer to us, and it will soon merge with us." (Gareth Branwyn, Mondo 2000 "Street Tech Editor")

This kind of writing worked, and the rush was catching. "Cyberspace" and "cyberpunk" kept growing as catch phrases. Mondo and its methods were mentioned everywhere, from The New York Times to Details magazine. And the publication was trendy in Japan and Europe.

Before long, however, it had competition: Wired, a publication with far more corporate aims.

Competition on Planet Cyber

Wired was founded by Louis Rosetto and Jane Metcalfe, who already had a pair of magazines behind them. Both were recently returned to the U.S. from Holland. Whereas Mondo grew out of parties and drugs and the publisher's checkbook, Wired was launched with a calculated business strategy.

Yet, when Wired made its debut, it owed a lot to Mondo. As the San Francisco Weekly recently put it, "It . . . looked long and hard at Mondo's back issues . . . Paying writers 20 times as much as Mondo . . . the more commercial Wired quickly skimmed the . . . Mondo talent."

Among their recruits were Goffman and Milhon. Milhon even appeared on the second cover.

Now, Wired dominates, certifying both their stature. But this pair want more out of the current moment. Their latest tool for getting it is a book: "How to Mutate and Take Over the World" (Ballantine Books, $24). Insofar as it has any format, this is a scrapbook, collaged and multi-colored. Insofar as it has any narrative, it concerns an anti-censorship cadre. The cover and its publicist call the text "an exploded post-novel".

"How To Mutate" was co-written with "The Internet 21," 21 writers located electronically. They live around the world, from Italy to rural America.

Says Goffman: "It's not found stuff, they wrote it all specifically. We sent out this long plea and a detailed plot line. It was set up as a role-playing game."

"How To Mutate" is extremely gamelike: Even its two authors play some definite roles. Most of its text is e-mail and online transcripts. Milhon: "It's a novel, but it's also personal. It's an e-pistolary novel, an electronic `Les Liaisons Dangereuses.' "

Still, one plot device got ahead of the book's writers. As they conjured up a set of government censors (called the "Human Anti-Defamation League"), Congress passed the Communications Decency Act. It became law the day their book was published.

Goffman sighs at being beaten to the punch. Still, he feels the CDA offers a "chance for change."

Altered statesmen?

Why? His leathers creak as he gestures excitedly. "America hasn't seen real subversion for ages; people are just showing off their shock tactics. But when someone does limit the cultural discourse, it creates a very real pool of rebellion. And it runs across a wide spectrum: from kid hackers to militia maniacs.

"So we've really been granted an opportunity. Now the hacker mind-set can permeate our culture!"

It may be debatable whether "wetware," "designer aphrodisiacs," "synaesthesia," "holographic fashion" and unreadable graphics should be considered "culture." But why not give some credit where it's due? Without these two and their Mondo cohorts, cyber-hype might have well have languished much longer. Besides, despite their talk of "pranking" and "dada mimicry," and their deluge of fairly comical nouns, both these writers are clear about their politics.

They believe in freedom, and the right to be absurd. Goffman: "We are really First Amendment absolutists. I'm a lifestyle absolutist: pro-meat, pro-choice, pro-fur, pro-theft. No coercion, no rape, no murder." When he pauses, Milhon leans in quickly. "The idea is instant revolution! Go online and learn! Make sausage out of society!"

Or, as Mondo-speak once put it: It's happening so fast you can't anticipate it, so just freestyle: Your style takes over.

"How To Mutate and Take Over the World" is out now; Mondo 2000 lives on at selected newsstands. The Mutate Project Web site can be visited at http://www.onworld.com/MUT