Granola
Farmers meet Virtual Reality on 42nd Street." That's one of the phrases
Paco Nathan, president of Fringeware, Inc., has used to describe an
organization indefinable; a kind of mind-bending retail outfit where
shoppers try on original thought for size along with counter-culture
T-shirts. But the head honcho himself is first to admit his definition
isn't quite as user-friendly as it could be, precisely why FringeWare
Review -- a zine functioning as just one part of the three-tiered
business -- carries the warning label, "We are persistently difficult
to explain to many people in your life..." For instance, one issue of
FringeWare Review might contain a compelling article detailing Timothy
Leary's psychological analysis of human brain activity, a piece of
cyber-punk fiction, and a news story regarding proposed legislation
restricting the use of online BBSs -- this all wrapped neatly in a
package containing some fake advertising (a little joke from the
editors) and a mail-order catalog selling everything from the
interactive "MacJesus" game (which, in the words of the game designer,
gives you "an inside track when dealing with the Creator of the
Universe") to less sophisticated sex games, audio cassettes, and rubber
stamps ready to ink all correspondence with the message "I Grew
Marijuana." Besides manufacturing and maintaining a certain mystique
about his pet company, Nathan is into the melding of real-time
communities with the virtual community of the Net, and, of course, the
other parts of the project -- a website (http://www.fringware.com), a
retail space on Guadalupe (recently relocated from the spot they shared
with vintage store New Bohemia) which now functions as a bookstore, and
a tech-consulting business too. But it's the thinktank aspect of
FringeWare that carries over into each of its parts, aiming to reach
into the next wave of information distribution on a grand lark. Herein
lies the message and it's inherent disclaimer: FringeWare's cyberbuzz
is purposely left subject to interpretation. And as Nathan's seemingly
nonsensical definition illustrates, fringe dwellers seeking
illumination would do best to maintain a little cosmic humor.
Even
fellow tech-culture scouts seeking out reality/cybereality gaps on a
daily basis get stuck on the prospect of categorizing FringeWare. David
Pescovitz, co-author of Reality Check (HardWired, 1996), a compilation
of essays from Wired's column of the same name and a contributing
editor at the magazine bOING-bOING -- a career path similar to the one
Nathan himself once trod -- describes the collective more by the
characters involved than what they do. "For years, the FringeWare folks
have been reporting back from temporary autonomous zones where riot
nrrds, freaks, weird scientists, and other strange attractions run
amok," he says. "But the best thing is that Paco and his colleagues
don't take a hoity anthropological attitude and scribble notes from the
sidelines. Instead, they're helping throw the party."
And what a
party it is. These modern day Merry Pranksters are taking multi-media
theory and applying it to the Net to create new forms of Real Time
communities where netizens can make up their own rules, eke out a
living, and have a little fun while they're at it. Along the way, the
purveyors of this cyber-funk experiment drop jokes and metaphysical
roadblocks to keep out those who might have less than a passing
interest in the ride, and to keep those already riding the vibe on
their toes.
Sort of.
MONDO-bOING and the serendipity of the meta-organism
FringeWare
was just an idea in 1990. Nathan, who has been involved with computers
since 1972, was then a contributing editor at bOING-bOING, a zine with
a special brand of humor -- one part MAD Magazine and one part WIRED.
When bOING-bOING made a turn in priorities and started working on
publishing books, Nathan -- who also had a computer consulting business
by then -- began to focus his writing time primarily on MONDO 2000, a
serious high-tech fashion magazine with a slant towards cyber-cultures
and the Rave. Investigating and writing about cyber-fringe culture soon
bred an interest in the newly allowed possibilities of the free and
open exchange of information allowed by the Internet. And late in 1992,
in the back of Europa Books on 24th & Guadalupe, the FringeWare
company was born as a small mail-order operation with a website and an
e-mail list allowing mass distribution of all types of fringe culture
information to those who were signed up on-line. "It was kind of a
media collective," Nathan says, recounting the early ideas that drove
the company into existence. "We saw a lot of changes coming and wanted
to take advantage of that. It was really about exploring new media and
selling things that we thought had fallen through the cracks, like the
brain machines and smaller publications." FringeWare still sells its
fair share of products: alien-abduction ID cards, conspiracy books,
taboo religious materials like The Satanic Bible, as well as
hard-to-find foreign language books and works by literary giants of the
Beat Generation -- Burroughs, Leary, and Kerouac. But FringeWare's real
mission, first and foremost, is the dispensing of information. "Part of
the idea of FringeWare was to give a marketplace and venue to
hard-to-find material," says Patrick Deese, owner and operator of the
recently opened FringeWare bookstore, "I mean, Barnes & Noble isn't
going to carry this stuff." Deese joined the troupe for real after
years of minding the small pile of mail-order materials in the back of
Europa books where he worked as a salesclerk, while Nathan banged away
on the computer building the web page and e-mail list.
And it
was back during that time, when FringeWare's first commercial space was
busy gathering hard-to-find, counter-culture consumer items for
mail-order, that the business as a whole -- quite serendipitously --
began attracting an eclectic mix of participants inspired by
FringeWare's free-thinking maxim. In what would be the first of a
series of events that can't be traced to any certain training or skill
but ended up shifting the focus of the company profoundly, Nathan met
Jim and Jamie Thompson at a local Electronic Frontiers Foundation (EFF)
meeting. The couple are part-owners themselves of Small Works, a
company which produces Internet security systems. In just a few months,
as the dynamics of FringeWare began to shift and when Jon Lebkowsky --
an original co-founder -- left to pursue other endeavors in cyberspace,
the Thompsons became majority stockholders in FringeWare and began work
on the tech side of the business.
"For me it was an interesting
group of people who were doing different things with Internet
technology than I had done, and my thought going into it was to keep me
on the edge," says Jim Thompson. "I thought it was a way of maintaining
a newness and freshness, especially the weird tech world."
As it
was, a legal development in this weird tech world would soon explode
the company beyond the boundaries of the mail-order shop. The
news-making arrest of Steve Jackson, whose Austin-based gaming company
was shut down by the Secret Service, gave Nathan new insight into the
possibilities and pitfalls of Net culture. Serving as a local
correspondent for national tech publications including WIRED, Nathan
the journalist kept readers up to date on Jackson as he sued... and
won... his case against the federal government. Covering the
controversial battle made Nathan a resident expert in the confusing
legal aspects of this new medium, and gave him an advantage in his
consulting business as well. "In 1992, having a website was like really
weird," says Nathan. "I mean, doing business on the Internet, people
were like, `Is this even legal?'"
The current FringeWare team
still wasn't assembled by the time the 1993 SXSW Music Conference
rolled around, but the event would be responsible for bringing another
key convert to the fold, as well as a print publishing aspect to the
business. As a SXSW showcase organizer, Nathan was in charge of putting
on a multi-media presentation involving a Brain Machine, a device
developed with Japanese technology that was supposed to help people
concentrate their energy in an effort to make aliens among us reveal
themselves (really it just gives your head a little electric shock).
Also scheduled to appear, as a more tangible part of the showcase, was
Dissemination Network (DIS-NET), an industrial band from Denton, Texas
who utilized giant television screens, keyboards, tons of lights, and
lots of media sampling in their performance.
"They sort of put
all the techno-type bands in the one venue and called it a Rave," says
Monte McCarter, then band member and photographer, who would soon leave
DIS-NET to become an integral part of the FringeWare staff. As a fan of
MONDO 2000, which Nathan was already involved with, the two
tech-culture heads hit it off immediately, and a few weeks later when
Nathan was set to cover RoboFest for MONDO, McCarter offered his
photography services for the article. As it happened, Nathan was
getting ready to launch FringeWare Review and he needed somebody to
help out with the art. "I think I kind of surprised him, I was the
first person to apply for a job," says McCarter, whose home is aptly
littered with old videotapes, keyboards, computer equipment, and
various samplings of art -- all tools of the trade for a designer of a
zine aimed at the new media cyberculture.
In this fashion, these
explorers of the fringe have managed to stumble across each other,
establishing the sensibility that has since guided the business; a
larger, driving force that pushes people into certain places, creates
certain circumstances. "I don't really like to talk about it," says
Casey. "It's like if you define it, it might go away."
Unsaid
then, the members seem to agree that the mix and the method are working
fine. Each staffmember operates their side of the business in the way
that makes them happy; group board meetings are spontaneous and
accidental.
Still looking for others experimenting with virtual
communities, Nathan up and took off in late '93 and into '94,
criss-crossing the states from California to New York. And that trip
led him to meeting current FringeWare Review contributing editor
Scotto, who at the time had hooked up with a group of drama students at
the University of Northern Iowa. LERI, as they called themselves (named
for the recently deceased acid guru), were an on-line psychedelic group
developing the "net trip" where people from around the country log
on... turn on... and wig out... firing messages back and forth to each
other, expanding their minds and searching for the meaning of life.
Apparently, right up FringeWare's alley.
Sort of.
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
So
last year, when the FringeWare bookstore finally moved into its own
home next to Mojo's on Guadalupe, a collective sigh went out. The move
established permanency for the company -- a concept that might seem
contradictory to a fringe philosophy of life. But if the group accepts
anything, it's the concept of entropy. And now, after several years of
hard work, getting their own space is exciting and challenging for
them. With $60,000 worth of books on the shelves and 50-100 new titles
being added on a monthly basis, the book retail seems ripe for success. "Any
fool with a database can make a list of books," says Deese. "We're
trying to write reviews, scan in the covers and put in hyperlinks. In
On the Road, Kerouac uses a pseudonym for Neal Cassady, but you can
type in Neal Cassady [on the FringeWare webpage] and that book will
come up."
Any reservations FringeWare had about attracting
customers to such a strange storefront were quickly laid to rest as the
kindred spirits came out of the woodwork in droves. "The first month we
were open, a guy came in and bought ten books and was freaking out. It
was our playlist. He was our target market," Deese says. The store
itself, which serves as an outlet the average Joe can understand, has
enticed browsers to take a deeper look into the philosophy FringeWare
markets. "I don't think there's enough places that are putting
information out," Deese says in the midst of one of his passionate
rants about the need for knowledge. "It's like, `Hi, we sell
chessboards and they are good' -- and that's where I think we are
winning. We're attracting a lot of people who don't even know who we
are, but they end up visiting our website."
And the organization
continues to gain popularity and credibility in print. FringeWare
Review, now boasting contributors such as R.U. Sirius, Erik Davis, and
Erika Whiteway, who spearhead special issues on everything from
feminism (issue #4) to chaos spirituality (#10), continues to bring its
readers together in a "D.I.Y. love fest" where they can learn to live
-- and conduct business -- in Net collectives.
So how does an
alternative information peddler like FringeWare survive in the
mainstream? Aside from the bookstore, which is just beginning to turn a
very small profit, the organization also gets financial support from
Nathan hitting the lecture circuit around the world from Austria to
Canada expousing his cyberworld view. In addition, funds are amassed
from the general computer consulting work that he and other members of
the company contract out. But all the profits go into a big pot which
is divied up among the different areas of the business. Despite
FringeWare's successes, money remains a side product, the means to an
end to keep the idea going.
"It would have been kind of a
detriment for FringeWare, Inc. to come off big and make money," Nathan
says. "We had time to really figure out what people wanted instead of
us just doing what we liked. Besides, if we had made a lot of money
right off the bat, it would have been like a feeding frenzy [for
outside parties merely concerned with turning a profit]." That's the
happy contradiction. FringeWare aims to make money, but not at the cost
of compromise.
"When people come to our site, they are coming
for information," Deese says. "Yeah, we want to sell them stuff, but
what they are really looking for is information."
FringeWare has
created a place where anything goes, where they, as the weirdest freaks
of all, make it safe for alternative ideas to come together; a place to
get information from the closest source possible. "[FringeWare
provides] the notion of the temporary autonomous zone (TAZ) -- an arena
that tries not to put too much of a spin on information," says Deese's
assistant Scott Casey, who has been involved with FringeWare since back
in the Europa days. "This is what [author and philosopher] Hakim Bey
talks about. Immediacy. Get right up there close to it and check it
out. Don't just trust what you hear about something."
So, the
intrepid traveler daring enough to attempt to climb the mountain of
information the FringeWare folks have assembled in their zine,
throughout their bookstore, and on their web site -- while remaining
able to laugh at themselves as they inevitably fumble along the
electronic road -- will be serving FringeWare's great experiment to get
people thinking again, even if it means hitting the edge of
rationality. "There is so much that mediates between people and real
information that can give you power," Casey says in one final prophetic
and philosophical muse. "[FringeWare] is a medium to disseminate the
most information with the least mediation."
So wherever
FringeWare is accessed -- on the Net or in Real Space -- we can be sure
that the new rules of chaos and information will be applied together in
search for truth. Individual truth. A Do-It-Yourself kind of truth.
