Newmedia on Tue, 7 Mar 2000 01:06:56 +0100 (CET) |
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[Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime> Re: NOTHING WORSE |
Saul: I can assure you that in 1955 -- when Chomsky was "discovered" at that conference at MIT -- a great many people *tried* to figure out what to do with this stuff . . . for "social engineering" (i.e. "mind control") purposes. And, there is absolutely no doubt that the CIA was funding *all* of this research at that point. No doubt. The "conspiracy types" are the ones who aren't sophisticated enough to read Chomsky . . . not the CIA. <g> Don't believe me? Take a look at "Science of Coercion: Communication Research & Psychological Warfare 1945-1960" by Christopher Simpson. Quite academic. Not a whiff of "conspiracy" in it at all. It's simply a fact that virtually *all* social science in the WORLD at that time was funded by the various intelligence agencies and simply a fact that virtually all research centers were headed by de-mobilized WW II "Psy-warriors." In the U.S. that funding relationship continued pretty much intact until the post-Vietnam era, when due to the "Mansfield Amendment," non-military "soft science" projects could no longer be funded through the Pentagon (i.e. the "black budget.") All this was particularly true at MIT -- one of the premiere CIA research outposts to this day. The post-Vietnam MIT Media Lab would have been military/CIA funded too but, under the new rules, Negroponte was forced to go out to "industry" for most of his funding. The little invention of which he seemed the most proud in his best-selling "Being Digital" -- the digital "walk-through" of Aspen, CO -- *was* CIA funded, however. How do I know about any of this? My father was a protege of Norbert Wiener and he was on the faculty of MIT from 1952-60. Wiener tried to quit over and over and I've read much of the records on all this -- in the "archives" and the "dean's office" -- as well as knowing a good deal about it from my family. Oh, yeah, Simpson -- who also wrote "Blowback", "The Splendid Blonde Beast" and "National Security Directives of the Reagan and Bush Administration" is something of a Chomsky protege . . . Best, Mark Stahlman _______________________________________________ Nettime-bold mailing list Nettime-bold@nettime.org http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold