Bruce Eisner's Vision Thing

Neuromancer (the novel) at 25 - PC World Author Looks at What It Got Right and Not

Neuromancer at 25: What It Got Right, What It Got Wrong by Mark Sullivan on PC World

I remeber spending time with Timothy Leary back in 1985 shortly after Neuromancer had been published in paperback. Tim pulled it off his shelf and handed it to me.

"Bruce, this is what the future is all about,"Tim smugly proclaimed..

I took the book home and read as much of it as I could. It was hard for me to get into it, because the future while full of new technology, still depicted human behavior as pretty much the same. My cherished notion at the time was that we would become better (less violent and more ethical).

I suupose that is because while change in technology has accelerated an almost exponential rate, we are pretty much the same human animal as we were 10,000 years ago, before history began. 

Still the novel is prophetic of a world in which I participate in more than most, the world of plugging into the web on a daily basis for long hours.

Now that 25 years have gone by, its probably time for me to go back and take another try at Neuromancer.

Timothy Leary Narrates Jim Morisons Trip in in the 1991 Oliver Stone Movie

Link for this Post: The Doors Movie on  [Blu-ray]

Oliver Stone's movie about my generation made a a full  generation ago (1991)  is on HBO in HD. As I turn it on,  Morison played by Val Kilmer is in front of my old Hollywood Hangout, the Whiskey A Go Go or a reasonable facsimile.

He leaps on top of one of the cars that cruised up and down Sunset Blvd as Hippies played guitars and shook tambourines. 

Morison has eaten some acid and as he looks down at the hippies on the street, he asks them "Is there anyone here who really knows how to feel."

He is transported to the desert where words straight from the words of Timothy Leary and Ralph Metzer from their classic LSD albums, invoking the Tibetan Gods and Bardos.

Since many of you are tweeing what you are up to tonight, I thought I'd share my encounter with the fictional verion of the raw soul of who young Irish Jim Morrison was.

Future Organic Technology -- The Visionary Art of Paul Laffoley

Link for this Post: Intro to Paul Laffoley and Future Organic Technology

A couple of days ago, I found a site called Miquel.Com "Your Favorite Source of Random Information." Actually the information is not a "random" as advertised but along the lines of stuff you might see on this blog.

Among the interesting eclectic information found on the site is a virtual visionary art expo by an artist named Paul Laffoley. One of his images adorns the top of this post. Here is how the artist describes his exhibit:

Immensely detailed mandalas of geometrical systems, thought symmetries, machines of the future, bioengineered living structures, methods of creating time-machines and dimensional wormholes are just the beginning!

There are many images up there and it would be worth your while to go there and take a look around.

Obama as Superhero -- Video

Link is video below

After having a President who launched the careers of more comedians than any other in history, at the beginning of his Presidency, Barack Obama appeared to be a bit harder as satiric muse. However, now that he is becoming more familiar to the us, that has changed.

As the Jib Jab web animation below shows, the direction of the humor has taken a refreshing new direction.

Try JibJab Sendables® eCards today!

The Psychedelic Conspiracy

Links for this Post:

The Aquarian Conspiracy Sex Drugs and Rock 'N Roll by Lyndon LaRusche; (first published in

The Aquarian Conspiracy: Fact or Fiction on Bible Believers

Psychedelic Alchemy on the Occult of Personality Blog

Unlike my now departed friend Robert Anton Wilson, I've never been a fan of occulture or conspiracy theories (although I think that Wilson was more a dilettante than a believer in such matters.

The reason I do not think much of conspiracy theories is that conspiracy is really not part of human nature. Humans are have too much competitiveness and too little intelligence for elaborate conspiracies. We are lucky enough if two or three people show up for lunch on time.

My opinion of occultism is similarly skeptical. Cults are just miniature religions. Just like religion, they require you adopt a fixed set of beliefs. Timothy Leary in his 1982 book Changing My Mind Among Others

The word religion beautifully defines itself, of course. It means "to bind" from the Latin re(back) and ligare (to tie up).. All religions are straight jackets, jackets for the straight.

The conspiracy theorists forge that nobody has spoken out about the dangers of totalitarian world order than Huxley. Take a look at the this video  interview of Huxley my CBS's Michael Wallace which I posted here.

Are Smart Drugs the Answer to Bad Moods—and a Bad Economy? Discover

Link for this Post: Are Smart Drugs the Answer to Bad Moods—and a Bad Economy? by Sherry Baker in Discover Magazine.

This is a wide ranging article about "smart drug's" that covers a set of topics much broader than its title would suggest. Rather than excerpt one section and have you read the article. I will list a few of the highlights and then let you read it.

• Recently introduced attention enhancing drugs such as Provigal and Modafinil
• Current and future memory enhancement drugs including a group called the " ampakines"
• The creativity enhancing qualities of psychedelic compounds
• transcranial magnetic brain stimulations to produce novel states of mind for creativity
• Futurists and their interest in the potential of brain-changing compounds for future evolution

This is brief outline of an article that probably should be three chapters in a book with some words connecting the dots

Undergrowth # 8: The Journeybook: Travels on the frontiers of consciousness New Book by

Link for this Post: New Book Undergrowth # 8: The Journeybook: Travels on the frontiers of consciousness

Back in February of 2006, after returning from the LSD Conference in Basel Switzerland, I posted REBIRTH - The Psychedelic Movement Comes of Age Rak Razam in Undergrowth describing and excerpting from Austalian Journalist Razam's account of the Basel event.

I just heard via email for Rak in which he told me about a new book he has published which uses the "Rebirth" blog article as a cornerstone for an anthology  I have not had the opportunity to read the book as it is from a small publication down-under but.here is his description of the new publication:

Undergrowth #8: The Journeybook is an essential map of hyperspace for the contemporary psychonaut and the uninitiated alike. Travel through time and space and partake of mushrooms at Harvard, hemp in Nimbin, DMT in the Amazon and anti-depressents in the suburbs of the West, to name but a few of the experiences which await you. Dance at Dionysian festivals, meet alchemists in the laboratories of

He Has Ridden -- Celebrating Bicycle Day 66

Links for this Post: Editorial: He Has Ridden by Bruce Eisner first published in published Island Views in the Winter of 1993.

Today is the 66th Bicycle Day, April 19, 2009 so I thought it would be appropriate to excerpt from article I wrote 16 years ago about this annual event celebrated by "psychelicists."

Sadly, the Island Group which I write about in the article is no more but otherwise the piece is contemporary:

We’re excited at Island Group because Bicycle Day is almost here. “Bicycle Day....what’s that?” you might be asking. Well on April 16, 1943, it will be fifty years ago that LSD was discovered. And three days after his amazing, chance discovery, on a spring day in 1943, Albert Hofmann took the first planned LSD session and soon found himself frozen in time on a bicycle ride from the Sandoz building in Basel, Switzerland to his home in the suburb called Rittimatte.