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Your ebook "The Intruder Bulletins: The Dark Side of Technology" will be published soon. Will it be strictly available on internet? For the time being "The Intruder Bulletins" will be strictly available for the PC, personal computer in the form of a fee-based download, a disk w/cover art or CD-ROM w/cover art. Later will be available for ebook machines such as RocketBook and Softbook. Where can we find it and how much will it cost? You can find "The Intruder Bulletins" at the ebook publishers site VanGoach Books, http://vangoachbooks.bizland.com It is listed in the nonfiction books section of the site. The price is $7.95 per copy. How long is it? The book is over 236 pages long. It covers 36 major topics, plus a final chapter on corrective solutions, a resource section, a glossary and an index. I understand it talks about the danger of technology. Is it a research based on actual facts, or is it a more philosophical work? "The Intruder Bulletins: The Dark Side of Technology" is based on nearly three years of solid research. Listed in the back of the book are nearly 300 major articles, abstacts and studies, as well as 43 large volume texts, I have either drawn or quoted in the manuscript. Though the book is factually-based, I have made my own conclusions about the logical ends of some technologies and dillemmas presented. These may be considered a component of philosophizing. But the most important element is the book's accessibility, I neither spew academic or scientific terms every sentence nor do I hang my hat on newage theories about mother earth and the like. Can you explain the subject of this book more in detail? The thrust of the book is this: technology is advancing faster than our means or will to consider its ethical ramifications. Is it fine to harvest organs for transplant from cloned humans in factories? Are these "humans" if we purposely keep them unconscious and only use them for spare parts? Do they have souls? Is chopping them up murder or is it an excellent way to save others dying from lack of matching organs? Above I listed a few of the ethical considerations that should be weighed BEFORE we venture into further experimentation with human cloning. And that's just on one topic, there are 35 more to choose from in the book. Yet one can already see that such deliberation is what makes us both human and humane, and without such ethical oversight, science and technology become new tools for torture, slavery and dictatorship. What made you chose such a subject? Did you personnaly have any bad experiences with the dark side of technology? I chose this subject one day when noticing that instead of achieving progress through science and technology, we may actually slip backward towards the days of communist Stalinism. I noticed this when realizing that the New Jersey Turnpike Authority (NJ's major highways) installed a ready-pass that scanned your car as it passed through the tollboth. It tabluates your fee from a pre-paid card---however, it didn't stop there. It also kept records of your movements through the toll booths throughout New Jersey. The system was ripe for exploitation. I mentioned it in a letter to the editor and was laughed at. Four months later, the NJ State Police attempted to use the Ready-Pass data records to help in their case of a convicted criminal's abili. They suspected he was lying. A consumer group got involved and stopped it in court. Information is power. NJ-DMV was also selling its records to telemarketers. Private info up for sale to the highest bidder. This invasion invites everything from sicko stalkers seeking to harm us to warp governments wishing to amend certain freedoms. It's dangerous and its ulitmately undemocratic. Would you have any advice to give to all the kids out there willing to write a book on the dark side of technology? My advice is simple: study the new device being sold in the marketplace. Don't just consider all the good points being mentioned. Investigate what you are not being told. The bad points are what surface later whether they be a defective liver-destroying drug like rezulin, pulled off the market recently, or that playstation-2, whose computer-brain could be adapted to act like a guidance system for a terrorist missile.The Japanese manufacturer actually had to annouce this and apply for aspecial export permit from the Japanese government. I learned you were a quite famous writer worldwide. Which of your work contributed the most to your sucess? My plays contributed the most. You can get away with a great deal with plays that you cannot speak about in poems or essays. This is the dramatic effect that pulls people in. Plus you actually get to meet and speak to your audience at world-premier openings. That feedback is precious and stays with you forever. If I am not wrong, most of your works were poems, essays or fiction stories. What made you chose to write a non-fiction book? You are correct, most are essays, articles, reviews, poems and plays.I choose the nonfiction book route primarily because I already exhausted what I could say about the dark side of technology in the other genres. I wrote a series of plays: Bytes of Burden: Gear Fear, Jane Doe and Numb about artifical wombs, black-market baby organs, machine-addiction, animal rights vs human rights, etc. It was time to spell out all I felt and discovered in an entire book dedicated to those feelings. Plus in the fictional pieces you do not get the chance to lay out some corrective actions. In the book I have entire chapter of my suggestions to improve or fix what is wrong with certain technologies. I didnt't want to just rant and rave. I also wanted to offer something constructive too. You have received an incredible amount of awards for your work, what was the most important one you ever received? The most important award to me was winning the NJ Play wright of the Year Award for 1997. I now live in Arizona, but that award means so much to me. I worked my heart out for it. It's a beautiful tall trophy, triple layed. If my dad were still alive, he would have jumped up and down after I won it. May I ask you your age? I just turned 35. Born April 3, 1965. Since when have you been writing? I have been writing since I was 16 years old when I joined the high school newspaper as a way to meet girls. My first professional credit, an op-ed piece for the local newspaper was published two years later. Then I joined the U.S. Air Force and wrote for their community newspaper in Cold War-ridden West Germany. Thanks again for taking the time to answer these questions. |
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