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William Gibson's AGRIPPA Recovered and Revealed
Posted by
kdawson
on Wed Dec 10, 2008 09:16 AM
from the gripping-hand dept.
from the gripping-hand dept.
Bud Cook writes "While the text of William Gibson's elusive electronic poem AGRIPPA is widely posted around the Web, it has not been seen in its original incarnation — custom-built software designed to scroll the poem through a single play before encrypting each line with an RSA algorithm — since 1992. Today is the 16th anniversary, to the day, of the poem's initial release. A team of scholars at the University of Maryland and UC Santa Barbara used forensic computing to restore the code from an original diskette loaned by a collector and have placed video of the complete 'run,' as well as never-before-seen footage from the night of AGRIPPA's public debut in 1992, up on a Web site called the Agrippa Files. There's also a detailed essay documenting the forensic process, plus a mess of stills, screenshots, and a copy of the disk image itself."
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Harold AI? (Score:5, Insightful)
We finally found the Epitaph of the Twilight?!
Could this be.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Could this be.. (Score:5, Funny)
It's much more draconian than the 3 activations and buy a new game from EA.
And apparently just as ineffective.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Considering it took 16 years for it to become widely available in its original form, I'm not sure I'd exactly call that ineffective.
Re:Could this be.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Considering it took 16 years for it to become widely available in its original form, I'm not sure I'd exactly call that ineffective.
Maybe it's just no one cared too much about it...
Parent
In a world of art that's mostly disposable... (Score:5, Insightful)
...it's quite heartbreaking to see a work that intentionally removed itself from your grasp. It's quite the change from people who expect immortality simply for having cameras pointed at them or semi-literate fiction aimed at people who think MTV is the height of culture.
Re:In a world of art that's mostly disposable... (Score:5, Informative)
Except the dead sea scrolls is hide from animals, not paper from your printer. Normal printing paper has a very short life span (comparatively).
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
As for AGRiPPA itself, I get the point, but it always struck me as Gibson's shark jumping moment. An extremely unegalitarian artwork that only a few people can see in its intended form is certainly the artist's rig
Re:In a world of art that's mostly disposable... (Score:4, Insightful)
The whole point of this was to show you it disappearing. End of. No more. Done.
Putting into a medium designed for longevity would be precisely against the intention of the work. How do you demonstrate the effect of a highly mobile medium on literature if you protect against that effect ? Do you (can you) see DRM in action through the medium of paper ? It is impossible because you can always go back a page - not so with this. This is ice sculpture for the modern age.
Parent
The 2008 /. version of the poem ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The 2008 /. version of the poem ... (Score:4, Funny)
"The 2008 incarnation of the poem consists of custom-built software that, when /. readers try to read the poem, it is encrypted in a weird Web-based algorithm that transforms the text into a message saying 'Error establishing a database connection'.
Sorry, that was my fault. I was the first one to visit the website, and it consequently encrypted itself. I should have mirrored it.
Parent
Que? (Score:3, Insightful)
I have to say the book is beautifully put together - a real work of art.
But I have read the poem (a copy of it is on Gibson's website) isn't it a bit pretentious?
However as a piece of art it is an interesting idea (minus the poem).
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Old enough to get it, are you? Hrm. haven't gone far enough in your thinking though. The text is not destroyed after reading. It is encrypted. It's the digital equivalent of locking something away and then throwing the key into the sea.
It was probably Gibson's way of saying he's trying to forget whatever made him make Agrippa in the first place. I also think he did it knowing full well that the text will be recovered. Dunno what this means in the context of the work (it's not a poem, although it contains a
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
To this day I am still amazed at how prescient he was in Neuromancer. The details -- all wrong, killing each other over a few megs of RAM, the virtual reality helmet, yadda yadda. The real interesting part is the atmosphere, e.g., at one point they go to a site that where people have been scrawling passwords for various high profile computers eve
pay attention (Score:5, Insightful)
This poem, for all intents and purposes self destructs after the first reading. Therefore, you should pay attention the first time--you won't get another chance.
That was, I think, the intent. Whether he could have written a program that would have enforced that intent better is beside the point (apparently it was "broken"). For the average reader, you'd get one shot.
It's still a compelling thought.
Parent
Good art (Score:5, Interesting)
I would see Gibsons work as deliberately demonstrating the sadness of work being published, read, then being removed from view and denying future readings. Very nice work considering the date it was first published, and our current problems with DRM and copyright.
Buhddist sand art (Score:4, Interesting)
That's a major factor in Buhddist/Nepalese sand art (proper name escapes me): a great deal of effort goes into making an intricate work of art, only to have it brushed away a few days later.
From the Japanese samurai classic text Hagakure: "In the Kamigata area, they have a sort of tiered lunchbox they use for a single day when flower viewing. Upon returning, they throw them away, trampling them underfoot. The end is important in all things."
Parent
Re:Good art (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the real trick is to display a work of art, while concealing said art, while also not allowing the act of concealing to turn into art itself. It seems to me that many would consider the "performance" of concealing the poem a work of art in itself.
I also have a hard time stating that "bad art" is "not art".
And I struggle over whether "not art" can be "accidental art".
Parent
I've studied Agrippa (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Yawn (Score:5, Funny)
it is a 5th grade programming project
So, let me get this straight. You were writing programs that RSA encrypt data embedded within its own executable in the 5th grade?
Wow. And here I was just writing programs in LOGO that made a turtle move around the screeen. :(
You were a gifted child, weren't you?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, interestingly enough, RSA is about as simple a cryptosystem as they come (next to OTP, that is). Really. The complexity is actually in the key generation (and even that is pretty simple once you've got a couple large primes). But once you have them, the actual encryption algorithm is dead simple.
'course, that's not to say it ain't still an impressive accomplishment. But it's no DES implementation. :)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
RSA encryption: c = m^e mod n.
It really is something a 5th grader could write. The security is in the selection of e and n (and d, for decryption).
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
RSA encryption: c = m^e mod n.
It really is something a 5th grader could write. The security is in the selection of e and n (and d, for decryption).
Assuming of course you wanted to decrypt it. That doesn't seem to be part of the design in this case.
Gibson Channeling Kovacs (Score:3, Insightful)
I love art
Thanks for clarifying that.
Lookit, I'm no expert on the topic, but as I recall the whole thing from when it debuted in '92, the use of the self-scrolling, self-encrypting gimmick was Gibson's toe-dip into a whole new creative medium.
The poem was about his mother, memories for whom were very dim, ephemeral even. Gibson selected this new "self-destructing" medium as a metaphor, to facilitate the poetry: Once you had read the poem, you could not go back and re-visit it, you had to rely upon your me