r i g h t . b r a i n . p e r f o r m a n c e l a b

Welcome to the Promised (?) Land.

As you all have figured out by now, the Internet (spelled carefully with a capital "I",) is the new Utopia. This is especially true for naturalized Californians like me who have searched westward and can't move any farther...unless we intend to swim.

The most recent developments in California's physical topography has been the dot-com influx, which has forced up the prices on real life space beyond the pocket capacities of most bipedal mortals.

Another, equally depressing issue is the co-option of the Internet by capitalist forces which are doing their best to turn our beautiful virtual paradise into a shopping mall. As a person who has watched the Internet develop since 1989, this is terribly saddening.

On the other hand, the Internet is not so easily tamed, despite outward appearances. While it's all too easy to leaf through search engine pages of monotonic dot-com shopping sites, it is still possible to find gems like the Gutenberg Text Project, AWAD's brilliant Anagram Server and other wonderful resources. There's also still tons of interesting personal web pages and odd fan sites that exist out of the sheer dedication of their authors.

This page is dedicated to the re-co-option of the web by human beings! Here's to our utopia!

The following are mainly non-commercial links, but a few are small commercial sites with interesting stuff. Most of it is stuff I've found as I've looked around over the years. (I'm not being paid by any of these groups to publicize them, if you were wondering.)

I'll do my best to add to and maintain it. Thanks

Last updated 6/6/01

6/4: New category - Activism. Will shuffle things around a bit soon since many of the links already overlap with this category.

5/22: Visit the SF Digger Archive to find out more about (some of) San Francisco's utopian roots. (They go back farther than one would think, and come from a surprising place.)

5/21: Adbusters.org and its anti-corporate culture-jamming campaigns are a great inspiration!

3/9: Recently I've found all kinds of wonderful things out there that gives me hope for the world. Check out Opera, the free open source alternative to the corporate-greed-head browsers. Also, I rediscovered an old friend -- the "Resident" of San Francisco's "Office Gallery," who looks at space and art in an altogether different way.

3/2: Thanks to Monaural Jerk who runs Debris.com, we can now OPT-OUT of advertisers' tracking! I'll post links, but meanwhile, check out his page listed below under "technology" to get to the right places.

Technology
Opencontent.org	Making information free...
FreeNet	A new way to think about networks
Opera	A company with a multi-platform browser that is open source, private, socially responsible and good to its workers. Check out their manifesto here. (Who needs Microsnot?)
Debris.com	REAL technology news...

Activism
There are plenty of fantastic activist sites that are barely accessible to anyone without a T1 connection, but are worth mentioning: Greenpeace.org (more to come)
Purefood.org	Find out about the foods we eat and recent news about genetic engineering. The campaign against Starbucks is very impressive.
KPFA.org	One of the last of a dying breed - true grassroots radio being threatened and worth supporting. Excellent and accessible RealAudio broadcasts. Democracy Now, Flashpoints nad CounterSpin (all linked to this site) rock.
Indymedia.org	Self-explanatory.

Mythology/Communities
Encyclopedia Mythica	A great resource.
The International Wizard of Oz Club	The mythology of the American Dream
The SF Digger Archive	This utopian, communitarian group from the late 1960s is based on the writings of Gerrard Witstanley, and the Diggers of 17th C England, when a group of unlanded peasants took up residence on common land as an early form of passive resistance.

Art
Sarah Smiley's Virtual Beret Project	One of the pioneers of Internet Art from Boston, MA
Office Gallery	Another art pioneer, this time, in the non-net world, although he's done great things with his web site.
SF Bay Area Artist Resource	For artists looking for space and news, art-lovers looking for shows, and a good look at the scene
Adbusters.org	Designers who culture-jam! If you aren't sure what that means, go to the site for some artistic inspiration! Now, this is what I went to art school for...

Literature
Project Gutenberg	The public library of the web. Always free, always fun. Great when you're stuck at home with a back injury.

Travel
New Zealand Guidebook	As many of you know, John travelled to NZ this December. This site was incredibly informative and entertaining.
(also see The Wizard of NZ)	We saw him in person. Went all the way around the world to do it. He defies explanation. This could be a homepage, but this man was called the Official Wizard of NZ by the Prime Minister some years ago. The verdict? Travel.

Music
Perkigoth.com	Very fun. A labor of love.
MP3.com	Commercial, but also a great source for new and emerging artists.
Napster/Macster	Needs no explanation.

Curiosities and Homepages
jodi.org (wrongbrowser.com?)	Jodi has been around for a long time. What is it? Who knows...but your computer isn't broken, it's just goofing around.
IconTown	A lovely imaginary answer to the SF eviction problem...A town of 32x32 pixel icon buildings by Bernd Holzhausen that has been around since 1996 and was honored at Ars Electronica 2000. Make your own tiny house on your own bit of virtual land. Meet your new neighbors. John and I will soon have our dream studio/house on Plot 9.
The Jencyclopedia	How many ways can you spell Jennifer? Over 100, according to this odd page which features a list of famous Jennifers as well as Jen sightings. (I have one of those every time I look into a mirror.)
The Duck Files	This guy raises ducks. In England. And he keeps a diary. They swim. They poke their beaks into camera lenses. They're very cute. Definitely worth a look.
The Searchable Online Archive of Recipes	Rolonzo Tolkien keeps an amazingly huge archive, which covers the globe, any dietary need, and curiosities like Star Trek food.
The UC Berkeley Department of Philosophy	This is a site I design and maintain, and IMHO, is a fun and unusual site, worth listing on this page. (Check out Hubert Dreyfus's on-line audio lectures!)
Wordsmith	Home of A Word A Day, a listserv that's been around forever, as well as the Internet Anagram Server which also calls itself "I, Rearrangement Servant"