Características de los principales tipos de dispositivos

language but come up with an impossibly implau- sible yet compelling story with which to save my acquaintance’s life.

Anyway, without further ado, I headed to the airport, catching the next plane to Amsterdam and billing it to my revolving expense account main- tained by N!

• • •

I stopped at the hotel in Amsterdam just long enough to shower, shave and pick up my media bag from a rapscallion Hindi named Nazir. A Dutch citizen in only the loosest sense of the word, Nazir had relocated from Saudi about 10 minutes after the Middle Eastern “Midnight Sun” event the rogue nova Asif ibn Karim had caused in late 2004. “It’s okay,” Nazir told me. “I don’t miss it.” The little fiend had originally established himself in the global nightlife circuit as part of the late 1990s’ world music scene, but that had since gone bottom up and Nazir had reinvented himself as a “shaman” of techno music.

That term — techno — has always caused a subcon- scious shudder in those who don’t understand it. Perhaps it’s ingrained in us; after centuries of making music with “analog” equipment like sitars, drums and flutes, some people just can’t relate to music composed with no instruments. Since its creation in the late 1970s, what may generally be called “techno” has evolved to eclipse the more traditional rock and roll of the late 20th century. Past its primitive (yet compelling) beginnings, techno has become the lingua franca of music — the “establishment,” as it were. Whereas the American “rebel” would pick up a guitar, his European coun- terpart would instead learn to make music on a computer. Somewhere after Aerosmith’s 75th album, the pop music enthusiasts of the world grew bored with tedious power ballads sung by 60-year- old men pining for the “hot sugar” in teenage girls’ panties. They turned to electronic music — dubbed techno for ease of reference — which was created by and for energetic young audiences, and which was performed in the greatest quantity (if not quality) in Europe. Vulgar, raw and at once emotionless and furiously passionate, techno ignites the hearts of the dance floor-regular and partygoer alike. It is not that unrealistic, then, to understand how techno has “taken over the world,” to use mediaspeak. Music is

and nightclubs are about excess performed to a backdrop of music. This much always rings true, as Nazir showed me at a nightclub called (roughly translated) the Echo’s Lick, no matter where in the world one finds himself.

Bodies whirled and pogoed like the pistons in an internal combustion engine. Clubcrawlers threw back drink after drink — beer, liquor, enzyme- boosting vegetable elixirs, you name it — and catapulted themselves back and forth across the dance floor. Every pharmaceutical of man’s device and then some could be found in the Echo’s Lick, often over the counter. (The club had somehow procured a license to prescribe drugs, which, when coupled with the Netherlands’ lax controlled- substance laws, made for one hell of a refreshment bar.) Spikeheads bumped into herb-smokers, who crawled past agitated Mitoids who whirled like dervishes through clusters of hallucinogen trippers and common drunks alike. After taking a pair of red bennies for nostalgia’s sake (much to my later chagrin), I cut a rug to an old favorite — Wonder Factory’s anthemic “Baby Left Me No Kidney” — and demanded Nazir take me somewhere else. “These cretins are dancing to the same damn 16- beats I’ve heard since I was born,” I spat at him. “Take me somewhere I can hear some modern music, you son of a dingo.”

In the cab, my head exploded. My bennies, which I had thought were measured in milligrams of po- tency, were actually measured in centigrams. The “nickels” I took made up more than a “dollar” worth of dosage. After we found enough pieces of my head to rudely fashion a replacement, we moved on to Groove Yard, a bar specializing in terr’r.

Terr’r music (pronounced “tear”) grew, I think, out of the 20th century’s nihilistic hyper-affected “gothic” (sic) genre. From seeds originally sown by urban industrial and goth music, terr’r takes the experience one step beyond. Using special subsonic frequencies, terr’r music stimulates the fear centers of the human (and nova) brain. These subtle sounds “create” fear in listeners.

Of course, any postgoth worth his salt is going to appreciate the irony of this, and while the vast majority of terr’r bands (like the Crypt Roses and Valhallan Reavers) turn out some truly overwrought

67 Z I N E

As for the bar’s patron’s, you’ve seen them all before: alienated teens, alienated young adults and indulgently alienated Older People. Most of them seemed bored by the scene, but Nazir told me that ennui is part of the culture. “They want to be dead. Or vampires,” he told me. I didn’t get it. In yr. Corresp.’s opinion, for a group

so alienated, these scenesters sure seemed to thrill at sniping at each other. If I had a dollar — excuse me, a euro — for every time one of them called another a poser, I’d be archduke of the Low Coun- tries.

It is curious to note that the Dutch have

severely limited the venues in which terr’r music may be played. Because of the psychological effects it creates, terr’r is forbidden in moving vehicles and in public houses of less than certain size. It

makes a sort of vicious sense; terr’r scares normal

people, on the level of mortal fright or amphet- amine derangement. Sensible individuals flee from fear, though human society seems to have bred headcases who actually thrive on this sort of thing. After flogging Nazir, I managed to persuade him to show me a novox bar. Out front, we met a woman who claimed to have a gun “with enough power to stop a nova dead in his tracks.” It sounded like a good deal to me, and I looked over her wares. Indeed, the gun looked like it would stop a rampag- ing nova, primarily by exploding the shooter and everything within a few yards of his vicinity. Thanking her and refusing politely, we entered the bar. On our way out, we noted that her car was a flaming wreck and the woman was nowhere to be seen, but I refuse to render any judgment based on my incomplete observation of the situation. Novox music (pronounced no-VEAU, sort of like nouveau) is defined not so much by its sound as it is by its creator. Performed by novas, novox may sound like literally anything. Most of it takes the form of enormously accelerated rhythm, but some songs involve a manipulation of soundwaves, distortion of

the audience’s perceptions and the creation of effects previously impossible without the abilities of the performers.

Aficionados of the movement subscribe to some fairly extreme (though they call it “pure”)

distinctions. A given novox song, if performed by a non-nova,

suddenly ceases to be a novox song. Likewise, a nova may

choose to perform an “unplugged” version of a novox song, thus making it no longer novox by removing the “super” elements. Exactly what genre this leaves the song in is not exceedingly

clear to me, and Nazir offered little insight on the matter, preoccupied as he was with a cute little Dutch girl with blue hair that had sporadic, visible waves of low-wattage

electricity running though it.

“Damn it all,” I whispered to the aging Marlene Dietrich clone across the table from me, “what’s the word I’m looking for to describe this music?” “Impossible,” came the reply, which was wholly accurate. She punctuated her revelation by standing suddenly and flapping toward the bar amid her wintery leather wrap. With that, I looked around the bar and surmised one of the great, baffling and ultimately stupid truths about novox music: It is for genuine individuals. Because it lacks a genre and a definitive sound, novox appeals to those who subscribe to the cult of personality surrounding various performers, which may be anyone. Legions of unique conformists, the fans of novox are an unsettling breed, even more disturbing than the most morbid terr’r musician.

By following up with my batlike bar-muse, I learned that she had meant it was “impossible” to define novox, but my first impression seems more poetic and appropriate, so I’ll continue to support that. As the evening waned, Nazir and I left the novox bar. “For God’s sake, you shirt-stealing Lowland

terrorist, hasn’t this city got an aggressive side?” I bellowed, cuffing my guide on the ear and pulling the door off a passing taxi to make my point. “What do you mean?” asked Nazir, wrapping his boxed ear with a bandage he liberated from a drunkard slumbering in the gutter. In tandem, we stomped the hobo and rifled his pockets for loose change, which seemed to come only in the form of French francs.

children are such hollow, monstrous brats. Robbed of a chance to grow up normally, these sons and daughters of the shafted proletariat instead mature into bitter, resentful creatures, blaming the rest of the world (or blaming small parts of it with greater vehemence) for taking away their chances. These kids don’t want school — they want to be given a fair shake.

Of course, skipping school leaves them with even fewer chances, but don’t tell them that or they’ll shiv you and take your wallet. (If you don’t believe that kind of thing still happens, go read Punch Nardello’s Detroit to Dresden.) Undereducated, mean and angry, they turn to celebrity, which they can attain through catastrophic violence broadcast on local news and OpNet newsfaxes or by making undereducated, mean, angry music. Here, for example, are the lyrics to Blood Simple’s under- ground hit, “Too Big World” (lyrics reprinted by ASCAP permission). Hate Hate Hate You Aberrant Spic Red-dot Jew

Charming stuff, to be sure. Upon making it to the iso bar, Nazir and I decided it would be safer to just hang out in the parking lot, where we could still hear the music, and drink malt liquor from the package store. Those clubs are every bit as ugly as the music they play, and they’re probably none too receptive to an aging doctor of journalism and his not-white contact.

Misplaced urban disillusionment diverted into aberrant musical social commentary!” I smashed a passing woman’s head through a storefront window for added effect.

Nazir kicked a dog that had foolishly wandered over to him. “Why, certainly. You want iso.”

Of course; iso. The bastard halfbreed of middle-class malaise and ignorance; the godless child of nihilism and social maladjustment; the sound of poor parenting and barely subjugated deviant whims. Iso is the music of reaction. Left unemployed by technology and shifts in urban corporate influence, many cities’ families have been left destitute, scrambling for whatever jobs unskilled assembly-line ratmen can turn up. It’s no wonder, then, that their

69

From OpNet Hypertech’s Monthly NetZine

TechStep , December 2007

Here we are again, with a brand new smattering of what’s chic and what’s plain weak. We editors here at TechStep take no small amount of effort to eyeball the current and coming trends, and we pick the most promising of them to relate to you, our loving readers. At the same time, we keep our fingers on the pulse of what’s on its way out, because God forbid anyone should see you using outdated apps or last year’s floor model. You’ll thank us, we promise.

Weak: Internet Diehards Chic: OpNet Pioneers

Okay, call us biased, but as the aging US information network degrades beneath billions of daily Ponzi-scheme e-mails and “I Like Karnage Kombat XIV Gold Turbo” websites, the OpNet looks better and better with each new dawn. Faster data transmit times, hardwired fiberoptic routing, infinite POP subscriber capacity and, most important of all, registered user licenses (to filter out the dimwits and plebes) make the OpNet the wave of the digital future — which is here and now.

Weak: Clunky Laptops and Palmtops Chic: Cellular Voice-Recognition Interface

Why carry your computer when you can talk to it from any phone? Typing takes too long and suffers the vagaries of low motor skills and sausage-fingers alike. That, and they always scan your laptop’s hard drive at the airport, which is pretty invasive, from a personal privacy stand- point. Instead, adopt any of IBM’s, ViaSoft’s or Apple’s vocal interfaces and telecommute at the speed of thought and speech. As long as your computer’s OpNet-capable, processing power is only as far away as your pocket or glove box (or wherever you keep your digital phone).

Weak: Bat-Swinging Vigilantes Chic: Nova Activism

Look, the novas are here to stay. Sure, a few of them are selfish bastards who crash local economies or wipe out city blocks, but most of them are fairly normal people underneath it all. Maybe it’s a naïve optimism, but here at TechStep, we still believe in the fundamental goodness of all people, novas included. Rather than let a few bad apples spoil the bunch, we’d rather see another Fireman than another Bernard Goetz or Percy Andreesen (the New York fall riots of ’03, anyone?).

Weak: Internal Combustion Chic: Hypercombustion Engine

Okay, maybe the hypercombustion engine is still a bit sketchy, but we can hope, can’t we? A twenty-five thousand percent reduction in global pollution from transportation and mainte- nance vehicles is a good thing and one that we’re willing to risk a few isolated cases of brain cancer for.

Weak: Grass-Roots Ecology Invigoration Chic: The Zushima Macrobe

The editors here at TechStep are basically lazy people, but firmly devoted to better life through technology. Now that we have garbage-eating “good” bacteria courtesy of the boys and girls at Utopia, let’s use it, dammit! The Zushima macrobe degrades waste material and converts it to carbon dioxide (which, granted, is a simplified statement, but even the post- macrobe undigestibles occupy less than one hundredth of their original mass), which our environment is prepared to handle. Doesn’t the grass look particularly green today? Now

that we no longer have to bury our trash or shuttle it around the oceans in toxic garbage scows, let’s all take a brief moment of reverence to throw a discarded McDonald’s cup into the street.

Weak: Proprietary OSs Chic: ViaSoft One World

Yeah, you Mac enthusiasts are going to raise a stink, but come on. Enough platform warfare — let’s get back to computing. Word is the VS wants to have a remote-compatible version of One World (nicknamed Infra, according to our sources in the R&D labs) by early next year, which should be music to your ears if you’re running DeskAway 1.03b. Don’t get us wrong, Big Blue; we love using the phone, but that awkward keyword interface needs to go — and to have the Mac’s floating-point coprocessor on its side.

Weak: Neural Messaging Chic: Good Ol’ Digital Cellular

Perhaps this seems Luddite of us, but does neural messaging offer anything that pocket or wet phones don’t do better? Why read a message when we can talk directly to the person who wants our attention? Global long-distance — when you even need it — is cheaper than neural messaging hubs and backup nerve tapes* anyway. Here’s a case of the “break- through” not living up to the hype. Sorry, PacBell; nice try.

*Yes, we know they’re not tapes, but they may as well be. So sue us.

Weak: Prague and New York City Chic: Addis Ababa

So long, global telecom. Goodbye, Madison Avenue brand doctors. Hello, entertainment, technology and hospitality. Since Utopia’s “terraforming” of Ethiopia, hundreds of thousands have been flocking to A-A to take advantage of the city’s boom in growth. Corporate and private citizens have made Addis Ababa a hugely important city, rivaling Tokyo and New York for finance, Bombay for entertainment and any of those crumbling old European cities for culture. Provided you like a warm (er, hot) climate and no humidity, you can live like a caliph in Africa, because it’s still burgeoning, so rent can be found on the cheap.

Weak: Endangering Species Chic: Genetically Engineered Fauna

Hey, we leave the office sometimes. We know that humans aren’t the only animals that share the earth. We’re happy, though, that new sciences and nova-assisted developments have made it easier for us to exist with those animals. The end of the last century saw over 200 individual species on the endangered list. Through cloning technologies, we’ve brought that down to a mere 12, and “adaptations” of existing animals (such as the Triton-backed “garbage pigeon”) give us a more harmonious environment. Engineered cattle, chickens

and fish provide more nutritional output per animal and in less time than Mother Nature’s way. Even Utopia’s Zushima macrobe is vectored by a specially bred rat. It may not be Bambi, but it sure beats eating species like popcorn.

Weak: NBC and Infantry Actions Chic: Nova Elites

While it pains us to think that we can communicate with our friends nine thousand miles away at the speed of light but we’re still fighting with each other over skin color and religion, at least there’s a better way to do it. Gas? No thanks. Germ-bombs? Forget it. We’ll just hire nova elites to do the necessary ass-kicking and watch it all on the N! Report. Why risk countless lives when the novas are willing to pound on each other for a few million bucks plus licensing options?

Weak: Polymer Chic: Eufiber

Polymers are artificial, expensive, unstable and able to transmit less data per millimeter than the alternative. Eufiber, even the synthetic stuff, is biodegradable, cheap, universal and able to transmit enough data at a one-millimeter thickness to grant everyone in the UK access to every subscription-service OpNet porn site in the world at speeds in excess of a gig a second. And it makes a snazzy running suit. No contest.

Weak: Big Five Chic: N!

For God’s sake, people, how many more sitcoms and gritty UN-agent dramas do we need? The answer is none! Maybe we’re just geeks (though the Nielsens suggest otherwiseº), but we’d rather watch the Stone Badass duke it out with Electric William any day of the week. And ABC, here’s a clue: Urkel is 40 years old. Retire him!

71 Z I N E

Few things frustrate customs officers more than smart-mouthed travelers, and, to their credit, that’s probably fair. Spending all day behind a desk while supposedly weeding out international terrorists and the like isn’t a very rewarding or fulfilling job, considering that most people who pass through their checkpoints are hopelessly boring. This has the unpleasant result of dulling the officials’ senses, making them slothful and irritable. Their vigilance turns to ire, as days pass without a single terrorist or dissident upon whom to swarm and pummel, and their only solace is a half-sleep, which smarminess only serves to agitate.

But then, that’s my job — to witness reaction and