Sarfatti, an early rebel against academic physics, has been working with a group of scientists for decades to develop and publish unconventional theories about quantum physics, the future and space/time problems. Now from across continents people write to Jack asking to sponsor him and his site. "We've been watching your work for years," they say (wishing to remain anonymous).
Suddenly Sarfatti has cut his hair, cleaned up his act, moved to a nice office, and you can't get him off the Web unless it's time to eat and now, finally, he treats everyone to dinner. Is there envy in the voice of Sarfatti's friend who just spent a million dollars to build a not-yet-published new-technology Web site? Does this friend screech at his staff: "How does Sarfatti build a whole Web site in two months and you idiots can't do anything with a million dollars?"
Meanwhile, Dr. Sarfatti humbly works away at his own cutting-edge site and, for the first time in his life, enjoys his success. His group, the Internet Science Education Project, has moved to 3220 Sacramento in San Francisco. This building was once the home of Apple Media Lab and now houses filmmakers, Internet service providers, a Russian-American Internet exchange program, and Sarfatti. It's exciting and intense. Judy Donnelly, a former Stanford executive fundraiser, happened on Jack's operation while doing some UN project work in the building, and now they have an active machine for bringing in new funds.
The natural question for the good Doctor is: How did you get into this Web stuff in the first place? And the unnatural answer begins:
" I'm always ahead of my time. 'The kid from the
future,' they called me at Midwood High in Brooklyn. Where Woody Allen went at around the same time. I was in love with two women at the same time.
One was a jealous pistol packin P.I. (private investigator). The other was the sister of Edie
Sedgwick -- the star of Ciao Manhattan. They became great friends and I was out of the picture. Some women drive men to drink and the Foreign Legion. They
drove me to the Web."
Sarfatti was sitting in the Cafe Trieste moaning over these unhappy love affairs when an old friend, whom he'd known since he was 17 at Cornell, drops in. It's 1992 and the friend says, "Every idiot has a computer and here's a genius who doesn't have a computer." He buys Sarfatti his first computer.
Internet Virgin
Sarfatti joins The Well. "I'm happy-go-lucky-innocent Jackie, the kid from Brooklyn. I'm an Internet virgin and this guy, a real momser, rapes me in cyberspace." The raper/flamer is called "Boswell," and Sarfatti learns later that he flames all newcomers. He does intense time on The Well debating whether or not the brain is a quantum phenomenon, if time travel is possible, and if UFOs really crashed at Roswell in 1947. He refuses an invitation to meet Boswell in a cafe. Boswell turns out to be Gerard Van der Leun, an associate of Mitch Kapor and a contributor to Wired magazine. Boswell helped publish the Blue Planet Notebooks by Sarfatti's old friend, Liam O'Gallagher.
By the time he's thick into The Well, another friend, Creon Levit, responsible for a lot of VR stuff at NASA, tells Sarfatti about Mosaic and the Web. It's early 1994 and Sarfatti joins Netcom, goes on the Web and that was it. He feels The Well is obsolete now, although he does still have a page there.
Memes on the web
For Sarfatti the Web is the collective consciousness of the world, the world mind, Gaia. "We'll make memes on the Web. What memes are to the mind, genes are to the body." A meme is an idea or artifact outside of the human body that affects cultural development of the species.
That's how Sarfatti not only found the Web, but blossomed there. It's a medium where he can publish all his writings and all the illustrations that go with them. While he talks a mile a minute, he works on his 486 DX 100 with 32 megs of RAM hooked up to a T1 phone line. Looks like the fastest machine you ever saw. This can't be true. He's changing the background colors of his pages. He's showing us how to use 3D graphics as 2D graphics on the site until 3D browsers become available later this year.
Paul Zielinski has just come by the hectic office to put a new piece of software on Jack's site. According to Sarfatti, the eprint file archives at research sites like Los Alamos are not available to download by ordinary PCs and Macs. Zielinski and Sarfatti are developing software that will let users read these files without going through a UNIX translating program. They feel this will open up the whole world of research to everyone who wants to indulge.
These sorts of ideas are important to Sarfatti, who has built up whole theories of alternative physics that are usually not accepted in traditional academic environments. On the Web his theories can be published and debated, shared and disseminated in a way that has never been possible with traditional academic journals. Is Sarfatti a genius or a nutcase? Was Copernicus? Galileo? Newton? They were all hounded in their own time. Will we live long enough to learn whether or not Sarfatti is right or wrong?
We will if we freeze our brains when we die.
Sherry Miller is an artist and journalist with an unusual Web site of her own.
