Cult of Mark Pesce

“This shall be everyone’s new favorite website – http://textsfromlastnight.com/”

Personally I don’t understand how the ABC justifies putting the New Inventors to air without awe-inspiring presence of the great one. Alison and Bernie may have their fans (Chris has a few too) but no-one comes close to the one true Pesce. With no on-screen Pesce goodness, those of us who seek to drink in his wisdom are fortunate to have The Word Of Pesce As Revealed Through Twitter – but it’s not the same.

I tuned in last week hoping to bathe in his nerdy glory, but he wasn’t on. The panel did however seem to be feeling the remnant auric energy from his last on-air appearance, however – there’s no other way you can explain cult-like smiles like these:

Wait, what’s that over James’s shoulder?

A recent twitter-converation-stream with our dear leader pointed out a new gold mine of religious messages for us followers to interpret.

For those unaware, Repo Man is a movie set in Los Angeles during the mid 1980s.. Weird aliens, LA Punks, Radiation .. and indiscriminate gun fire.

Please review the quotations from the movie, and report back your meditations.

I am dismayed, alarmed, wailing and gnashing my teeth. The spellchecker on my computer insists that The Glorious Leader’s name should be replaced by the hideous corporate moniker, ‘PepsiCo’. What is the world coming to? Does Joan Crawford have shares in Microflacid? Please, fellow cultists, help me be at peace with this heresy.

Perhaps we need to take up a collection and get him a Snuggie?

This might be the very thing to keep our dear leader happy through a harsh Sydney winter …

It comes as a great concern to this #CultOfMarkPesce devotee that others on Twitter are attempting to commit heresy by starting a #CultOfNickHodge.

There is only One True Cult, One True Way to Internet Enlightenment.

A mere droid of the Borg can not, nor ever can be, a Cult Leader.

To commemorate the fallen of his native land, Our Mark, the ever generous social butterfly, invited all of twitter to his roof top on Anzac Day 2009.

Other photographic evidence of the Dear One’s exemplary and totally at oneness with the vibe style of event management are available on flickr. Lots of fun and frivolity were had by all who attended. Btw, there is an entire stub pool at flickr.

Fine examples of Our Mark’s most excellent culinary ability are available all throught the interweb. Acclaimed by the members of the #cultofmarkpesce as the highlight of the season.

On 16 February 2006, Australian public broadcaster SBS current affairs program DATELINE telecast a segment featuring 60 new photos of the torture inflicted on prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

These photos were secured by court order, but the photos had not, at that time, been shown in the media anywhere in the United States.

Our Mark immediately saw the need for access to both Web-downloadable versions and BitTorrent file-sharing network versions of the broadcast. He sprang into action and made both the images and the show itself available on his VRML website.

His initiative was responsible for the dissemination of this information into the US.

Mark Pesce, our noted leader and predictor of all things digital shows his flexibility.

In a recently posted video of a 2007 lecture, Mark used the work Networking to describe the our internet future. A future, I might add, that will come to fruition as he predicts.

Like other soothsayers such as Nostradamus, the exact nomenclature of future objects and technologies will change: and Mark knows this. In fact, I believe that Mark is inventing these terms for our emerging digital culture.

From 2007: Networking

From 2008: Hyperconnectivity

From 2009: Sharing

In early 2008, Our Mark wrote:

Child pornography rings are highly secure, highly secretive, and almost entirely invisible. No child pornographer has been detected or caught through filtered network traffic. These rings are cracked because some law enforcement agency has broken into the human network of individuals who trade in these images. Filtering has not, nor will ever stop the distribution of any child pornography. Hence, Australia’s net filter will not do anything to stop or even slow down child pornography. It’s an emotional argument that has zero practical value.

In late 208, Our Mark wrote:

Which means that viewing a clip of The Simpsons on YouTube will soon be as illegal as watching it on television. In particular, videos showing the various times Homer has strangled Bart – which exist – would be very illegal, the equivalent of the most severe child abuse materials. And God help you if you should flip a link of that video to one of your friends. That’d be “distributing” child-abuse materials, because, where we are now, distribution has expanded to include link-sharing.

….

The age of gatekeepers is over. There are no gatekeepers anywhere. There is no way to keep someone from downloading the horrific child abuse that is The Simpsons. There’s no way to keep them from telling others about it. There’s no way to keep them from sharing it. Yet we’re hamstrung by legal processes and a Government which are completely desynchronised from the world at large.

In his own inimitable style, Our Mark was pointing out how both the Judiciary and the Executive branches of Australian government were struggling with the basic concepts behind the internet, and how this would affect ordinary users of the intenet. Before this subject hit the mainstream, before a Television show on our public broadcaster was hijacked over the matter. Truly a man ahead of his time.