Hacker poetry: Agrippa

For a while now, I 've been collecting bits and pieces of poetry with that tie into a hacker theme. I've decided to post them here one-by-one in the coming weeks.

The first offering: 'Agrippa (a book of the dead)' released in 1992 by William Gibson on 3.5" floppy disk and set to encrypt itself into oblivion after a single reading.  Published in collaboration with artist Dennis Ashbaugh, the floppy disk came embedded in an apocalyptic looking art book.   A gallery of pictures depicting the book can be found here and for those that want the original 3.5" floppy disk experience, an emulation can be found on this UCSB website.

From the poem itself doesn't really have any sort of technical slant (see the full text on williamgibsonbooks.com), but given the novel distribtion mechanism and the author, I couldn't overlook it.  An excerpt:

When the colored restroom

was no longer required

they knocked open the cinderblock

and extended the magazine rack

to new dimensions,

a cool fluorescent cave of dreams

smelling faintly and forever of disinfectant,

perhaps as well of the travelled fears

of those dark uncounted others who,

moving as though contours of hot iron,

were made thus to dance

or not to dance

as the law saw fit.