Selected Nonfiction

I Remember Mama – A Mini-Memoir

May 12, 2009

I Remember Mama by Richard Thieme published in Review Americana, Summer 2009 I remember my mother talking on the telephone. She sat on the telephone bench in the hallway, turned toward the wall. She always talked loudly, as if what she had to say had been compressed and forced itself out of her. Energy sprayed [...]

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Engineers and Existentialists: How Critical Infrastructure Protection Turns Security Professionals into Philosophers

January 6, 2006

Engineers and Existentialists: How Critical Infrastructure Protection Turns Security Professionals into Philosophers by Richard Thieme Published in the Infragard Journal (Winter 2006) A discussion of critical infrastructure protection in the larger context of public/private partnerships would seem to be a simple matter. I imagine that many security professionals, if they studied philosophy at all, did [...]

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Are There UFOs on Mars?

July 1, 2005

Are There UFOs on Mars? by Richard Thieme It’s a matter of common sense, really, this UFO business, that and taking the time to understand all kinds of human activity from the psychology of perception to “black budget” and other clandestine operations to the uses of cults and religions for purposes of social control. It’s [...]

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Persons of Conscience and the Laws of Robotics

March 12, 2005

Persons of Conscience and the Laws of Robotics by Richard Thieme The Three Laws of Robotics I have been listening a lot lately to persons of conscience. What do I mean by “persons of conscience?” Let’s take a cue from Jeffrey Wigand. Wigand, made famous by the film The Insider, is the man who called [...]

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The Enemy is the Machine: A Letter from Israel

June 12, 2004

The Enemy is the Machine: A Letter from Israel by Richard Thieme In a world frightened of both terror and warnings about terror, what is the worst danger?  To live with fear or not to live at all? And if we dare to live, should we fear most an explosion or the loss of our [...]

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The Future is Not What it Used To Be

April 27, 2004

This is the statement by Robert Adams as to what he would like. I see the context of his questions or way of framing the issues that leads to this essay, a little more than 2000 words (2191) and hence available for editing. Robert’s issues are included and recontextualized; the essay illuminates the context of [...]

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Talking to Ourselves

January 14, 2004

Once upon a time in the sixties, I published a short story in Analog Science Fiction about a man who invented a virtual reality machine and let a carnival owner try it out. The carnival owner was so hypnotized by the fantasy world and its contrast with the grim realities of his life that he [...]

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Identity/Destiny

October 7, 2003

Identity/Destiny. by Richard Thieme “Identity/Destiny” was published in Prophecy Anthology, Volume 1“  a full-color book featuring sequential art by artists such as Shannon Wheeler, Scott McCloud, Sho Murase, Yuko Shimizu, Nathan Fox and Bernie Mireault by Sequent Media (2004). The text accompanied wonderful graphic narrative. Identity is destiny. Identity is designed. Our destiny then is [...]

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Straight Talk on Useability

August 9, 2001

Straight Talk I write an column called “Islands in the Clickstream” that is disseminated over the Internet. It’s about our interaction with new technologies and the larger issues of our lives that they raise. One reader wrote that more and more of my columns were emphasizing sentiment, rather than technological issues. He was right. So [...]

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Ferg’s Law

December 16, 1997

This is how the Internet works: Somebody in Kentucky finds one of my columns and asks to reprint it in a newsletter. Our email exchange begins a dialogue – in this case, on Buddhism, on-line spirituality, and how the world works – and in one of her exchanges, my email pal says, “I have a [...]

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The End of Television – Anticipating the Future in 1997

November 2, 1997

The End of Television by Richard Thieme published online by Freed November 1997 A funny thing happened on the way to this article about television. Television disappeared. I don’t say that lightly. I was the last kid on my block to get black-and-white television and the first to have color. We won a huge RCA [...]

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Find the Answer Within

August 5, 1997

Find the Answer Within published in .net Magazine (UK)Summer 1997 William Gibson’s Neuromancer is known to many because of one word, “cyberspace,” a fulcrum of a word around which a whole new world has coalesced. Equally memorable, though, is an image of the cyberjunkie Case jacking into the Dixie Flatline for the first time. The [...]

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Hot Wired Wheels – Anticipating the Future

July 29, 1997

Hot Wired Wheels by Richard Thieme Published on Web Ireland, Summer 1997 Your autombile, the Internet and you will soon be a seamless weld of three systems of information and energy. You’ll be slotted into an energy field like a card in a laptop. Daimler-Benz is trotting out technology that they say will give us [...]

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Knock Knock

May 2, 1997

Knock Knock by Richard Thieme published as “Mapping the Human Heart”  in Internet Underground, January 1997 “Who are you?” said the caterpillar. Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland “How can it not know what it is?” Deckard, Blade Runner Blade Runner. A film about replicants, genetically engineered androids, machines that look and act human — [...]

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The Interior Castle

April 19, 1997

The Interior Castle The spatial metaphor of architecture has deep implications. A house, for example, is an archetypal symbol for the psyche; when we dream of houses, we are dreaming of our interior “space.” Teresa of Avila’s The Interior Castle described spiritual development as analogous to the exploration of hidden rooms. Similarly, orators in ancient [...]

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Creating and Discovering Community in the Digital World – for IBM

April 4, 1997

Creating and Discovering Community in the Digital World by Richard Thieme We think of artifacts as physical constructs, but the symbolic artifacts that constitute our individual and collective mental maps of the world are no less substantial. Our belief systems are built of those symbolic artifacts; often unaware of their presence, we inhabit a complex [...]

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One Family, One Planet

November 29, 1996

One Family, One Planet Richard Thieme Published by Gateway Computer in the Gateway Magazine, Winter 1996 Our Island Earth The first photos from space of our planet – a fragile blue-and-white oasis in the desert of our solar system – changed what we meant by “one world” forever. Our experience of the Internet is doing [...]

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Stalking the UFO Meme. or, How to Build a UFO … Story

November 1, 1996

Stalking the UFO Meme by Richard Thieme published as  “How to Build a UFO … Story”  in Internet Undergr0und. November 1996 (Vol 1, Issue 12) “There is Thingumbob shouting!” the Bellman said. “He is shouting like mad, only hark! He is waving his hands, he is waggling his head, He has certainly found a Snark!” [...]

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Bridging the Chasm

June 1, 1996

Bridging the Chasm published in Internet Today in the U. K. in 1997 What in the world is happening? Everywhere I go as a consultant – businesses, schools, city government, even the FBI – I hear the same concerns. Here’s how it came in one morning on the telephone. “We need you to come talk [...]

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Lost

April 22, 1996

From dashboards to backpacks, GPS technology is everywhere. Maps updated with streams of data guide us through traffic jams. Hikers navigate mazes of trails with ease. Efficiency and security. That’s how GPS is sold. But something important is being lost — the ability to get lost. It isn’t just physical. Lost-and-found symbols have long given [...]

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The Stock Market, UFOs and Religious Experience

May 23, 1994

The Stock Market, UFOs and Religious Experience reflections on a speech I have given for investment analysts,  religious seekers, and other interested parties … As a consultant and public speaker, I address a variety of issues: leadership, the uses of power, and the transformations of organization; diversity, conflict reduction, and team-building; and ethics. But I [...]

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The Future of Networks … in 1994

April 4, 1994

The Future of Networks: the Future of the World published in LAN Magazine (Australia) (Spring, 1994) I am not a futurist, but I do take solace in knowing that most futurists aren’t either. Futurists seldom describe the future; they describe the present. Since ninety-five per cent of us haven’t arrived at the present yet, it [...]

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