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From: Stig Agermose <stig.agermose@get2net.dk>
Date: Thu, 08 Jul 1999 05:54:24
Fwd Date: Tue, 13 Jul 1999 02:43:01 -0400
Subject: Firmage Interviewed By ZDnet


Source: ZDnet,

http://www.zdnet.com/zdtv/bigthinkers/interact/story/0,6917,2288925,00.html

Stig

***

Joe Firmage Transcript

**

Big Thinkers: Joining us on Big Thinkers is one of the most
talked about people in Silicon Valley, Joe Firmage. So, Intend
Change, what's that about? You going from prophesy to
profiteering again?

Firmage: Well, hopefully a graceful combination of both the .com
and .org frame of mind. Intend Change is a venture construction
company that will build a small number of breakthrough new
businesses in partnership with a keiretsu if you will, venture
capital resources, engineering, and marketing talent, and also
the sort of management consulting to put all the moving pieces
together.

Big Thinkers: So what's the difference between everybody else
that's jumping on the VC bandwagon?

Firmage: Well, a number of things. First of all, the people
forming Intend Change have about as much experience in the
Internet economy as anybody on the planet. It's that simple. We
are financed by the organization that financed Yahoo! and
eTrade, and USWeb. We've got, of course USWeb/CKS.

Big Thinkers: You're talking about Softbank?

Firmage: Softbank, yes.

Big Thinkers: I must mention that Softbank is actually a part
owner of ZDTV.

Firmage: Sure. Softbank as you well know has its hands in a lot
of the leading ventures of the Internet economy. Also,
Crosspoint Ventures, with whom I go back almost a decade in
various venture capital projects. But, perhaps the most
important [aspect] of Intend Change is the expertise that we're
bringing to bear. We are hiring the seal team of Internet
economy experts, who have been there, done that, on multiple
occasions in the past half decade. And have been some of the
pioneers of assembling what we think is the Detroit of the next
century.

Big Thinkers: What did you see on the Web this time that made
you feel like you could step in and there was an opportunity
there?

Firmage: Well, we have seen at USWeb, a staggering number of
good ideas that are still-born, for lack of the expertise and
the resources to wire them together properly. We are going to
pick off 10 to 15 of the very best of those ideas, generated
either from entrepreneurs, or as spinouts from Fortune 500
companies, which is something we should talk about. And put all
of the pieces together: the management teams, the venture
capital, the strategic alliances, both inside the industry and
in the economy as a whole. To really launch these ventures
properly.


Now About Them Aliens


Big Thinkers: Your views that led you to leave USWeb obviously
didn't scare away these big investors. Have your views changed?
Have they modified since we last spoke?

Firmage: Not at all. In fact, I'm in a better position than ever
as a result of my ongoing studies and my investments in the
space sciences project to comment on it. And we'll get to that
conversation in a moment. But I think it's important to note
that the difference between USWeb and Intend Change, with
respect to my extra-curricular publishing activities, is that
the expectations are set properly in advance here. I stepped
back from USWeb because the expectations there had previously
not been set. At Intend Change I'm dealing with folks who have
been pre-disclosed. The market knows, the employees know, and
anybody who works with me knows that these are things that I
think about. These are things that I'm going to invest in and
study.

Big Thinkers: Now there are a flurry of questions from our
viewers. We've asked viewers to send in the NetCam questions.
We've got one right here. We received this NetCam question from
Colleen in Redwood City.

Colleen: I'd like to know why you believe that modern technology
is connected with aliens?

Firmage: This first and fundamental question is this: Is it
possible for life across the cosmos to develop a form of
propulsion more advanced than controlled firecrackers and jet
turbines? I, and a large body of new physicists believe the
answer to that question is definitively yes. If it is possible,
then there are all sorts of astronomers and cosmologists who
would leap over to my side of the debate and say, "Well, it's
almost certain then that humanity has been visited in the past
by advanced forms of life." If that is so, then we need to
consider more carefully the relatively well documented, better
documented than most people think, idea that at certain times in
this century, yes remarkable events have occurred that are not
public. But, that is not the center of my hypothesis. My
hypothesis does not rest anywhere close to Roswell, New Mexico.

Big Thinkers: Did you ever believe that this was going to
happen, that this was how people would respond, and was it worth
it?

Firmage: I presumed that this is the response that I would get.
But, the reason I did it was because I work with scientists and
engineers and theologians and others who for a variety of
reasons don't have the millions of dollars that I do to be able
to risk my career on talking about such subjects. The scientists
that I work with for example, behind the scenes, cannot suffer
the type of credibility damage that…

Big Thinkers: So you put yourself forward?

Firmage: Absolutely. Because I think society needs to be mature
enough to start thinking outside of the boundary conditions of
20th century physics, which we know are not a closed subject. We
all presume in western civilization that the gods of 20th
century physics have explained the fundamentals of the cosmos.
That is not so. They have derived in the past 80 years
remarkably effective mathematical equations that describe
certain parts of nature. However, every physicist knows that the
fundamental of space-time, of which I write and others write,
has not been discerned. And it is precisely in that domain that
these great innovations will arise.

Big Thinkers: If I said that your views were taken to heart and
actually were incorporated, what would transpire?

Firmage: We would start compensating the leading researchers in
engineering and science, who are pushing the limits on the reach
of humanity, at least as much as we pay our sports figures. To
me it's utterly inexcusable for society to trivialize what could
be the most profound revolution in human science ever. And at
the same time glorify the tactical and the tedious. We have
become a society which has lost its sense of discovery,
convincing ourselves that we are forever bound on this small
planet.

Big Thinkers: How could you say that? I mean, there are so many
discoveries in biotechnology, nanotechnology, cloning, on the
Internet? How could you say at a time like this that we've lost
our desire for discovery?

Firmage: That is true to a large extent in every discipline of
science other than the discipline of science which underlies
them all. Physics. Physics is to scientist what Genesis is to
the faithful. And when you have a revolution in physics, you
have a revolution in all science built there on. Which means
chemistry, geology, biology, and basically all of the
engineering disciplines that we've built on those sciences. This
is very profound stuff we're talking about.

Big Thinkers: Let's take another video mail question. This one
comes from Britt Morris from San Francisco, who wants to know
about the possible cover-up.

Morris: If there really is this big conspiracy, how come so many
people bought into it, and it hasn't been uncovered yet?

Firmage: That's an excellent question. It's one that I don't try
to spend much time talking about because I don't want to get
down the rat hole of conspiracy theories and all that stuff.

Big Thinkers: What about proof?

Firmage: I'll tell you the best information I have. The best
information I have is that the organization that does have,
shall we say, better knowledge than the public is much smaller
than you might guess. It is very small. It is also
quasi-private, established half a century ago and essentially
custodians for one of the greatest secrets of all time.
Remember, 50 years ago there was no such thing as a calculator.
The most advanced technology that John Q. Citizen was familiar
with was a Studebaker. Most people did not know the difference
between a moon and a planet. And you talk about the introduction
of knowledge that you're being visited by extra-terrestrials?


Visions in the Night


Big Thinkers: You yourself have mentioned, in The Truth, you
mentioned being visited by something. And I know you've said it
a million times before, but just for the recorded, tell me
exactly what happened.

Firmage: Well, a lot of people throughout history have
experienced what I've described. It was an image of a visitor.
At home. Waking up at 6:10 in the morning. Ready to head out to
the gym. My alarm clock goes off. I slam my hand down on the
snooze button as I tend to do. And in the next nine minutes this
image of a person hovered over my bed for about three minutes
and we had a conversation about space travel.

Big Thinkers: What did you say?

Firmage: He spoke first. He said, "So, why have you bothered
me?" He looked annoyed and perturbed. I said, I was between
asleep and awake, and I said, "Because I want to travel in
space." And he chuckled and said, "Well why should you have that
opportunity?" And I said without even thinking, "'Cause I'm
willing to die for it."

Big Thinkers: And are you?

Firmage: It's been a dream of mine since I was very, very young.
I was into astronomy and science in general starting at age 8 or
9. Bought my first telescope at age 11 and got a physics
scholarship. So I've been thinking about this sort of stuff for
a long time. But I will tell you something. You talk to anybody
in my background. Anybody. They will tell that you I'm one of
the most rational left brain type people they've ever met. So
for me to have that experience was a wake-up call, so to speak.

Big Thinkers: But the analogies to religion are very, very
strong.

Firmage: Sure.

Big Thinkers: You yourself grew up in a strict Mormon family in
Salt Lake City, Utah. Didn't an angel visit Joseph Smith, the
founder of Mormonism? I mean, angel/alien?

Firmage: Yes, he did have such an experience. And I'd left the
Mormon church by age 15. So, again, what I have come to see is
that the broad reach of science and the sweeping trajectories of
world faiths may in fact be on a path of convergence that we
will see in our lifetimes. And that path of convergence has a
direction-- the cosmos.


The Internet Chasm and Aliens on the White House Lawn


Big Thinkers: You've talked about the need to get across an
Internet chasm in the economy, so, are we going to get across
that chasm or are we going to be mired by this conflict between
the potential of communication and the vulnerabilities it
creates?

Firmage: That's a superb question. It's an open question. The
problem we have today is that we do not engineer our software
systems as if they were critical systems. Very few software
systems historically have been engineered for fault tolerant
operation in any dimension. Whether scalability, or attack, or
random failure. Infrastructure Defense is designed to aggregate
the knowledge to answer that question based upon a certain set
of attributes for a given institution or organization's IT. So,
take any government agency for example. ID would go in, make a
comprehensive assessment and compare that against its knowledge
base, and make a prediction, if you will, on the plausible
scenarios and probabilities with each scenario for the
reliability of that infrastructure.

Big Thinkers: Now I guess the question is, "Will we mire
ourselves in computer viruses and computer worms?" Is it your
belief that civilizations that we may encounter in other parts
of the universe have had to cross a similar divide, and is there
something to be learned here?

Firmage: I think there is. I personally am convinced that there
is advanced life out there and that it is equipped with
technology to travel.

Big Thinkers: Superior to ours then?

Firmage: Vastly. Vastly superior to ours. Remember we have been
engineering the "energy" in space for 40,000 days. 40,000 days
in a multibillion year planetary history. We have just begun to
learn technology. And we're confronting these seminal questions
that will be recorded in the history books a millennium from now
as fascinating, historically important debates. When we engineer
systems, on the Internet for example, for virus management on a
systemic basis, these are big, big decisions. These are the
future Y2K decisions that we're making. And we make them
everyday.

Big Thinkers: In the past, when we've gone searching for other
life, like when we came over here, we've infected that life.
These people may be advanced enough to travel in space, but are
they advanced enough to withstand our human viruses, or are we
going to wipe out another race by meeting them?

Firmage: I love that question because it answers the most
frequently asked question, "Why don't they land on the White
House lawn?"

Big Thinkers: Are they afraid of the prime directive?

Firmage: It sounds kind of corny, but it makes a hell of a lot
of sense. Every time human beings have interacted with more
primitive cultures, it's been a total disaster. So, is it
realistic to believe that if you were an advanced
extra-terrestrial visitor to this young world of primates, that
you would want to empower those 6 billion animals with the most
potent technology ever conceived? Far more potent than nuclear
energy. Far more potent.

Big Thinkers: I'm wondering how you'll work some of these large
companies that you want Intend Change to do business with, some
of which are very conservative, and may consider your views a
bit out there?

Firmage: No doubt. To parse the answer. First, everybody knows,
going in, what I do in both halves of my life. So, I think
everybody's pre-disclosed on what to expect. But, also I think,
in the Internet economy, one of the things we need most,
particularly the conservative corporations, is out of the box
thinking.

Big Thinkers: Did the Mormon belief that there are many planets
and life forms similar to ours influence you at all in this
quest?

Firmage: That's an interesting question. First of all, I would
describe my spiritual worldview as interfaith. Highly
ecumenical. Highly integrating, if you will. I see profound,
deep wisdom in ancient eastern mysticism. I see the
anthropomorphic reduction of that in Judeo-Christian teachings.
By combining the two together you get a very integrated
worldview. Mormonism is interesting because it works in a modern
civilization as well as any faith. No doubt it had some
influence on me. Mormonism is a very cosmically aware faith.
But, I'll tell you again; this is not a religious crusade. It's
about the unity of rigorous signs. And also the recognition that
what science does is measure. Science is not what you are.
Science measures what you are. You are something called the
cosmos. And I think that deserves to be characterized as a
spiritual concept.


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