Richard Thieme celebrates speaking for Def Con for fifteen years by discussing the deepest truths he knows and relating them to Big Picture hacking.
Thieme references the most fervent explorations of his life, from immersion in the works of the Society for Psychical Research while living in England as a young man to conversations with remote viewers in the governmentís Stargate program to thirty years of research in UFO reports (in particular, experiences of ìstrangenessî such as spacetime distortion and telepathic knowledge transfer) to the passionate, obsessive exploits of real hackers and what they discover when boundaries dissolve - all in a context of his own anomalous experiences. He talks about the background for 'Mind Games', his recently published collection of nineteen stories of brave new worlds and alternate realities, which he wrote after a friend at NSA told him, ìThe only way you can tell the truth now is in fiction. He also discusses why another NSA friend warned that he was 'over the line' in the hall of mirrors as a result of his conversations with dark side actors and victims alike. He weaves all this together in the kind of narrative usually reserved for private conversations but which he feels he owes Def Con colleagues and friends after fifteen years of enthusiastic and mutual knowledge-transfer.
Richard Thieme has done his best to use his skills as a writer and speaker all his life He articulates what is often invisible, the ground or frame of the picture, as opposed to seeing only the picture or only being in the picture. He attempts to illuminate the context of cultural and social realities by describing the slightly bigger box into which we jump when we move out of the box in which we usually live. Born in Chicago, Illinois, Richard taught literature and writing at the University of Illinois, was an Episcopal priest for sixteen years, and has since 1993 traveled the world as a professional speaker. His presentations are diverse but always include the impact of technologies on social, cultural, and psychological states and the temporary identities that result. He speaks globally and locally, to audiences that range from four at a breakfest to thousands at a conference. Since speaking fifteen years ago for the first time at Def Con, he has integrated the seemingly disparate worlds of altered states of consciousness and deep states of spirituality, classic hacker mentalities at their best, and the professional practices of deception, intelligence, and security. Robert Morris, Senior, after reading his "Islands in the Clickstream," said, "You know you're insane, right?" An intelligence analyst at NSA, after reading "Mind Games," said, "I love this book! You're absolutely mad!" and a colleague from the Central Intelligence and Security Agency in Paramaribo, Suriname, after hearing him speak in Europe several times, said, "What planet are you really from?" Then he added, "Your writing makes me discover life again and again." Those quotes sum him up pretty well. Wisdom and insanity are contextual and depend on the frame of the listener as well as the speaker. You be the judge. Thieme's pre-blog column, "Islands in the Clickstream," was distributed to thousands of subscribers in sixty countries before collection as a book. His work has been taught at universities in Europe, Australia, Canada, and the United States. After reading "Mind Games," a colleague who serves as gatekeeper with Richard of an archive on ethics and intelligence at the Hoover Institute of War, Revolution, and Peace, wrote: "This is an extraordinary book. The stories, drawings, and, my favorite, the unusual introductions to the stories, together draw the reader, if not into another dimension of reality, into another dimension of literature." Thieme attempts to bring his passions to a presentation unlike any he has ever given before. As Simple Nomad said ... "With Richard, there is no spoon."