Press release, Thursday May 30th:            http://www.xcom2002.com/
    
    
        CONFOUND THE SUPERMAKETS AND GAIN A WHOLE NEW SHOPPING IDENTITY
                         AT EXTREME COMPUTING 2002
    
    Your supermarket loyalty card - it just sits there in your purse or 
    wallet, silently recording everything you buy, occasionally rewarding 
    you with just enough points and prizes to keep you taking it to the 
    shops. But now it's your chance to get your own back - at EXTREME 
    COMPUTING 2002, where you can swap your loyalty card with someone 
    else's (cash in the points first if you must), and take on the brand 
    new demographic profile of a complete stranger. Imagine the data-
    processors' bafflement when a healthy-eating family of 4 suddenly 
    turns into a single 33-year-old male who consumes nothing but 
    satsumas and ready meals. Plus, in your own small way, you'll be 
    helping to stave off the nightmarish world of personal surveillance 
    predicted by George Orwell's "1984". 
    
    But the fun does not end there. Other attractions at this startlingly 
    reasonably priced event will include: 
    
    CIRCUIT BENDING - get amazing new sounds from any cheap electronic 
    musical instrument, by taking the back off it and fiddling with the 
    wires. 
    
    MAME CABINETS - the video games that can play any arcade classic ever 
    invented. 
    
    COMMEMORATIVE WEB BROWSER TEA-TOWELS - lovingly printed with 
    authentic screengrabs of early versions of Netscape, Internet 
    Explorer and (here's hoping) NCSA Mosaic. 
    
    And, to conclude the shopping theme, the UK's first GEEKIEST CARRIER 
    BAG COMPETITION. The UK reputedly throws away 8 billion plastic bags 
    every year, so rather than print up a load of new ones that will 
    eventually end up as landfill, EXTREME COMPUTING is insisting that 
    visitors bring their own - and the geekiest one wins a prize!
    
    It's a technology trade show with a difference. It's...
    
    
                         EXTREME COMPUTING 
    
           The NTK/Mute Festival Of Inappropriate Technology
    
                    11am-7pm, Sunday June 9th 2002
       The Camden Centre, London (opposite Kings Cross station)
                        http://www.xcom2002.com/
    
                and it's all only THREE POUNDS to get in.
    
    
    Further updates and illustrations - including a clumsily mocked-up 
    "Supermarket Disloyalty Card" - are available on the official site: 
    
                   http://www.xcom2002.com/media.php 
   
   PRESS INQUIRIES: please call Dave Green on 07719 907136 - or email 
   [using this form] - for further information, interviews, 
   or potentially inflammatory comments on a wide range of subjects. 
      
   Notes for editors:
   EXTREME COMPUTING 2002 has been described as "a technology trade show 
   with a difference", "a medieval version of eBay" and "a rock festival 
   for all those of us whose idea of a good time is sitting indoors 
   hunched over a PC with the curtains drawn". It has been organised by 
   digital arts magazine MUTE in conjunction with award-winning news 
   site NTK; speakers include theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson, 
   Charlie Brooker (the founder of TV Go Home), and the authors of the 
   ZX Spectrum games Meteor Storm, 3D Ant Attack and Chuckie Egg.

   NEED TO KNOW ( http://www.ntk.net/ ) is the UK's longest running 
   independent technology newsletter, and the winner of last year's 
   Net-media award for "Internet Journalist(s) of The Year". 
   
   MUTE MAGAZINE ( http://www.metamute.com/ ) is the UK's leading 
   magazine on network culture, and describe themselves as "purveyors 
   of critical/information/services since 1994". 
   
   Final programme may be subject to alteration. Thanks for reading!