Several days ago I read an online news article about Joseph P. Firmage. The headline, if I remember correctly, was "Silicon Valley CEO resigns to chase UFOs." I read the article and followed the link to his website where he has compiled a huge dissertation on a philosophy (for lack of a better word) that weaves history, science and faith. This was all very intriguing to me so I read more and more and more. I was impressed with his depth of knowledge crossing various areas. He has a section on Y2K too and quotes De Jager and Yardeni among others. My question is "WHO IS THIS MAN?" Anyone know of him, his background, etc? The information may be buried in his website somewhere. However, I've not run across it yet. It seems like in the initial news report I read he'd come up with some innovative computer technology or something along those lines??? In case you want to check out the site, the url is: (warning, multiple access pages to get to the meat of it)

http://www.thewordistruth.org

-- Other Lisa (LisaWard2@aol.com), January 14, 1999

Answers

Hi Lisa Ward! The whole history of our research here into Mr. Firmage is on the following thread:

WHAT Is This? Is It For Real?

I started the thread because his "revelations" were being compared to Y2K: "bigger than Y2K." I think the likelihood is that January 1, 2000, will arrive sooner than open alien visitation. I've been trying to nudge Diane into interviewing Mr. Firmage to get his take on Y2K and governmental cover-up tendencies, but Diane has not responded to my multiple little suggestions sprinkled on various threads. ;-)

Ashton & Leska in Cascadia, not into the alien thing, but willing to say hi to a little green being after the Y2K dust settles

xxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxx xx

-- Leska (allaha@earthlink.net), January 14, 1999.

Joseph Firmage is an exceptional individual. He's a young, foward thinking individual who is incredibly intelligent and he's become very, very wealthy by his own hard work. He is worth millions. I believe his background is physics.

The word "hero" comes to mind for me because he has literally given his future up in business because of his personal beliefs. Quite a story, the man understands that the chase of money isn't what life is about it's the pursuit of knowledge and truth.

I have heard him in interviews and he comes across as more than sane.

I have also visited thewordistruth.org once and I did enter my email address. You aren't asked to purchase anything and the only email I have received was one announcing the coming synopsis of his book. He has written a book, some 700 plus pages, and a synopsis will be posted on his site.

Unfortunately, the media did a spin job on his departure from the business he created. He is leaving because he did not want the publishing of his book to reflect badly on the business, his partners or it's employees.

Anyway, that's what I know about the guy. I believe he'll be doing an interview soon on Art Bell.

Mike =========================================================

-- Michael Taylor (mtdesign3@aol.com), January 14, 1999.

Weird. A friend of a friend says UFOs are swarming in East Texas lately.

I'm not into UFOs - according to my input into the Drake Equation, they cannot exist - but I'm surprised how many people run into them.

Who's that one guy - Bob Lazaar? - who discusses element 113 and proves that the distortion of gravitational fields permits real real rapid transportation?

-- lisa (lisab@shallc.com), January 14, 1999.

I'm no UFO guy myself, but a couple years ago a gravitational physicist named Michel Alcubierre proved that faster-than-light travel is permitted under general relativity provided you have matter with negative mass... which has never been found but has been indirectly proven to exist according to current theory, and lately there are some cosmological indications that it exists in large quantities. NASA has a small program investigating FTL and antigravity, just in case.

-- Shimrod (shimrod@lycosmail.com), January 14, 1999.

Anyone interested in what Firmage's site says about y2k? Here's the url (would link it but don't know how). I've been having difficulty accessing the site today due to traffic I assume.

http://www.thewordistruth.org/narr_article.cfm?id=107

-- Other Lisa (LisaWard2@aol.com), January 14, 1999.

Lisa - let's head over to the HTML 101 thread and learn how to post a link once and for all. It's a practice page.

-- The not other Lisa (lisab@shallc.com), January 14, 1999.

Anyone interested in what Firmage's site says about y2k? Here's the url (would link it but don't know how). I've been having difficulty accessing the site today due to traffic I assume.

http://www.thewordistruth.org/narr_article.cfm?id=107

And now the testing phase...my apologies if this doesn't work and you all have to look at the latin/greek/pig-latin I've just entered in my first attempt to linkaaaaage

-- Other Lisa (LisaWard2@aol.com), January 14, 1999.

BTW, thanx LisaB ;)

Not mastered, but at least acquired!

-- Other Lisa (LisaWard2@aol.com), January 14, 1999.

Leska,

I received the hints, but will probably leave that until after next week, or so and until Joe puts out the whole book. Clearly, a weekend reading job.

Over the past eleven years Ive read and studied so many different topics, UFOs included. Also, Ive seen them. Nothing quite like several sightings, and direct experience to help expand ones ever widening perspective. Our universe is an awesome playground!

Also, used to have a housemate that had worked on Project Blue Book (government funded). The things he let me read! His job was to interview contactees and abductees. They have different experiences ... one empowering the other disempowering, depending on who the group was.

I could go on and on, but I wont. Ill just simply state that in my mind and experience, whether they exist or not is a non-issue. Like Y2K, if motivated, do the investigative journalistic digging. Seek, and you shall find...

Diane

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), January 14, 1999.

Diane, sounds like you & Mr. Firmage are an interview match! After next week, of course. Next weeks looks to be fun, productive, and most interesting ;-)

xxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxx

-- Leska (allaha@earthlink.net), January 14, 1999.

I am a hardcore DWGI when it comes to aliens. I'm fairly convinced they do exist, but I want no part of them whatsoever for any reason on any date, anywhere. My astronomy professor said it best: they wouldn't come all this way just to say hi. And if they get here, it's not because they took a wrong left turn at Alpha Centauri.

-- Lisa (lisab@shallc.com), January 14, 1999.

Like Diane mentioned, the UFO issue is not relevant in my mind. However, regardless of reality or non-reality of ufos, aliens, etc., Firmage seems to be in synch with a lot of us on the Y2K issue and offers some good insight in how to deal with it. See my butchered attempt at linkage above to check it out.

-- Other Lisa (LisaWard2@aol.com), January 14, 1999.

If any of you want to get out of Kansas for a while, or if you're trying to get back, read Jaques Vallee's books: "Dimensions," "Revelations," and "Passport to Magonia."

Then just follow the yellow brick road.

And watch out for the flying monkeys!

E.

-- E. Coli (nunayo@beeswax.com), January 14, 1999.

One of the really cool things about allowing for any possibility is the opportunity keep your mind open.

We are in our infancy with regard to our technological and scientific understanding of the universe, our planet, our existance, etc. If you step back and look at how little we really know it's quite eye opening.

I don't trust any scientific mind who suffers from a constraint in thought or places limits on any possibility based on current data. We know very little about this planet, let alone the universe and beyond.

"My astronomy professor said it best: they wouldn't come all this way just to say hi."

If you look into our past you'll find much evidence that perhaps this statement is very true. All you need to do is look at anchient sites to see they didn't come just to say "hi".

You want to really get a sense of how little we know? Look into the Great Pyramid at Giza. It's a marvel of technilogical expertise that even today we cannot duplicate. We cannot duplicate the precise nature in which the ground beneath the Pyramid was leveled, we cannot duplicate the precise way the the Great Pyramid was constructed using todays "modern" building technics. And, as a group of Japanese scientists demonstrated with the failure of their attempt, we cannot even recreate the Pyramid at a much smaller scale.

Oh, and regarding traveling beyond the speed of light... at one time it was thought that the world was flat then at another it was speculated that travel could not extend beyond the speed of sound... it was thought that the atom was a it was thought that a trip to the moon was impossible then it was thought that a trip to the moon may be possible but we could never go there and then actually return...

History shows us that the only thing that can constrain us is ourselves and our shortsightedness.

Surely, y2k is a perfect example of how shortsighted ways of dealing with an issue and not allowing for all possibilities can create serious problems.

Our science and technology can't continue to evolve without imagination. We are so caught up in our arrogance and what we "know" that we forget how much we simply don't know or understand.

Mike =============================================

-- Michael Taylor (mtdesign3@aol.com), January 14, 1999.

wow... I need a proofreader : )

eh, you get my point about the atom right? you know... we split the thing...

Mike =====================================================================

-- Michael Taylor (mtdesign3@aol.com), January 14, 1999.

If you are experiencing back pain it is because you have been "shanghied" and taken to Mars, along with stolen fertilizer and forced to unload this same fertilizer. If you have no sex drive, it is because you have been having orgies with your abductors during "coffee breaks", and you are really too satisfied to care for more. This occurs at night while you are sleeping, and that's why you are not aware, that is until now. You are only "gone" for a couple of earth hours, but subjected to a time warp which stretches to become 10 hrs. (It's an hr up and back,8 hrs work) .. The micro-processor was captured at Roswell in '47, and this tech. became widespread by humans, but we realise now that it was as if giving a power tool to a chimpanzee. I have been able to report this now because I have learned to resist the aliens by posing as a homeless alcoholic at certain times and pretending to be asleep at others. Soon I hope to share this technique with others, that we might all be free, but human females seem to enjoy alien sex much more than males, therfore they will be more difficult to reprogram. More later......

-- King of Free Estmates (Isrtryinghard@this.time), January 14, 1999.

To anyone that has read the Firmage book: The discussion on light in the beginning seems very similar to Plato's discussion of the cave in "The Republic." Send comments directly to my email above, as I don't want to waste Y2K forum space on a different subject.

-- Other Lisa (LisaWard2@aol.com), January 14, 1999.

Michael, I think they levitated the stones into place. You know the trick where you lift somebody in a chair with your fingertips...

If these benefactors - sure, maybe ten thousand years ago they were - were really interested in advancing our culture, why would they spend so many resources to get here but never attempt to communicate? They never even land/park/get out to stretch their legs!

I prefer the Stargate scenario... and I agree, we know nothing.

-- Lisa (lisab@shallc.com), January 14, 1999.

Wait a sec, didn't God get here and then do nothing, not even try to communicate?

Either that, or he hasn't had anything he considered worth saying, for the last 2000 years ;)

--Leo

-- Leo (lchampion@ozemail.com.au), January 14, 1999.

To lisab @shallc.com Your message concerning Bob Lazar, at the age of 12 he developed a device similiar to a partical beam accelerator,but it damaged his parents home. Still the element 115 when exposed to certain particles at an advanced accellerational speed becomes element116 which has a half-life of a short time .000000001 of a sec. But you remember the Govt project in Waxahatchee,TX . A huge particle beam accelerator 50 miles in diameter underground. But Congress cut the funding,why ? because they were told that it made a material that will defy gravity. thought you'd like to know.

-- Furie (furieart@dnet.net), January 14, 1999.

>> But you remember the Govt project in Waxahatchee,TX . A huge particle beam accelerator 50 miles in diameter underground. But Congress cut the funding,why ?

CAUSE IT WOULD HAVE COST 12 BILLION DOLLARS or more and those funds would have been spent in only a few states!!!! geeez....

-- Jay Kusnetz (jayrtfm@hotmail.com), January 14, 1999.

Don Knapp And Reuters www.cnn.com 1-14-99

LOS GATOS, California (CNN) -- Don't call Joe Firmage the CEO of UFOs. He has heard enough of that since announcing his views on extraterrestrials last week.

"It's definitely painful to go through what I have the past few days," says the multimillionaire high-tech boy wonder whose current crusade has Silicon Valley abuzz.

Firmage quit the $2 billion Internet marketing and consulting company he helped found, wanting to spare it negative press while he pursues an interest in what he believes is "the most important news event in 2,000 years" -- namely, that many of today's scientific advances came from space aliens.

"The only objection that science has put forward to the UFO phenomenon is that we can't control gravity. Well, these new papers are suggesting that very soon we may be well be able to control gravity," he says.

Firmage, 28, has made not one, but two megafortunes as a computer pioneer in California. But the man dubbed the "Fox Mulder of Silicon Valley" has a new passion.

He has set up the International Space Science Organization to promote his views, sunk $3 million into a project aimed at preparing humanity for alien contact, and posted a 600-page manifesto, titled "The Truth," on his Web site: www.thewordistruth.org.

Cyberspace 'Deep Throat'

Included in "The Truth" are new documents from a source Firmage calls the "Deep Throat of Cyberspace" which he claims back up his space alien theories.

One of the documents is a purported 1947 memo from President Harry Truman to Secretary of Defense James Forrestal that sets up a secret U.S. government operation dubbed "Majestic Twelve" to investigate extraterrestrials.

Another is an alleged June 1947 letter from Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer to scientist Vannevar Bush giving advice on how to deal with alien visitors.

Firmage tripled his Web site's capacity Tuesday, but it still couldn't handle all the Internet surfers interested in such items as his "encounter."

"I never referred to the words 'visitation' or 'alien,' in that experience that I did in fact have 15 months ago," he says. "It was a very unusual experience, but I would compare it more to a near-death experience."

Firmage suggests that Silicon Valley and the high-tech industry benefited from a UFO crash near a remote New Mexico town in 1947.

"It is plausible something did occur at Roswell, of an extraterrestrial nature. And if it did, I'm not saying that fiber optics came from the crash, I'm not saying the microchip came from the crash. All I'm saying is if material was recovered, it would have been seeded very discretely into laboratories to analyze," he says.

That last suggestion has irked some in Silicon Valley.

"These were hardworking people," says Michael Malone, a Silicon Valley historian. "And they plunged in and managed to create great products. Then someone comes along and says, 'Oh no, that was aliens just whispering in your ear, giving you the ideas.'"

Even Silicon Valley's "official" UFO organization, the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute, which is partly financed by high-tech heavyweights from Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and Intel, is not lining up behind Firmage.

Roswell has repeatedly been discounted as nothing more than a military experiment, SETI Institute President Frank Drake told the San Francisco Chronicle. "It is constantly exploited by obsessive types who want to believe. If it's not Santa Claus, then it's aliens."

Firmage, who was a physics major at the University of Utah, welcomes the controversy because it brings attention to his theories.

"I think what we're staring in the face is the reunification of religion and science," he says.

Correspondent Don Knapp and Reuters contributed to this report.

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), January 15, 1999.

Furie:

Made a material that can defy gravity........... you mean an anti-material? Hmmmm........

This material would have convenient uses for transportation on this planet, no? How would a plate of this material behave? Guess it couldn't plane horizontally, without propulsion on top and underneath the plate. But if the material could be fashioned into spherical form, you could ship goods, mail at jet-speed.. alleviating transportation traffic. Hm.

Road rage drives me to consider any type of alternative transportation.

-- Lisa (lisab@shallc.com), January 15, 1999.