DECONFERENCE REVIEWS:

After being processed through decon, as one of the decontamanees (attendees), Department of Philosophy Professor Ronald de Sousa wrote an interesting review of CYBORG, emphasizing the final chapter of the book where the decontamination facility is described (forward search for "Ronald de Sousa"):
Mann describes with hilarious deadpan irony a number of devices he has actually patented. Particularly timely, when all loyal Americans seem to think it obvious that all loyal Americans must be prepared to give up freedom for the sake of securing freedom, is the plan for a "Mass Decontamination facility" in case of an anthrax attack or civil unrest. Visitors are stripped and required to pass through hexagonal rooms equipped with internet-connected showers combined with body scanning machines.
(For the complete review, beyond the Amazon.ca 1000 word limit, follow this link.)
Ana Viseu, founder of the Privacy Lecture Series, wrote a text on her DECONference experience as an attendee to the event, where she observes that women were more inventive in smuggling contraband or could it be that the female decon officers (e.g. the staff on the women's side) were too lenient or not security-conscious:
After everyone was registered and the introductory speeches were over, decontamination officers in yellow protective overalls lead the first group of twelve contaminated individuals into a room containing a table with towels, surveillance cameras, a glass ceiling, and a talking computer that endlessly repeated the following message in the most soothing voice: "You will feel better when stripping." This is exactly what the officers told us to do and after a moment of awkwardness it is what we did: take off all our clothes and accessories, ... and hand everything over ... Naked, we waited, lining up against the wall, until everyone had completed this step. ... The shower facility was remote controlled through motion detectors, no human presence needed. ... Afterwards each attendee was handed a (paper) towel and was asked to stand in front a scanner that took a digital impression of his/her body and displayed it on the computer with an indication of the size of the attire he/she should be given: a white protective plastic coverall with the brand name TYVEX printed in the chest. Like in any other institutional procedure there were some of us who managed to smuggle in the most diverse objects: cigarettes, watches, underwear, etc. This was done through a process of begging and delicate reasoning with the guards, and gave a sense of reality to the drama we were now involved in. Women, on average, were much more inventive when it came to tweaking the procedure to their own needs, the men went through more docilely.
(For complete Viseu article, follow this link.)
Decontaminee Milena Placentile wrote:
... an opportunity to remember that freedom of choice is not something to be taken for granted. It was easy to view the DECON experience lightly while we participated because we knew that (if we really needed to) we could leave at any time. The DECON Officers certainly worked to establish a sense of a legitimately controlled environment but we knew that everything, as strange as it seemed, was just a drama. But what if we didn't have the choice to stay or to go? Someone in the decontrabanding room exclaimed: "Hey! At least we'll know what to expect if this happens in real life". I thought to myself: if this ever happens in real life, you'll find me racing the hell out of the city to seek security in a cave! Had that DECON experience been real there is no doubt in my mind that it would have been viciously humiliating rather than only somewhat humiliating, and that it would have been fiercely uncomfortable rather than only oddly uncomfortable. And we wouldn't have had a choice. ... We pondered the amount of brainwashing an individual would have to endure in order to subject fellow human beings to the physically and psychologically offensive process of decontamination. We questioned how any human being could possibly consider these actions as necessary for the "public good". We wondered why more people weren't cynical about the motivations and actions of governments and other power-based, power-hungry organizations. We suggested that perhaps every single person needed this sort of reality check and we worried that an education into the politics of power may not happen soon enough.
Follow this link for entire text.
(filename: undress_deconfess.box)
Paul Royes wrote:

DECONfess...
by paul e royes 

    the artistic stance...
    the metaphysical shock ...
    multi-states of the invisible...
    seeping about and through the physical ... forms...
    the need for "shocks" continues...
    understatement: "society has chosen to be complacent"
    DECONfess everything...
    there is no time to compress
    no space to contract...
    no form other than the form you have created for your self...
    DECONfess everything...
    shower off what you once knew
    towel dry your new home
    there is nothing there
    imagine nation
    evacuate the physical world
    relocate your soul
    share...
    the one with the many...
    the many with the one...
    take apart everything
    build up from nothing
    mass-contamination
    misfiring of the omni-canon
    universal beings won the day
    DECONfess everything
    before you forget...
    why you be-came...
    UNdress
    DECONfess
    REcess
    EXpress....
publish at will... (let me know if you require further information... cheers...)
more DECONfessions may arise...
get thee to a DECONfessional...