From: Sarah Lawrence (sl@TCS.ac)
Date: Wed Feb 09 2000 - 16:19:15 MST
At 1:34 pm -0600 on 9/2/00, Billy Brown wrote:
>QueeneMUSE@aol.com wrote:
>> Ok thanks for sharing adolescent fantasies.
Hey, who are you calling adolescent? :-)
>Hey, what exactly is wrong with a man wanting there to be lots of beautiful
>women in the world? (Or vice versa, of course.)
Nothing!
>> (Now if you can also program them to tell you are the best lover in the
>> universe whether or not that's true....)
>
>How about if we combine the body mods with a little hedonic engineering, so
>that sex can actually be as good as we all wish it was?
You mean it *isn't*? You should get out more -- or rather... er, never
mind. 8-)
>> Ever hear of the Stepford Wives?
>
>Fictional treatments of this subject always assume that 1) the women are
>coerced, 2) the men are either scum or nitwits, 3) mental mods are only
>superficial, so the 'real you' is still in there somewhere, and 4) boring
>mediocrity is somehow better than ant fantasy. None of these assumptions
>are likely to hold in the real world. I'm not sure what the result will be,
>but I expect it will be far more complex (and interesting) than anything
>portrayed in fiction.
Quite.
>several people wrote (paraphrasing):
>> Body mods! Eeek! Oh, no, everyone will become a soulless clone of the
>> latest trendy body style! Evil corporations will take over our bodies and
>> doom us to an eternity of bland sameness. The sky is falling! The sky is
>> falling!
Yawn, yawn.
>Get a grip, guys. This attitude is itself an example of mindless conformity
>to decades of bad science fiction and intellectual elitism. The only
>segment of society where the herd instinct is that strong is teenagers, and
>that is obviously a temporary phase.
If it is strong in teenagers (which I doubt) that is a figment of the
way they have been raised, and the the fact that they are incarcerated
in institutions (schools) where conformity can be vital for survival
(or at least for avoiding getting your head kicked in five times a
day).
>I'm sure most people will want to be good looking, but that does not imply
>they will all look the same. It is already possible to have yourself
>altered to look like an attractive celebrity, but virtually no one does.
>What most people want is to look like themselves, only better.
Well... I don't know... 7 of 9's body is very tempting....
Ooops, letting the side down. Sorry, Billy. Actually, I do agree with
you, given what you go on to say:
>So, the middle class gets in shape while the upper class goes looking for
>ways to stand out. Since exceptional beauty requires that you look
>different than everyone around you, that means a whole new branch of art
>will arise to fill the demand for unusual and esthetically pleasing bodies.
>And lets not forget that standards of beauty vary a great deal from person
>to person, let alone between different cultures.
>
>Meanwhile, we have lots of subcultures that will probably diverge from human
>norms. I predict that many Furries will actually become their favorite
>anthropomorphic form, many sci-fi and fantasy fans will want to look like
>humanoid aliens or fantasy races, and many fetishists will lavish great
>attention on whatever it is that they like. Throw in a scattering of purely
>functional enhancements that happen to have cosmetic side effects and you've
>got a recipe for an explosion of diversity in human appearance.
-- Sarah Lawrence <sl @ TCS . ac> http://www.TCS.ac/SarahHomePage/SarahLawrence.html Oxford, England
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