Re: AU: Aussie >H TV shows

From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Fri Jan 12 2001 - 18:55:26 MST


At 11:32 AM 13/01/01 +0930, Emlyn wrote:

>I've been watching this new show on the ABC in Oz, called FAQ.

Put that trash telly down at once, sir, and get back to conversing with
your brilliant children.

>This week's topic was something along the lines of "Human evolution - where
>next?", and was basically a non-stop transhumanist piece about us doing our
>changing deliberately from here on in.

It looked so promising, in principle. Oh dear.

>Admittedly it's pretty dumbed down. The panel are people who are in the
>science world but not the >H world; talking about the humans of a million
>years from now being cyber-augmented "normal" humans; pretty conservative
>stuff.

Yep, they got as far as `chips in the brain', thousands of years from now.
Far out, man!

>Any Aussies seen this show?

I was invited on that ep but had a previous conflicting lecture gig at
Swinburne University of Technology, talking to IT studes on the Spike and
AI Ethics. If I could have just piped a partial up to Sydney for the show...

I was pretty disappointed by the dreary level of shock!wow! they managed.
On the other hand, it's not clear what impact I (or any of us) could have
had, since our most minimal presuppositions blow such a massive hole in
their format that the experts would have sighed, nodded, and gone back to
talking about The Man of the Year One Million With Bionic Teeth.

>"The Anders Show!" Our host, Anders Sandberg, presents topical issues each
>week, to keep you up to date with the future. This week - special guest
>Eliezer Yudkowsky

shows off his Friendly, tail-wagging robohyperpup. But wait - isn't the
tail wagging the dog?

Damien Broderick



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