From: J. Hughes (jhughes@changesurfer.com)
Date: Sun Jan 20 2002 - 00:35:44 MST
>Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2002 07:58:42 -0800
>From: Natasha Vita-More <natasha@natasha.cc>
>Subject: Your Paper
>
>Hi James,
>
>I went over your interview of me in 1998. It seems that I did mention a
>number of points which were not included in your paper and which pertained
>to the some topical areas of your paper. This is quite a while ago, and it
>stands to reason that these points could easily have been forgotten, I
>certainly didn't remember all of them.
Did you tape it? It was my first interview, and I didn’t tape it or
transcribe it. If you have a chance, send me a copy of the tape. I’d love to
hear it for historical purposes.
>I am approaching a window in my schedule to address some of the issues you
>represented to me and which I will take the time to think about.
I’d love to interview you again, eventually. But as you know I’ve been
trying to get Max to agree to an interview for several years now, and he has
refused to respond to four formal requests. Perhaps you could get him to
just let me know whether he refuses to ever appear on my show or not.
>While I appreciate your interests in politics and your enthusiasm, it seems
>you did have a definitive slant which I do believe is counter to the bigger
>picture here. We do need to develop a more articulate political outlook in
>order to more appropriate deal with the world at large.
Yes, I’ve had that slant since the early 1990s when I first logged into the
extrop list and acknowledged that I was a socialist, and then in 1998 when I
started Changesurfer Radio (formerly Event Horizon) as “democratic
transhumanist” radio show.
As for the articulateness of the political perspective that we need to
develop, I think things are moving along nicely now that there are a growing
diversity of voices. I don’t think it makes sense to expect a single
transhumanist politics to emerge, or for >Hists to reinvent the wheel.
Rather I would like to see the WTA comes to emcompass >Hists with views
ranging from libertarianism (the extrops) to social democracy, and together
we can express a United Front against the Luddites and the fascists (alleged
>Hists and otherwise).
I think it would be a wonderful step in this process for you to organize
Pro-Act as a >Hist 501.c.4, i.e. a political lobby, and begin to do the
things that lobbys do: raise money from (especially) wealthy (but also
plebian) donors, identify >Hist candidates to support (hopefully both Dem
and Rep), channel money to them, and then work the halls of Congress on
behalf of our political interests:
- More funding for scitech education and research, esp. nanotech,
silicon-neural interface, etc.
- Stop the Luddite anti-reprotech and anti-cloning laws
- End the Drug War
- Fund the space program
'course I'd also argue for expanding the agenda in a social justice
direction (bridging the digital divide, national health insurance to cover
high tech procedures for the poor) but I can't expect perfection...
That would make a real contribution, and I suspect that you might just be
the right person to put the squeeze on a lot of rich businessmen.
Sincerely,
J. Hughes
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