From: Spudboy100@aol.com
Date: Sun Mar 10 2002 - 03:54:34 MST
<<I don't know what was in Lucas' subconscious mind when he wrote
_Star Wars_, but consciously Lucas was strongly influenced by mythic
symbols. (Also, Joseph Campbell was George Lucas' good friend)
Amara>>
Also a mess-load of comic books each of which included a mythic theme, etc.
Now I choose to ask whether the mythic themes will endure, if some of our
transhuman goals arrive? In a book by astronomer, Michael Hart; The Most
Influencial People of History (looking back from the year 3000) human
viewpoints have changed.
One of Hart's imaginary subjects (#1) is the Chinese scientist, Chen, who in
the 22nd century devises a method of systematically replacing brain sections
during surgery, while dumping data from the dis-used section of the brain
into a computer, and the re-integrating the data into new sections. Note:
that the brain was the last organ to be tissue engineered by then.
The result is what Hart called pseudo-immortality. Everyone Chen'd, and
people lived "until the stars burned out." People could choose to expire when
they wished to, but most, of course did not. People had to do frequent
personality and memory backups.
One characters marrige lasted for over 600 years, until he and his wife chose
not to Chen. Most people could list 2 or 3 marriges at least. Everyone
looked young, and intersteller travel, though extremely rare, was less of an
issue because for one, you lived a incredibly long time in peak health, and
secondly, there was hibernation which slowed down aging aboard ship. So if
your spaceship took 200 years to get there, it wasn't such an issue.
More to Amara's point, many works of literature, such as that of Shakesphere
(identified finally to be William D'evere) went out of fashion. The reason
being that it was unappealing to kvetch about how miserable and short life
was, when it no longer was.
Humor was more to the popular culture of 900 years from now, as well as
political thrillers, and science fiction. I wonder what we would do if we
were able to live hundreds and hundreds of years in fine health? One thing
would be to solve the unanswered problem of what to do when the brain cells
run out? An easy answer would surely be to inplant a memory 'cube' in the
mastoid sinus, adding perhaps cenuries more of experience.
Another thing, baring the discovery of native life would be to colonize the
solar system, including hell holes like Venus. To make Venus habitable for
human tissue'd
life (what the author depicted we would still be), might be rather rewarding
for several hundreds of millions of years.
-Mitch
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:12:54 MST