From: James Rogers (jamesr@best.com)
Date: Thu May 02 2002 - 13:07:17 MDT
On Thu, 2002-05-02 at 11:02, Harvey Newstrom wrote:
> > In my observation, Extropy Institute went through some of this in
> > years past. One story that affected me was a press piece about the
> > extropians printed in the San Jose Metro (a widely-distributed
> > freebee entertainment rag) in April 1995. Three extropians were on
> > the cover with maniacal looks in their eyes with a "Freeze Your
> > Head" cover title. Inside they appeared in Buckaroo Bonzai-like
> > outfits, carrying guns, and talked about their leather-clad S&M
> > lifestyles.
>
> Are these people still around? They sound more useful than some of our
> latest crop.
Those people aren't around on the list as far as I know, but they are
doing things. As it happens, one of the people on the Metro cover
mentioned above shares an office with me at a (currently secretive)
startup company. I know a lot of old members of this list in "meat
space", and while some of them are doing interesting things, most are
leading pretty ordinary lives. In fact, I would say most of them have
far more ordinary lives then back when they were on the list.
Obviously there has been a lot of churn on this list, but in part I
think that is because the list has served as an educational tool for
proto-Extropians to develop a more thorough philosophy and perspective
of Extropian thought for the last several years. Once people "graduate",
the list has far less to offer.
One of the problems I think this list has been having in the last couple
years is that the number of Old Guard Extropian Scholars who actively
participate in the discussions have dropped off to near zero. In the
past (like around the time I joined the list), there were a number of
core contributors that actively pushed topics in extropian directions.
This corralled the newer members into realms of discussion that were
more obviously of relevance to extropian thought in general. I know this
was very helpful for me when I first became interested. The problem with
the list now (as I see it) is that most of the core contributors today
are more interested in things only tangentially related to core
extropianism, which has a way of self-reinforcing itself. New members of
the list see very little discussion that is actually extropian related,
which probably hurts membership; without a stiff dose of "extropianism",
the list has little to offer that is unique relative to the myriad of
other mailing lists on the net.
I'm not really making a statement, just an observation. Most of the old
contributors to this list are either too busy to contribute, find little
value in the content it currently provides (and are therefore not
subscribed), or both. I understand their reasons; one of the primary
reasons I stay on at all is that the email volume doesn't bother me,
though I have little time to actually contribute these days and many of
the topics discussed these days don't really interest me.
Cheers,
-James Rogers
jamesr@best.com
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