From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Mon May 06 2002 - 07:25:03 MDT
Hal Finney wrote:
>
> Attempts to cast this technology as demonic or threatening to human nature
> are bound to fail. If people can become comfortable with technological
> integrations that effectively expand human capabilities and potential,
> then perhaps biological enhancements will seem less threatening as well.
>
> We've got these two major parallel paths into a posthuman future.
> The burden is on the neoluddites to block them all, or their program
> will have failed. Ultimately I continue to believe that our side has
> an overwhelming advantage in the dispute.
This is what the jews and protestants said before the Inquisition. This
is what the jews said in the 1920's and 30's. This is what secular
afghans thought before 1993, and what Russian capitalists thought in
1916. It is what the Dutch thought at the time of William the Silent.
Technology and liberty may have won out in the end, over the long haul,
but far more people died and suffered significantly *specifically*
because those who forsaw the threat were ignored by those like yourself
who were not willing to do what was necessary to prevent those lives
lost.
Governments passing laws will *always* have the advantage in shaping
public opinion. Take, for example, the crossbow. This was a piece of
technology, invented in the middle ages, which enabled your average serf
the ability to kill a marauding knight with little training. It was
possibly the most liberty enhancing piece of technology ever to come out
of the middle ages. Specifically because of this, it was declared by the
Church to be a mortal sin and capital crime to be in posession of or use
such a device (unless you are using them against the muslim infidels, of
course). Such a stain of evil was attached to the crossbow throughout
the remainder of european history as a result that even today it is
looked on as an evil, dishonorable, device, despite the fact that we are
allegedly a freedom loving people who extoll the equality of men. The
crossbow is illegal in a number of states in the US and in a number of
european countries to this day.
The technologies that will create the new revolution in individual
liberty in this century pose a similar threat to the power structures
and aristocracies in control today as the crossbow did back then. They
will similarly outlaw them, and use their ability to mold public opinion
to create a consensus opinion that these technologies are evil
incarnate, a violation of human nature, and that anyone that uses or
promotes them deserves to be treated in the worst sort of way.
We HAVE to act now. We need to dedicate our time, our money "and our
sacred honor" to this cause. Fence sitters, armchair quarterbacks,
whiners and lollygaggers are a drag on the cause. "Now is the time that
tries men's souls" and all that, and summer soldiers and sunshine
patriots just won't get the job done.
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