From: Hal Finney (hal@finney.org)
Date: Mon May 06 2002 - 16:15:36 MDT
Damien mentioned a quote fromm the McGinn review of the Fukuyama book:
"Above all, we need to be thinking about all this now, not when the
streets are crowded with mutants and supermen and we wonder where we
went wrong."
I am struck anew by how extraordinary it is to read in the New York Times
a serious statement like this about the future. How many people even
five years ago foresaw a world which could be described in such words?
Mutants and supermen... it's a comic book image, but I think he meant
it seriously.
It's another example of how the future which we have been debating and
discussing for years, which we alone saw only a few years ago, is now
becoming visible to the wider public. A few years ago people thought
we were crazy to even consider such changes. Now they may still think
we're crazy to want them, but we are no longer alone in anticipating an
entirely new world a few decades hence.
No doubt McGinn meant his phrase to describe a horror, but personally,
I find it to be exactly the opposite. For me it precisely captures
the hopes which brought me to Extropianism: a world where mutants and
supermen crowd our streets. This is an incredibly appealing vision,
a world with diversity and choice and variety far beyond anything which
has been achieved in the past. It is a world of tolerance (or else
such beings could not exist), of openness, a world where people can make
themselves into whatever they want to be.
It is my strongest hope that we will someday live in such a world.
Let mutants and supermen and every other kind of being walk our streets,
let them swim in our oceans and climb on our mountain tops and fill
the air with their thoughts. Such a world has room for everyone, even
for those like McGinn who want to close their eyes to the glory of what
humanity can become.
Hal
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