From: Emlyn O'regan (oregan.emlyn@healthsolve.com.au)
Date: Tue Jun 04 2002 - 19:06:59 MDT
I think Natasha is spot on here.. there is plenty of material from past
artists which will always have something profound to say about what it is to
be human.
I think that what it is to be human has pretty much been explored, end to
end, there is nothing new in the universe, blah blah blah. The deepest
modern insights about what we are still, in the end, appear to walk well
trod ground.
...Except where science & technology poke their sibling noses in! The truly
new insights about us seem to be coming from new knowledge about what we are
made of; biology, physics, chemistry, etc. Computing is another big one; we
have some (unreasonably dominant) new ways of seeing the world coming out of
computer science, and, in parallel, out of the mass adoption of computers
throughout society.
This is maybe one of my deepest motives in identifying as a transhumanist.
What we stand to do, for the first time in most of human history, is to
explore vast tracts of new ground in our exploration of what, fundamentally,
existence is. With fields like neuroscience, ai, nanotechnology, we are (or
will be) really seeing the nuts and bolts of what have been the great
mysteries of the universe.
Even more interesting, is that as we remake ourselves, a great question
remains open. Will we still be human? What do I mean by this odd question? I
mean, is there a fundamental element to existence which will always tie us
back to what we were when we were human? Is there some common, unifying
thread shared by all forms of intelligence? Or will we be alien, new, unable
to relate? Will posthumans read Shakespeare, and still get it? Or will it
just be words without meaning?
I suspect that quite possibly, they wont get it. Just as we can't really
relate to the bacterial world view, I expect a posthuman wont be capable of
experiencing what we experience now from great, human created, music,
literature, and art. However, I don't know it for sure, and certainly the
intricacies of this transition, the fine grained visceral experience of it,
isn't predictable, even leaving aside questions of technological
singularity. What I do think is that, as we begin to really change ourselves
en-mass, new literature, new art, new expression will emerge, which will be
truly new in a way that no art is now, because it's creators will be
fresh-born into the universe.
Perhaps it's sad to lose the great works of human history in this way, but I
think we stand to gain vastly more. Lay on, Macduff, and damned be he that
first cries "Hold, enough!"
Emlyn
Hmm.. that quote's not quite right. The problem is that the really great
works are all tradgedies. Perhaps that in itself says enough about why we
should push on.
>
> From: Lee Daniel Crocker
>
> >While Eli's first 3-line version of this was justly
> ridiculed by E. Shaun ...
>
> >>I can't read Shakespeare. It's old, it's slow, it's barely
> comprehensible,
> >>there are too many cliches,
>
> "To be, or not to be that is the question."
>
> I used these lines in my talk at the Fourth Technology
> Conference in Monterey. For me, it is a simple but profound
> piece of writing that exemplifies our extropic existence - to
> live or to die.
>
> > Kipling remains one of my favorite poets. And he may have been an
> > enlightened guy, for his time;
>
> Kipling's poem "IF....." is timeless.
>
> > Let us take Ayn Rand. (snip_
> > amounts to "This is why *my* tribe should rule the world."
>
> I hope the poem "If....." can arrest a Singularitists' tribal
> dogma. -:)
>
> Natasha
>
>
>
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