From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Thu Jul 11 2002 - 14:55:59 MDT
On Wednesday, July 10, 2002, at 07:14 am, TT wrote:
> Iím beginning to think that becoming mainstream may be a bad thing for
> Transhumanity. It certainly seems to occupy a lot of debating time, but
> what would the real advantages be? To be quite honest (and selfish) if
> H>
> technology works and is of benefit to me I couldnít care less if it were
> mainstream or not.
I often wonder this myself. I know that we hope the masses will provide
public opinion support and monetary support for our goals, but I don't
really envision this happening. There seems to be a mindset that is
very engrained in people to accept or not accept our ideas. I really
don't know if people can be convinced if they aren't already. I think
mainstream science is already working on this stuff, mainstream business
is already funding research, and mainstream militaries and governments
are already evaluating potential scenarios using it. I don't think
public opinion is necessary or will even be much of a factor when this
stuff gets really close. Debating it this far in advance of its actual
arrival seems unnecessary, and maybe even a waste of time.
Do we really have to argue the copy question many decades in advance?
Won't we know a lot more about the ramifications 30-50 years down the
road? Do we really need to design anarchy governments for asteroid belt
when we currently can't get out of low earth orbit? (The moon missions
seem to be a fluke that we no longer can reproduce with today's
equipment.) Maybe debating how we can improve this list's
signal-to-noise ratio, or how we can avoid current problems with today's
governments would be more productive. Our debates about future decades
may be like 1950's artist conceptions of space stations. Quaint,
informative, but not even important enough to review for current
technology.
Existing scientists are trying to figure out how to make nanotubules
more than a few millimeters. We are trying to figure out how to finance
a space mission to our nearest neighbors. We are trying to figure out
what the next step of computer will be now that we've revamped the
Pentium chip a dozen times without getting new designs acceptable to the
public. We can't even get our laptops to stop crashing every day, yet
we are often distracted on the "pressing" problems of how to keep an AI
friendly, how to govern space colonies, and how society will react to
duplicates.
Not that any of this will keep me from being interested in all the fun
stuff. But sometimes I wonder if this is any more useful than a Star
Trek convention.
-- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP <www.HarveyNewstrom.com> Principal Security Consultant <www.Newstaff.com>
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