From: natashavita@earthlink.net
Date: Tue Aug 20 2002 - 10:36:22 MDT
From: Damien Broderick
"More worryingly: people living part-time in this pocket universe of ours
seem to lose touch terribly easily with the, ahem, Real World(TM). What's
the likely response of middle-of-the-road people researching a topic like
this, for a newspaper or magazine article or TV soundbite, who find
themselves directed in the first instance to the deep thoughts of someone
who called himself FutureMan2030? (Or Avatar Polymorph, or T0Morrow, or R.
U. Sirius for that matter, or even, cough cough, sorry, These are insignia
instantly (mis)read ...
as the mark of the crank, the cyber-crazy, the ignorable or mockable.
Sorry, that's just how it is. Obviously people who select these new names
do so for all kinds of defensible reasons, but mass media PR ain't one of
them."
I agree with you. I think FM's name is incongruous with his public image
which was, for many decades, that of a genius and the leading thinker of
futurism (along with Al Toiler (before John Naisbitt). Interestingly
enough, FM did not want to be publicly associated with Timothy Leary,
although he was very fond of Tim.
"the rather flushed
Romanticism of `Natasha Vita-More'?)"
Regarding my name, my dear Damien, it is clearly my husband's last name
with my Italian background inserted so I would not totally be a "Mrs". So,
bite your tongue and consider your own weaknesses for Romanticism -:)
Others who have names that might take heed are Tim Short (an unfortunate
name he inherited from his father's side of the family); Marilyn Mason (she
was often associated with her brother's profession (a masonry)); Leigh
Christian (people thought of a Christian each and every time her name was
called out); Harry Phillips (unfortunate reference to Phillips tobacco);
and then there is Kent Day (who by no means is futuristic or even wants to
be living in the present.)
"I directed Walter Truett Anderson to www.thespike.us, by the way, and
commented: `It's a crying shame that James Hughes mentioned Nazis in his
list, since that loathsome doctrine is in fact about as far from `Extropian
Transhumanism' as one could conceive, but the misleading association will
doubtless stick. (A few creeps with Nazi-like or racist views have popped
up on the extropy list in the six or so years I've been monitoring and
participating in it; they are quickly seen off with reasoned argument and
scathing ridicule.)'"
And then we have people perpetuate it.
Natasha
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