From: Scott Badger (wbadger@psyberlink.net)
Date: Tue Jun 22 1999 - 22:08:40 MDT
James Ganong <JGanong@webtv.net> wrote:
> Since I sparked this latest thread, let me clarify something; I was
> asking for the personal experiences of individual list members & their
> first brushes with extropian/transhumanist ideas, not trying to make a
> list of what historical figures should be considered proto extropian. To
> better reflect this intention, I've adopted a new subject line (see
> above).
Your guys are going to think I'm a dumbass, but one of the earliest things
that got me thinking seriously about the future was Zager and Evans, "In the
Year 2525". So I looked up the lyrics.
*************************************************
Zager And Evans
Album : (Exordium And Terminus)
In The Year 2525
In the year 2525,
If man is still alive,
If woman can survive,
They may find-
In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth,
Tell no lies.
Everything you think, do, and say
Is in the pill you took today.
In the year 4545
Ain't gonna need your teeth,
Won't need your eyes.
You won't find a thing to chew,
Nobody's gonna look at you.
In the year 5555
Your arms are hanging limp at your side,
You legs got nothing to do,
Some machine's doing that for you.
In the year 6565
Ain't gonna need no husband,
Won't need no wife.
You'll pick your sons, pick your daughters too
>From the bottom of a long glass tube.
Whoa-oh-oh.
In the year 7510
If God's a-coming
He ought to make it by then.
Maybe he'll look around himself and say,
"Guess it's time for the Judgement Day."
In the year 8510
God is gonna shake his mighty head.
He'll either say, "I'm pleased where man has been"
Or tear it down and start again.
Whoa-oh-oh
In the year 9595
I'm kinda wondering
If man is gonna be alive;
He's taken everything this old Earth can give
And he ain't put back nothing.
Now it's been ten thousand years,
Man has cried a billion tears
For what he never knew.
Now man's reign is through.
But throughout eternal night,
The twinkling of starlight,
So very far away,
Maybe it's only yesterday...
In the year 2525 (etc...)
*************************************
Boy, that song sucks a lot more than I remember. What a bunch of moralistic
pontificating. Still, it made me think. That's the point, right?
I think that the sc-fi novels I read (Bradbury, Heinlein, Clark, Farmer,
Zelazney) was the most powerful first contact experiences I had, like many
of you. That is, of course, because novels are such an *engaging* medium.
I was there . . . I traveled to exotic places and I often transcended my
humanity in my mind. When I remembered 2525 though, I was reminded that
music is another powerfully *engaging* medium useful for infecting the
populous with Extropian memes. We need catchy Extropian dittys that people
can't get out of their heads. We've discussed Extropian musicians
before...I recall Phillip Glass, Robert Fripp, and others....but I seem to
recall that most of the musicians mentioned were primarily instrumentalists.
I must give note here that I have already downloaded Max M's MP3 files.
This is probably the most blatantly Extropian musicology of which I'm aware.
The tunes have grown on me quite a bit (even though I had to download the
lyrics to understand what he's saying) and I play the tunes often. Thanks
for making them available Max!
So who are your favorite lyricists that have promulgated Extropian themes
through their musical poetry? Or are there any besides Max M?
Scott
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:04:16 MST