From: GBurch1@aol.com
Date: Sun Jun 27 1999 - 08:10:57 MDT
Here's my list of people whose work or life influenced me toward extropian
thinking and values in my early years:
Arthur Clarke (most important personal impact, ages 11-14)
- Clarke has to be at the top of my list, if for no other reason that 2001: A
Space Odyssey. There's a passage in the book -- which I read and which
completely blew me away when it was first published -- that is as clear and
poetic a description of technotranscendance and total automorphism as one can
find anywhere. Anders has posted my quotation of this passage and some
comments on it at:
http://www.aleph.se/Trans/Cultural/Art/2001.html
Jacques-Yves Cousteau (most important personal impact, ages 8-12)
- Cousteau's use of technology to extend his own and humanity's reach into a
new environment and his personal energy, fearlessness, curiosity, breadth of
vision, grace and expressiveness exemplified what I eventually came to
realize were a pretty full set of extropian values.
Carl Sagan (most important personal impact, age 17-20)
- Sagan's poetic cosmic vision kept me passionately interested in our destiny
in space in the long drought after Viking.
Buckminster Fuller (most important personal impact, age 14-18)
- Fuller showed me that one could create an integrated personal futurist
vision that combined humanism and technology.
Paolo Soleri (most important personal impact, age 16-18)
- Soleri introduced me to the concept of mega-scale engineering.
Leonardo da Vinci (most important personal impact, age 9-14)
- da Vinci was like a proto-Fuller and made me comfortable with the idea of
being an individual with a humanist vision of worlds not yet realized.
Robert Heinlein (most important personal impact, age 9-16)
- Heinlein's work showed me the many textures of how individuals, technology
and society can fit together.
Ayn Rand (most important personal impact, age 16-18)
- Rand opened up the whole world of radical individualism for me.
Aldous Huxley (most important personal impact, age 16-20)
- Huxley opened up the doors of perception for me.
Timothy Leary (most important personal impact, age 16-19)
- Leary put a sense of humor on Huxley.
Greg Burch <GBurch1@aol.com>----<gburch@lockeliddell.com>
Attorney ::: Vice President, Extropy Institute ::: Wilderness Guide
http://users.aol.com/gburch1 -or- http://members.aol.com/gburch1
"Civilization is protest against nature;
progress requires us to take control of evolution."
-- Thomas Huxley
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