From: Eugene Leitl (eugene.leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)
Date: Tue Nov 30 1999 - 14:50:22 MST
Harvey Newstrom writes:
> Now for my heresy: None of the topics discussed on this list will
> dramatically change humanity, bring about more freedom or free time, or will
You fail to observe that some novel technologies (mostly nano) will be
capable to change humanity for the very first time.
> result in mass deaths. We will adapt, and everything will stay the same
> according to human nature. Yes we have evolved a long way thus far, but the
Human nature won't soon be a constant, however.
> future will be the same only faster. We will use computers instead of
> camels. We will move planets instead of piles of rock. We will dispute
> rights to subspace quantum frequencies instead of freespeech. We will argue
> whether AIs have rights rather than race relations. Everything will be
> faster and on a grander scale, but basically the same. We will adapt to new
I would argue with the notion that a current hi-tech culture is
"basically the same" as a hunter-gatherer community. We can understand
them, after a fashion, but they not us.
> technology, just as we upgrade our PCs or game systems to a new version
> without much thought. A few weeks later, we forget how different the new
> system was, and go on with our lives.
It is difficult to go on with your life as before if there is a new
player on the block, operating on a time scale 10^3..10^6 faster than
you.
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