When I read such attention-getting articles as "Why the Future Doesn't Need
Us," my first reaction is "why?" Why imagine that "we" aren't needed, and
why involve "us."
A more attentive instant caused me to be curious about the nakedness of such
a bold statement about fear in such a public forum -- Wired.
Thinking about the human form and reading Michelangelo's poem, placed within
the article, I turned my attention to Marble Arch in London and the many
people who have come to rant and rave about their fears. I remembered
passing that corner once in 1985 and I did have some form of fear. It
wasn't stirred by sophisticated future technologies, but by the mundane
technology of the Tube subway getting me from John Clute's flat to my own
lodgings.
Fear is an emotion that humans inherit, that transhumans try to understand
and refine, and that posthumans (whatever we may be) may use for verve,
perchance, or only have a distant memory of.
Regardless, there is nothing wrong with apprehension. It alerts us and
warns us. Being apprehensive about the future warrants understanding.
Being frightful about the future warrants a movie script. While a Shaman
might say that the frightened person is obviously facing his or her fears or
"shadow" (that naughty child in humans that gnaws at uncertainty while
tempting limbic-combat); the transhumanist might be a bit more intent at
wondering what developmental dementia occurred in his evolutionary trail.
"For all its eloquence, Sagan's contribution was not least that of simple
common sense - an attribute that, along with humility, many of the leading
advocates of the 21st-century technologies seem to lack." I differ with
this statement. Common sense is what we transhumanist aspire toward, in
deference to Sagan, and in deference to our own selves. It steers our
intentions as we seriously try to understand and work with the technologies
available and our possible future scenarios. Kill-Joy's anthropomorphizing
of our technologies to reflect human ignorance appears to be a low-blow
reflection on the designers of such technologies.
So many people hid behind fears while attempting to appear confident and
clever. Not kill-Joy. Kill-Joy exhibits his fears right smack in the middle
of the guts of high-tech culture and carves out potent extropian names:
Kurzweil, Moravec, Drexler for all to see.
Doesn't kill-Joy read Wired? While I can sympathize with his concerns
("It's a moral and ethical obligation to see people in complex ways ..."
(Sontag)), I cannot accept his myopia. "But if we are downloaded into our
technology, what are the chances that we will thereafter be ourselves or
even human?" (Joy) This type of phrasing would take the hardest of marbles
and the strongest of diamonds to carve through the density of this
single-track and isolated thinking.
Natasha Vita-More
http://www.natasha.cc
"Non ha l' ottimo artista alcun concetto
Ch' un marmo solo in sè non circonscriva
Col suo soverchio; e solo a quello arriva
La man che ubbidisce all' intelleto."
Michelangelo
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