Well, you have to remember that we are pretty funny, after all. All this
rampant technophillia, belief in the Singularity, living forever through
cybernetics/biotech/nanosanta, testosterone fantasies of becoming spaceborn
battlepods, or starting floating communities at sea of the few and the free
(and the highly dangerous). It's space cadet stuff.
Personally, I think Transhumanism, and Extropianism, is a beautiful bunch of
somewhat shared visions. To be a technophile is to love what it really is to
be human. I think the singularity probably is around the corner. I think
life extension is laudable, will become practical, and will one day, in
retrospect, seem as obvious as powered flight. I think the idea of munching
Mars up for a zillion spaceborn bubble environments and spare parts is a
very cool vision. Life on the high seas, hmm, maybe I could skip that one.
But we really need to take a step back and laugh at ourselves once in a
while. See it from the outside. We have a credibility, I'd estimate, just
slightly higher than the person who worked on Klingon for her PhD thesis,
and maybe slightly below the Scientologists. We are fringe dwelling, grade A
loony toons.
It's always like that with vision. One day, people will say "what was so
special about transhumanism?" It'll seem obvious in retrospect. And we'll
probably have trouble remembering what the big deal was too. But for now, we
are freaks.
I'd say we're on the right track. As long as we can stave off dogma, and can
keep taking in new information from the environment around us, we'll be a
step ahead on future developments. We might be off track predicting 30 years
into the future, and predictions that include everything up to and including
the heat death of the universe, well, I'm skeptical. But I think we've got a
halfway decent idea of the coming decade, and will continue to be able to
see that far ahead with some clarity. We wont be too surprised by future
developments. Some of us will make a lot of money. We'll be ahead of the
game on grabbing the benefits of the really crazy new technologies, and thus
some of us will have a good chance of controlling the directions these take.
We might even see the singularity coming, if it does, just in time, if we
are lucky and are still paying attention.
Cynicism is so late 20th century (I like to think I'm at least one year
ahead of the game). Optimism is in, and we've got it in bucketloads. Be
freaky, be proud, enjoy it while you can; tomorrow we might have to run the
world.
Emlyn
----- Original Message -----
From: "Terry Donaghe" <Terry@Donaghe.com>
To: "Extropy.Org" <Extropians@extropy.org>
Sent: Wednesday, September 06, 2000 2:03 AM
Subject: SIGH: We're Being Made Fun Of...
>
> Right now its at the top of:
>
> http://www.memepool.com/
>
> Later you'll have to scroll down a bit to see the info.
>
> I suppose any coverage is better than none at all, and it does include a
few
> links.
>
> Terry Donaghe: terry@donaghe.com
>
> http://www.techstropia.com Your source for emerging technology news.
>
> Try http://www.extropy.com and open your mind.
>
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 02 2000 - 17:37:12 MDT