From: Spike Jones (spike66@attglobal.net)
Date: Sun Feb 11 2001 - 21:59:30 MST
Samantha Atkins wrote:
> And if we bring them to these technologically more advanced levels
> quickly then we are guilty of "cultural imperialism" and have murdered
> their culture and folkways...
One cannot murder the willing. The term would be facilitating their
cultural suicide. If people are given technology and choose to trash their
culture and folkways, trading them for *our* culture and folkways, then
I have nooooo problem with this brand of cultural imperialism. If we
build it, they will come.
> ...So what sort of memes and practices do we lay to
> embrace that fast pace of change and to dance happily and successfully
> within it?...
Easy. Simply offer advanced technology, at a price. They will pay it. People
all over the world will be given an opportunity to purchase leap-frog
technologies, with economies of scale already in place. They will
enjoy a foretaste of the singularity in a sense, as they advance the equivalent
of a technology packed century in a few years. Destructive superstitions
and religions designed for agrarian cultures will be hurled into the
ideological trash. Sure they may suffer displacements, but those
societies will develop ways of dealing with rapid change. We need
not tell them how to embrace fast change, they will teach us. They
will be used to it, they will *expect* everything to be different every
year.
Those who have been given a warmup course in rapid technological
change (by getting electricity, internal combustion, and communications
all in the same decade) will be in even better shape than us westerners
who have suffered from slower technology growth. spike
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