From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Sun Feb 24 2002 - 20:16:07 MST
On Sun, Feb 24, 2002 at 03:00:29PM -0500, ABlainey@aol.com wrote:
>
> Companies, political parties and governments pay a great deal of money
> for exactly what we are doing now. Discussing our views.
> There are many think tanks, Quangos and consumer groups out there that
> already make money for doing nothing more than stating an opinion.
>
> Its not too hard to believe that somewhere there is a company etc that
> is willing to part with hard cash for the thoughts of an International group
> of articulate, inteligent and knowlegable people such as the Extropians. ???
There certainly are. But you can't package a mailing list, and a think
tank that does not think about questions specific to your company's
interests or show how their issues relate to your interests will not be
particularly worthwhile. You can certainly mine the list for good ideas,
or even insert ideas into it to see if anybody comes up with anything,
but the actual interface with companies and organisations has to be a
structured organisational entity that can deal with them in the
traditional way, make contracts, do quality control and so on. There is
a market for smart future-oriented commercial think tanks (I know this
because I'm involved with one), but they need a firmer organization than
a list or virtual community to work. I think it would be a smart step
for transhumanism to start up a number of such organisations right now,
in order to really sell transhumanism to the world. My experience is
that it is far easier to convince people by selling them ideas, analysis
and papers than by giving them away.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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