From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Fri May 10 2002 - 14:15:20 MDT
Lee Corbin wrote:
>
> T.0. Morrow writes
>
> > When I daydream about how I'll enjoy the fruits of advanced
> > technologies, I often think about such things as running the
> > Pacific Coast Trail or living on top of a Utah butte.
>
> I assume that you're describing your post-uploading experiences...
> You're not, ugh, thinking of doing that in the flesh, are you?
> Gross! What a waste of resources.
Not at all. In fact, you greatly reduce your environmental footprint by
doing such trips for extended periods. Most people have absolutely no
idea of the amount of resources are consumed to live a modern lifestyle.
While most of these are renewable (water, paper, plastic, glass, etc) it
does take energy to renew these.
I've been fantasizing about getting a small sailboat with solar panels,
a satellite link, a small wind turbine, fishing equipment and a water
still and becoming a true technomad with my computers on board.
My other fantasies have been along the vien of the time travel into the
past, with some modern computer technology and CD-ROMs of, say, the US
Patent database, and gaining great wealth by introducing modernizing
technologies. (this is also my current theory explaining the Rimbaldi
character in the tv show ALIAS).
>
> > True, I could do those things now--but not without incurring various
> > unacceptable risks and discomforts. Humans probably have some inborn
> > affinity for thriving in nature; nature has too seldom cooperated with that
> > preference. That will almost certainly change, and for the better.
>
> Yes, not only those "unacceptable risks" but today you have to
> put up with crowding.
>
> When you say, "That will almost certainly change", are you
> speaking about the profound problem of how you are going to
> deal with your "inborn affinity for thriving in nature"?
> After you can edit your inborn affinities, which one are
> you going to keep, and why?
We can either edit nature, or edit our inborn affinities, or both. It's
not necessarily an either/or proposition (nor a neither/nor).
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