From: Max More (max@maxmore.com)
Date: Sat Sep 07 2002 - 21:31:46 MDT
At 01:52 PM 9/7/2002 -0400, you wrote:
>All,
>
>I just added a new article to Betterhumans that started out as an
>examination of how Transhumanists discovered the movement. After
>contacting several, I realized that without the Internet there would be no
>Transhumanism. That became my theme. An obvious point, maybe, but only if
>you're involved in Transhumanism already. And hopefully future historians
>will find it useful, when Transhumanism changes the world :)
Simon: I haven't read your article, but if it is consistent with your
summary here, I think it will be seriously misleading.
There *was* transhumanism before anyone used the Internet. (Apart from a
tiny number of IT specialists. I'm talking about before 1991-93 or so.)
Extropy magazine started in 1988 and had grown substantially before anyone
found us via email, and certainly before anyone outside CERN in Switzerland
was using the Web. And Extropy was not the first transhumanist attractor,
although I think it was the first modern and enduring one. For instance,
FM-2030, author of "Are You a Transhuman" had regular gatherings of
transhumanists before the Web existed, and Natasha Vita-More's earliest
transhumanist work was also earlier.
The Internet and the Web have certainly been a *tremendous* boon to
transhumanism, but it is quite false to claim that "without the Internet
there would be no Transhumanism".
Max
_______________________________________________________
Max More, Ph.D.
max@maxmore.com or more@extropy.org
http://www.maxmore.com
Strategic Philosopher
President, Extropy Institute. http://www.extropy.org <more@extropy.org>
_______________________________________________________
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