From: Eric Watt Forste (arkuat@pobox.com)
Date: Fri Sep 05 1997 - 13:23:17 MDT
> The question remains, is this kind of information really likely to
> be important? I can't imagine a plausible situation in which an
> entity with the kinds of powers that nanotech confers is going to
> find itself needing access to information from its biological past.
> This may be a failure of imagination on my part though. What kinds
> of things could you see happening where it would need this information?
Well, I don't think I'm going to remain interested in nothing more
than accumulating capital forever. One interesting challenge that
looks like I could work on it for many centuries, at least, is
self-transformation, self-improvement. The more I know about all
the legacy code embedded in my genes and my chordate nervous system,
the better able I'll be to modify (and I hope improve) it. Because
this stuff is the product of an evolutionary process, it is shaped
("written") by the history of the selection pressures that affected
my ancestors and that affected the people who shaped my culture.
I don't know enough about my legacy code yet to know exactly
which information about the history of the selection pressures
that shaped me is going to turn out to be most handy in my
future self-creation projects. So to the extent that I'm
serious about this grandiose talk, I'm wary of cutting loose
with the dance of Shiva on the delete key.
Besides, one of my favorite Unix jokes is "Those without
history are condemned to retype it." ;)
-- Eric Watt Forste ++ arkuat@pobox.com ++ expectation foils perception -pcd
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