From: Alexander 'Sasha' Chislenko (sasha1@netcom.com)
Date: Fri Jan 16 1998 - 15:00:13 MST
I just read a message entitled "Immortal Astronaut"
on the Future Culture mailing list, about 77-year-old
John Glenn going to space again, and thought:
what if NASA decides to launch a manned star
mission at some point? They would have to take
serious measures to extend the lives of the crew
then, and would explain to the public that radical
life extension is sometimes a good thing...
There will probably be other uses of technologies
of extropian interest that would justify them in the
public opinion: improving the intelligence of military
commanders in the time of war so that they could better
protect the average citizens, enhancing physical skills
of surgeons and empathic abilities of social workers who
help "disadvantaged individuals", improve sensitivity of
doctors working with cute babies, extending lives of
public heroes, etc. And then, among the thousands of
"good" uses, the technology wouldn't seem that evil anymore...
Look how little time was needed to make opponents of
"commercialization of the Net" cool their rage...
They were so prominent just a couple of years ago -
and now nobody even discusses the topic. The "Net
socialists" were not destroyed or out-argued; they
were just drowned by the practical logic of the Net
development.
So if we just come up with some "PC uses" for cloning
and telomerase manipulation...
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Alexander Chislenko <http://www.lucifer.com/~sasha/home.html>
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