From: Brian Atkins (brian@posthuman.com)
Date: Sun Jan 18 1998 - 17:59:31 MST
Yes, remember in one of W. Gibson's books (Count Zero)
where there was the really rich guy (Virek?) living in the vat
who had a whole corporation doing his bidding in the real world.
Adam Foust wrote:
>
> At 04:03 PM 1/18/98 +0100, you wrote:
> >A leader-centered metaorganism is in some sense a huge exoself that
> >extends the leader and could be considered a transhuman technology if
> >it didn't involve the use of less-than-free humans as
> >components. Imagine having something equivalent to a major corporation
> >as an integral part of yourself, implementing your will and augmenting
> >your capabilities!
> >
> >However, many organisations are not strongly under control of their
> >human leaders, but are more of a collective system. Usually they do
> >not become collective systems independent of leaders immediately, but
> >slowly grow in this direction as they age. I would say "true"
> >metaorganisms that have their own behavior independent of humans today
> >tend to be very old and large, and it might be that they have not yet
> >fully emerged.
>
> Many people think of Microsoft as a "huge exoself" of Bill Gates...
> If so, is the guy (by fuzzy definition) already a transhuman, while
> we are still merely transhumanists? I do not have any special
> feelings for Microsoft (or Bill) one way or the other, but this thought
> flew to mind after reading about ten "Microsoft is the Borg" articles
> followed by this message. Hmm...
>
> [Adam Foust] * agfoust@farthest.com * http://farthest.com
--
The future has arrived; it's just not evenly distributed.
-William Gibson
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