From: Alexander 'Sasha' Chislenko (sasha1@netcom.com)
Date: Fri Jul 17 1998 - 18:30:29 MDT
A rather interesting article by Michael Malone in Upside
- see <http://www.upside.com/texis/mvm/story?id=35927f000>.
He discusses current infatuation of the media with high
tech, worries for the future of medium-IQ masses, points
out that the expectations of the technological revolution
are not accompanied by careful analysis of "implications
of such a profound historical discontinuity", and draws
some interesting historical parallels.
Comprehensive, well written, and probably to a certain
degree symptomatic of at least some of the upper-middle-
intellectual attitudes to the explosive development of events.
I think the text could be improved though if it contained
not only the references to the possible scale of the expected
"discontinuity", such as Moore's "Law", and relevant historical
analogs, but also some interesting ideas on its long-term
qualitative changes in the nature of humans and their
agglomerations, as well as suggestions of which should be
pursued and which should be avoided. (Most interesting enabling
technologies, such as AI, ER, nanotech, uploading, etc. are not
even mentioned, let alone what they could *do*).
Well, maybe after such articles convince the thinking public
that the subject deserves serious consideration, some people
will start thinking of such things, and pay more attention to
extropian ideas. Don't know if facing a huge, disoriented,
horrified, and demanding crowd then would me more enjoyable
than watching today's clueless proto-conscious technosocium
cheerfully trot towards this discontinuity...
So far humans have been much better in bringing the imperatives
of functional development into existence, than in understanding
what they are doing - so maybe a certain degree of public
cluelessness is even beneficial for technological progress
at this point?
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Alexander Chislenko <http://www.lucifer.com/~sasha/home.html>
Extropy Online <http://www.extropy.org/eo/index.htm>
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