From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Fri Jan 01 1999 - 05:49:44 MST
Stardrive9@aol.com writes:
> Why Anders chose it for his site? I've wondered about that myself.
> Anders...?
Well, there were several reasons. One evening in 1993 or so, the
members of the Omega mailing list (swedish transhumanism list, still
active) met to have dinner. During the discussions we decided to form
a formal organization to promote transhumanism. The question of names
came up, and we began to play with the original name omega. Somebody
suggested alpha, but that didn't quite strike a chord. Then somebody
8I think it was me, but I'm not certain) suggested aleph instead - it
is the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet. It has a number of nice
resonances:
1. Of course, the pun/antithesis with omega.
2. In the Kabbalah, it represents origin, power, just about Everything
with big E.
3. Borges story (quite fun) where it is a kind of place where the
whole universe can be viewed.
4. Mitch Porter's concept of an Aleph State, a kind of generalization
of an Omega Point.
5. And of course the transfinite cardinals in set theory.
It is a nice symbol, although we have sometimes been accused of having
a swastika for symbol (amazing but true).
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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