From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Thu Mar 04 1999 - 11:31:05 MST
ASpidle@aol.com writes:
> In a message dated 3/4/99 1:46:20 PM, you wrote:
>
> <<Most likely the finished scenario will be posted to the web in a few
> months, after we have played it. It does involve a lot of
> transhumanist ideas, although maybe not in the way many people
> think...>>
>
> Anders, I think any future scenarios must include intelligence augmentation
> and virtual people and hybrids a la Gary Egan's book "Diaspora".
Sure. But my scenario has deliberately softened these aspects - at
least among the colonies. Not to go into a lot of detail, but while
the colony ships trundled on towards their destination, quite
naturally things continued to develop in the solar system. The
singularity has come and gone there, the colonies are still on the
human side. And one problem for them turned out to be their small
size: you cannot ship over huge populations, and since the
reproductive rate remains fairly low (they are almost all at least
equivalent to the current western world, with two or three exceptions)
the amount of brainpower, economic growth and scientific discovery was
much lower than in the solar system. So while some of the colonies
have indeed developed intelligence augmentation, nanotech, mental
redesign, human genetic modifications and AI afterwards, they are ages
behind the "solarians" now inhabiting the solar system. (And please
don't ask what the solarians are up to, that is a transcendent secret
:-)
> Has anyone else read Egan's works?
I love them. BTW, his name is Greg Egan.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 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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