QueeneMUSE@aol.com wrote:
> Ok thanks for sharing adolescent fantasies.
Hey, what exactly is wrong with a man wanting there to be lots of beautiful
women in the world? (Or vice versa, of course.)
> (Now if you can also program them to tell you are the best lover in the
> universe whether or not that's true....)
How about if we combine the body mods with a little hedonic engineering, so
that sex can actually be as good as we all wish it was?
> Ever hear of the Stepford Wives?
Fictional treatments of this subject always assume that 1) the women are
coerced, 2) the men are either scum or nitwits, 3) mental mods are only
superficial, so the 'real you' is still in there somewhere, and 4) boring
mediocrity is somehow better than ant fantasy. None of these assumptions
are likely to hold in the real world. I'm not sure what the result will be,
but I expect it will be far more complex (and interesting) than anything
portrayed in fiction.
several people wrote (paraphrasing):
> Body mods! Eeek! Oh, no, everyone will become a soulless clone of the
> latest trendy body style! Evil corporations will take over our bodies and
> doom us to an eternity of bland sameness. The sky is falling! The sky is
> falling!
Get a grip, guys. This attitude is itself an example of mindless conformity
to decades of bad science fiction and intellectual elitism. The only
segment of society where the herd instinct is that strong is teenagers, and
that is obviously a temporary phase.
I'm sure most people will want to be good looking, but that does not imply
they will all look the same. It is already possible to have yourself
altered to look like an attractive celebrity, but virtually no one does.
What most people want is to look like themselves, only better.
So, the middle class gets in shape while the upper class goes looking for
ways to stand out. Since exceptional beauty requires that you look
different than everyone around you, that means a whole new branch of art
will arise to fill the demand for unusual and esthetically pleasing bodies.
And lets not forget that standards of beauty vary a great deal from person
to person, let alone between different cultures.
Meanwhile, we have lots of subcultures that will probably diverge from human
norms. I predict that many Furries will actually become their favorite
anthropomorphic form, many sci-fi and fantasy fans will want to look like
humanoid aliens or fantasy races, and many fetishists will lavish great
attention on whatever it is that they like. Throw in a scattering of purely
functional enhancements that happen to have cosmetic side effects and you've
got a recipe for an explosion of diversity in human appearance.
Billy Brown
bbrown@transcient.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:03:36 MDT