>I think of it as "Memetic Inertia", a force which
>acts as a brake on the rate of change in meme space. It shares a niche
>with Neo-Luddite Activism, although it's not the same thing: NLA is an
>active resistance to change on principle, whereas MI is passive and based
>not on principle but on a cognitive inability to accept that the world is
>in flux and that today's engineering was yesterday's science fiction.
I've had the same thought, and called it social inertia. It's why I
think the Singularity will not happen. Something interesting will
happen, certainly. But it will not involve more than a small fraction
of the population, because most people don't *like* change.
So, a few people will transform themselves, then a few more, then a
lot more - but it will be gradual: not a Singularity.
-R
Randall Clague | All about me lay those who had not the strength
rclague@netcom.com | to go on. A normal man would have given up, or
| died. ...I am not a normal man.