Re: Re: We luv the guv't
Adam Foust (agfoust@farthest.com)
Sun, 18 Jan 1998 11:55:42 -0500
At 04:03 PM 1/18/98 +0100, you wrote:
>A leader-centered metaorganism is in some sense a huge exoself that
>extends the leader and could be considered a transhuman technology if
>it didn't involve the use of less-than-free humans as
>components. Imagine having something equivalent to a major corporation
>as an integral part of yourself, implementing your will and augmenting
>your capabilities!
>
>However, many organisations are not strongly under control of their
>human leaders, but are more of a collective system. Usually they do
>not become collective systems independent of leaders immediately, but
>slowly grow in this direction as they age. I would say "true"
>metaorganisms that have their own behavior independent of humans today
>tend to be very old and large, and it might be that they have not yet
>fully emerged.
Many people think of Microsoft as a "huge exoself" of Bill Gates...
If so, is the guy (by fuzzy definition) already a transhuman, while
we are still merely transhumanists? I do not have any special
feelings for Microsoft (or Bill) one way or the other, but this thought
flew to mind after reading about ten "Microsoft is the Borg" articles
followed by this message. Hmm...
[Adam Foust] * agfoust@farthest.com * http://farthest.com