GBurch1@aol.com wrote:
> Regarding who "The Turning Point Project" really is, Mike found this:
>
> In a message dated 8/29/00 2:13:34 PM Central Daylight Time,
> retroman@turbont.net writes:
>
> > From the CTA website at http://www.icta.org
> > Executive Director
> > Andrew Kimbrell is a public interest attorney, activist and author. He has
> > been
> > involved in public interest legal activity in numerous areas of technology,
> > human health and the environment. After working eight years as the Policy
> > Director at the Foundation for Economic Trends,
>
> The Foundation for Economic Trends is, of course, Jeremy Rifkin's
> organization. Looking into the bios of the people at the Turning Point
> website, there are LOTS of connections to Rifkin.
>
> As Mike points out, the great irony here is the extent to which this
> well-organized group of people use funding from their "corporate enemies" to
> get their message across, when the Rifkinite ideology is premised in part on
> the notion that "corproations" control the world. The luddites are becoming
> masters of playing one single-issue special interest group off another in the
> pursuit of their much more unified goal.
>
> I'll say it again: The opponents of science and reason are much better
> organized, with a much more unified ideological framework than the disparate
> groups working toward a continuation of the goals of the Enlightenment. If
> real progressives don't get better organized and funded, there's an
> increasing chance of a significant anti-technology and anti-science backlash
> that could begin to have real impact on the kinds of timelines we've all come
> to accept as more or less "inevitable". Folks like Kurzweil and Moravec are
> increasingly "preaching to the choir", while others, like Joy and Rifkin, are
> crafting messages that reach far beyond core anti-progress constituencies.
>
> Greg Burch <GBurch1@aol.com>----<gburch@lockeliddell.com>
> Attorney ::: Vice President, Extropy Institute ::: Wilderness Guide
> http://users.aol.com/gburch1 -or- http://members.aol.com/gburch1
> ICQ # 61112550
> "We never stop investigating. We are never satisfied that we know
> enough to get by. Every question we answer leads on to another
> question. This has become the greatest survival trick of our species."
> -- Desmond Morris
The day some otherwise disinterested dowager can extend her lifespan threefold by
taking a pill, she will.
People are right to be skeptical of paradigm-shifting progress. The nuclear age
ushered in an era of mutually assured destruction and fear of who had the bomb.
Yet, besides the unfortunate civilian souls at Hiroshima and Nagasaki who died,
and others from that incident, none have died from the bomb.
The luddites are those that are already making money (off of others), and their
puppets, who fear that the paradigm shifts would take away their market.
It took humanity millions of years to evolve to where it is, the preeminent
species on the planet for thousands of years. While an asteroid might snuff us
all out at once, the probability of our digital descendents doing so is less.
-- Ross Andrew Finlayson Finlayson Consulting Ross at Tiki-Lounge: http://www.tiki-lounge.com/~raf/
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