Hello all, this is my first time posting here so be gentle! I am going to
take C.J.'s lead and introduce myself also. My name is Brian Shores, and I
have been a huge fan of sci-fi ever since I can remember. I have always been
interested in future possibilities, and have molded my belief system on the
premise that anything is possible given the right amount of time and effort.
I am a mechanical design engineer by trade, but I have a wide variety of
interests, such as computers and VR, music, art, and philosophy/sociology. I
came upon the extropy.org website and could not believe what I was reading.
It was like Max had summarized the majority of the ideas that I was thinking
all along in a concise, logical order! I was hooked and decided to jump on
for the ride myself. I just KNEW that I wasn't alone in my thinking! Glad to
be a part of all this.
And now a few comments on some of the current discussions:
As far as I am concerned, I do not mind if a group of intelligent people have
my full contact information... hopefully I will be able to contribute
something useful to the discussion once I get into the flow of things. The
problem is that there are just a large number of people out there (and
corporations such as Doubleclick) that use personal information to their
advantage, and a small number of people who have malicious intent with such
info. I look forward to the day where people can get beyond the greed,
selfishness, and pettiness that our society seems to be stuck in right now
and be able to join together and do something truly great with our species. I
think that if people learned to trust one another (the belief that all human
beings are basically good), and totally accept who we each are as
individuals, it would not matter so much if we had a mutually (I agree with
Zero that it MUST be mutual) transparent society. Freedom of information
comes with the responsibility to use that information in a benevolent way.
On having a pseudo-self online... It is a very iteresting thing to me to be
able to have an alter-ego online (especially in virtual environments such as
ActiveWorlds). Digital-selves or avatars allow us to explore new social,
artistic, and cultural relationships with people through the use of a
computer interface and the web.
Also, I will be one of the first in line for an in-line broadband connection
straight into my brain, because I just don't have enough time in the day to
absorb all of the ideas and knowledge that is out there for the taking! We
can only wait for that day to happen for the common man!
Cheers,
Brian (A.K.A. Artillo)
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