At 11:28 AM 04/11/2001, Damien Broderick wrote:
>Well, the nearly-hour-long program by Ian Walker was broadcast today in Oz.
>Pretty nifty Spike/Singularity start, some odd skews (to my ear, at least)
>as it progressed, closing with the mandatory invocations of Drs Faust and
>Frankenstein, complete with groaning movie monster. Ah well.
Yeah, that ending note annoyed me a bit. He just *had* to finish by giving
in to the sensationalist scary aspect. Grrrr!
I can understand the desire to wind up the show on a strong dramatic point,
but geeez! I would have thought the comparison with the changes we have
gone through over the last 100 years being dwarfed by the changes of the
next 20 years makes for exciting stuff without biased overlay. Let us
optimists enjoy our half full glass. Let the pessimists bemoan their half
empty one, but there is no need to encourage their fear and loathing.
But on the whole it was a pretty well rounded show, I thought. And at least
he didn't interview any of the hordes of dickheads who think cyberheaven is
a sin against god and humanity. (whew!)
>Featured players included Natasha Vita More, Stelarc (with his mad
>scientist laugh), Miriam English, and me, with readings from Greg Egan
>fiction.
I was quite pleased that he left in the part of my interview where I
pointed out that I like having a biological body, but sadly must leave it
behind if I am to live in full health for many hundreds of years.
He can't really be blamed for using Stelarc's *mwahahahah* laugh. He is a
broadcaster -- such a sound bite is an irresistable sweet to them. :-)
>I found the edited excerpts of my long shambling interview with
>Ian Walker pretty fair. In one place, though, I shruggingly admitted that
>trying to find a suitable analogy to immortal life (becoming a flower,
>say) is hopeless; as quoted, this might create the false impression that I
>am in despair at the pointlessness of *everything*. Such editing verged, I
>thought, on bad faith.... but luckily it was a rare lapse.
I couldn't *believe* that he actually asked you what is so bad about
dying!!! I could almost feel you tripping over yourself in amazement that
someone could actually consider death as acceptable.
The part where you talked about immortality came over almost as a joke or a
quip I think.
>Oh, and according to Ian Walker extropians have a secret handshake--I'm
>terribly put out, as you'll appreciate, that nobody has ever shared this
>mystic grip with me... :)
Heheheh.
ACK/SYN packets perhaps. :-)
>Audio of the show at:
>
>http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/bbing/
>
>Transcript to be posted on Thursday.
I guess that would be Friday in USA...
Cheers,
- Miriam
---------=---------=---------=---------=---------=---------=------
To the optimist, the glass is half full.
To the pessimist, the glass is half empty.
To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
---------=---------=---------=---------=---------=---------=------
http://werple.net.au/~miriam
http://members.optushome.com.au/miriame
Virtual Reality Association http://www.vr.org.au
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