Hello Extropians!
Not since college (long time ago) have I enjoyed the kind of earnest self-important discussions of the kind that one can find on this list. Allow me to join in! (Old bald guy sits his fat ass down amid the college kids, who look at him with mild disgust.)
File under: Duh!
News Item: Extropians, technology and freedom lovers, are chagrinned to discover universal surveillance and biometric identifiers threaten the very freedom they profess to love! Dooh! I hate it when that happens! (See aposite citation below).
But wait! Here's a solution!
Spike proposes wearing clever disguises to fool big brother. Walk down the street in pancake makeup and eyebrow lifters! Duck behind corners when the camera swings your way! Wear human-skin gloves with fake fingerprints! There's freedom for you! But I think credit for this general approach must be given to (!) the literal ("fundamentalist") Christian theologians, who, according to a copy of Harvard Lampoon that I read on retreat in 1969, having abandoned work on microscopic camel, had developed giant needle to show non-incompatbility of wealth and righteousness implied in Jesus's famous "it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven."
Suggestion for Further Research: In the spirit of discussion of research in
how various chemicals fuck up the ol' cortex, I wonder if any research has
been done on ill effects of feeding Ein Rind, er, Ayn Rand to impressionable
high schoolers? These works "almost perfect in their immorality" (comment
attributed to Gore Vidal)usually cause no damage in adult brains, which shut
the damn book on or before the 675th page of John Galt's 29,776 page
concise summation of why everybody who makes less than $200K per annum ought
to be sent to the best kitchen appliance that German Industrial Organization
can produce. But what of the risk to teenagers? My own daugther, having read
"Anthem" as a high school junior, bounced around hitting her head against
the wall for two weeks after. Only repeated playing of Rage against the
Machine and P.J. Harvey was able to restore her to the bosom of her family.
. . Not that I would propose censorship, mind you. . .
Have I missed this part of the discussion? When all the transhumans start arriving, what happens to the humans? Just wondering!
Hey thanks! Been lovely talking with you! (Old bald guy stands his fat-assed self up. It's unclear whether his pawing of the shapely young woman sitting next to him was intentional or merely necessary to get himself vertical).
That Apt Citation You Was Promised Above:
"Thus it is clear that the human race has at best limited capacity for
solving even straightforward social problems. How then is it going to solve
the far more difficult problem of reconciling freedom with technology?
Technology presents clear-cut material advantages, whereas freedom is an
abstraction that means different things to different people, and its lost is
easily obscured by propoganda and fancy talk."
Source? You guessed it! "Industrial Society and Its Future" by your favorite
"send him away for life without a trial" anarchist and mine, Theodore "Ted"
Kaczynski!
Later,
jrs
Nice day if it don't rain! Holy Synergistic Zeitgeist, check out my nanotech novel about Gulf War Syndrome, Acts of the Apostles, at www.wetmachine.com