Re: The Spike

From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Sat Jan 27 2001 - 18:10:23 MST


At 01:45 PM 27/01/01 -0500, John K Clark wrote:

>the hardback looks great, much snazzier the
> old Australian edition.

It does indeed. I like it!

>did you make any big changes in
>the content?

I've tried to make the opening a bit more accessible to a general audience,
and I've updated as many technological examples as I could (since the
original was written in 1996), and the largest change is a long closing
chapter where I tried to bring together brief summaries of various thinkers
on how and when a singularity would occur. It concludes triumphantly with
none other than (tah-rah!) that bright spark E. Yudkowsky, of the coveted
Singularity Institute for Outlandish Claims and Ambitious Aspirations.

>I hope you didn't start bad mouthing that splendid
>fellow Pelagius.

I would never do that. The man has some scary ideas about uploading, but
I'm very grateful for his help and continued interest. On the other hand, I
haven't heard a peep out of Augustine, his opponent in the argument; I do
provide the URL to his `Geniebusters' site. (Nor have I heard from Dan
Clemmensen, whom I still quote; he seems to have fallen off the transhuman
map. You lurking out there, Dan?)

Ahem; might I suggest, for the good of the memes (not to mention my bank
balance) that any reader from this forum who finds the book good and the
topic important should send a brief `review' saying so to amazon.com or
barnes&noble.com. Anyone who regards the book as deplorable rubbish should,
of course, remain mute.

Damien Broderick



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