Re: "Sound and Fury" over enhancements

From: Randy Smith (randysmith101@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue Jan 08 2002 - 12:52:49 MST


>From: hal@finney.org
>Reply-To: extropians@extropy.org
>To: extropians@extropy.org
>Subject: "Sound and Fury" over enhancements
>Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2002 12:02:31 -0800
>
>PBS tonight (here in LA, see local listings) is showing an Oscar nominated
>documentary, Sound and Fury, about the controversy in the deaf community
>over cochlear implants for deaf children, which can restore hearing.
>See http://www.pbs.org/wnet/soundandfury/.
>
>It seems almost unbelievable that what is in many ways a cure for deafness
>could be controversial. One would think that parents would want the
>best for their children.

This "debate" has been going on for a couple years now.

This is a perfect example of what is happening to this society. The problem
may well be that this society is too large and complex, hence our watchdogs
and other "bullshit" mechanisms have been crippled by various forces and
interests.
I did not read your entire post, but bascially the interests here are the
well funded "deaf welfare society."

The parents of some deaf kids are deaf themselves, and they have set up a
little empire at places like Galludet University, and they do not want
technology crushing it.

By all rights, these parents should be criminally tried, but this society is
apparently broken.

Maybe we need to break up the USA, or at least cripple the fed govt and
break up the larger states...
we need to bring the govt and our watchdogs back down to a manageable size,
I think. (Maybe the internet can fix this once we get broadband....along
those lines, does anyone here have a comment on the Slashdot article re:
100:1 compression of near random data?)

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