RE: Memes - more information please...

O'Regan, Emlyn (Emlyn.ORegan@actew.com.au)
Wed, 9 Jun 1999 10:11:13 +1000

> ;)) ... When the machines rule the world and if they decide to entertain
> humans in some kind of zoo I will ask them to implement for me a
> girlfriend
> with a good amount of your intellectual and humoristic characteristics
> ;)...
> please keep some datas so that i can ask you some additional
> specifications
> if needed..
>
Just to register this on the list again, I am a bouncing, blue eyed boy.

I'm sorry everyone keeps taking me to be female, maybe my communication style is too effeminate? Maybe I should take up a more easily recognised handle, which is very male (Death Lord Zod?) rather than my real name, which causes confusion. This is an interesting problem in the light of the thread about representing yourself honestly on the net, because I have been, and it's not really getting the correct impression across.

If only the famous Emlyns (an elite group to be sure) were known outside the UK... Also, I have heard of at least one instance of Emlyn as a woman's name.

Actually this doesn't bother me personally - it's actually really interesting to be in a position like this. It is a good example of the elusiveness of identity in fact. For example, in a purely text-based relationship, how is physical gender really relevant? In fact, how many of the components of your identity really have relevance in such a context.

We talk a lot about the unknowable post-singularity transhuman future, and few people conceptualise themselves as having a body in any recognisable, human sense at all. What then of gender? Will I, born in the 20th century, but living 10,000 years in the future (hoping), with a distributed intelligence across planets or built into an interstellar vessel, or uploaded into a nano-scale brain, still conceive of myself as male? Still even conceive of myself as a single entity?

But for now anyway, XY all the way.

Emlyn
PS: You're still welcome to use me as an intellectual model for your robot girlfriend - it's just so perverse, I like it.