From: Adrian Tymes (wingcat@pacbell.net)
Date: Sun Apr 13 2003 - 00:16:45 MDT
--- Reason <reason@exratio.com> wrote:
> These things are not off topic, per se. I would note
> that the larger (d20,
> collectable card games, fantasy/scifi board games)
> for example) gaming
> community is pretty damn large. It directly feeds
> ideas, people, creativity
> and IP to the enormous, growing computer gaming
> market (already larger than
> the movie industry). Dropping tranhumanist ideas
> into the pen-and-paper
> gaming community is to -- just maybe -- one day see
> them make it into a
> computer game that will sell half a million copies.
> Such is the power of
> post-literature to spread memes.
If you need evidence of this, even Nintendo has let
it slip into one of its high-profile series. From the
ending of their recently released Metroid Fusion:
"The wisdom of Adam Malkovich continued to serve even
after death. Until today, I had no idea that the
minds
of leaders and scientists were frequently uploaded to
computers. My incredible reunion with Adam may have
saved the universe..."
With this kind of exposure, one can dream of the day
when, "an AI acts similar to a known dead person; it's
an upload," becomes a cliche.
> So the more the merrier. Steve Jackson Games'
> Transhuman Space
> (http://www.sjgames.com/transhuman/) is part of the
> canon now, and we can
> expect to see these ideas filtering into other SF
> games as time goes on.
>
> The role of fun: a big one. If you want someone to
> adopt your credo, make it
> fun for them to find out about it.
One step further: show them how much fun it can *be*,
to be a posthuman. Well-written RPGs are definitely
one way of doing so.
Taking this a bit further...if one sees a transition
from humans-aided-by-AI in cyberspace fiction, to
humans-improved-across-the-board in transhuman
fiction,
what might be a further step along this path?
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