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The Next Generation
EReidJ writes "Washingtonpost.com has a story about what biotechnology means to being post-human. While the article gets a little dorky at times, and the comic-book references somewhat over-the-top, it manages to penetrate well past the surface of what most articles would do. (And come on, admit it, how many of us have daydreamed well into our twenties about doing the kinds of things they only comic book heros can do?) They reference a lot of good material, talk to Kurzweil and Max Moore, and use the excellent Science Magazine issue on this subject for a lot of their material."
I maintain a page on transhuman / posthuman resources, with lots of links and information. If you're at all interested, I'm sure you'll find something cool there!
Eric's Transhumanism Page.
augment your senses: http://sensebridge.net/
For example, there was a link a while ago that showed a computer camera system attached to a implant in a blind man's brain that allowed him to see (at a very basic level). This thing was pretty intense, but development for it started in the 70's. Also, the procedure was not allowed in the states because of all of the FDA red tape that exists. Stuff like this is cool, but your or I will be long gone before we see any real-world applications for it.
"Even change has changed. It's been 32 years since Alvin and Heidi Toffler published "Future Shock," warning that the pace of change was increasing faster than people could handle it."
/. has provided a wonderful window into what is hot, and forthcoming so that we may at LEAST have a glimpse of what is going on around us.
If this is NOT true, then why is it that nearly 90% of kids now days know more about computers than their parents?
Merely because the kids have more free-time to play and tinker with the contraption? Thus, change happening faster than people can handle.
Hell...how many of us can keep up with TODAY's technology let alone tomorrows? Albeit,
"Just Smile and Nod." --Huck
That's weird that you missed the Tomorrow People reference then! (I'm not familiar with the show myself, just thought the song was rather appropriate!)
:)
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
I spent some time lurking around the Extropian main mailing list. There are some brilliant people with some good ideas there, as well as some real whack jobs.
Max Moore is really one smart guy. I'd recommend reading his Extropian Principles statement.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
but hardly anyone is running around screaming about how cell phones have Fundamentally Altered Human Nature
I beg to differ. There are many people who do discuss such things and how they are fundamentally altering human nature. The phenomenon is usually referred to as Globalism, a term that can be seen in most any major or minor publication.
On the other hand, some of your sentiments are credible, in the long run. The idea of a modern Democracy was something that shook the world in it's time, but has now become muted and old hat. Same could be said for other inventions that have come or will come. Don't forget that this "shaking the world" didn't happen all at once, it is a process with it's own growth curve.
"I think we should tax people who stand in water! " - Mr. Gumby
Thanks for the kind words. :)
... or, if as is more likely, you're not bored with your threescore and ten, what makes you think you'll be bored with centuries or millennia?
You know, I would really love it if I thought all my grandparents had at least another century of life to go. And, if they could be cured of the aches and pains of old age, I'll bet they would too. Day-to-day life may be depressing, but it's mostly better than the alternative.
I've had this argument about immortality, or even significant life extension, plenty of times before, and I've never understood it. "I don't want to live 200 years / 1000 years / a million years / forever," people say. "I'd get bored." To which my reply is, are you bored now, with decades? So bored that you really don't want to go on living? Then kill yourself now
Right off the top of my head, I can easily think up fulfilling, productive ways to spend at least a few thousand years of lifespan, especially if the people I care about will also have that time. And by my, say, 5000th birthday, I'll probably have figured out plenty more to do.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
If we think rascism is bad now, just wait until we can create even new ways of grouping people.
But then, once self-change is common enough, those groupings will become meaningless. As any car dealer will tell you in Silicon Valley, don't snub some guy just because he's wearing a ratty T-shirt and shorts, since he may be a billionaire.
How meaningful will groupings be if we have the ability to change our appearances and characteristics the way we change desktop colors on our computers?
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
First off: There's plenty of people yelling over cell-phones changing people's nature.
And I'd easily say that technology has changed human nature, or perhaps allowed human nature to be shown more openly.
Humans are greedy, and selfish, and except for small times, inherently evil. But of course we have to work together to live. Technology and fucking (population booms) are changing that. You can't look to your neighbor anymore and know that if he died, then you'd have alot more work to do.
Humans won't change (though biotech may succeed I hope) but their circumstances and values may; and those are probably more important.
If I told you, you could live forever, except if someone shot or killed you. And you grew up that way (our kids would if we figured it out in this generation), you would be terrified of the thought of death. Everyone would be. Killing someone would be unthinkable, and death too big a risk. People who fight wars, commit suicide bombings etc. think to themselves "I'm gonna grow old and die anyway, might as well go out in a blaze of glory"
- Tempestdata
I strongly think the electric light and the power grid has fundamentally changed the daily course of daily events.
So has the watch and calendar.
As have the alarm clock.
Or feminism.
Let me count the ways:
Before electricity and the electric light, there really wasn't much you could do after sunset; 5pm in the winter, 8pm in the summer. You were forced to adopt the solar cycle. Now we can/have decouple ourselves (to our own detriment, of course) from the same old same old; get up at dawn, go sleep shortly after dusk.
Now think how long you sleep now, vs how long you would sleep without an electric light. I do 12am to 7am, my brother does 2am to 9am; but without electriciy and light, we would probably be forced on a 8pm to 6am schedule. And I would have no choice; without light, there's precious little I can do, at all.
Then there's the whole concept of swing shift.
Imagine genetic engineering allowing 100% decoupling from the solar cycle?
Okay, how about watches and calendars?
We would be reliant upon good weather and sundials. We wouldn't be able to predict the future at all, because we couldn't predict the present. The lowest granularity would be 'morning, afternoon, evening, bedtime', but now we can do better 'every ten minutes', 'ever 30 seconds', 'every three hours'.
Again, separation from the solar cycle. This allows us to do chemical reactions, physics experiments, planning into the future (meet tomorrow at 3pm'. Does this change the way we live life? Yes, it makes life more regimented and predictable (probably to our detriment)
Try an experiment; turn off or disable all clocks in your house for two weeks, it's actually very relaxing.
Or feminism: The very thought that a woman's body and life are her own.
Fundamental change: Childbearing age has shifted from 14 years old to much later; late 20s, late 30s, even the occasional 40 year old.
It means women have a choice how to live their life, instead of being tied to the social/cultural needs as dictated by men. It means they have a chance to dictate their own lives.
This probably comes from a combination of political though, abortion inducing technologies, and anti-pregnancy technologies;contraceptives.
I'm sure there are others I haven't thought of.
GPL Deconstructed
Sci-fi dreaming was fine for the pulp paperback age. Kind of dumb now, as I seriously doubt any of the shit mentioned in that article will implement in the public sector.
Aside from the fact that technology to radically alter human abilities through surgery has been around for quite some time. You think the 'X-Men' is fantasy? Aside from the dumb costumes, and canned dialogue. .
The story about "Steve Rogers" as Captain America is barely fiction. Guys like that are entirely too real. But that's nothing I'm in a position to prove, so moving right along. .
The point of the matter is that any 'upgrades' Joe Public will be able to have implemented on himself will be:
Assuming for a ludicrous moment that these kind of upgrades will ever become a marketable commodity, like owning a car, having an enhancement would be a financial and life-style leg shackle sold under the guise of freedom. --Which, no doubt, everybody would buy into. Hook, line and sinker.
Out of all the car owners I know, only a very small handful are not miserable wage slaves trying like mad to pretend they're happy. --While chasing the bullshit 'satisfaction markers' as sold to them by cute television sit coms and popular music, all of which is primarily designed to cause social strife.
"Hit me baby, one more time."
-Fantastic Lad
post-human? I paraphrase Richard Leakey, who once stated at a lecture at Stony Brook, that he spent many years looking at the fossil record, trying to answer the question "When did we first break off from the rest of the primates and become human?". He's now convinced this has not yet occurred.
post-"Homo sapien" is more accurate. Genes make a species; they don't make a human being. Maybe we should focus on what it really means to be human rather than focusing on what happens next.