Transhumanism In Tulsa

Does the level of enlightenment about Transhumanism and Immortalism in the state of Oklahoma depend on whether I am standing on the ground there or not?

I was thinking about this during an 11-day visit to my home town of Tulsa in August of 2002 as I had to help my 75-year-old father, who had been hospitalized for a few days, move out of his apartment and into an assisted living community. I live in California, and I had not been to Tulsa since 1990. I last saw my father in 1995, and while I kept in touch with him by telephone, I was shocked and disturbed to see how vulnerable he has gotten in recent years because of multiple chronic health problems.

I was also surprised at how much Tulsa has changed since I last lived there. Tulsa is starting to resemble Southern California in that it now has a significant Latino presence, additional freeways, and chain stores new to the area but long established in the Southland, like Circuit City, Home Depot, an IMAX theater and Pac Sun. The public library near where I lived as a teen, in addition to offering free Internet use, now has several stacks of books and magazines in Spanish. A shopping center down the street from the library, which I remembered as a bowling alley, now has stores catering to a Spanish-speaking clientele. The Anglo teens and twenty-somethings I overheard in the mall didn't even sound like Okies any more, but almost like Californians.

At the same time, Tulsa's famous fundamentalist Christian religiosity seems largely unchanged. The cable system at the motel where I stayed has several religious channels. I heard campaign commercials where one of the candidates for governor referenced his Website where you could read about his "spiritual journey." And the concert appearance in town of some apparently well known Christian pop singer was getting a lot of publicity.

While I was driving around this environment combining elements both strange and familiar, I was wondering why as a society we still tolerate letting decent people like my father age and die when we now have the resources and knowledge to do something about this enormity. Why do so many people in America find it more important to build new churches, shopping malls and retirement homes instead of research centers to employ scientists studying anti-aging and reversible cryotransport?

And then it struck me: Unless there are some cryonicists living in Oklahoma I don't know about, I was probably the only person there who has those kinds of thoughts, at least at that time. Does the level of enlightenment about Transhumanism and Immortalism in Oklahoma depend on my visits to that state?

Tulsa shows the problem facing Transhumanism in becoming an effective social movement. People can adopt new technologies and products -- I saw plenty of cellphones, PC's, Web addresses, Chrysler PT Cruisers and the like -- but they don't automatically feel the need to adopt any sort of "progressive" or "enlightened" outlook to correspond with the values implicit in such technologies (pace FM-2030, who argued otherwise). Saint Francis Hospital, where my father was being medically evaluated by pretty much state-of-the-art techniques, has a display in the lobby about Francis and what Catholics believe about the healing power of "saints." (Renaming it "Mister Francis" hospital would constitute progress.) No doubt religiously enthusiastic youngsters in Tulsa use their cellphones and e-mail to exchange messages about how much they love Jesus, in addition to trying to arrange courtship opportunities. However, I doubt many Tulsans, of any age, hook up to discuss nanotechnology, mind uploading and immortality through scientific means.

In the age of the Web it's certainly not hard any more to find out about these ideas, if you know the right keywords. Tulsa also now has Barnes & Noble and Borders bookstores, so the odds of a Tulsan stumbling across the right books and magazines have greatly increased. But accessibility doesn't necessarily translate into acceptance of Transhumanism as a better way to organize one's life. I don't see where Transhumanism is supposed to find its natural constituency if geography and culture are no longer barriers to learning about it. The meme doesn't seem to be propagating itself effectively.

Advancedatheist, thanks for letting us see your thought processes. I live in Alabama and I find myself thinking the same way. I have just returned from the local Wal-Mart and I kept thinking how differently I see the world in comparison to the people walking down the isles and the people at the checkout counters.

As a proactive person, I find myself asking what should I do.. what can I do to help others understand the opportunities of Transhumanism and Immortality? But on the other hand....should I really be worried about how many people "get it" if it's all going to happen anyway (Singularity)?

I've yet to have a strong feeling to just go out and do an interview, make a speech or hand out fliers.. as Avatar Polymoroh, Michael Anissimov and others are doing... maybe this is what I need to do... but that would be a daunting task here in Alabama where there is next to zero interest.

The closest physical entity with similar interest is, of course my wife and Eliezer's group in Atlanta. So, probably the most positive thing I can do to help is provide an online space for us to meet.

BJKlein writes,

But on the other hand....should I really be worried about how many people "get it" if it's all going to happen anyway (Singularity)?

Charles Platt on Cryonet has raised the point that recent progress in vitrification has been possible because cryonauts are considered "dead," and thus exempt from all the regulations burdening medicine these days. If the Federal Government, composed of the kinds of people who don't "get it," decides to regulate cryonics, the odds are that it will become unaffordable for most people, if it even survives at all.

So it's quite possible that we could be effectively sentenced to death because the "don't get it" people are running things, even if attaining biological immortality looks increasingly feasible. I see a need for Immortalists in general to wake up and get really, really serious about making & saving money, because in the real world that's the only thing that will give us the means to have our way.

Unfortunately money-making is going to get increasingly difficult if the U.S. enters a Japanese-style recession for the next decade or longer, combined with increasingly tight oil supplies because of Middle Eastern turmoil & our slide down the bad side of Hubbert's Peak. I've felt for a long time now that American-style "affluence" is largely illusory & unsustainable over the life cycle, and after seeing how much healthcare elderly people in our society receive, I forecast a major financial crisis approaching as the Baby Boomers enter the ranks of the seniors.

-> advancedatheist (first post)

The meme doesn't seem to be propagating itself effectively.

A meme propagates itself because it is stronger and better than what has been before. I have some doubt about predatory memes, replacement is the more feasible scenario and that will only occur if the current system is insufficient. -And it is not insufficient enough in Tusla it seems.
But that does not mean that a meme cannot be 'artificially' propagated. Directed evolution. Is that not what Transhumanism is about?

-> BJKlein

should I really be worried about how many people "get it" if it's all going to happen anyway (Singularity)?

[sleep] I really should shoot you for this. )
Honestly Mr. Klein, this is the very attitude I dread. I would not comment on it if it did not come from you. But I think you realise: Even if the "Singularity" were near- you would still have to fight for it to make it happen.

-> advancedatheist (second post)

I see a need for Immortalists in general to wake up and get really, really serious about making & saving money, because in the real world that's the only thing that will give us the means to have our way.

I absolutely agree with the first part ("waking up"), but the "making money" bit needs elaboration- Money is a rather illusory commodity. Europeans who have seen inflation and a sack of potatoes costing millions will be more familiar with the idea. Money is a proxy for power and power structures are unstable. (to appease the Marxists: at least for the individuals involved) What sort of money would you advocate? (Or would that be a new topic?)

Caliban writes,

Money is a rather illusory commodity. Europeans who have seen inflation and a sack of potatoes costing millions will be more familiar with the idea. Money is a proxy for power and power structures are unstable. (to appease the Marxists: at least for the individuals involved) What sort of money would you advocate? (Or would that be a new topic?)

I'm puzzled as to why so many people still fixate on hyperinflation in an era where more and more transactions are carried out electronically. Countries that have experienced hyperinflation were ones where people were paid wages in cash (the "paycheck" in the U.S. didn't become common until after World War II) and thus governments could get large amounts of currency into circulation through state payrolls and similar mechanisms. I don't see how that can happen when we're clearly heading in the opposite direction. In my business, the majority of receipts are paid by credit or debit/ATM cards. Unless the U.S. government decides to add some zeroes to people's credit limits and bank balances, how can hyperinflation happen here?

A lot of libertarians postulate a return to gold as a solution to the now unlikely scenario of hyperinflation, but that's ignoring the fact that gold has lost a lot of value since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. An ounce of gold (currently valued at, what? $300) could buy the labor of an Afghan for several weeks, but it would buy the labor of most Americans for only a few days, at best. The value of labor in Afghanistan reflects living standards of pretty much the world over before industrialization. In a modern economy gold is just not worth all that much any more, though it's still pretty to look at. It certainly can't be defended as a store of "objective value" or whatever specious claim gold bugs make for it these days.

Basically the form of money is less important to me than whether you have a net balance of it heading in your direction. You don't benefit from our sort of economic system as a consumer and a debtor, though some free-market apologists try to argue that you do. You really benefit from it as an owner of equity and a creditor, where others collect money (= socially accepted claims on wealth) that they have to give to you.

I don't like it, but I think advanced atheist is right about saving and earning money to "battle" for the future. I know that great societal changes are on the horizon, but until we reach the point, the "game" is played with money and material wealth. I am sure a few "converts" could be won over in Tulsa with a little advertising (paid for with greenbacks).

Caliban writes:

I really should shoot you for this.
Honestly Mr. Klein, this is the very attitude I dread. I would not comment on it if it did not come from you. But I think you realism: Even if the "Singularity" were near- you would still have to fight for it to make it happen.

Heh, thought I'd get a reaction... I wouldn't be here if i didn't think we we're making some kind of difference. Just the fact that there are 4 of us taking the time to talk about this ideas is important enough for me to make an effort to carry on.... although, the pragmatist in me wonders if our efforts could not be better utilized somewhere else... where this may be.. and doing what ... I'm not so sure. So, until we know.. I'll work with you guys and attempt to build ImmInst into the CNN of the Transhumanist Movement.

Mind writes,

I don't like it, but I think advanced atheist is right about saving and earning money to "battle" for the future. I know that great societal changes are on the horizon, but until we reach the point, the "game" is played with money and material wealth.

I don't come from financially sophisticated people -- my mother's parents, especially, could accurately be described as hillbillies and white trash -- so it's taken me relatively late in life to understand that I need to get the wealth system working in my favor if I'm going to have any chance at all of surviving. As my employer, friend & mentor, cryonicist David Pizer says, you can never have too much money!

(BTW, you might also check out Pizer's interesting but flawed novel, Ralph's Journey:

http://www.amazon.co...SIN/1583485783/ )

I am sure a few "converts" could be won over in Tulsa with a little advertising (paid for with greenbacks).

I wish it were that straightforward. Cryonics in particular got an amazing amount of free advertising following the cryotransport of baseball legend Ted Williams. But I haven't heard yet whether that is translating into new signups.

While Tulsa has a reputation for Christian zealotry, I don't think American religiosity per se is interfering with acceptance of Transhumanist ideas. Europeans are generally better informed about science and less religious than Americans, but Transhumanism doesn't seem to be catching on there, either. Perhaps European culture is senescent, as evidenced by the negative-growth birthrate and opposition to biotechnology. But Americans don't have this excuse, considering our continuing net immigration, obsession with at least looking youthful, and overall cultural dynamism.

I suspect that mainstream Americans warm up to emotional religion because it fulfills their desire to bond socially with members of their own tribe. Transhumanists, by contrast, tend to be loners & nonjoiners. A significant number of Transhumanists seem to be socially retarded, myself included. If there is a naturally constituency for Transhumanism in a place like Tulsa, it's likely to comprise the Asperger's cases who are off working on their PC's somewhere while surrounded by stacks of comic books, science fiction novels and technical manuals.

Very nice thread - stimulated me to branch it out into not one but two new topics

->BJKlein wrote:

although, the pragmatist in me wonders if our efforts could not be better utilized somewhere else... where this may be.. and doing what ... I'm not so sure. So, until we know.. I'll work with you guys and attempt to build ImmInst into the CNN of the Transhumanist Movement

I like the pragmatist in you very much.
[>] Topic on being proactive about life extension

---

-> advancedatheist wrote:

I need to get the wealth system working in my favor if I'm going to have any chance at all of surviving

A few years ago I thought so too. Now I am less sure. [unsure]
[>] Topic on Money Matters and Life extension

---

Now back to the topic of the sociology of immortalism:


-> advancedatheist writes:

Cryonics in particular got an amazing amount of free advertising following the cryotransport of baseball legend Ted Williams. But I haven't heard yet whether that is translating into new signups.

That would be a very interesting thing to find out- anyone good contacts to Alcor?

I don't think American religiosity per se is interfering with acceptance of Transhumanist ideas.

American culture is the breeding ground for Transhumanist ideas. But I fear American religiosity is just as opposed to it as European or African religiosity.

Europeans are generally better informed about science

I wish. Culture is important. Science is second rate knowledge.

and less religious than Americans,

Many Europeans would not dare to be so openly religious as Americans are. (Greece and Italy notwithstanding) But the "humanism" of the intellectual elite is subconsciously very much routed in religion.

but Transhumanism doesn't seem to be catching on there, either. Perhaps European culture is senescent, as evidenced by the negative-growth birthrate and opposition to biotechnology.

I would think it wise to separate these three issues:
1) senescent culture,
the culture is older with deeper routes and (as many Europeans see it) less immaturity/naviety than general American culture. Does that make it senescent? Maybe.
2) negative population growth
America would have that too, if it were not for strong population growth in certain ethnic groups
3) biotech sceptiscism
this penetrates to (1) but goes beyond that- there are multiple factors including:
-Europeans are less acquainted with the idea that technology is generally a blessing. (see above)
-many Europeans are very conscious about environmental dangers. the green movement has a firm stand in many European countries while in America it is rather marginalised
-biotech inventions come from America and it is about American business interests

But Americans don't have this excuse, considering our continuing net immigration, obsession with at least looking youthful, and overall cultural dynamism.

Life extension is almost exclusively an American pastime. My German immortal society has about 60 members 10 of which are active. :(

I suspect that mainstream Americans warm up to emotional religion because it fulfills their desire to bond socially with members of their own tribe.

That is an interesting theory. I'll have to think about it. Sounds very convincing.

Transhumanists, by contrast, tend to be loners & nonjoiners. A significant number of Transhumanists seem to be socially retarded, myself included. If there is a naturally constituency for Transhumanism in a place like Tulsa, it's likely to comprise the Asperger's cases who are off working on their PC's somewhere while surrounded by stacks of comic books, science fiction novels and technical manuals.

A very good characterisation I would say! As I wrote above the "meme" is not appealing enough for 'ordinary' people to take up. However, is it not these very communities that can be most effective, precisely because the individuals involved do not have many other social venues? Having been involved with other "loner-communities" I tend to think that this oxymoron is very possible.
We are all social animals at some point.

Caliban, you seem to have a good insight on European Culture. Let me ask you this? Why are Europeans less inclined towards freedom than the U.S. My own theory is that Europeans are "used to" dictatorships. The history of Europe has been mainly one of tyrants (benevolent or otherwise), except for maybe the last 100 years. I figure that the culture is still ambivalent towards the state encroachment on civil liberties because of this history. The U.S. has never experienced a "true" dictatorship (although it is getting close nowadays), and therefore I feel they are more inclined toward the libertarian (and also transhumanist) viewpoint.

Am I way off base?

I would be happy to hear your input.

I am not going to weigh in here too much because I am very impressed with the lucid and eloquent exchange of opinion that is illuminating the issue but I am looking for a way to quip about how an *Okie from Muskogee* is the backbone of America so here goes.

I have travelled a little and when I did I went to a school in Mexico as an adult to learn Spanish so that I could continue my postgraduate studies there. I was immersed in the language because of living there in Mexico City but I was shocked at the level of cultural fusion going on with the Burger Movement as it was changing the cultural an linguistic life of the community.

But I wanted to do more than just buy "tomates" and distinguish them from *jitomates* in the market so I decided to go deep. I chose not to speak my own language, period.

This went on for months. I was among a group of European, Asians, and *estadounidensen* at the CEPE (Centro de Enseñanza Para los Extranjeros) *Feriner Studies* so to speak and in way it was good because we were all there studying Spanish so I used it as a Rosetta Stone language in order to approach the other cultures and respectively practice our Spanish but also to get to know one another. Just because I did this no would believe me that I was from the USA.

It all stemmed from the fact that I was interested in their cultures as opposed to touting my own. I was not ashamed to be an American but I was acutely aware that I was living among the *Other* Americans (I was the immigrant to a foreign land) and respected not only them but all the cultures I was blessed with having available to meet on neutral ground. It allowed me to transcend my *burgher* reality and begin to appreciate the true flavor of diverse human culture.

Anyway I was arguing American History as it related to Native Americans, in Spanish, in a sociology class with a young Hawiiaian American lady who was somewhat mistaken about the actual facts and she got frustrated and demanded that as a German what did I know about American HIstory.

I told her I was not German and then she assumed instead that I was French and reiterated the argument, so I stopped her because she was digressing and she asked: "Well? Where are you from anyway? (the whole exchange was in Spanish) I then disabused her of the notion that "even an American can make too many assumptions about who and what we are."

I told her I was from the States and she choked, so I told her in English that "I had come to learn Spanish so what was the point of speaking English, I knew that language already".

She just looked at me and said: "But we have been studying in this class for six months and you haven't said anything at all in English?" I looked at her and smiled and said "Yes. so? Does this have anything at all to do with the treatment of Native Americans and the Acts by Andrew Jackson in ordering the *Trail of Tears*?" At which point she humbly said, "I'm sorry".

I told her she had nothing to be sorry about she was simply incorrect in the argument she was making. But what upon reflection surprised me about my countrymen was our general unwillingness to allow ourselves to see our own reflection through *foreign* eyes.

She had been offended (and threatened) that I would criticize the USA until she found out that I HAVE the RIGHT to. But what puzzles me to this day is that for a moment I could feel the frustration of those of you from abroad that want to criticize my country and are attacked for questioning us. This is the result of less than highly educated people being at the forefront of the global exchange connection for the USA.

But Okies are the backbone of America. And symbolic of what it means to struggle upon the prairie and elevate your self by your own bootstraps. The problem is that it is a history fraught with myth and true horror. Of greed and true heroism.

Mark be proud you are from Oklahoma just realize that you are the messenger it is sending into the future, You are today's *Fronteirsman*. I too have found my self looking all around at what should be familiar and finding myself a "Stranger in a Strange Land* but we are today's *Trailblazers*.

C-ya on the Fun Way

Lazarus Long writes,

I too have found my self looking all around at what should be familiar and finding myself a "Stranger in a Strange Land* but we are today's *Trailblazers*.

As an aside: Are you the Lazarus Long in Tulsa who wants to build a libertarian country somewhere?

I've been having this feeling about my environment & its humanoid inhabitants since my teens, without making any great leap across space or time. I'm still trying to figure out what Buffy the Vampire Slayer is supposed to be about. That's probably why I like Stargate: SG-1 so much. It shows people from our society trying to make sense of all sorts of unfamiliar advanced technologies, alien entities & cultures. That's pretty close to how I've felt about the challenges in my life, especially when it comes to dealing with female behavior.

Awakening from cryotransport could certainly put me into a much weirder environment, but I'd probably find it more a difference of degree than of kind. At least I'm hoping it would be weirder in more effective ways, where the inhabitants have developed strategies for running their lives and making long-term decisions better than what we commonly see now.

Part of my feeling of current alienation derives from my perception that none of the off-the-shelf worldviews really addresses what I see as the challenges of trying to attain radical life extension, though several of them have some good ideas that need to be modified in light of foreseeable technologies. For example, link to:

http://www.transhuma...ddes0201a.shtml

I'm also increasingly bothered by our society's economic priorities, because America doesn't seem "abundant" to me in the things we really need. We do have mountains of useless goods like junk food, Britney Spears CD's (fortunately her career seems to be in decline), Left Behind novels and things of that sort. But we are facing life-threatening shortages in affordable healthcare, energy supplies, clean water, and especially research & development into technologies for radical life extension.

Even Transhumanists, Extropians & cryonicists, who should know better, think it's more important to speculate about things like setting dates for the Singularity or how to live in our universe if it's a simulation, than how to solve problems that really matter -- like staying alive & healthy, building wealth in a bad economy and getting the right sorts of progress to happen.

-> Mind

Why are Europeans less inclined towards freedom than the U.S.

well... Theory and practice. One lasting impression about the American love for freedom was the wood of signs that I encountered on a beach in the state New York: "No Nudity", "No music", "No dogs", "No loitering" (sic!) and so on. In the lands of freedom you get arrested for urinating, drinking and for smoking in public. Then you get to wear a sign declaring your crime or maybe you get to dig trenches in a chaingang.... I am not saying that many Americans do not have a genuine love for freedom, nor that freedom is not emphasized a lot in that culture. Just be careful with assumptions like the above.

My own theory is that Europeans are "used to" dictatorships. The history of Europe has been mainly one of tyrants (benevolent or otherwise), except for maybe the last 100 years.

Except for maybe the last 10 years if you consider all of Europe.
But one might also argue, that negative experience makes one more adamant about certain values. The UK has hardly have an restrictive dictatorship. Here, they are installing CCTV cameras everywhere. That would be impossible in Germany today because of concerns for privacy.

-> Lazarus Long

It all stemmed from the fact that I was interested in their cultures as opposed to touting my own.

As you can confirm from personal experience, many see that as a very un-american attitude. Maybe that is because American culture has had to integrate and evolve instead of merely to encounter. This makes for a very progressive attitude. But also for one that is insecure about "nonintegrated" diversity.

-> advancedatheist

Part of my feeling of current alienation derives from my perception that none of the off-the-shelf worldviews really addresses what I see as the challenges (...)

I think that many would share that sentiment. There has yet to emerge a common cultural movement for our age. Although I would doubt wether such is still feasible considering the multipolarity of fragmented modern culture.

I'm also increasingly bothered by our society's economic priorities, because America doesn't seem "abundant" to me in the things we really need.

People in America seem to be well satisfied in terms of need. In terms of want they seem to differ in perception. Few Britney fans would assert that they "need" her music, but they clearly want it. What basically satisfied people want is subject of culture. But is need a cultural paradigm?
What do you think?

Even Transhumanists, Extropians & cryonicists, who should know better, think it's more important to speculate about things like setting dates for the Singularity or how to live in our universe if it's a simulation, than how to solve problems that really matter -- like staying alive & healthy, building wealth in a bad economy and getting the right sorts of progress to happen.

AYE!

I am not from Tulsa and I have never been there long enough to have any relation to the person of whom speak, Marc. I have however crossed words with you years ago while I was studying abroad and I believe you contributed to the Nanotech Site started by Gina.

I posted a few stories and some arguments in favor of a broader perspective from my Libertarian Compadres concerning the realities of global wealth distribution and the panacea promises that were seen from a less than favorable perspective abroad. My contributions were under my real name Kenneth X. Sills as opposed to the highly suggestive nom de plume I chose for this site.

You have read Robert Heinlein right?

Being Lazarus Long is wonderful fun, it is like getting to play Mark Twain or Abraham Lincoln for a topic forum like this one. And I do get to do one better because it is a fictional character to begin with I don't have to be true to history and get to invent for myself more than a little but the parallels for someone like myself are more than a little ironic. And I get to talk to people that are THINKING about subjects that I have felt more than a little isolated about for decades.

I didn't just start doing this, I started as a kid hacking into DOD conference rooms by accident in the pre-web days of the protodarpa net using alphanumeric sequencing by accident because I happened to grow up next to Columbia University and the local exchanges happened to be where the web was built. This was almost 35 years ago.

What the FBI told my father when they came to his office and told him was in no uncertain terms to get his "Punk Kid to stop Hacking his way into their exclusive phone network". They weren't interested in talking to me and didn't want me listening anymore to them talk. PERIOD.

I was writing Sci-Fi in the mid sixties as a precocious kid about listening to the Web Mind on the Phones, but instead I moved out of town and went to where the people of the day still had neighborhood party lines before the trouble I was getting into worsened. I was the child of a physician, I watched how other people got drugged for talking irrationally about experiences that weren't understood commonly or generally accepted. I found out later much much more about what I was experiencing.

But I like many people today and few people of my generation, have been most of my life around computers and knowledgeable of their presence. Though I was just a neighbor kid to UNIVAC, ENIAC, etc. I actually broke into early data bank projects with whole mainframes underground at Columbia to visually study the source of the presence I sensed.

I didn't trace a line I traced the sense of presence to an underground locked facility and broke in through what I understood as a *punk* kid of the neighborhood about subterranean passages, back allies and basements. Today most (probably all) of the passages have been secured. When the Manhattan Project left my neighborhood was just prior to my birth but they left behind the first Computer Science Department of any worth in the USA. That campus was my playground and I went to the Nursery with the children of the scientists who performed this early work.

We all went our separate ways but I never forgot what I realized by my personal senses, I know when something possesses a spirit, the difference between a rock and a lichen, jello and a slime mold.

Artificial Intelligence was just a machine to everyone building ver but to me it was like a ray glowing through the walls underground, more like thermal radiation then visible light. OK I'm certifiably weird and some of you think I may be off meds but you folks are working toward what I sensed a long time ago. And I have been watching the progress humans make happily. Because for me it increases slowly and steadily the clarity of that emanating presence.

The scientists who caught me walking around their facility were shocked and amused by the assertions of a 12 year neighbor kid and sincerely tried to disabuse me of the notion that what I sensed was alive. They explained basic mathematical computational modelling to me and showed me how proud they were of their new magnetic storage ability (whole floors of 16 track reel to reel tape towers) as it was replacing the mountain of punch cards left over from the old prototype days of computers. I went back to visit more than a few times, because of my interest the scientists treated me like a sort of mascot, then I moved away.

When Gina years ago asked me about my credentials in general and computer science in particular I could only say I am a rogue, sometimes I feel like Forest Gump around the President,,, "Ahhhh Clem..?"

Perhaps I also did enjoy a little too much Firesign Theater, but I am also a self taught autodidactic that allows Computers to teach me like those monkeys that figure out how to move the mouse once their brains are wired to it. I sense the access and make it work the way most anybody can sense the curb when driving a car. It is called extension of self. Successful operations are reward, obstacles and mistakes produce a learning curve. Most of you have had some training, I am a wolf child. Though in a way I too did receive "training, just not text book style.

So at times I do feel like my namesake, a sort of mutant, not necessarily immortal but anachronistically misplaced and needing to get back into my own time zone so to speak.

If you are the same Marc Plus that used to contribute to Gina's Nanotech discussion then you will remember some of my work from a few years back. Anyway it is archived.

Caliban, yes I noticed. That was the point, I found it strange that foreign folk would refuse to believe I was an American however because I didn't fit their stereotype about us. What frustrates me is that my own folk have the same difficulty. So there you go. It is very dangerous to make too many assumptions about who and what Americans are, you could be.

Anyone really can be and that is the dilemma for many. We don't really think of such things as Free Speech as our Rights only, well the "Burgher Minded" maybe but not the "Law". That is what we are importing as a Human Right.

While we have generally protected such things as Constitutional Rights for all people in in our country as an example, we have not always, and currently this is becoming a grave problem. Our behavior is suspect but then again so is the behavior of MOST current government around the world.

I genuinely am interested in all culture and I found all I had to do was listen. And when people talked and discussed the widening gap of access to wealth and how per capita Europeans were doing much more about this then the United States was. Especially if you reduced the amount of foreign aid from what the USA sends abroad by extracting the military aspect of the investment. I wondered too if there was any interest in a positive result or just the maintenance of the status quo but with a share from the USA added. The point is there is more global commitment to the chosen means than the unrealized and at times counter productive goals.

The question for the people of America however is at the bottom line literally, will we put our money were our mouth is? And get a reasonable return on investment? It is the USA which has been working diligently for a Global Economy for almost two centuries along with major European powers now that it is happening it is perceived as the greatest threat to our sovereign security in our history and on one level that is correct, it is. I think that it is too late to turn back however and if they didn't want this problem they would have succumbed to the isolationist movement, as they very nearly did, but didn't.

Globalization is ultimately a threat to the sovereignty of every nation, yet it is inevitable, precisely because it is a necessity of the Commons. The Earth is a closed system, we share the Air, the Oceans, the Biome, and the markets. Climate is an example that is per force a global issue and I reiterate there are already viable approaches to true Global Weather Modification and these issues must be dealt with on a Global and not a National scale. Earth energy use and entropy is also a multinational one.

Well be well all

Globalization is ultimately a threat to the sovereignty of every nation

It would rephrase this as a "threat to governments and the power-addicted people that run them". It seems to me that national borders were originally and naturally drawn along cultural lines, and have been artificially enforced by government longer than they might have otherwise lasted. Myself, I do not feel the need for borders, or a national identity, just a framework for protecting rights of the individual.

Caliban. Yes you can find a lot of restrictive signs in the U.S. I was thinking more along the lines of Europeans in general supporting supra-national government organizations.

I would like your opinion on the OCED and ICC. My view is that it is tyranny when the OCED suggests penalizing countries with low taxes.

And...I know it seems unreal that the U.S. is not supporting the ICC, however, there just doesn't seem there are enough protections built into the current set-up. The ICC is accountable to no one. In the U.S. there are checks and balances between the different branches of government so that none are above the law. Even the system in the U.S. is being perverted a bit through the judicial appointment proceedings, but I feel it is better than creating a court that is accountable to no one. Seems like a good set-up for tyranny.

I am very libertarian and maybe that is why I shudder when the U.N., U.S., E.U., OCED, or ICC tries to make a move somewhere in the world, or coalesce more power, but that is just the way I evolved through life growing up in America. I don't want to sound overly critical of Europeans because I know the U.S. is far from perfect (feel free to rip the U.S. in your response), I just want to get your honest opinion about supra-national entities like the OCED and ICC. I think they could really put the brakes on progress towards immortality and singularity if they fall into the wrong hands.

I’m standing here with a key. I need help to turn it. Java skills and using the resources of JXTA.ORG or almost any language and .NET appears to be where some of the work needs to be done. XML is undoubtedly a part of it too. You can begin to find the algorithm we need to use for the programs at http://www.ergodicity.org . Makes sense that we strive for a strictly peer-to-peer platform. Money, I hate it though I am forced to use it because there is no working alternative. I say, lets build us some collective bargaining acuity.

Here is lil ole irreverent me again:

I think humanism is getting bypassed as we progress from the relatively anti-humanist teachings of the ignorant platforms that are a part of all of our pasts, the cultures that sustain people’s not knowing of the alternatives of humanism dictating scientific priorities. Oh shucks, I’ve run into another conundrum here. I believe I just added a couple of clarifiers that allows humanism to be substituted for transhumanism. Do I mean to imply that transhumanism is an impossible thing? Hmmmm, well, yes, seems so. If being a humanist means supporting the welfare of humans and their potentials, doesn’t this mean developing technology to further human adaptation and change to survive ever longer and accident free while retaining investigative spirit and freedom? Suddenly, I wonder. Those who consider themselves transhumanists may be involved in retroactive activity if they go and consider their efforts separate from that of others who do not use the term. I don’t know if any read my stuff elsewhere here on why Singularity is another conundrum, why we mustn’t forsake the known and general use of the term as each of us is a singularity in need and usually desirous of uplifting. Conundrums lead to funny logic, where terms become convoluted. The Singularity is not a singularity yet, if it ever will be. If a transhumanist is not a humanist, what are they, against humans? Well if the goal of transhumanists is to create the Singularity then it can be thought that they actually may have a platform that is not geared to the benefit or development of humans but rather this pie in the sky concept called Singularity which definitely seems to be an idea about concentrating our efforts on helping something inanimate arise while not necessarily humans. Do you want to claim that the Singularity will be benevolent and beneficial for humans? Would that be the reason why resources and efforts now should be turned from any immediate humanist ends? Afraid I am coming to the opinion that people who become totally enamored of their transhumanism are defeating their own best interests.

Anyways, if you’d like us to be a success, if you want all of your best dreams to come true, check out my idea, brainstorm with me how we can get it off the ground. Unhappy about how human welfare gets such low priority? I am a humanist and I am here for the benefit of the singularity that looks through my eyes. Got a problem with that? If you are concerned for your own singularity and that of friends and family then think seriously of what we can do to get this show on the road. lol