Ian & Stuart's Australian Mac: Not for Sale/Another.not.for.sale (Australia).iso/hold me in your arms/Michael Ney's Cyberculture/Cyberculture/Extropianism 101

Text File | 1994-09-02 | 11KB | 213 lines

Topic 248       Extropianism 101
peg:visionary   cyberculture zone        1:37 AM  Oct 27, 1993


From: [e-mail] (John McPherson)
X-Original-To: [e-mail]
Subject: SPEECH: Extropianism 101 (203 lines)

This is a copy of a speech I delivered to my Toastmasters Club on 14 Oct 93:

--------========OOOOOOOO========--------

"Extropianism 101"  by John McPherson

"Forward! Upward! Outward! Into the Future!"  This is the rallying cry
of the Extropian futurist movement.  "Who are these Extropians?", you
may ask. First, I must say that Extropians are among the most fiercely
individualistic people I know of, so my whole speech is only in general
and probably doesn't apply to any particular person.  That having been
said, basically, Extropians are people interested in living as long as
they can in a high-technology lifestyle, perhaps even in space, and they
agree that libertarianism offers the best socio-political and economic
system to encourage and support that lifestyle.  Extropians also want to
improve and upgrade themselves, perhaps to a degree that may stun even
some of the most open-minded people, for you see, many Extropians dream
of becoming immortal.  More on that later!

Let's take a look at the word "extropy" ... what does _that_ mean?
_Ex_tropy is the opposite of _en_tropy, and many of you know that
"entropy" refers to that tendency of the universe towards disorder,
degradation, erosion, and ultimately, death, so, "extropy" refers to
that opposite tendency which promotes improvement, upgrading,
progressive self-organization, and the building-up of energy, vitality,
intelligence, and creativity ... in other words, the very essence of
life itself.

"How would you like the option of living as long as you want?"  Many
Extropians would answer a resounding "Yes!"  Incredulously, you might
ask "How?!"  "Simple," they would answer, "it's a 4-step process: life
extension, cryonics, nanotechnology, and uploading."  Here's the plan:

First, take care of yourself as best you can, and increase your chances
of living as long as you can, perhaps by following the dietary advice of
Dr. Roy Walford who wrote "The 120-Year Diet".  He describes a program
backed up with solid scientific research which has been shown to extend
the life span of laboratory animals.  The diet consists of high-quality,
low-calorie selections >from the whole range of foods and nutrients, and
it's carefully balanced using a computer program.

Second, if you don't live long enough to gain access to the next big
longevity breakthrough, you can arrange to have your recently-deanimated
body deep frozen in liquid nitrogen by Alcor Life Extension Foundation,
where it will wait essentially unchanged in cryonic suspension until
technology allows you to be resuscitated.

Third, within a hundred years we'll probably have micro-miniaturized
technology, or "nanotechnology", developed to the point where
molecular-sized robots can repair damage to your body at the cellular
level, as described by Eric Drexler ("Unbounding the Future").
Nanotechnology will probably be the way that you are revived from your
cryonic suspension, by repairing freezing damage, curing whatever you
"died" of (including "old age"), and jumpstarting your metabolism.

Fourth, for the long haul, some may choose to replace various parts of
their body or brain with more durable and efficient mechanisms, and some
may go all the way and replace everything!  This process, called
uploading, is described by Hans Moravec ("Mind Children"), and the end
result is that a person "uploads" or upgrades themself into a
super-advanced robot with lightning-fast massively-parallel embedded
computers to store your personality or essence. This process, of course,
is rather controversial and is something for the distant future.

If that or some of these other proposals sounds "way out there",
consider how fast technology has been advancing this century.  We've
gone from horses to cars to planes to rockets, from epidemics to
vaccines to genetic engineering, and the pace is accelerating.
Extropians are merely anticipating and planning for what already seems
feasible to some of the best minds.

What are the driving forces behind developments such as these? The
assuming of personal responsibility for your own destiny, unabashed
optimism for the future and your prospects in it, diligently applied and
expanded creative intelligence, and the socio-economic freedom to
experiment and act.  Extropians want to live in a libertarian society,
free to pursue these projects in peace, free to enjoy their lives in
whatever peaceable ways they desire, and free to create wealth to as
great an extent as they aspire.

I assume that you all understand the importance of personal
responsibility, optimism, and freedom, so I'll focus on intelligence.
Extropians want to maximize their effective intelligence, and they can
do this through mind- enhancing technologies such as: nootropic smart
drugs, the computer-based technologies of virtual reality, hypermedia,
artificial intelligence, and neural networks, and the future technology
of direct brain-to-computer linkages.

I only have time to describe three of these in greater depth, so I'll
focus on: smart drugs, hypermedia and artificial intelligence.

Psycho-pharmacologists have discovered and developed what are known as
smart drugs which seem to facilitate neural communication and
functioning at the chemical synaptic level.  Some of them have been
described by Dr. Ward Dean ("Smart Drugs and Nutrients"), and I'll
mention 4 of them.  Hydergine has been shown to enhance cognition in the
elderly.  Piracetam has been shown to enhance memory and the flow of
information between the cerebral hemispheres. Vasopressin improves
concentration and the imprinting of new information in your brain, so
its good for students.  Lucidril boosts intelligence and removes old-age
deposits from the brain.

The second intelligence technology is Hypermedia, which is a way of
structuring information such as text, pictures, sound tracks and video
clips, in an expandable network of reference links that _you_ can make
according to your own interests, as opposed to linear one-dimensional
modes of communication, such as books, newspapers, radio and TV, which
you have to take pretty much as it comes. With a hypermedia system, you
can go off in wholly new directions just by clicking a button, creating
new links and following your own pathways.  In case you get lost, you
can easily retrace your steps (because it's all stored in the machine)
and can start over from any branch point you choose. The implications
for education are obvious.

The 3rd intelligence technology is Artifical intelligence, which will
enable us to function at a higher level by storing patterns of knowledge
or by offloading certain tasks for machines to handle.  Expert systems
can guide us through complicated tasks that we know nothing about,
because they will store the insights and rules of thumb used by experts.
"Knowbots" can help us in study and research by autonomously searching
for information in vast library archives just based on general things we
"tell" them to look for.  For example, I may tell a knowbot to "look for
something on parental choice in education with lots of numbers and
statistics and get back to me tomorrow", turn it loose, and it will do it!

After hearing all these things Extropians are interested in: life
extension, cryonics, nanotechnology, uploading, smart drugs, hypermedia
and artificial intelligence, etc., you might ask "Why?"  Why would
someone want to live for a thousand years, or upgrade their body, or
augment their intelligence?  My current answer is: experience,
knowledge, and the glory of achievement ... to see, to know and to do.
With enough time and durability, you can see the whole world!  Heck, you
can see the universe!  You can learn whole new fields that you never
would've gotten to otherwise.  You can read all those books you've been
meaning to get to, and write those books you've been meaning to write.
You can work on ever bigger and grander projects, maybe even someday
constructing on the stellar level!  You can enjoy the experience of
accumulated successes, innovations and breakthroughs that before
might've only been once-in-a-lifetime experiences.  You can share the
exquisite pleasure of passing on quality knowledge and of mentoring
younger people who are "only" 2 or 3 hundred years old.

In conclusion, Extropians want to live as long as possible in a
maximally free society, and to grow in knowledge, creativity,
intelligence, and ability, to the fullest extent possible.  Personally,
I applaud their efforts and look forward to the day I too can say...
"I am an Extropian."

--------========OOOOOOOO========--------

Here are some audience reactions:

I got a few (unexpected) laughs from the phrases "has been shown to
extend the life span of laboratory animals" and "you can arrange to have
your ... body deep frozen in liquid nitrogen".

When I talked about uploading, one fellow said "Data" (from STTNG), and
the audience seemed pleasantly surprised.  (This might be a good
association; people generally like Data.)

There were some rather enthusiastic nods when I talked about hypermedia.


Among the after-speech written comments:

"Was I born too soon? I'm extropic and didn't even know it."

"Fascinating topic ... I wanted to hear more."

"Very interesting. I want to know more about this, particularly
anti-aging."

"What dosage of Hydergine do you recommend?"  :-)


The speech was received very well indeed, and I was voted the best
speaker of the evening (out of 4 contestants).

If you want to give the speech (or forward it), that's fine by me (and
of course I'd like to know about it :-).  It took me about 10 minutes to
deliver it, which is a little long for a toastmaster speech but I
couldn't bear to cut any more.

I originally intended to slam government intrusiveness a bit, and also
to speak of the benefits of certain currently-illegal drugs, but in the
end I opted to make the speech as positive-in-tone as possible and to
focus on future hope rather than current controversies.  I think the
strategy worked well, and would encourage others to portray positive,
uplifting visions of the future.

John McPherson         [e-mail]         [phone]

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Life -->  Individual  -->  Net Extropic  -->  Free  -->  Free Market
Human Action       Production        Trade        Economy
----------------------------------------------------------------------

"Things are only impossible until they're not."  Captain Jean-Luc Picard

........................................................................

for access to the conference feed of the listserver of "extropians"
send a note to <[e-mail]>. Relevant to APC Networks users.