[extropy-chat] a frightfully difficult sacred problem

[Adrian Tymes]

--- Dirk Bruere <dirk at neopax.com> wrote:
> That's not what I was referring to.
> I was thinking about intelligence being built into
> just about every
> appliance, including speech o/p.
> Not to mention RFID and web enabled kitchenware.

But consider how they will be used.  The more points
of communication there are, the easier it is for
desparate and talented subversives to find one that's
not being monitored - and, some fear, the more those
in power will see this potential and strive ever more
fiercely to clamp down on said communications, with
"unintended" side effects not unlike we are seeing
with the anti-terrorist hysteria among America's
lawmakers over the past two years.

But what this does not take into account is the effect
of an entire culture that preserves freedom as a
fundamental virtue.  Perhaps those who wrote the
sacred texts did not anticipate it, or perhaps they
thought it impossible - those in power would never
allow such a thing to flourish.  Or perhaps they
bought the argument that, left to their own devices,
the unenlightened commoners would bring themselves to
ruin.  They saw widespread enlightenment as a possible
cure for that, and so do we - but a different sort of
enlightenment.  We don't rely on fables and untruths,
nor do we claim to know everything.