[extropy-chat] [Pigdog] Fwd: Extropian Trash (fwd from thespian at doitnow.com)

Thu Sep 9 06:24:46 UTC 2004

----- Forwarded message from Richard Reinholdt <thespian at doitnow.com> -----

From: Richard Reinholdt <thespian at doitnow.com>
Date: Wed, 08 Sep 2004 13:51:06 -0700
To: pigdog at skunk.pigdog.org
Subject: [Pigdog] Fwd: Extropian Trash
X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 6.0.3.0
Reply-To: The Pigdog Mailing List <pigdog at skunk.pigdog.org>

From the current issue of the _SF Bay Guardian_:

----
Extropian trash

By Annalee Newitz

I HATE THE extropians. I just can't say enough bad things about their whole 
stupid, late 1980s-Los Angeles robot cult philosophy, which I'm convinced 
was inspired by a combination of Christianity, transactional analysis, and 
(perhaps worst of all) the science fiction of Robert Heinlein.

Picture this: It's 1985, and a bunch of people, too young to have been 
hippies, too old to understand yet that Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology's Media Lab is doomed to be irrelevant, are still recovering 
from having grown up during the 1960s "rocket age." Now they're living in 
California doing boring jobs or going to stupid private universities, and 
the flying cars they were promised on The Jetsons are nowhere to be seen. 
Plus, nobody has cured cancer, the light-filled aliens haven't arrived to 
impart wisdom, and there still isn't an anti-aging drug they can take to 
preserve their wrinkle-free, preternatural tans.

So they get into self-improvement, but with a high-tech twist. They call 
their movement "extropy" – you know, like the opposite of "entropy," the 
process of slowing down and descending into chaos. Extropy is supposedly a 
way of always progressing, growing, and transforming oneself, particularly 
by using science. And the extropians decide that science is going to save 
them from everything, especially growing old and dying. It will be just 
like heaven, only with a lot more tantric sex and smart drugs.

Some of them start theorizing that in the future they'll be able to upload 
their brains into computers. Others request that their bodies or heads be 
cryogenically frozen after they die so they can be revived, Futurama-style, 
in a far-distant future in which everything is perfect and glorious and 
subject only to the laws of extropy.

You think I'm kidding, don't you? But I'm not. The extropian thing only got 
more popular all through the 1990s, riding the wave of dot-com psychosis 
into a mire of self-help delusions. Calling themselves "transhumanists" or 
"posthumanists," the extropians continue to preach longevity and 
techno-rapture and, occasionally, hedonism. Most of all, they proselytize 
for rampant individualism: it's all about achieving your dreams, making 
real life into science fiction so you can be whatever you want.

It's precisely the kind of pseudo-religion that would appeal to people 
whose lifelong devotion to high-tech capitalism leaves them with no value 
system other than personal accumulation. After all, extropian heaven is 
automatically within reach if you can afford all the life-extending gadgets 
and pills that will supposedly hit the marketplace any day now. I suppose 
that's why various stripes of extropianism have flowered among professional 
geeks who want to believe there's something more to existence than coding 
all day. Of course, that something is just more of the very same life 
they're already leading – which means they'll outlive their retirement on 
all that Google stock money.

Although not yet as powerful as other annoying cults like evangelical 
Christianity and Scientology, transhumanism definitely has the potential to 
catch on, big time. First of all, it's already fairly popular among members 
of the nerd elite, who have money and control the blogosphere (I have a 
sudden urge to invent extropian blog conspiracy theories!). Maybe some of 
them can create an ExtroPAC that funds politicians who agree to support 
foolish longevity research. Plus, the extropians are a perfect fit for the 
U.S. political system because they appear to offer an alternative way of 
thinking while actually reinforcing the status quo.

Extropians, for all their future worship, are part of the same cultural 
bent toward superstition that has led George W. Bush and other 
right-wingers to proclaim that stem cells are full of little souls, 
abortion is murder, global warming isn't a threat, and peer-to-peer 
networks are used primarily to disseminate child pornography. The only 
difference between a Bush conservative and a transhumanist is that 
conservatives project their fears onto technologies they don't understand, 
while transhumanists project their hopes. Either way, you've got a magical 
interpretation of science being advanced as a creepy political agenda.

And let there be no doubt about it: the extropian agenda is creepy. Who 
wants to live forever in a world where only the richest people in developed 
countries will become immortal? It's not as if there's going to be a 
special cryogenics fund for everybody in Kenya and Chile.

In order for people to live forever in the transhumanist future, some 
people will still have to live like trash. Sounds sort of like entropy to me.

----
http://www.sfbg.com/38/50/x_techsploitation.html

Annalee Newitz (lycanthropy at techsploitation.com) is a surly media nerd and 
spazhumanist who would rather die than be an extropian. Her column also 
appears in Metro, Silicon Valley's weekly newspaper. 

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