[extropy-chat] Booke Review: A post-human Brave New World?

[Neil H.]

Google Alerts informed me of a book review of Kurzweil's "The Singularity is
Near," by an engineering professor at the University of Toronto. It mostly
goes about drawing parallels between the future Kurzweil predicts and
Huxley's "Brave New World."
 Personally, I think the root of the dystopia in Huxley's novel wasn't the
access to advanced technologies, but the all-controlling World State. Minus
the totalitarian government, I think Huxley's world would be quite a
desirable one to live in.
 Some snippets from the review:

> Kurzweil is a technological fundamentalist, someone who is enthralled with
> technology, but who frequently underemphasizes the human aspects. As an
> example, he writes: "Two machines . . . can join together to become one and
> then separate again. Multiple machines can do both at the same time: become
> one and separate simultaneously. Humans call this falling in love, but our
> biological ability to do this is fleeting and unreliable."
> ...
> Experiences such as those of S are not always known or appreciated by
> technological fundamentalists who focus on "overriding, impersonal" forces
> and are keen on pushing the boundaries of technology. Enhancing memory for
> the disabled, such as Alzheimer's patients, may be a worthwhile and
> achievable goal, but eliminating the limits of normal human memory would be
> disastrous.
> ...
>
> What is at stake here is nothing less than our vision of humanity.
> Kurzweil believes we have "physical frailties" and "suffering brains" that
> should be fixed. Others believe in the power of humanity and marvel at Tiger
> Woods's golf swing, commuters navigating rush-hour traffic in Paris and
> doctors eradicating smallpox from the planet. This latter view also believes
> in the power of technology not to fix frail people, but to enhance
> remarkable human capabilities.
>
> ...
>
> I believe that the answers Kurzweil provides are fundamentally misguided
> and perhaps even dangerous. But his book is still valuable because it forces
> us to think about how we would like to see technology used in society. What
> kind of brave new world do we want for ourselves, our children and our
> grandchildren?
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20051105/af809787/attachment.html>