[extropy-chat] Martine Rothblatt and "bemes"

Thu Nov 9 16:31:49 UTC 2006

At 07:43 PM 11/8/2006, you wrote:

>Hey, was anyone going to answer my question about Martine Rothblatt's 
>concept of "bemes" as a valid concept of future identity?

Just some morning thoughts, but probably nothing of consequence to answer 
your question PJ:

To be or not to be?  We have to "be" to be a future identity.  It seems 
that Bemes can take any form - and, because of this the very concept 
of  how "identity" is configured is an issue.  Identity as a set of 
"information pattern" or set of "information patterns" is an exciting topic.

My talk at the Fourth Alcor Technology Conference on "

A Talent for Living: Cracking Myths of Mortality"  opened with and 
continued to focused on Shakespeare's line:

http://www.natasha.cc/techtalk.htm

""To be, or not to be"
wrote William Shakespeare in Hamlet in Act III, scene 1,
"that is the question: ..."In my presentation at the aforementioned 
technology conference, I made a poetic statement based on my practice at 
that time, which was media-animation and poetry:

"... To beto liveis what we do. It is our talent, our business and our 
pursuit of well-being which we must carry out. The refinement of this 
built-in talent currently separates us from other life forms. It is our 
native, intrinsic talent, calling for the creative challenge to do 
somethinganythingas long as we are "doing." To be, we must do. If not, we 
are busy dying. ...

(pause with algorithmic images on scene)

"When I think of our culture, I see it as a body of electronically 
connected data filtering messages into its appendages. Out into the 
capillaries of culture, our technology has become far more exacting and 
more robust than our biological bodies. Our biological bodies are far too 
inadequate to keep up with our ideas and the new landscapes we venture. 
 From the telegraph to telecommunications, from the Net into Space, it is 
no longer just the written symbolthe wordbeing transported, we are the 
new transportees."

I do not necessarily see identity as transportees or Martin's excellent 
Bemes as an entirely separate philosophical outlook than the transhumanist 
life view, but as an integral part of a complex extropic system.  For 
example, Automorph Art is an extropic subset of Transhumanist Arts which 
developed in the 1990s and is intently based on "being as 
art."  http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/art.html   Because it is within the 
extropic genre, it is understood that his automorph being as art is the 
actually practice of improving oneself, which is inclusive of the positive 
ideas presented and described in Martine's philosophy of Bemes.

So, as you can see, I see that Martine has a valuable idea.  :-)  However, 
I do not think it is separate from or counter to transhumanism, but 
included within transhumanism as a constructed category of interrelations, 
or at least a complimentary, valuable aspect thereof.

Right now I am writing a paper on "SEx - Skin (as a symbol of the 
boundaries of identity) Exobody" for a conference in Brazil on the future 
of identity.  ...

Beme-ing forward -

Natasha

>PJ
>
>
> >Robert writes
> >
> >> On 10/31/06, Lee Corbin 
> <<https://webmailcluster.perfora.net/xml/webmail/mailDetail;jsessionid=3D226EDDED85DD69EF895DE7DCDB6107.TC132b?__frame=_top&__lf=AdresseUebernehmenFlow&__sendingdata=1&resyncFolder.Doit=true&resyncFolder.TreeID=leftNaviTree&createMail.Action=create&createMail.To=lcorbin%40rawbw.com&__jumptopage=mailNew&__CMD[mailDetail]:SELWRP=resyncFolder&__CMD[mailDetail]:SELWRP=createMail>lcorbin at rawbw.com> 
> wrote:
> >>
> >> > But what happened to *me* in there? I'm more than my memes, pal.
> >> > Don't forget my memories.
> >
> >> Well memories are memes and at least some of them are essential
> >> components of the survival and reproduction processes.
> >
> >Memories are memes??? That does violence to the concept so far
> >as I understand it. Memories are more like raw data; for one thing,
> >they're very seldom contagious. Beliefs are something else, and
> >are indeed memetic.
> >
> >> > That's me, maybe. I don't want to "become", especially if the end
> >> > product is not me. I would rather "are". As you put it.
>
>What about Martine Rothblatt's concept of "bemes?"
>
><http://www.imminst.org/conference/Martine.ppt>www.imminst.org/conference/Martine.ppt 
>
>
>PJ
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<http://www.natasha.cc/>Natasha <http://www.natasha.cc/>Vita-More
Cultural Strategist - Design Media Artist - Futurist
PhD Candidate, 
<http://www.plymouth.ac.uk/researchcover/rcp.asp?pagetype=G&page=273>Planetary 
Collegium
Proactionary Principle Core Group, <http://www.extropy.org/>Extropy 
<http://www.extropy.org/>Institute
Member, <http://www.profuturists.com/>Association of Professional Futurists
Founder, <http://www.transhumanist.biz/>Transhumanist Arts & Culture

If you draw a circle in the sand and study only what's inside the circle, 
then that is a closed-system perspective. If you study what is inside the 
circle and everything outside the circle, then that is an open system 
perspective. - Buckminster Fuller

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