[ExI] Anyone FedUp Besides Me?

[Natasha Vita-More]

Thank you all for your responses online and off line.  It touches me deeply 
that so many of you care and repeated slam jobs on all the hard work WE did 
in the 1990s and the enormous press WE received during these years -- from 
the early 1990s (actually late 1980s) through today.  Each month, I do at 
least one magazine interview and at documentary.  I am continually 
answering questions for journalists on one hand and students on the other.

Certainly there was some bad press in the 1990s but it does not compare to 
the positive press during that same time.  We were covered in magazines, 
newspapers and televised programs throughout the world.  I was thinking 
last night of articles on Max More and he was "the man" - the mind, talent 
and looks that journalists love to expose.   I remember so many televised 
documentaries on the future of humanity, science and technology that "we" 
were asked to participate in and/or be interviewed for. And I remember 
FM-2030, Christine Peterson, Amara Graps, Fiorella Terenzi, Tanya Jones, 
Regina Pancake,  and Linda Chamberlain, in the media and of course Eric 
Drexler, Marvin Minsky, Hans Moravec, Tom Bell,  -- so many of "us" were 
regarded as icons by the media.

Whether or some journalists used yellow-dog journalism to spice up their 
articles was not so bad because we had so many positive articles in the 
works.  And at times some were referred to as kooky, to be sure, but it is 
inconsequential compared to the great articles and strides we have made and 
getting out name on the map.

So, when someone(s) continues to make commentary such as:

 > "I was pretty happy with the tone of the piece, and I don't
 > think I or we were portrayed as subcultural nuts. That kind
 > of coverage is far more common now than the dismissive "laugh
 > at the Trekkies" coverage of the 1990s."

I have no problem whatsoever to say I made  mistakes in the press or on 
TV.  But I have never been a trekkie, I have never been called nuts, nor 
has my husband.  Since most of the media at that time involved him or me, I 
take the above statement and the many ones similar to it that has been 
uttered to mock as unhealthy at best.

It puts out a sordid representation of a period in time that I personally 
am proud to be a part of.  Such commentary lacks quality of data 
gathering.  It is short-sighted and one-sided and done to promote one 
position over another - one view over another - one group over 
another.  Such reeks of the type of behavior that is used to mock and 
degrade people.  Since we are part of this movement, it degrades all of us.

Natasha


At 07:43 PM 5/9/2007, you wrote:
>Anyone reading the WTA and posts that continued slam jobs against early
>transhumanists (ie., extopians)?
>
>Natasha
>
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<http://www.natasha.cc/>Natasha <http://www.natasha.cc/>Vita-More
PhD Candidate, <http://www.planetary-collegium.net/about/>Planetary 
<http://www.planetary-collegium.net/about/>Collegium
<http://www.transhumanist.biz/>Transhumanist Arts & Culture
<http://www.extropy.org/>Extropy Institute

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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