[ExI] extropy-chat Digest, Vol 78, Issue 4

[Keith Henson]

On Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 4:59 PM,  John Clark <jonkc at bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Mar 1,  BillK <pharos at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> The main difference with the old Extropy list is that everybody got older.
>
> Getting older really sucks, but it beats the alternative. I've been on this list for 15 years but I'm far from one of the original members. From day 1 15 years ago when I was the resident newbe I've been hearing about how much better the list was back in the good old days. It's like a ninety year old man telling us how much happier people were during the Great Depression; well I can easily believe that you personally were happier, back then you were a lusty teenager now you're a decrepit old man.

Well, I was there, still have some of the postings from those days on
various copied media (nowhere near the whole thing)  There were a lot
of new ideas boiling up in those heady days when nanotechnology,
memetics, cryonics, and the consequences of godlike AI were first
being discussed in the relatively new context of a mailing list.  A
lot of my archive files are on 3.5 inch Apple Lisa floppies which I
have not been able to read for more than a decade.

If anyone wants to read a story that was written around the ideas that
floated across the Extropy list in those days, try Acclerando by
Charles Stross.  It's free on the net, but you might want hard copy as
well.

Keith