[ExI] The "real" world

[Stefano Vaj]

On 23 March 2010 12:58, Mike Dougherty <msd001 at gmail.com> wrote:
> As we get better at medical technology, we might be able to fix a
> senile brain before we can upload it.  Ironically, work in organic
> computing or wetware interface might drive those insights/innovations.
>  I also expect that body repair will improve considerably with
> technology.  The disturbing fact is that political and economic
> innovations aren't evolving as quickly as other technologies - so
> we'll have miraculous science being wielded by antiquated powers to
> maintain the status quo.

As somebody coming from "wet" transhumanism, I used to be rather
uninterested if not uneasy with regard to talks on radical
cyborgisation and/or uploading on different "platforms" (including,
but not only, because I found such prospective as distracting from the
 possible "biorevolution" in place).

Let us say that I had more or less the same attitude of Gregory Stock
on the subject (genetic engineering plus fyborgisation as the really
interesting stuff).

Now, I see the mechanist/shaper split as outdated, at least conceptually.

In any event, convergence is not going to happen anywhere near
pull-and-lever entities such as Robby in the Forbidden Planet.

Most probably, when we get on silicon, silicon will be much softer
than that :-), and may not even be silicon at all, given that most new
info and materials techs are based on carbon...

So, after a fashion, we shall have to do, after all, as in
Cronenberg's Videodrome, with a "new meat"  (or flesh, in Italian the
words are one and the same). ;-)

--
Stefano Vaj