[ExI] The "real" world

Lee Corbin lcorbin at rawbw.com
Tue Mar 23 16:33:36 UTC 2010


Stefano writes:

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

Well, it's much closer, and---understandably for many more---technically interesting.

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 Now, I see the mechanist/shaper split as outdated, at least conceptually.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

25.7 percent of the Earth's crust is silicon. There's just
not enough carbon (I'm speaking, again, very long term).
You might get quintillions of people going on carbon, but
no way decillions (10^33), as presently constituted in
terms of their personalities. Or some such gigantic ratio.

> 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). ;-)

Okay---but are you dissenting from the view that running on
tiny bits of distributed processing throughout the Earth's
crust is less preferable to something else?

Lee




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