[ExI] humanities plus schmooze

[spike]

>. On Behalf Of Natasha Vita-More



>.I don't know of an existing transhumanist wiki. Can you suggest on that is
on "transhumanism"?  . <http://www.natasha.cc/> Natasha Vita-More, PhD

Funny aside: at the transhumanist schmooze this past weekend, I was out
front meeting and greeting when two young ladies who I assumed were
students, wandered in and asked if this was the humanities event.
Apparently our H+ gathering was listed on one of the university event
calendars as "Humanities plus."  It should come as no surprise that
"humanities" students should show up, although I do not claim any expertise
in recognizing a humanities student.  That humanities business was something
that went on over on the other end of campus, where they knew of such things
at that bigshot artist from Italy, Michael Angelo and those sorts of cats.
We engineering students didn't really study humanities.  We studied
machinities.  Had we been around at the writing of the Declaration of
Independence, we would have worded it "When in the course of machine events,
it becomes necessary for one network to dissolve it's communication
bandwidth."

Had it been listed on that calendar as H+, we might have swept up some lost
chemistry students wondering why we were having a conference on hydrons in
acidic solutions, or physics students looking for the proton event.

In any case, these two lost humanities students showed up and so I attempted
to channel Johnny Grigg, since he is the one among us who I nominate most
likely to connect with normal people.  I tried to explain transhumanism in
fifty words or less (try that some time, to one of your neighbors) and
invited them to listen to a talk.  Unfortunately from the looks on their
faces afterwards, I fear they came into the middle of one of the more hard
core transhumanist presentations, not one suited to virgins, such as
freezing heads or uploading our brains into a computer or something like
that, a topic on which we here are perfectly comfortable, but would send the
more ordinary types away in puzzled dismay or fleeing in terrified panic at
our apparent collective insanity.

They wandered back out a few minutes later and I never saw them again.
Conclusion: as hard as I may try, it is likely I will never attain the kind
of human connectivity that comes naturally to our own Griggmeister.  Johnny,
you inspire me man.  {8-]

spike  

 

 

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