[ExI] Gene drift and Atlantic article

[Keith Henson]

<spike at rainier66.com> wrote:"

>> ... Accelerando...has the "vile offspring" of the human race taking the
Earth apart to build clouds of "computronium" around the sun... Keith

>Keith when you state it like that, it almost makes it sound like a bad
thing.

That's Stross talking, not me.

I presume everyone has read _Accelerando_.  There is no excuse not to
since Charles has it up on the web for free.
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelerando/accelerando.html

The background follows the mostly lost content of the early days of
this mailing list wrapped in a fictional form.  I did that with "The
Clinic Seed," which ends with the human race biologically extinct from
a surfeit of good medical care.  It is at least one of the logical
outcomes, as could happen as an outcome of optimal sex machines.
That's another topic Stross played with in _Saturn's Children_.

Plot (from Wikipedia)

"The novel chronicles the travels and perils of Freya Nakamichi-47, a
gynoid in a distant future in which humanity is extinct and a
near-feudal android society has spread throughout the Solar System."

As to humanity's real future, who knows?  It's subject to unexpected
side effects of technology interacting with evolved human psychology.

I should report on a Sam Wineburg lecture held at SDSU yesterday.  You
can get a bit of the flavor from here:
https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/09/why-learn-history-sam-wineburg-history-class-failing.html

There is appalling information about Twitter I have to verify before
repeating it.  Background here:
https://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htiw/articles/20181107.aspx

Keith