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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div><div style='border:none;border-top:solid #B5C4DF 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in'><p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>From:</span></b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'> tt-bounces@postbiota.org [mailto:tt-bounces@postbiota.org] <b>On Behalf Of </b>Natasha Vita-More<br><b>Subject:</b> [tt] [ExI] Too Much Futurism or Not Enough?<o:p></o:p></span></p></div></div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>I remember 20-30 years ago when we talked about the future<span style='color:#1F497D'>… </span></span>Natasha<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>Good questions all. Sometimes I think we tended to get a little too caught up in the flying cars and space cities notions to notice the wonder of what we ended up with instead. Look at it this way. What if the future turned out the way the 50s sci-fi crowd envisioned. We would have or be building enormous space stations, on which perhaps 500 humans could live, which is one in ten million, and wouldn’t that be cool? Well, not really, not for the other 9,999,999 of every ten million. What if we had ended up with flying cars, wouldn’t that be cool? Not for most everybody, who couldn’t afford one. In fact if you have enough money, we have flying cars, ones that don’t go very well on the road. So no, that wasn’t really all that cool a vision.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>So what if we greatly extend life? We did, some, and likely will, and this is cool. Everyone can play if they want. We can get a few body enhancements, not as many as I had hoped for by now, if you have a lot of money.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>But keep a focus on what we did get: the internet and cell phones, and pretty soon, self-driving cars. These are in reach of ordinary people with ordinary means. I am one such person, so I would say better we have technical advances that we can actually have, rather than a bunch of really cool stuff that only a few can afford.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>Note who is writing all this, this is ME, the poster child hardcore capitalist here. The future turned out cool, even without the other stuff, considering what stuff we did get.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>spike<o:p></o:p></span></p></div></body></html>