[extropy-chat] Futures Past

[Damien Broderick]

At 03:40 PM 10/9/2005 -0400, Harvey Newstrom wrote:

>On Oct 9, 2005, at 1:36 PM, Damien Broderick wrote:
>>
>>My take in the US edition of THE SPIKE (revised 2000, published 2001) was 
>>this, at the close of my final chapter:
>
>These predictions seem much more reasonable to me.
>
>Do you have people agreeing with your timelines?  Or do you find most 
>transhumanists telling you that you are too conservative?

Damned if I know. Although transhumanists sort of recognize the existence 
of my book, I haven't seen much discussion of it. I suppose extropians tend 
to see it as nothing more than a sort of watered-down summary of 
discussions from this list. Mainstreamers tended to ignore it because it 
was all that "made up sci-fi crap".

That's why it's encouraging, on the one hand, to see Kurzweil's book being 
reviewed everywhere but, on the other, somewhat disheartening that it's 
being received pretty much as if all these ideas sprang fully armed from 
his forehead (an impression not entirely inconsistent with the tenor of 
Ray's own presentation, cough).

Damien Broderick