[ExI] META: proper authentication

[spike]

> ...On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg
> ...
>Dear Extropians...

Do you remember when in our misspent youth, perhaps in the 60s or 70s, we
read the real hard-core sf?  Often the author would start out on the first
paragraph with a comment that was at once interesting, obscure, mysterious,
compelling.  It set up an alternate universe which needed exploring.  We
would dig into the story to try to figure out what the heck that first
comment means.  Anders' post brought back a flood of pleasant memories from
those days:

> ..."Dear Extropians. I recently got a TransLife X655 body. But 
> when I try to forward motor control to one of my forks some 
> datafield firewalls my exoself, saying that it lacks proper 
> credentials."	Anders Sandberg

If we want to write a collective sf story as Lee has proposed, Anders'
comment could serve as the first line.  I propose a slight variation on
Lee's idea.  Make a collective sf story, but write everything not
futuristic, but rather nowistic.  Write stuff that describes the real thing.
Your SecondLife persona would be OK.  

The future is now.  We are there.

OK, I propose a second segment to Anders' story:

1. "Dear Extropians. I recently got a TransLife X655 body. But 
when I try to forward motor control to one of my forks some 
datafield firewalls my exoself, saying that it lacks proper 
credentials."	(Anders Sandberg)

2.  As Spike finished reading Anders' comment, he wondered how he might help
the young man.  Spike was always fond of Anders, such a fine young
gentleman, a highly intelligent and kindhearted person, a combination of
characteristics not often found in humans.  But Spike was a satellite
controls specialist rather than an internet protocol expert, and so was
inadequate for the task at hand.  Spike decided to propose solving Anders'
Translife body firewall problem by proposing a collaborative science
non-fiction story with the collective intelligence to which he belonged.  

It was unclear to him how to avoid having the collective non-fiction end up
as a massively branching mess.  He proposed that everyone in the collective
wanting to contribute to the effort merely look up the latest post under the
subject line "proper authentication" then append to that version.  (spike)






spike