[ExI] Transhuman

[Natasha Vita-More]

I tend to lean in the direction of what Charlie Stross is writing. There are
many avatars that have all sorts of appendages for fun or for effect, but
that does not make them beautiful. As far as SL, I spend time there but the
aesthetics of Elif Ayiter, brilliant SL avatar designer, reflects "beauty"
based on a combined sense of proportion, shape and color.  She also includes
narrative to her virtual personas, which introduces psychology of design and
touches on our emotional reaction to or away from visual experiences.

Notions of beauty are located in the domain of design and fine art.
Mathematics certainly has its interpretation of beauty, but it really is an
element of design. And, further, when considering what is transhuman from a
sense of social and economic terms, the locus of beauty is still design.

A book came out a few years ago titled 100,000 Years of Beauty. I have it on
my coffee table:
http://www.amazon.com/100-Years-Beauty-Elizabeth-Azoulay/dp/207012844X

Natasha Vita-More, PhD



-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Ben Zaiboc
Sent: Thursday, September 06, 2012 1:25 AM
To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
Subject: Re: [ExI] Transhuman

Charlie Stross <charlie.stross at gmail.com> wrote:

> Our sense of self-identity is emergent over time from our experience of
our interaction with our surrounding environment (including other people),
and these interactions are mediated through our existing bodies. (Not to
mention other peoples' reactions to us being coloured by their perceptions
of us, again based on external physical appearances). So it would be
unsurprising to find that most people (in a society with cheap and easy body
modification) would only consider physical adaptations that tend towards the
social norm: more "beautiful", in convergence with a socially-approved
vision of beauty.


Most people, at first, yes.

But spend any time in a virtual environment like Second Life and it won't be
long before among the 'beautiful people', you see the dwarves, furries,
daleks, dragons, spider-squids, floating eyes, etc., etc.  As time goes by,
and people become accustomed to seeing these non-normal forms, more people
will adopt them, and it won't be long before the range of 'normal' becomes
very wide indeed.  I'd expect this to happen IRL too.  There will probably
be a large number of mostly-human-looking people (although probably
'idealised' as in comic-book proportions, manga-ised faces, etc.), a smaller
number of more extreme types, and a small number of really bizarre ones.
Much like fashion in clothes today.


Ben Zaiboc

_______________________________________________
extropy-chat mailing list
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat