tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post2146989700448522147..comments2023-11-22T01:14:54.298-08:00Comments on amor mundi: No, You're the Cultist!Dale Carricohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-64839126246966963892009-04-26T08:44:00.000-07:002009-04-26T08:44:00.000-07:00> Nor will you ever find proof. . .
Her mother...> Nor will you ever find proof. . .<br /><br />Her mother is cynthia@roseoftheworld.com, Rose of the World<br />being an intentional community of sorts, back up in the red-dirt<br />country of Maui.<br /><br />Cayce has never been there but Cynthia has sent pictures.<br />A sprawling, oddly prosaic sixties rancher set back against<br />a red hillside in long sparse grass, that red showing through<br />like some kind of scalp disease. Up there they scrutinize<br />miles of audiotape, some of it fresh from its factory wrap,<br />unused, listening for voices of the dead: EVP freaks, of which<br />Cayce's mother is one from way back. Used to put Win's Uher<br />reel-to-reel in their very first microwave. She said that<br />blocked out broadcast interference.<br /><br />Cayce has long managed to have as little to do with her mother's<br />penchant for Electronic Voice Phenomena as she possibly can, and<br />this had been her father's strategy as well. Apophenia, Win<br />had declared it, after due consideration and in his careful<br />way: spontaneous perception of connections and meaningfulness<br />in unrelated things. And had never, as far as Cayce knows,<br />said another word about it.<br /><br />-- William Gibson, _Pattern Recognition_, p. 115<br /><br /><br />http://www.instapunk.com/archives/InstaPunkArchiveV2.php3?a=743<br />--------------------------<br />A new belief system is being born at at a site<br />called Serpo.org. It's a present-day phenomenon.<br />Retired members of the Defense Intelligence Agency<br />are incrementally releasing details of the most<br />secret program ever run by the U.S. Government --<br />a 10-year visit by 12 highly trained U.S. military<br />and scientific personnel to a planet in the Zeta Reticuli<br />star system. . . The website has been constructed<br />by literate people who know when not to use an apostrophe<br />in conjunction with the word 'it,' . . . and who<br />have already acquired a radio and internet audience<br />via persuasive performances on Art Bell's Coast-to-Coast<br />radio show. . .<br /><br />We've been known to listen to Art Bell. It's entertaining stuff.<br />We learned there of the possibility of the death by<br />laboratory-induced supernova of the entire universe . . .<br />and the existence of a hole in the ground in the southwest<br />where the screams of the damned in hell could be recorded<br />on a cellphone.<br /><br />Who cares, right? Crazy people like crazy stories, especially<br />when they involve crazy conspiracies that paper over any<br />perceived absence of the meaning of life. . . There was once a<br />site called Zetatalk, which purported to explain everything that<br />had ever happened, including Atlantis and Christ, in terms of<br />the arrival of a tenth planet which would destroy physical life<br />on earth while catalyzing the transition to a fourth-dimensional<br />state of being for those who were in "service to others" as<br />opposed to "service to self." The site was amusing because<br />it offered matter-of-fact explanations for EVERYTHING, including<br />the lowdown on the Lincoln and Kennedy assassinations,<br />the fate of Noah's Ark, the truth of the Shroud of Turin,<br />and the final judgment about the relative greatness of the<br />1929 Philadelphia Athletics versus the 1927 New York Yankees. . .<br />The most interesting fact was that Jesus Christ was an alien<br />from Zeta Reticuli who ultimately agreed to be put into a<br />state of suspended animation from which he would answer<br />the prayers of all earthlings in perpetuity.<br /><br />It turns out that Zetatalk convinced lots of people to leave<br />their homes and relatives forever in order to be ready for<br />the arrival of Planet X, home of the aliens who were going<br />to destroy earth and life as we know it. . . Many of them<br />lost homes, careers, and all their money because of Nancy Lieder's<br />monomania, which still hasn't ended, because Zetatalk is still<br />on the web.<br /><br />While Nancy Lieder was leading her sheep to ruin, another<br />star was rising. Laura Knight-Jadczyk discovered much the<br />same alien threat, including the impending "fourth dimensional"<br />transformation, by way of a Ouija Board that alerted her<br />to the impending end of our existence and the beginning<br />of her romantic relationship with a Polish physicist named<br />Arkadiusz. Unfortunately, the more Laura learned about human<br />history from the Ouija Board, the more she discovered<br />that multiple alien races in command of time travel technology<br />had destroyed the meaning of human history and existence. . .<br /><br />It's all too stupid to believe. . . But there are people<br />out there who do believe it. People a lot like you, who<br />loved Star Trek and the X-Files and the DaVinci Code<br />and the war-for-oil conspiracies elaborated at Moveon.org. . .<br />--------------------------jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-35643101927435185252009-04-26T08:31:00.000-07:002009-04-26T08:31:00.000-07:00"Extropia" insists that Robot Cultists are concern..."Extropia" insists that Robot Cultists are concerned with the "wider picture" as against the "narrow concerns" of people who are doing real science or who are engaging in real progressive activism. I doubt most of their fellow Robot Cultists will so readily concede that theirs is not a scientific enterprise, indeed their more conventional line is that they represent champions of "pure science" against post-modern relativism and all that jazz, and constitute a kind of high priestly scientific avant-garde soldiering away in their secret labs (presently in their parents' basements but soon enough, you can be sure, in the asteroid belt or deep beneath the sea) building "The Future" one online manifesto at a time, and so on. <br /><br />But credit where credit is due, I quite agree with "Extropia" that superlative futurology is not best understood as a practice of science, policy, or progressive activism (to the contrary of most of its public advocates), but a sub(cult)ural <I>discourse</I> and its associated fandoms instead, devoted to creating a narrative to make disruptive technoscientific change meaningful to those who invest in it, to solicit their identification in marginal communities of shared True Belief, and to answer to the irrational passions (and we all have them, just not the same ones) of the faithful. <br /><br />Of course, I don't agree with "Extropia" that superlative futurology is concerned with "<B>the</B> wider picture" but just with one of many on offer, and a rather implausible, alienating, anti-democratizing one at that.<br /><br />Superlative futurology in my view is invested in a constellation of imaginary idealized outcomes, sometimes denominated "The Future," which its practitioners identify as occasions for their personal transcendence and the shared investment in which provides the palpable compensation in the present of the pleasures and urgencies of personal identification in a self-marginalizing defensive moralizing sub(cult)ure. <br /><br />That shared superlative futurological identification tends to come at the cost in the present of an ambivalent dis-identification with their worldly peers -- hence all the glib talk of "post"-humanity -- but this cost typically seems to them negligible if not actively desirable given that the Robot Cultist's desire for transcendence via superlative imaginary technodevelopments expresses the ambivalence, or even loathing hostility, here and now, of the Robot Cultists with the frustrations of an error-prone passionate thoroughly social embodied intelligence, with the frustrations of a disease-prone demanding vulnerable socially legible embodied mortal life, with the frustrations of the stakeholder politics of reconciling the ineradicable diversity of aspirations of peers with whom we share the world and the fragility of the freedom bodied forth through that interminable reconciliation. <br /><br />Quite apart from the "technical" implausibility of the imagined outcomes and developmental timelines proposed by superlative futurologists -- hence their utter marginality from scientific consensus in the actual fields they superficially, selectively, and opportunistically graze for "signs" that their wishes might come true for them -- the Robot Cultists divest the concepts of intelligence, life, progress, and freedom of their social/embodied substance and then invest them in a compensatory amplification of blind, brute instrumental force, first rendering them meaningless and then adding insult to injury and confusing this with "emancipation."Dale Carricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-50612453947372001282009-04-26T08:24:00.000-07:002009-04-26T08:24:00.000-07:00> But nor do I have proof that the brain CANNOT...> But nor do I have proof that the brain CANNOT be understood,<br />> or that aging CANNOT be prevented. <br /><br />Nor will you ever find proof that ESP doesn't exist, or that we're<br />not being visited by aliens in flying saucers, or that palm<br />readers, crystal ball gazers, and Dionne Warwick's "psychic<br />friends" can't see the future. Or that the world wasn't really<br />created in 4004 BC and that the Devil didn't bury fake dinosaur<br />fossils to lead us into temptation.<br /><br />Look, I shouldn't have to tell you this, if you've read the<br />books you've mentioned.<br /><br />> So yes. . . any. . . individual in any. . . field of science<br />> or technology does not need to concern him or herself with the<br />> wider picture of how the narrow problem she or he is determined<br />> to resolve might connect with the work being done by the all<br />> other scientists out there to produce something incredible.<br />> I however, choose to do precisely that.<br /><br />Geez, and Michael Anissimov dismisses bottom-up AI as believing<br />in the "emergence fairy"!<br /><br />Well, if that's the way your mind works, you can, of course,<br />"choose to do precisely that", and ain't nobody gonna convince<br />you otherwise.<br /><br />If you enjoy connecting the dots in this way, maybe you should<br />read Laura Knight-Jadczyk's "Signs of the Times" Web site.<br />http://www.sott.net/jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-38258415653164457512009-04-26T08:09:00.000-07:002009-04-26T08:09:00.000-07:00> > . . .Susan Haack [_Defending Science -- ...> > . . .Susan Haack [_Defending Science -- Within Reason_]. . .<br />><br />> Judging by the title, the theme of the book sounds rather similar<br />> to Michael Shermer's 'Why People Believe Weird Things',<br />> Eric and Jonathon Dregni's 'Follies of Science: 20th century visions<br />> of our fantastic future', Bob Seidensticker's 'Futurehype: the myths<br />> of technology change' and Alison George's 'Invented knowledge:<br />> False history, fake science and psuedo-religions'<br /><br />It's more about technical epistemology than the titles you mention,<br />but by all means read it, if you're so inclined.jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-65183520945934342152009-04-26T04:48:00.000-07:002009-04-26T04:48:00.000-07:00'"Extropia" declares me to be no different from a ...'"Extropia" declares me to be no different from a fulminating Creationist in my assessment that the curious claims of the Robot Cultists are faith-based in their essence.'<br /><br />Actually, I suggested that your demands for 'extraordinary proof' could be used to dismiss any evidence anyone might bring to prove the case for H+, just as creationists declare the evidence for evolution 'not persuasive enough'.<br /><br />Of course, it is true that no evidence I could cite at time of writing is persuasive enough. I do not have proof that the brain can be fully understood nor that aquiring such knowledge would allow us to unlock the secrets of consciousness or upload minds into computers. I do not have proof that for all the underlying causes of aging there is a remedy that we will find if only we continue to look for it. But nor do I have proof that the brain CANNOT be understood, or that aging CANNOT be prevented. <br /><br />Would you agree, though, that IF the brain CAN be reverse-engineered and understood well enough to recreate its powers in technology, the payoffs for that in military, medical and commercial terms would be massive?<br /><br />'Do I need to recite those views of the Robot Cultists again for the peanut gallery, by the way?' <br /><br />I have already agreed with it, so no there was no need to repeat it. Are you prepared to agree that there is a middle-ground between beliefs like that, and the belief that the future will be pretty much like today?<br /><br />'Deny the obvious marginality of these beliefs all you want'.<br /><br />I do not deny them. I do deny that I have to accept everything claimed by transhumanists or Singularitarians. That is like saying if you believe the theory of Relativity has merit, you must believe in time travel, wormholes to parallel universes and all the other extremes of theoretical physics. Of course, that is not true. One can be persuaded by some aspects of a theory, while also being skeptical of other aspects.<br /><br />'Nobody needs to join a Robot Cult to work on actual software security, or actual healthcare, or actual materials science.'<br /><br />Consider the following fields: Material sciences, mechanical engineering, physics, life sciences, chemistry, biology, electrical engineering, computer science and IT. Some are clearly related to others, some have no relationship, right? Wrong. They ALL related to the field of nanotechnology. And because all these fields converge on nanotech, research in any one of these areas could result in breakthroughs for molecular nanotechnology. Such a solution might take the form of an emergent pattern of a billion research topics, comments and insights, spread across all the disciplines in a complex web of cause-and-effect. Possibly, no single document or comment has anything to do with Drexlerian nanotechnology per se, it is just that a solution to some intractible problem becomes obvious to deeply-networked research groups who are aided by software tools that find possible solutions emerging from other, perhaps seemingly unrelated, areas of science and which then translate the specialised language used by one group into that used by another.<br /><br />Much the same could be said for AI and robotics. As IMB computer scientist Dharmendra S. Modha said, 'there is a new synthesis of four fields, including mathematics, neuroscience, computer science and physchology'. He is talking about 'cognitive computing', research which is distinguished from earlier generations of AI work by the wealth of biological data science has since gathered on how the brain functions.<br /><br />So yes, a materials scientist or any other individual in any other field of science or technology does not need to concern him or herself with the wider picture of how the narrow problem she or he is determined to resolve might connect with the work being done by the all other scientists out there to produce something incredible. I however, choose to do precisely that. <br /><br />'Such a person is not likely to want to read anything by<br />Susan Haack.'<br /><br />Judging by the title, the theme of the book sounds rather similar to Micheal Shermer's 'Why People Believe Weird Things', Eric and Jonathon Dregni's 'Follies of Science: 20th century visions of our fantastic future', Bob Seidensticker's 'Futurehype: the myths of technology change' and Alison George's 'Invented knowledge: False history, fake science and psuedo-religions', all of which I have read (apart from the last one, which I have ordered but not received at time of posting).<br /><br />It sounds like a very good book. Thanks for mentioning it:)Extropia DaSilvanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-46271530928134263772009-04-25T20:29:00.000-07:002009-04-25T20:29:00.000-07:00> [T]here was even a 1972 made-for-TV movie (wi...> [T]here was even a 1972 made-for-TV movie (with none other<br />> than William Shatner [& Kim Darby, & Diane Varsi]),<br />> called simply "The People", based on one of these stories.<br />> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_People_(1972_film)<br /><br />A few scenes from this are on YouTube:<br /><br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1JLeB99FlI<br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXZgJFCu7_k<br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVyUZvFJ1eQ<br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7jd69hFmEM<br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bm1WfHlTc3Ajimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-74374091202814826602009-04-25T15:33:00.000-07:002009-04-25T15:33:00.000-07:00The subject of Mormonism has popped up on this blo...The subject of Mormonism has popped up on this blog from time to time -- most<br />recently in Dale's complaint against out-of-state Mormons financing the<br />campaign in favor of Proposition 8 in California<br />http://amormundi.blogspot.com/2009/03/exposing-mormon-hate-campaign.html<br />and in earlier debates between Dale and Lincoln Cannon of the<br />Mormon Transhumanist Association, e.g.,<br />http://amormundi.blogspot.com/2008/03/faith-in-finitude.html<br />http://amormundi.blogspot.com/2008/04/if-everything-is-faith-then-nothing-is.html<br /><br />I find it curious, given how little I knew about Mormonism when<br />I read them, that it has turned out that several stories and novels I've<br />remembered all my life turned out to have been authored by Mormons.<br /><br />The very first paperback book my parents ever bought me was<br />a 1962 Dell softcover called _A Decade of Fantasy<br />and Science Fiction_, edited by Robert P. Mills.<br />It contains the unusual story "Jordan", which I found haunting<br />and memorable enough at the time, though it rather frustratingly felt<br />as though there was a lot more going on in that "world" than what was in<br />just that one story -- the story felt like a chapter that had been<br />excerpted from a book. Sure enough, years later, I ran into paperback<br />by the same author entitled _Pilgrimage: The Book of the People_,<br />(and some time after that _The People: No Different Flesh_),<br />and found out that the same author been writing these interconnected<br />stories for years.<br /><br />They're definitely science fiction (the "People" are human-looking<br />aliens with various supernormal powers, stranded on Earth),<br />but the stories also have a "religious" flavor -- nothing very explicit<br />or doctrinal, I would've been repelled by that, just a prominent theme<br />of being about a very close-knit, disciplined but caring community<br />with a highly-developed sense of social responsibility. (Some people,<br />including me, might find a steady diet of them a **touch** saccharine<br />after a while.)<br /><br />I only found out in the Web era that the author, Zenna Henderson was a Mormon,<br />at least during her early life (people who've lived in Utah could've have<br />guessed her origins from the name "Zenna" ;-> ).<br />(Wes Clark's "Utah Baby Namer" http://wesclark.com/ubn/ )<br />http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_People_(Zenna_Henderson)<br />http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zenna_Henderson<br /><br />She wrote stories about the People between 1952 and 1975<br />http://www.nesfa.org/press/Books/Henderson.htm<br />and there was even a 1972 made-for-TV movie (with none other<br />than William Shatner), called simply "The People", based<br />on one of these stories.<br />http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_People_(1972_film)<br /><br />Orson Scott Card came rather later -- he became famous<br />with the 1985 publication of _Ender's Game_, but<br />the first book I read by him, called _Songmaster_,<br />was a little unusual for its time in that it explores (in a<br />sentimental but still very frank way) the theme of the sexual and<br />romantic attraction of several grown-up male characters for<br />a beautiful young boy.<br />http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songmaster<br /><br />It's the farthest thing imaginable from pornography; there's<br />precious little sex, but a great deal of romantic longing.<br />In fact, when I read it, it **seemed** like an apology for<br />man-boy love. Imagine my surprise when I discovered, again<br />not until the Web era, that its author is 1) a Mormon and<br />2) not at **all** supportive of gay rights.<br />http://www.nauvoo.com/library/card-hypocrites.html<br />http://archive.salon.com/books/feature/2000/02/03/card/index.html<br /><br />Yet **another** SF author, who I only found out was a Mormon<br />quite recently, is Raymond F. Jones, author of _This Island Earth_ (1955),<br />which I've never read, and a story that I read in 6th grade and<br />liked very much called "Tools of the Trade" (1950).<br />http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_F._Jones<br /><br />"Tools of the Trade", in fact, imagines starships being built<br />with a complete absence of nuts and bolts and welds and rivets,<br />via a technology of streamed matter called in the story<br />"molecular spray", which sounds very much like what a contemporary<br />SF author would call "molecular nanotechnology".<br /><br />So, apropos of all this, and of the connection between Mormonism<br />and not only science fiction, but transhumanism as well, I<br />found the following passage recently on the Web:<br /><br />http://www.publishersweekly.com/index.asp?layout=talkBackCommentsFull<br />&articleid=CA72275&talk_back_header_id=72275<br />--------------------------------<br />Other Worlds, Suffused With Religion<br />By Kimberly Winston -- Publishers Weekly<br />04/16/2001<br /><br />. . .<br /><br /><br />The Mormon Link<br /><br />Science fiction writers are more often Mormon than any other<br />religious denomination. That's according to www.adherents.com,<br />a Web site that tracks religious affiliation and has compiled<br />a list of 175 published SF/fantasy writers who are either current<br />or former members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.<br />The LDS church counts five million Mormons in the U.S. and just<br />under 11 million worldwide. Compare that to Catholicism, which<br />has 26 million baptized followers in the U.S. alone, but can claim<br />only 30 writers of speculative fiction on the same list. <br /><br />"Mormon theology does dovetail with science fiction quite nicely,"<br />Preston Hunter, a computer programmer and avid science fiction fan<br />who created the site, told PW. "Mormons have an outlook on God and<br />the universe similar to science fiction writers that other Christian<br />churches do not."<br /><br />And that outlook sells books, whether published by Mormon or commercial<br />houses. Some of the Mormon names on Hunter's list are among the biggest<br />SF/fantasy writers around -- Orson Scott Card, Dave Wolverton, Anne Perry,<br />Zenna Henderson, Tracy Hickman and Russell Asplund. Many keep Mormon thought<br />completely out of their work, while others write openly about their<br />faith, albeit transferred to another world.<br /><br />Is there something special about Mormonism that fosters this kind of<br />literature? Card, winner of the coveted Hugo and Nebula Awards for science<br />fiction, says the answer is yes. "Mormons are theologically not so far<br />removed from science fiction. We literally believe that God has created<br />sentient beings on other worlds, that there really is faster-than-light travel<br />and that God can go hither and yon. In many cases, we are writing about a<br />universe we have already thought about from childhood on."<br /><br />Portions of Card's The Tales of Alvin Maker series include scenes from the<br />life of Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism. The five volumes of his<br />Homecoming series, about a race of earthlings guided to a promised land<br />by the Oversoul, is a retelling of the Mormon trek to Utah. One reason Card<br />sees a Mormon affinity for science fiction is that their idea of God as a<br />highly developed man -- and not an ethereal, supernatural being -- is the<br />kind of highly evolved hero much of science fiction is founded on.<br /><br />"We believe in a physical, corporeal being who moves through time and who<br />was once like us," Card explains. "We believe he is accessible, but also<br />bound by natural law, just like us. So the God we believe in is already<br />50% of the way toward being the God science fiction can accept, so it is<br />a lot easier for us to move the last 50% without compromising any of our<br />other beliefs."<br /><br />But perhaps the chief reason Mormon writers have an affinity for<br />science fiction is because much of their history has painted them as<br />"aliens" to the American mainstream. Because of their different ideas of God,<br />Christ and the universe and their early belief in plural marriage, the<br />first Mormons were hounded out of Ohio, Missouri and Illinois to finally<br />form, in 1846, a mass exodus west to Utah. This sense of being somehow<br />different is so embedded in Mormon culture that Pepperdine University's<br />Michael Collings, an authority on the science fiction of Orson Scott Card<br />and author of Storyteller: The Official Orson Scott Card Bibliography<br />and Guide, sees it as the one chord sounded throughout speculative fiction<br />by LDS authors. "Whether spoken or not, there is that core of experience<br />that Card so aptly describes as being an alien in one's own homeland,"<br />Collings says. "Some use science fiction as a way of bridging that difference<br />or of modulating it."<br /><br />Marion K. Smith, professor of science fiction writing and literature at<br />Brigham Young University, told PW the link between Mormonism and<br />speculative fiction is well-rooted in Mormon cosmology and theology.<br />In addition to seeing God as a flesh-and-blood man, Mormons also believe<br />they are literally his children and that he made many other worlds<br />populated with his offspring as well. Mormons suppose a premortal<br />existence as "spirit children," and believe that by "eternal progression"<br />they can evolve, becoming at some point like God. They also believe in<br />continuing revelation -- that their leader, whom they refer to as a prophet,<br />receives ongoing divine communication. "So the concept of lost civilizations,<br />of alien races and other cultures, is not foreign to us," Smith notes.<br />And that, he adds, "is a backbone of science fiction, that there are people<br />who have unusual knowledge and act upon it."jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-41593120886732421362009-04-25T14:47:00.000-07:002009-04-25T14:47:00.000-07:00It'll be interesting to see how long that lasts [s...<I>It'll be interesting to see how long that lasts [sfnal/futurological fetishizaton of networked digital computers], and if it [chief enabling conceit for sf-sensawunda] switches back<br />[to, say, psychics] after a few years of Moore's Law flameout with no replacement in sight.</I>Yes, as a sf-geek with investments in literary-criticism I'll admit I'm watching that very thing pretty closely as well. The late great Octavia Butler interestingly shifted from her own early Zelanzy psychic sooper-humans to bioengeneered ones and mutant monsters rather than hopping on Moore's bandwagon -- no doubt there will be much more where that came from, much of it peddled to teens as vampire-analogue fiction.Dale Carricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-83501914475566940682009-04-25T14:24:00.000-07:002009-04-25T14:24:00.000-07:00> It is not so much a hard party-line that is p...> It is not so much a hard party-line that is policed by the<br />> Robot Cult, but a circumscription of debate onto an idiosyncratic<br />> set of marginal problems and marginal "technical" vocabularies. . .<br /><br />There are a few hard party lines, though.<br /><br />One of them, probably the pre-eminent one at the moment (at least in terms of<br />"'technical' vocabularies" and putting aside the default sociocultural<br />background of libertarianism, Ayn Rand, the Divine Right of the<br />Mathematical Genius, self-styled big-brained heroes as saviors<br />of the world, and so on -- attitudes which have certainly straddled<br />both the world of wound-tight SF fans like Claude Degler in the 1940s<br />**and** the "real world" of scientific research -- see, e.g., the recent<br />_Broken Genius: The Rise and Fall of William Shockley, Creator<br />of the Electronic Age_ by Joel Shurkin<br />http://www.amazon.com/Broken-Genius-William-Shockley-Electronic/dp/0230551920 )<br />is the non-negotiable status of the **digital computer** as<br />the key to the transcendence of the human condition.<br /><br />Although the classics of SF about transcendent supermen focused on superintelligent<br />mutants with psychic powers (J. D. Beresford _The Hampdenshire Wonder_,<br />Olaf Stapledon's _Odd John_, A. E. Van Vogt's _Slan_, Poul Anderson's<br />_Brain Wave_, Arthur C. Clarke's _Childhood's End_, George Turner's<br />_Brain Child_), these days it's computers or bust.<br /><br />It'll be interesting to see how long that lasts, and if it switches back<br />after a few years of Moore's Law flameout with no replacement in sight<br />(not that I'm looking forward to that era -- 3D optical computers?<br />molecular computers? bring 'em on!)jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.com