[tt] [wta-talk] Virtual Heaven -- A View from the Commanding Heights

[Eugen Leitl]

----- Forwarded message from Ralph <figment at boone.net> -----

From: Ralph <figment at boone.net>
Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2007 03:31:49 -0400
To: World Transhumanist Association Discussion List <wta-talk at transhumanism.org>
Subject: [wta-talk]  Virtual Heaven -- A View from the Commanding Heights
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2900.3028
Reply-To: World Transhumanist Association Discussion List <wta-talk at transhumanism.org>


   (Crossposted to Betterhumans...)

   The virtual community of Second Life has attracted many businesses,
   commentators, real estate brokers, trend watchers, journalists and,
   well, odd people. Not to mention writers, artists, innovators,
   scientists and other creative and visionary types. Many Second Life
   boosters can no doubt defend the communities peculiarities or at least
   wax rhapsodic about "Second Life at its best." Tech boosters are good
   at obscuring reality with a glorious vision of the hypothetical,
   utopian future.


   Ironically, it's that Platonic ideal of Second Life, that glorious
   utopia-to-be, that is the "threat" I wish to address today.


   A thought occurred to me when Anders Sandberg gave a lecture, "Keep on
   Raging Against Aging," on Second Life. The idea of an array of people
   actively engaged in creating the future (or at least enthusiastic
   spectators to the future rising before their eyes) assembling in
   virtual bodies to hear a talk on the radical near-future was
   intriguing, to say the least. Ironically, that lecture looked almost
   like the kind of ultimate Internet discussed in the heady days of the
   late 90s, a place where you could discuss radical, world-changing
   ideas with mavericks from across the globe.


   And for transhumanist enthusiasts, paradise, at least in that hour,
   was clearly already here. Naturally participants in a VR world like
   Second Life are a self-selected group, and are more apt to be
   interested in certain things like, well, VR, online networks, the
   online world, the uploading of human consciousness, etc. What could be
   better for someone looking to discuss these concepts in depth?


   But therein lies my concern: I wonder to what degree the "irrational
   exuberance" of the Dot.Com era was fed by a relatively small group of
   hard-core enthusiasts talking mainly to each other and their admiring
   fans. If you consider how much the residents of places like Silicon
   Valley were talking to themselves, the members of other tech enclaves,
   those first-adopters initially entering the Internet and Web, and
   businessmen, writers and politicians eager to tap into the Next Big
   Thing the Net was becoming... If you consider these factors, you can
   see how the real-world and online communities helped to seal
   themselves off from disquieting criticism, while appearing to be
   completely open to outside ideas.


   My point? I wonder to what degree the discipline of future studies and
   many business forecasting efforts are warped by the fact that
   technology experts tend to be online and highly wired, and part of
   virtual communities that still overselect for, say, computer
   programmers and tech workers. Whatever virtues the U.S. Army's latest
   future combat system concept may have had, one wonders if there would
   have been such an emphasis on connectivity and wiring the "common
   grunt" into the military's digital communications networks if that
   research hadn't come out of a period in which greater connectivity was
   seen as the solution to almost everything.


   Meanwhile, science-fiction visions of the future seem dominated by a
   specific breed of technology popular among online SF fans -- AI,
   nanotech assemblers, cybernetics and/or human uploading. That's not
   entirely surprising, if you ask fans who are programmers if they
   believe AI is possible, you're much more likely to get an affirmative
   than if you ask the Man on the Street. It's not surprising that the
   philosophers pushing the idea of a computer-driven "Singularity" have
   heavy backgrounds in computer hardware or software development.


   Futurists talking online about "human enhancement" and other forms of
   radical evolution seem to be much more taken with the idea of using
   cybernetic implants or uploading to enhance human intelligence --
   rather than, say, genetic enhancement or nootropic drugs. Much less
   the use of accelerated learning, self-hypnosis or other exercises or
   disciplines. Is that a purely rational assessment, or the result of
   having relatively limited sources of information on the subject of
   human evolution?


   Returning to the rise of VR worlds, is it possible that a "reality"
   which increasingly draws in so many of our writers, leaders,
   visionaries and commentators is going to have a wildly
   disproportionate impact on the world's thinking? On the one hand, you
   may end up a lot of the world's brilliant and innovative minds hanging
   out together and working together. On the other, you may end up in an
   intellectual hothouse where the inhabitants aren't just sharing much
   the same limited viewpoint on the world, but in which the issues of
   their particular, heavily represented sliver of civilization loom
   large over everything else in the greater society.


   For example, how many people remember the aggressively
   ultra-Libertarian philosophy that emerged in the tech industry during
   the 90s boom? You would forever be hearing some programmer who'd just
   gotten his first stock options ranting about how the government was
   obsolete (even for some age-old tasks as law enforcement, military
   defense, and road construction) and how the Market, and, of course,
   the Net, were going to sweep everything else aside and transform the
   world into a hyper-capitalist utopia.


   And regardless of how much of a Libertarian, Socialist, moderate,
   anarchist, etc you might be, it was always interesting to see how
   little many ideological champions seemed to know about how the world
   actually works, and what kinds of sincere objections people might have
   to their agendas. So issues like making stock options tax free and as
   easy to hand out as possible seemed much more important than trivial
   concerns like taxing some of that money sloshing around for other
   societal needs (like maintaining that Internet thing) or preventing
   tax fraud or insuring more tech startups were actually viable. How
   could any of those things be important?


   Which raises a concern about having large numbers of very intelligent
   people spending vast amounts of time residing in worlds in some ways
   more appealing than the real one. What happens if these people become
   even more detached from reality than those Dot.Boom
   programmer/revolutionaries looking at the world from a corner office
   in Silicon Valley through the filter of Cliffnotes' Ayn Rand? And what
   happens if a more subtle bias comes into existance in which everything
   not acknowledged and accepted by the core "society" becomes a fringe
   concern, if not irrelevant?

_______________________________________________
wta-talk mailing list
wta-talk at transhumanism.org
http://www.transhumanism.org/mailman/listinfo/wta-talk


----- End forwarded message -----
-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.ativel.com
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE