I'm not on a "jihad" or any such thing. I'm just expressing my view that this course of action may not be the best one. While I'm also helping other express similar views, I'm not trying to force anyone to do anything or trying to stop anyone from doing what they want to do. I'm just putting my position out there. If my position has merit, is based in sound logic, and is compelling, others will pick it up. I'd much rather see Foresight put some serious thought into what I'm saying, and what the anti-technology movement is saying, than see them "put out of business".

First, let me say that I consider myself a Leftist, but I don't fear technology and look forward to the future. Actually, I'm kind of hoping that you might join me in my debate against Virginia Postrel. She thinks that left eco terrorists "stasists" (Her term. You have to read some of her stuff.) don't have anywhere near the power of right wing pro life "stasists". But I actually just had a couple of questions that I'm hoping that you might answer for me…

1) Why are you against space exploration and why is that necessarily a "left" position to be against exploration and curiosity? If it turns out that we destroy the world via global warming or the gray goo doesn't it make sense to develop the technology to allow us to go somewhere else?
If the worst happens, Mars might become more of a necessity than a whim. Also, does your jihad against space exploration include the entire world? If you succeeded in convincing the United States political apparatus that exploring space is a bad thing does that mean that the European Union, India, Japan, and China will all fall into line? If not, would you use force to stop them? And would that in fact take a very large space program in order to do that?

2.) To touch upon that last point, if you and your very clever allies in the anti tech movement succeed in putting the Foresight Institute and Zyvex and the computer chip industry out of business, will you make sure that assembler research is also stopped by the European Union, India, Japan and China? Or is the goal to make sure that only North Korea and Iraq have perfected assembler technology?

By the way, I'm against both the NAFTA and the WTO agreements not because I'm necessarily against free trade, but because many of their key decisions are not open to the public which to me seems to be an invitation to graft and corruption…To me, the left should always for democracy, freedom and the right to be curious about the world around us. Please tell me what you think it means…

vab@cryptnet.net

Well, unfortunately, you don't seem to have made available a email address to reach you by. If this is intentional, I'd invite you to email me, for I would like to discuss this with you, otherwise, modify your user info.

As a senior associate for the past 6 years and someone with college level genetics and chemistry education, I consider myself to have a resonable understanding of nanotechnology. I've read Drexler's Nanosystems, and many papers on nanotechnology.

I also consider myself a neo-luddite and I'm one of the people working to build the anti- technology movement. I've been working on it for about 2 years now. I can tell you that it's very unlikely that any of the anti-technology people will reverse their position.

I'd encourage the people reading nanodot to take a less dismissive attitude, and review some of the movement's writings.

There are a growing number of educated people developing views similar to those expressed by the anti-globelization movement. Emergence of these feelings in the mainstream culture can even be seen through movies like Fight Club (which had a regressionist anarchist plot). People do not necessarily need to be hard core leftist neo-luddite anarchists to hold, at some level, anti-technology sentiments. For example, the common man with limited anti-tech feelings can discourage, or vote down representatives supporting, funding and research initiatives for NASA there by cooling some of the misplaced enthusiasm for nanotechnology and other sciences. In fact, we have a letter writing campaign in place to try and reduce NASA's research funding which has received not insignificant support.

If anyone would like to discuss this, please email me privately. I do not read nanodot very often.

Thereís also the possibility, outlined by Ray Kurzweil in The Age of Spiritual Machines, that we might gradually merge with our machines, enhancing our intelligence or uploading our consciousness, and thus change the nature of humanity. Kurzweil and his book inspired Joyís nightmares, but Joy doesnít really explore Kurzweilís scenario.

-Virginia Postrel, "Joy, To the World", Reason magazine, June 2000

To be fair, taken out of context this does not sound like quite a ringing endorsement of the ascension to cyberspace scenario, but it does imply a willingness to entertain the notion of "uploading our consciousness" and "enhancing our intelligence," whereas Bill Joy is implicated as narrow-minded for equating this vision of cybersimulated superpeople to a nightmare instead of really exploring Kurzweil's scenario.

Taken in context, this open-mindedness toward the transhumanist project is more significant, because this is exactly the escape route typically advanced by hard-core cybogizers in response to the concerns Postrel summarized in her previous paragraph:

Joyís article starts with the idea that highly intelligent robots might supercede human beings. This could happen because a) the robots are so great we become dependent on them and essentially bore ourselves to death (a scenario Joy snagged from the Unabomber manifesto) or b) the robots outcompete us for economic resources, so that we canít afford enough food, water, land, energy, etc., to survive, just as placental mammals wiped out competing marsupials in the Americas (an idea from robotics researcher Hans Moravec).

This is a very good statement of what it seems to me Bill Joy advanced as the central concern of his article. As we discuss the creation of humanoid and superhuman robots and AI systems, we face the question, are we creating a competitor that will destroy us?

The soothing answer is, we can merge with technology. Postrel here suggests this may be a valid route.

There are many egregious errors and falsehoods in Postrel's article, and if she would like to invite a response of perhaps 1,000 words, to appear in her magazine, I would be willing to write one.

Oh my look whoís here. The Big C-Span Media Darling has come down to the message board gutters to mix it up with us proles. Well, according to your thesis, and Iíll be quoting you a lot, dynamismówhich sounds distractingly L. Ron Hubbardish I might noteóis all about allowing criticism, or as you write: ìCriticism is at the very heart of the dynamic processî.

Gosh then. Let me do my best to add to the evolutionary ìdynamistî process.

First, let me register the disappointment I felt when you started your flame with an ad hominem attack upon me. Of course I suppose that would be easier than addressing my argument that the left is powerless in this country and that right-wing stasists not only have the ear of the presidency, but may in fact be the presidencyóempty headed, inarticulate and doltish as it may be. When I go to your website I expect an even handed attack upon the evil stasists. Not just liberal stasists or environmental stasists, but those stasists that want to eliminate a womanís right to choose or tie us to the noose of fossil fuels. If youíre just going to be a corporate media styled web hackócut purely in the Noam Chomsky mold of freely being able to criticize government but can never seem to find a single corporate wrong despite Bhopals and Nigerian executions and South American death squads screaming for your ìpressî attentionówho, quite coincidently Iím sure, canít be openly critical of the very dangerous stasists in the Republican Party who my dweebish looking boss at Forbes openly courted during the last election cycle, then just tell me. Just say ìI, Virginia Postrel, represent a very narrow viewpoint of my own ideology. Guvmint is bad and free enterprise is good no matter how much random misery, death, poisoning, destruction and/or 40 percent energy cost increases it may bring.î

That would clear it right up for me.

My only other conclusion is that youíre dumb and that you donít know about what the right-wing, uh, forgive me, the stasist wing is doing. You know, the ones that have real power to change laws, legislate boondoggles to their Big Money pals and god knows what other evil. You know, the ones that actually have the power to stop Nan if they wanted to. Clue me in on how you balance what you think is newsworthy. At Forbes, that capitalist tool, I could understand their bias. The reason I tune into your site is that Iím assuming you can be a more independent spirit. That means when the administration defends in court a bill that would censor library speech at the expense of billions of dollars in funding then I would expect you to throw out a line about the evils of government bureaucracy. Whereís your free speech outrage there? Iím not saying that you should ignore the news about David Horowitz (And what do you care anyway: according to you private companies are Gods unto ThemselvesÖWho needs seatbelts or the EPA. Private enterprise will do the right thing, right?) Iím just trying to figure out how one act is more important than the other. Seems to me if youíre offering the objective dynamist position both bits of news would enter your radar. Ditto, I might add, for the choice issue. Whoís more dangerous: stasist prolifers who routinely murder to push their agenda or stasist environmentalists who destroy experimentation and shrubbery? You have apparently chosen shrubbery over the Hot War against a womanís right to choose. Iím not saying destroying experimentation is not important, but donít both issues deserve some mention on your website? I canít think of anything more intrusive than telling a woman what she can do with her own body. Isnít the pro-life movement a Big Time stasist movement? You ask, contrasting the stasist view against the dynamist view: ìDoes progress depend on puritanical repression or a playful spiritî? Well, stasist pro lifers sound pretty much like puritanical repression to me. Whereís your dignified eloquent outrage? Shouldnít there be a post or a link? On the front page of your site, not buried in footnotes or a digression in one of your speeches? Canít you give us something on RU-486? Just a jot about the evil federal bureaucracy? Throw us a bone. Show us that youíre not one of these fuckiní pathetic corporate media hacks whose perspectives serendipitously resembles that of their publishing patrons. The reason why Chomsky sells all those books is people like you keep validating his proofs. Let me guess: youíre all hot and bothered about Cheneyís proposal to bring back nuclear energy? I hope they plant all those nuke plants right by your home in TexasÖ

As for your comments on biotechnology and fossil fuels, I find them fairly predictable considering the Radical Free Market Source. And again, and you have me scratching my head here at your sense of perspective, the biotech market is fine and well. Donít worry, your rich Big Pharma friends have bought off both parties. Not to worry. And Global Warming, as you know, is a big green eyed conspiracy. Despite science against the fictional notion of warming, environmental wackos like the industrial heads of BP and ALCOA, that tree devastatiní bomb thrower Christine Todd Whitman and the entirety of Europe push the ìglobal warmingî myth. Bravo to coal and oil you must cheer. I can only say that since you are now a resident of Texas I wholeheartedly encourage you to take many deep breaths of that fine Texas air and drink many gallons of that fine tap water. What thatís taste and smell you ask in a choking and gasping fit later? Thatís the wondrous Invisible Hand at work…Or as you say: ìthe party of lifeî.

Philip Shropshire
http://www.threerivertechreview.com
http://www.majic12.com

If you actually read my work, instead of making assumptions, you would know that I frequently write critically about people on the right and that, in fact, one of my central themes is that "left" and "right" are not helpful in characterizing the alliances on some of the most important issues of the day, including many involving technology. (You would also know that, Kirkpatrick Sale aside, many of these people do have websites, to which I provided some links.) A bit more research would also find that I am frequently criticized by people on the right and am a particular bete noire of certain neoconservative intellectuals who are greatly concerned about the threat they believe biotechnology poses to what it means to be human.

But you're right about one thing: I don't consider fossil fuels inherently evil. And I don't think that cutting off government funding of energy boondoggles is the equivalent to trying to shut down all biotechnology.

Virginia Postrel
dynamist.com

I'd like to see a citation for this, since I've never written anything of the sort: "The link between Reason and the Extropian cult was recorded long ago in articles by Virginia Postrel arguing, crucially, in favor of the maximal project of Hans Moravec, Ray Kurzweil and Max More: "uploading", the technological apotheosis, ascendance to a heaven of posthuman simulated existence. Whatever the hell that means. Postrel explicitly bought the nightmare wholesale in using it as the escape route from Bill Joy's broad critique of super-technology." I've never written *anything* in favor of uploading, which I find both too way-out for my rather mundane mind (sorry Max et al.) and not all that appealing. My response to Joy put an emphasis on such "escape routes" as improving the Centers for Disease Control's ability to react to biological threats (which I believe pose real, near-term, understandable threats that can only be countered by *more* knowledge, not less). Virginia Postrel http://www.dynamist.com

I find your lack of patriotism to be quite refreshing. I could use your help at the US Expansion into Space post topic, at Missions and Launches, over at http://www.space.com. I'm writing under the moniker Steely Dan. I think I'm the only person in the bunch who thinks critically about the US over there. You would be a welcome addition to the fight. My argument is that the United States wouldn't create a very good space society, or at least a space that I would want to live in.