From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Mon Sep 09 2002 - 00:36:31 MDT
>Here is a new interview with Steven Pinker, whose new book _The Blank
>Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature_ is coming out in October:
>
>http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/pinker_blank/pinker_blank_print.html
It's a very fine short account, but Pinker does have his limitations.
You'll be relieved to learn, for example, that the Singularity won't
happen. Can't change human nature, you know:
http://www.mit.edu/%7Epinker/techreview.htm
< Third-millennium futurologists should realize that their fantasies are
scaring people to death. The preposterous world in which we interact only
in cyberspace, choose the endings of our novels, merge with our computers
and design our children from a catalogue gives people the creeps and turns
them off to the genuine promise of technological progress. The constancy of
human nature is our reassurance that the world we leave to our descendants
will be one in which scientific progress leads to delight rather than
boredom, in which our best art and literature continues to be appreciated,
and in which technology will enrich rather than dominate human lives. >
Damien Broderick
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jul 17 2013 - 04:00:40 MDT