From: Damien Broderick (thespike@satx.rr.com)
Date: Sat Feb 11 2006 - 16:48:13 MST
At 05:58 PM 2/11/2006 -0500, Jeff Medina wrote:
>Perhaps an explicit dissociation from McKenna is in order. I wonder to
>what extent people have come upon the SIAI-notion with a prior
>knowledge of McKenna, presumed we were followers of his views, and
>dismissed us without investigation on that basis.
I did just that in chapter 5 of THE SPIKE:
<Certain New Age doctrines might smack of this supine god-struck
reverence--those of psychedelic guru Terence McKenna, say, who perceived a
`novelty curve' Timewave supposedly derived from the I Ching that would
peak on December 21, 2012. Others saw clearly enough that the exponential
curves mapping the likely upward sweep of technology was nothing else than
the sum of human efforts in the next twenty or fifty years, aided by the
fluent and growing power of machine amplifiers.
Still, some observers were clearly worried that this temptation
to passivity and worship might corrode the very impulse required to make it
happen. Little value in paying good money to have your head frozen after
death, in the hope that nanotechnology would allow future generations to
revive you, if everyone went on an extended holiday, lolling about in the
expectation of the Singularity arriving miraculously. >
Damien Broderick
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jul 17 2013 - 04:00:55 MDT