{"id":877,"date":"2002-02-14T19:55:00","date_gmt":"2002-02-14T23:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles-wp\/?p=877"},"modified":"2002-02-14T19:55:00","modified_gmt":"2002-02-14T23:55:00","slug":"technophilia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/2002\/02\/14\/19\/55\/technophilia\/","title":{"rendered":"Technophilia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today&#8217;s word: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cgjungpage.org\/psychtech\/technophilia.html\">Technophilia<\/a>. One of the most persistent memes in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shootthemessenger.com.au\/u_jul_98\/close\/c_techno.htm\">technophilic<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/members.tripod.com\/~The_Holeyman\/Slow_Apocalypse.html\">eschatology<\/a> is the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aleph.se\/Trans\/Global\/Singularity\/\">Singularity<\/a>, a transformative moment when humans and technology fuse to become something other, and unknowable. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ugcs.caltech.edu\/~phoenix\/vinge\/vinge-sing.html\">Vernor Vinge<\/a> thinks this is why, when we point radio telescopes at the sky, we hear not the chatter of millions of civilisations, but instead a deadening silence &#8211; they have transcended past such mundane communicative methods. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/wired\/archive\/8.04\/joy.html\">Bill Joy<\/a> thinks it&#8217;s because the machines probably wipe us out. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.homeschoolgrads.org\/spiritua.htm\">Ray Kurzweil<\/a> thinks the replacement is more benign. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.users.zetnet.co.uk\/iplus\/nonfiction\/kensf.htm\">Ken MacLeod<\/a> thinks all this is just <a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/books\/feature\/1999\/07\/27\/macleod_interview\/\">Rapture For Nerds<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>But my reading of <a href=\"http:\/\/dnr.metrokc.gov\/swd\/naturalconnections\/edward_wilson_bio.htm\">Sociobiologist Edward Wilson<\/a> presents a more evolutionary hypothesis. What if the reason we see a desert around us in our local space is that in all species evolutionary pressures cause us to expand, Malthusian-style, until we exhaust all natural resources and a dieback results in societal collapse, and perhaps species extinction?<\/p>\n<p>An extract from his new book, <A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0679450785\/meehawl-20\"><i>The Future of Life<\/i><\/A>, analyzes why there seems to exist such a dichotomy between economists and environmentalists, and whether a useful synthesis of both ideologies could one day deliver us from our apparently impending biospheric doom.<\/p>\n<p><i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciam.com\/2002\/0202issue\/0202wilson.html\">The relative indifference to the environment springs, I believe, from deep within human nature. The human brain evidently evolved to commit itself emotionally only to a small piece of geography, a limited band of kinsmen, and two or three generations into the future. To look neither far ahead nor far afield is elemental in a Darwinian sense. We are innately inclined to ignore any distant possibility not yet requiring examination. It is, people say, just good common sense.<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n<p>But then, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thymos.com\/mind\/wilson.html\">sociobiologists<\/a> always think they have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.personalityresearch.org\/evolutionary.html\"><i>all<\/i> the answers<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today&#8217;s word: Technophilia. One of the most persistent memes in technophilic eschatology is the Singularity, a transformative moment when humans and technology fuse to become something other, and unknowable. Vernor Vinge thinks this is&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/877\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}