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I'm in the midst of planning for my spring "Science, Technology, & Society: Examining the Future Through a Science Fiction Lens" course, and was researching a bit for interesting material. Here's some of what I found.
Are you the very model of a singularitarian?
Speaking of transcendental or catastrophic change, this book on Armageddon Science looks interesting. Here's an interesting interview with the author, discussing various end-of-humankind scenarios.
[Poll #1659680]
Later: How do we avoid such scenarios?
In related news, have you seen the Google Ngram Viewer? Interesting tool for seeing word usage in the books that Google has scanned. Note how "natural philosophy" reaches peak usage in the early 1800s, while "fuck" saw its peak usage from the late 1600s to the early 1700s, appearing almost not at all from the early 1800s through the 1960 or so. "Extinction" doesn't see much regular use until the late 1700s, becoming more popular ever since. What can we learn from these trends? Just sayin'.
Singularitarianly yours,
Chris
Are you the very model of a singularitarian?
Speaking of transcendental or catastrophic change, this book on Armageddon Science looks interesting. Here's an interesting interview with the author, discussing various end-of-humankind scenarios.
[Poll #1659680]
Later: How do we avoid such scenarios?
In related news, have you seen the Google Ngram Viewer? Interesting tool for seeing word usage in the books that Google has scanned. Note how "natural philosophy" reaches peak usage in the early 1800s, while "fuck" saw its peak usage from the late 1600s to the early 1700s, appearing almost not at all from the early 1800s through the 1960 or so. "Extinction" doesn't see much regular use until the late 1700s, becoming more popular ever since. What can we learn from these trends? Just sayin'.
Singularitarianly yours,
Chris
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;)
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Evolve?
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One other, that of the Conspiracy/New World Order Theorists:
Decimation of the overall population by poor food, lab-created disease and incarceration for the purpose of labor.
Those that remain will eventually be annihilated by our Benevolent Feline Overlords returning to find what a sad state has been made of their initial experiments on human evolution. They are going to be really pissed off about having to start all over again.
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:D
Atheist cat approves.
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Don't forget my colleague's work at CERN....
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So.
I do what I can in my own life. And hope that there are enough people doing this that it actually makes a difference.
By the way, I never got my copy of Transcendence. :(
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I hear ya, and I think it makes a difference!
When did you order it? If you ordered directly from the publisher, drop him a note!