Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Neo-techo-Platonism
From: bob.ezergailis@canrem.com (Bob Ezergailis)
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!howland.reston.ans.net!torn!news.uunet.ca!uunet.ca!portnoy!canrem.com!bob.ezergailis
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <60.19093.4351.0N1D8816@canrem.com>
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 95 15:52:00 -0500
Organization: CRS Online  (Toronto, Ontario)
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JG>Saint Jenny, hymn writer for the New Order

        The New World Order ?  Ah, let's, order a new world.
        Will be have anchovies on it, or perhaps double cheese ?
        You can only really know what you are able to consume.

JG>We, Neutopians, can create a world where no one is poor materially and
JG>everyone has an computer account and archival space.
JG>                                --Doctress Neutopia

        Of course, neo-techno-Platonism.

        There, where the ultimate value is the IDEA, and everyone
        has unlimited access to more ideas than they are able to
        assimilate, no one would be poor.

        However, all that anyone would ever have is an electromagnetic
        link into cyberspace, where they would play with their self.

        Eventually that evolves into what Gibson calls "simStim".
        The neuronal triggers produce physical sensations that emulate
        human neural responses to the physical environment. Then no
        more need for a physical environment. The technology exists.
        It simply is not yet commercially available to the masses.

        A new opium for the people. They can become addicted to their
        own bodies and want for nothing outside of themselves and their
        own play of ideas. Actually an involution where each conscious
        thought elicits what appears to be an internal novel response,
        or its own echo, to diminish any attachment and desire for any
        external input and involvement. Instant feedback from your
        very own artiticial intelligence messiah, so that you
        never again want for another human's responsiveness. People
        would become more and more wrapped up within their own minds,
        and hardly know it. They would have more inside their own mind
        than the outside interactions of superficial trivia, formalisms,
        and customary production and consumption relations. In fact
        the retreat into solipsistic inner space would be promoted
        by the imposition of that narrowly constrained and coercively
        dispassionate external environment of no more involvement
        than the most casual economics.

        What more could any machine want ?

regards,
from,

Bob


 * SLMR 2.1a * How could anyone feel poor with so many many ideas ?
