X-Message-Number: 17148
From: "Gary Tripp" <>
Subject: Re: Nanotech and Diversity
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 12:15:39 -0400

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Subject: Nanotech and Diversity

Mike Perry writes:

>Gary Tripp, #17134, writes:
>>However, I speculate that the unique characteristics and beliefs that
>>differentiate pre-nanotech individuals would disappear or merge
>>in post-nanotech individuals.

>This would not necessarily follow, because post-human individuals should 
>value history (I certainly intend to), and that includes personal history, 
>thus those features that distinguish one's past from another's. Though we 
>might expect convergence of opinions and other characteristics in many 
>areas, this sort of difference will remain, and actually, I think, far from 
>just this. Thus I expect different individuals will choose different 
>lifestyles, things to investigate, and so on, and over time diverge in such 
>areas as special interests and expertise. One person, however enhanced 
>technologically, simply could not keep up with, hence subsume, all the 
>separate, ongoing activities of all the others who will also be operating 
>from a position of post-human enhancement. This I see in a constructive 
>light. It would be a duller universe, don't you think, if all individuals 
>were almost exactly alike or there was just one person because all had
> merged?


Diversity, of course, is intimately bound to our sense of identity and hopefully
we will retain memories of our history but my speculation is informed by an 
abstract view of the essential philosophical underpinning that animates our
behaviour. Without doubt, the insane banter of new age spiritualists will be 
found to be either inconsistent or untenable. The influence of nanotechnology 

will be devolutionary in the extreme and will preside over an era that will be 
pretty 

close to anarchy. In such an environment diversity will take of itself. I 
anticipate 

and look forward to a point in our future that will be tantamount to an 
explosion 
of diversity.

/gary

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