X-Message-Number: 21471
From: "Mark Plus" <>
Subject: Bill McKibben's book
Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 17:26:04 -0800

You might want to look up a copy of Bill McKibben's new book, _Enough: 
Staying Human in an Engineered Age_:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0805070966/

With the following description:
--------------------------------------------

Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
In 1989, McKibben published The End of Nature, a gorgeously written and 
galvanizing book about the true cost of global warming, the destruction of 
the ozone layer and other man-made ills-the loss of wild nature and with it 
the priceless aspect of our humanity that evolved to listen to and heed it. 
Now McKibben applies the same passion, scholarship and free-ranging thought 
to a subject that even committed environmentalists have avoided. Here he 
tackles what it means to be human. Reporting from the frontiers of genetic 
research, nanotechnology and robotics, he explores that subtle moral and 
spiritual boundary that he calls the "enough point." Presenting an overview 
of what is or may soon be possible, McKibben contends that there is no 
boundary to human ambition or desire or to what our very inventions may make 
possible. In an absorbing and horrifying montage of images, he depicts 
microscopic nanobots consuming the world and children born so genetically 
enhanced that they will never be able to believe that they reach for the 
stars as pianists or painters or long-distance runners because there is 
something unique in them that has a passion to try. Indeed, in the view of 
the most unbridled "technoutopians," the day of the robotically striving 
human is already here. What does set a human being apart from other beings, 
McKibben argues, is our capacity for restraint-and even for finding great 
meaning in restraint. "We need to do an unlikely thing: We need to survey 
the world we now inhabit and proclaim it good. Good enough." McKibben 
presents an uncompromising view, and an essential view. Readers will come 
away from his latest brilliantly provocative work shaking their heads at the 
possible future he portrays, yet understanding that becoming a pain-free, 
all-but-immortal, genetically enhanced semi-robot may be deeply 
unsatisfactory compared to being an ordinary man or woman who has faced his 
or her fear of death to relish what is. This is a brilliant book that 
deserves a wide readership.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--------------------------------------------------

Transhumanists have a philosophical Baghdad to conquer, ladies & gentlemen!

Mark Plus
"Stargate" is right: God IS our enemy!






_________________________________________________________________
Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online  
http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=21471