I was thinking about your recent tiff with Erik Drexler, and I began to
wonder if it might not be a good idea for GBN people to have a 500-1000
year scenario session sometime soon. To get back to our roots, and to
provide input to the clock library.
One axis defining the scenario quadrants is likely to be labeled "degree of
discontinuity". Extreme discontinuity is fashionable- Drexler, Tipler,
Moravec and many others expect a "singularity", or "omega point" of one
sort or another to create an utter break with the past. The discontinuity
is usually to be caused by some combination of nanotechnology, AI, or other
techs taking off on their own. I should have proposed a VR discontinuity!
A friend at NASA, Creon Levit, recently gave me a book on the other end of
the axis. "The Millennial Project", by Marshall Savage, proposes
Fulleresque engineering schemes and a charming scenario for the next
thousand years. The technologies all sound both nutso and elegant. Like
the geodesic dome I grew up in, I suspect they would leak. But nonetheless
it is exhilarating to read a vision of the next thousand years that is
remarkably free of jarring discontinuities. This book is comfortably
humanistic. There are generational styles at play here. Savage refers to
science fiction all the time, but it's all golden age stuff- Heinlein,
Clarke. Drexler, on the other hand, is a Gibson baby.
What would the other axis be?
Best,
Jaron