Life is Not a Science Fiction Story

Mike Treder
Ethical Technology
http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/treder20100211

Posted: Feb 11, 2010

Many transhumanists are under the mistaken impression that the world they live in operates like a science fiction novel. It doesn’t.

This cognitive confusion seems to underlie some of the conflicts between moderate technoprogressives, like me, and the more exuberant types who expect that radical, wondrous changes are always just around the corner—because they read it in a book.

Don’t get me wrong. I love reading science fiction. I find it fascinating, compelling, mind-expanding, and occasionally even well-written. But I try to remember the second word in that genre description: fiction.

You see, the real world is not a story. It is not designed to be easily understood, to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. It doesn’t have a moral. It cannot be edited to improve clarity and flow.

The actual world we inhabit is complex, confused, arbitrary, random, chaotic, contingent, and messy. It’s hardly the stuff of a best-selling novel, or at least not the kind that seems to incite such zeal among transhumanists who believe that what they read in a book or saw in a movie must be true.

No, if real life was a science fiction story, it would be very different.

READ ON:

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/treder20100211

then there's fictional government...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pO1oJPps1I
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2...dcs_broken.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/17/b...v_n_465073.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNbTW0lhR1Y

Wait It Out

Where do we go from here?
How do we carry on?
I can't get beyond the questions.
Clambering for the scraps
in the shatter of us collapsed.
It cuts me with every could-have-been.

Pain on pain on play, repeating
With the backup makeshift life in waiting.

Everybody says,
time heals everything.
But what of the wretched hollow?
The endless in-between?
Are we just going to wait it out?

There's nothing to see here now,
turning the sign around;
We're closed to the Earth 'til further, notice.
A Stumbling cliche case,
crumbled and puffy faced.
Dead in the stare of a thousand miles.

All I want only one street-level miracle.
I'll be a an out-and-out born again from none more cynical.

Everybody says,
time heals everything.
All in the end
But what of the wretched hollow?
The endless in-between?
Are we just going to wait it out?

And sit here cold?
Well, We'll be long gone by then.
And lackluster in dust we lay
Around old magazines.
Fluorescent lighting sets the scene
for all we could and should be being
in the one life that we've got.

(Ah, Ah, Ah) (Ah, Ah, Ah) (Ah, Ah, Ah)
(Ah, Ah, Ah) (Ah, Ah, Ah) (Ah, Ah, Ah)

In the one life that we've got.

Everybody says,
that time heals everything.
But what of the wretched hollow?
The endless in-between?
Are we just going to wait it out, sit here?
Just going to Wait it out, sit here cold?
Just going to sweat it out?
Wait it out.

Very Good! Well expressed. Fluently articulated. Very understandable. Applicable to all.

I have submitted my work to the world. Not to dominate the world but to have my work evaluated like everyone else does. The internet has been a quick medium for my ideas to reach the public for discussion and review. But for the true value of my work to be assessed properly...well I'm waiting too.

P.j.S

PJS