``Sheesh, I was in the car at least a dozen times today and for the 4-5 minutes each that I had NPR on, you'd think that the whole world was an expert on these things. Never mind that this "60" number seems to be something that _no one_ understands, ....'' /jordan
``http://hcd.ucdavis.edu/faculty/kenney/ might help you get a handle on the stuff....Leon Kass had a book out a few years ago that was plugged by George Will if I remember right; they're terrified of the Bruce Sterling thesis in Schismatrix.....'' Ian
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Not knowing what Schismatrix was I had to look it up and found this:
http://www.aleph.se/Trans/Cultural/Art/schismatrix.html
A review of Bruce Sterling's scifi book Schismatrix Plus. This gives the basic idea for those who don't want to look it up:
``...The setting of Schismatrix is transhuman. The people colonizing the solar system are divided into two main ideologies: the Shapers, who use biotechnology, genetic engineering and subtle psychology to enhance human potential, and the Mechs, who employ artificial intelligence, bionics and other technology to become more than human. There are plenty of similarities with the Cold War (the book was after all written in 1985, another era) as the Shaper-Mech struggle spills over into "neutral" orbital habitats....''
Meanwhile back to that other fantasy land of the transhuman, USA, yesterday evening.
My first thought when I listened to his worship's stem cell research directives was the permitted 60 lines were merely those that had established US patents, were currently on the market, and were part of some larger bio-tech-med edu-corp business sector. So banning them would hurt business and kill off some significant piece of for-profit healthcare as we know it. The determinant was probably some economic bottom line and had nothing to do with anything else.
Which reminds me of course that the real problem with all this bio-tech-med shit isn't the moral, ethical, all too frail and human aspects at all, or the Schismatrix----but the CPH (capitalist pig hegemony). Which in turn leads to Michael Pugliese's post (SDUSA on Empire):
``The thesis of "Empire" is that globalization and technology are dividing the world between "the multitude" and "the Empire," the system that organizes production. But because economic production is now based in knowledge and social interaction, the disenfranchised multitude will in due course rebel and do away with the chains of Empire. Sound familiar?
Many on the moderate left have argued that globalization needs to be shaped by a new social contract, a global New Deal, that would temper raw capitalism with some regard for social consequences. "Empire" looks on such half- measures with disdain, and presses on toward The Final Conflict.''
So Ian, did you want to flesh out what Kenney has to do with all this?
I looked briefly at: http://hcd.ucdavis.edu/faculty/kenney/ and couldn't see the immediate relevance. That reference seem to be some Silcon Valley business-first puke and so I moved on to chase down Schismatrix.
Chuck Grimes