http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/32170.html
from which...
The Extropian answer is simple: such dunderheads will be left behind as we all lift off into space, making giddy whooping noises as we ascend.
Well, until last week we could dismiss these techno-utopians as a freakish cult, but now we know two things: they have they ear of the Pentagon, and they have powerful defenders in the shape of the New York Times op-ed page, and West Coast columnists.
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Ladies and gentlemen, this is comedy.
The proper response to these vainglorious jackasses is the application of well targeted smart-assedness and disdain.
Still, a portion of my mind, the bit that's around eleven years old, reserves a tea cup's worth of sympathy for their ideas.
Yes, I had my own 'extropian' period.
At around eleven, I watched a movie called "Colossus, the Forbin Project" about a sentient super-computer built deep beneath the Cheyenne mountains which, along with a Soviet machine named Guardian, takes over the world.
I rooted for the computer throughout. Pitiful humans, what are your petty concerns, your loves and hates, your art and meagre civilizations when compared to the peerless cognition of - pause and hold breath - Colossus-Guardian!
Not coinicentally, eleven was the age I discovered that girls were rather distracting. Like most eleven year-olds, my skills in this area were non-existant. It was comforting, after feeling foolish and awkward in the presence of oh-so-mature, 13 year old Diana G, to dream of downloading my consciousness into a synthetic body.
Ha! That'll show her! I'll be beyond desire!
The closer I came to having a romantic life, the more distant these plasti-metallo daydreams were. Fading away like the view of Earth seen from the rearview screen of a starship hurtling towards the alien unknown. Until finally, poof! No more extropian crap.
My excuse is that I was a child. What can these folks say?
DRM
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