I appreciate that statement. While I had higher hopes for this forum, it’s still a good place to share crazy and experimental ideas. There is a lack of suitable places for that. This lack scares me a little bit.
Even the transhumanist mailing lists of old are a faint shadow of their past. And it looks like Second Life had now effectively given up by nearly everyone.
To me it appears that we are living in a decade of decline. The energy and optimism to shape the future towards a positive transhumanist future has been dissipated to a great degree. And the best part forward is hard to identify. Even the reasons for this (perceived) decline are mysterious to me (one could blame the end of Moore’s law, but then there are still impressive advances in genetics and AI, and some basic progress in nanotechnology). After all, are there any sane alternatives to transhumanism? No, there is only escapism or insanity as alternatives. And those won’t change our world. To me it feels like most people have given up on the world entirely. Sometimes I feel like that, too. However, thinking along those lines quickly leads to very dark places.
I chose to opt for hope for a better future. If nothing else remains, this hope is final dejection of despair and defeat.
Most people seem to suffer from a nearly complete lack of vision and perspective for the future. That’s probably not even special for our times, but for human existence in general. Our times may be some of the best, actually. It’s still frustrating that the world seems to be lagging behind in vision so much. The only solution might be to invest heavily in education about possible futures. Get the brightest visions of the future to every classroom, to every family, to every media outlet. Then that may transform society thoroughly.
But for now we need to compose, discuss, refine, and share these visions first. Starting with “brain dumping” is a modest, yet important beginning.
I really encourage you do to that. Get your thoughts out of your system and onto a platform that is visited by similar minds!
And then what happened? Smartphones and social media! Who could have predicted that? The superficial feeling of connectedness we get from Facebook and Twitter seems to be more alluring that a remote prospect of full immersion virtual realities.
Perhaps not too surprising. In most times humans were more inclined to look forward to the next drink at the bar than eternal bliss in heaven. Now, even the realistic prospect of creating those heavens for ourselves doesn’t seem to change the fundamental psychological equations. Humans still flock to the cheap, quick, and shallow alternatives. Those who yearn for more have always been a minority. One possible solution might be to use big data to identify that minority and organize it to get something truly amazing going. Hmm…