The thing that makes me most nervous about all of it is the overly optimistic, completely unskeptical Utopian attitude. Obviously if we can cure diseases, provide better care, make cleaner technology, what have, I’m all for it. I’m not a Luddite – I have a blog, after all.

But, really, when I read people like Nick Bostrom or Ray Kurzweil, it’s their fevered tone that freaks me out – as though all of the lessons of large-scale Utopian thinking have been lost. Kurzweil and Bostrom especially, as two of the most prominent voices in the movement, are worrying. In the first place, the notion of “guided evolution” is absurd – oxymoronic, actually. To say that one can “guide” evolution is to misunderstand evolution itself – Darwin conceptualized evolution as an agentless, unguided process that requires unguidedness, chaos, etc. Because evolutionary processes occur by way of the interaction between random mutation and geographical happenstance (availability of resources, presence of predators, etc), what you do when you try to “guide” evolution is simply to live. Evolution happens not because we struggle to survive, but regardless of whether we struggle to survive or not. There is no imperative there.

This is getting long – I have more things to say, but the laundry’s done.

Naturally, this whole ‘new eugenics’ business is complete bullshit. And I seriously doubt anyone’s going to buy into genetic engineering en masse to make their kids stronger, faster, better, more (although I’m not discounting it). Instead, I’m more for the scary/awesome man/machine interface. Y’know, verging on making us all cyborgs with nanotechnology and such. Personally, if we could cure all disease forever with nanobots, I don’t see any reason why we wouldn’t.

Of course, the ‘wing-and-a-prayer cocktail napkin calculations’ business starts to take over. How possible is it really? I think science is more and more steadily finding out that all those dreams of what was possible of yesteryear (retrofuturism at its finest), is actually limited in huge quantities. See, it’s safe to believe in all this technological transhumanism because, well, it’ll never happen.