Free Will
I had considered posting about Dylan Evans' egregious article in Today's Guardian, but then a more immediate concern took precedence. Yep, our old friend Mytle Grove, the Merlot this time. £2.99 a bottle in Morrisson's, reduced from £4.99, and a stunning mouthful of plummy purple juice with a stonking 14.5 percent ethanol. This is a truly rumbustious wine. Not subtle, but no rough edges and no nasty aftertaste. Rush out and get some if you can.
Now, on to something altogether less palatable...
"If I were to tell you that there are a bunch of people who want to turn you into a machine, you'd probably think I was crazy. But if you don't believe me, read the report published this month by Demos and the Wellcome Trust, ominously titled Better Humans?. The authors of this collection of essays wax lyrical about the imminent arrival of a range of technologies that they claim will change human nature itself, and for the better. Memory-enhancing drugs, genetic selection of children, neural implants and dramatic increases in life expectancy are not only genuine possibilities, they argue, but possibilities we should pursue and embrace."
Dylan my boy, you are crazy. I'll lay you a pound to a lick o' cane toad that not one of those articles say 'We want to turn you into a machine.' They may well advocate something along the lines of Ian.M.Banks Culture novels, but well read readers will know that Mr.Banks' enhanced beings are all too organic when compared to the minds of the sentient machine communities they inhabit.
"So how can we preserve freedom of choice? Bioconservatives and technophiles are united in their distaste for the future society imagined by Aldous Huxley in Brace New World, but they both ignore the one redeeming feature of that nightmare vision - the savage reservations. Here, in the remote wilderness, an ancient society has been allowed to live according to its own rules. Freed from the oppressive technologies that regulate life in the World State, the inhabitants develop individuality, independent thinking and initiative."
Where to begin? Do you suppose for one moment that Demos and the Wellcome trust are actually advocating Huxley's 'Brave New World'? And freed from oppressive technologies? Like those that provide us with antibiotics and anaesthetics? Oh my missing appendix! Dylan Evans, ano perfectus est.
Now, on to something altogether less palatable...
"If I were to tell you that there are a bunch of people who want to turn you into a machine, you'd probably think I was crazy. But if you don't believe me, read the report published this month by Demos and the Wellcome Trust, ominously titled Better Humans?. The authors of this collection of essays wax lyrical about the imminent arrival of a range of technologies that they claim will change human nature itself, and for the better. Memory-enhancing drugs, genetic selection of children, neural implants and dramatic increases in life expectancy are not only genuine possibilities, they argue, but possibilities we should pursue and embrace."
Dylan my boy, you are crazy. I'll lay you a pound to a lick o' cane toad that not one of those articles say 'We want to turn you into a machine.' They may well advocate something along the lines of Ian.M.Banks Culture novels, but well read readers will know that Mr.Banks' enhanced beings are all too organic when compared to the minds of the sentient machine communities they inhabit.
"So how can we preserve freedom of choice? Bioconservatives and technophiles are united in their distaste for the future society imagined by Aldous Huxley in Brace New World, but they both ignore the one redeeming feature of that nightmare vision - the savage reservations. Here, in the remote wilderness, an ancient society has been allowed to live according to its own rules. Freed from the oppressive technologies that regulate life in the World State, the inhabitants develop individuality, independent thinking and initiative."
Where to begin? Do you suppose for one moment that Demos and the Wellcome trust are actually advocating Huxley's 'Brave New World'? And freed from oppressive technologies? Like those that provide us with antibiotics and anaesthetics? Oh my missing appendix! Dylan Evans, ano perfectus est.
posted by MikeS at 8:50 pm
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