Musings of a Demon-ted Mind

The following is the opening chapter of a book which I am thinking about writing about Second Life and it’s value as a testing ground for the future developments of cyberspace, as well as it’s value as an indicator of the social and moral issues humanity will face over the next few decades as our technology continues to advance at an ever increasing rate.  Any views, questions, advice, or suggestions are welcome.  I am not yet certain of exactly where I wish to go with this, in terms of what topics to cover, questions to ask and answer, or even how I wish to format it.  *************************************************************** Chapter One: Welcome to Your Second Life “Why am I here?” I asked myself for the twentieth time in the last hour. I felt like a fool.  Why had I allowed Shasta to talk me into this?  An idle fantasy?  A chance to escape the humdrum daily grind and allow myself the freedom of just being myself?  This was crazy.  It ...

The Lights In the Tunnel - Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future : "What will the economy of the future look like?" This is from IEET, the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. At least that is where I found the link. Now if you have ever been to IEET, you might find I have one major issue with most of them, which is that they all seem to see all these issues as being still safely decades down the road. I've just started reading this PDF, and I can already say it appears to NOT suffer from that same failing. I have been saying for years now that our economic crisis is not going to get better. That we MUST come up with humanitarian solutions to reduce the misery and suffering of the mass of humanity, because we are going to face greater and greater misery and suffering as jobs vanish to machines. And that we must DO IT NOW, before things get even worse. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. The economy of scarcity is collaps...

"Lifeblogging" Sony Glasses Go Beyond Mere Eye-Tracking This article on Gizmodo annoyed me, because it used the word "worrisome" to describe the device Sony is working on. I wrote this piece originally for H+ just prior to it's going on hiatus, but it applies just as much here. Lifeblogging. I’d like you to imagine your life on camera. Like a contestant on Big Brother, imagine that your every word and deed is permanently recorded. Your every social interaction, your conversations, even your facial expressions, are logged and documented with time and date stamps, stored electronically with full random access and search functions. If this Orwellian scenario strikes a note of fear in you, than I would have to say you are one of the millions of people who have listened to a lot of propaganda, and not someone who has seriously evaluated the concept of lifeblogging. http://www.metaverseroadmap.org/overview/02.html#LL Lifeblogging is exactly what I described ab...

Val's Nanotech discussion thread - ImmInst.org Forums : "Watch this. Get used to it. You're going to see a LOT more of this in the future."