From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Tue Apr 24 2001 - 21:43:47 MDT
At 11:54 PM 4/23/01 -0700, Ben and then Samantha wrote:
>> Anyway, it's clear from this conference and from Kurzweil's forthcoming
book
>> that the Singularity concept is going to seep into the tech media over the
>> next couple years.
>It will go further than the tech media. It will soar into general
>awareness, for good or ill. Time to get those beneficial meme machines
>cranking.
I hope this does not seem off-topic or pettily self-interested, but I get
increasingly Bent & Twisted when I see such remarks. The updated edition of
my popular science book on the Singularity, THE SPIKE, has been available
in the USA now for three months. As far as I can see, it covers much the
same territory as Ray Kurzweil's forthcoming book, with much the same
optimistic attitude to the coming changes. Yet I see almost zero response
to its existence. That is, damn-all reviews in the States (despite some
nice endorsements from transhumanists in forums such as the Extropian
list), little acknowledgement that the thing exists.
It's a beneficial meme machine, *in potentia*. But of course a meme that
isn't taken up and circulated isn't a meme at all.
Damien Broderick
[`the meme rath outgrabe'!]
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