"The *things* are also people."
Jan. 3rd, 2007 07:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jmatonakI was gonna tell you all a story about something that bums me out- this being Californian for, "has made me very unhappy"- but, as is so often the case, it's not my story to tell. Plus, it bums me out.
You know, I don't know if I've mentioned this yet, but I think some future U.S. President will break Gerald Ford's record and have the longest life of any U.S. President. My reasoning is this: no one gets better medical care than heads of state in major nations. The Prez is unlikely to be an early adopter of wonky new medical advances, and there are undoubtedly hereditary factors that would limit any future Presidential lifespan. And Presidenting is hard, which wears on Presidents. But I believe there will continue to be individuals styling themselves President of the United States for a good long while, and the lifespan of those who get a Presidential level of care is going to hug the long end of the appropriate bell curve.
The Extropians and all the other posthumanist weirdos have gone away. There used to be people out there who would tell you that "human" lifespan was going to increase to 1400 years, pretty soon. They derived that number as the mean time you could live before some accident killed you, given that you didn't have to care at all about aging or deterioration. And, come to think of it, that probably has some relevance to Buffy- accident places an upper limit on the lifespan of vampires.
The extremely long life sort of goes hand in hand with some ideas put forth by Freeman Dyson and some other crazy people not affiliated with the Institute for Advanced Study about how human beings were/are going to evolve. The idea was that humans would adapt themselves to live in a huge range of environments- Mars, Venus, even crazy places like the Oort cloud. We would essentially become all the weird forms of life we used to think existed in the solar system. Ultimately, Dyson posited one time, consciousness would be suspended in huge webs of electromagnetism inside gas clouds, and could survive "forever" by thinking more and more slowly as less energy was available in the universe. It takes you longer to have the same thought, but subjectively you don't notice.
Perhaps this kind of thing will happen one day. But it is much further away than some people were wont to assume ten years ago. I will not see any kind of colonization of space in my lifetime. No one is willing to volunteer to be the first "posthuman", and I can't say as I blame them. So things will pretty much just keep on going like they're going. Which I think is sad. It's much less colorful than the other way.
Only this, and nothing more.
You know, I don't know if I've mentioned this yet, but I think some future U.S. President will break Gerald Ford's record and have the longest life of any U.S. President. My reasoning is this: no one gets better medical care than heads of state in major nations. The Prez is unlikely to be an early adopter of wonky new medical advances, and there are undoubtedly hereditary factors that would limit any future Presidential lifespan. And Presidenting is hard, which wears on Presidents. But I believe there will continue to be individuals styling themselves President of the United States for a good long while, and the lifespan of those who get a Presidential level of care is going to hug the long end of the appropriate bell curve.
The Extropians and all the other posthumanist weirdos have gone away. There used to be people out there who would tell you that "human" lifespan was going to increase to 1400 years, pretty soon. They derived that number as the mean time you could live before some accident killed you, given that you didn't have to care at all about aging or deterioration. And, come to think of it, that probably has some relevance to Buffy- accident places an upper limit on the lifespan of vampires.
The extremely long life sort of goes hand in hand with some ideas put forth by Freeman Dyson and some other crazy people not affiliated with the Institute for Advanced Study about how human beings were/are going to evolve. The idea was that humans would adapt themselves to live in a huge range of environments- Mars, Venus, even crazy places like the Oort cloud. We would essentially become all the weird forms of life we used to think existed in the solar system. Ultimately, Dyson posited one time, consciousness would be suspended in huge webs of electromagnetism inside gas clouds, and could survive "forever" by thinking more and more slowly as less energy was available in the universe. It takes you longer to have the same thought, but subjectively you don't notice.
Perhaps this kind of thing will happen one day. But it is much further away than some people were wont to assume ten years ago. I will not see any kind of colonization of space in my lifetime. No one is willing to volunteer to be the first "posthuman", and I can't say as I blame them. So things will pretty much just keep on going like they're going. Which I think is sad. It's much less colorful than the other way.
Only this, and nothing more.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-01-03 08:11 pm (UTC)Barring an alien race appearing and giving us lots of nice tech or someone inventing the improbability engine, I agree with you .. on almost everything.
Have you seen this article?
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/12/04/moon.base/index.html
BTW, I was looking up Sumerian mythology yesterday. I found this neat:
These Gods were called the Nephilim - Nefilim - Elohim - Annunaki meaning "Those who from Heaven to Earth came." In Sumerian Mythology they were a pantheon of good and evil gods and goddesses who came to Earth to create the human race. According to the some resources, these gods came from Nibiru - 'Planet of the Crossing.' The Assyrians and Babylonians called it 'Marduk', after their chief god. Sumerians said one year on planet Nibiru, a sar, was equivalent in time to 3600 Earth years. Annunaki lifespans were 120 sars which is 120 x 3600 or 432,000 years. According to the King List - 120 sars had passed from the time the Annunaki arrived on Earth to the time of the Flood.