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For those of you who haven’t read it, futurist Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Near is a valentine to all those scifi writers who believed that the future and humans could only get better through technology. According to Kurzweil, in the near future humans will become technologically joined with superhuman intelligence to become superhuman. I won’t dispute his ideas but I will put forward the one question that must be answered — Why? Why do we want to supercede our biology? Yes, I know that is a hard question for humans, especially westerners, to ask themselves and others. But if we are going to make this drastic a change in our bodies, minds and civilizations, I for one want some good answers.

Perhaps the question that really needs asking is not whether Kurzweil is correct in his future projections but do we really want to allow technology to change our lives, relationships and civilizations so completely. More importantly, why do we wholeheartedly welcome such extensive changes?We have evolved over millenia to be a species that must work together, build connections with others, if we are to survive as a species. Yet the technology Kurzweil so welcomes is the antithesis of connection. He may talk about how we will all be connected through technology yet it is only the illusion of connection. We learn as a species through shared experiences. We learn as individuals through empathy, much of which is gained through shared events. I understand your hurt because I have felt pain. Virtual reality is NOT reality. In fact it is the offer of fake connection for the real connections of real people and events. Moreover, why should we want to embrace a reality for which we are not biologically or psychologically suited? Our brains are wonderfully evolved to process and manage information, and perhaps most importantly if you follow the work of certain neuroscientists (i.e., Damasio) emotional input. Where does emotion live in this new world of Kurzweil’s?Lastly, are we to expect that everyone will have access to this nanobot-enhanced world? What about the poor? What about the middle-class? I suspect that Kurzweil’s brave new medical and technical breakthroughs would only be available to those who could afford them. Just like medical care in America today, many people would simply be cut out and left behind.

The upshot of technology such as this at the beck and call of the wealthy is that they (who are already often extremely out of touch with the real world of everyday people) would become even more out of touch. What does this say for the decisions that they will make that influence us all? I suspect those decisions will do even less to draw us together. Why should the wealthy and powerful make decisions that help everyday people? Through virtual reality they can become even more insulated from the results of their acts. Those left on the outside (probably the mass of humanity) are not as “human” or advanced are we? So, like the 21st century version of Puritanism with this form of technology as God, everyone without it will be found wanting and cast off into the technological and civil underworld.

Note, I am not a Luddite. I would not question all new technology but something as fundamentally important as how humans interact with the world and others is something to be closely considered and examined before letting it loose to do untold damage. A device that beeps me to my keys is not likely to affect the way I interact with others and the way I think. A virtual reality womb that feeds my the sensory input and thereby chooses what I see and therefore how I feel about that input is something else all together.

So I ask again — Why do we so easily welcome this technology without closely examining potential results from every angle?

The great and greatly missed Theodore Sturgeon in his classic, More Than Human, envisioned a superhuman formed by the connections and relationships of a number of humans. It was their interdependence that made them the next step in human evolution. I wonder if Kurzweil’s world would usher in the less-than-truly-human rather than superhuman?

From the fine folks at Common Dreams yet another compelling article on Global Warming. The Independent is reporting that we are about to see an acceleration of Global Warming. Seems that the readings of carbon dioxide parts per million have jumped from 1.6 in the 1990’s to recent unpublished findings of 2.2 ppm.

I guess I’d better write the sequels faster so we can see what happens. It would be nice to know if there is much of a future. Sardonic of me I know…

Common Dreams has sent on another great article on global warming. In this one the Guardian reports that the US government is addressing global warming by depending on the private sector to devise new technologies!!!! Talk about governing by putting one’s head in the nuclear sand!!!! I’m guessing these political appointees never heard of the tragedy of the commons.

Frog species victim of global warming

Interesting article in The New York Times today about global warming being the root cause of the demise of a variety of frog. Biologists have said for decades that frogs are our canaries in the mines. When they start going, so do we. Thanks to Common Dreams for circulating the article!

And so it begins…

I guess that isn’t really correct because I’m sure there are other species of animal and plant life that are already beginning the slide into extinction due to global warming and we just don’t know about them yet.

If you don’t get either Truthout online or Rolling Stone you may have missed a moving and well-considered article by Jim Kunstler, the author of the new look forward, The Long Emergency. Kunstler addresses what happens when America runs out of cheap gas. As I’m seeing the future in which Haint and Amanda are interacting, I can’t help but be moved and influenced by what Kunstler has to say. To read the article on Truthout click here.

But don’t stop there. Continue on to Kunstler’s homepage to get an even bigger view of where he has been and where we are going. I suspect that in the year’s to come, Kunstler’s work will be even more appreciated.

As for me, I’ll keep his vision in mind as Haint’s sequel progress.

Hi again. Busy day here I guess.

I’ve just signed up for the Readers Circle so please join me over there. The Readers Circle is an online reading community. It lists book groups across North America. It also makes authors available to reading groups for interviews over the phone, via email and even in person. Its the cutting edge of readers groups!

As I mention on the site, I’m available for phone, email and in person visits. Even though the listing says I’m only available around St. Louis, MO, that’s not quite the case. I’ll be traveling to a number of science fiction conventions and literary fairs so if you’re in one of those locations and we can work out the scheduling for an in-person visit with your group or bookstore, all the better! Check out my website for the current schedule.

Hope to hear from you soon!

If you’re a literate person (which I assume you are since you’re here with us now) and you haven’t met the Wessex Collective yet, please allow me the honor of introducing these talented writers to you. They are a writing collective in the old sense of the word. They live all over the US but they have one aim — to publish high quality literature that would otherwise never find a publishing home. This following missive wes sent to me from Sandy Schwayder Sanchez who manages the Wessex Collective. She’s also the author of two very moving books, Stillbird and The Nun.

Dear all,
The following forward is part of an email one of our authors has sent out to his list of friends about his novel The Marble Orchard which Wessex Collective is publishing this coming summer. Paul’s first novel Killing The Blues was published by St. Martins in 1984 and received very favorable reviews in The New York Times Review of Books. His second novel Operation Remission was published by a smaller publisher ten years later but received even more enthusiastic praise in NYTRB. Paul is/has been a political activist, editor of an alternative magazine and carpenter as well as a novelist. We are very excited to have Paul join the collective.This is a book that is going to appeal most to baby boomers but I’m sending this out (after deleting the personal update) to all of you including the youngsters among you with the request that you forward it on.

Also please do check out our website(undergoing some gradual changes so eventually we should have a more modern look). We now have a distributor to market and sell our books to stores but of course whenever possible we prefer to make direct sales (that would be me: “order fulfillment” is my title). We have three new titles: Peter Burnham’s second novel set in the same small town in Maine as Envious Shadows, The Angry Dust by William Davey (posthumously published for the first time in this country) and Little Bluestem, a collection of short stories set in the rural heartland where the author, Brian Backstrand, got to know his characters well serving them as pastor, hospice chaplain and teacher since the sixties. Brian’s stories remind me of the paintings of Andrew Wyeth. I hope some of you will consider giving one or all of these new books a chance (and we still have plenty of copies of Envious Shadows, The Gift and Stillbird available). Thanks folks, Happy New Year. Sandy

Subject: New Mexico Update 1/4/05From: Paul Johnson
Meanwhile I’ve been having a glorious time by email with Sandy Sanchez & Peter Burnham of the Wessex Collective, discussing all the issues like type face & size, paper, & the cover (right now it looks like Franny’s going to take a crack at designing it), for my novel, THE MARBLE ORCHARD. As most of you know, authors don’t usually get to put their oars into those waters, but Wessex is not your usual sort of publisher, it really is a collective. With my novel, they–or rather, we– are going to try something that until the late 19th C. was the commonest manner of getting a book into print: subscription, it was called, & all it meant was that the writer & his friends would find enough people to buy enough copies in advance to cover the original print bill. That’s how Poe & Melville & everybody else went about it, & it worked pretty well until books became big business. Some books, of course, still are big business, & always will be, & big businessmen continue to publish them; but thanks to all sorts of technological breakthroughs, small-scale publication can allow good books that aren’t bestseller material to find their publics & pay their modest way.