Disability and the tipping point of transhumanity

I've been reading a lot of books, lately, about the Singularity and the ideas about the singularity. Charles Stross, Vernor Vinge, even John Scalzi has some stuff which challenges the nature of consciousness and humanity.

I was speaking to a new friend who was telling me about a disabled friend of hers, who effectively has checked out of the human race by making the focus of his life be virtual reality. I was immediately struck by two gut-level reactions; the first was "that poor guy, he needs human contact, needs to be dragged out of his shell, maybe have someone take him out to see the beautiful sky and feel the sun on his face and take in a play or have a hot chocolate." But then I thought about things from the Stross / Vinge perspective. Here's a person who is very happy in his VR world, whose *mind* is perfectly able, whose sexuality and social life exists online. It seems to be conventional wisdom that if you don't use your brain you lose it, and here he is shaping his life around something that gives him stimulation.

In the VR world he has lovers and friends and is active and admired for his personality and presence. I think that guy deserves to be happy as long as whatever's making him happy doesn't hurt anyone else. I think my first impulse had more to do with my social model of what my Grandma would've wanted to do to "help" him. Not that he needs my help!

I think that if we are going towards a singularity, it's possible that disabled / differently-abled / handicapped people will be the early adopters. They are getting the first neural implants, I'm certain. I know that Cynthia has from time to time asked for a new body - Goddess knows that I would give it to her if I could. Makes me wonder if she (or really, anyone) would still be with me if her body was 21 again, but I would jump at the chance to get her a pain-free life. I know that in our own private virtual world - the world of words she and I create together - she is a lot happier when she's visiting there.

I am still withholding judgment on the whole singularity idea. I'll pause while you Google it if you need to. OK. There are people who praise the coming of singularity as if it's going to be the salvation of the human race and there are people who feel the whole idea is creepy.

For me, I am still on the side of the hot chocolate and the sun on my face. But, having visited VR worlds in my head since 1985, I can tell you that I totally understand the siren song of bits over atoms.

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  By Stephen Joyce, December 30, 2008 @ 2:23 pm

  Hi Sam - I'm the author of Teaching an Anthill to Fetch - Developing Collaborative Intelligence @ Work - a Google Alert pulled up your blog - very interesting - though at the outer eadges of my reading patterns - I'd be happy to send you the e-book version as a gift and the first two chaps as a audio in case you want to be really lazy just send me an email address that works - also look carefully at the 'copy right' page of my book - I have published under a creative commons licence and although Wiley Business Books in Germany bought the rights (and published last month) I had trouble finding publishers willing to publish the book under a CC licence

  be warned this book is written for the layman and may be a little too basic for someone as well read as yourself

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  By SambearPoet, December 30, 2008 @ 6:41 pm

  I really appreciate your comment and your compliment! I'll send you an email, because I am dearly looking forward to reading your work.

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