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Future Imperative

What if technology were being developed that could enhance your mind or body to extraordinary or even superhuman levels -- and some of these tools were already here? Wouldn't you be curious?

Actually, some are here. But human enhancement is an incredibly broad and compartmentalized field. We’re often unaware of what’s right next door. This site reviews resources and ideas from across the field and makes it easy for readers to find exactly the information they're most interested in.

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The future is coming fast, and it's no longer possible to ignore how rapidly the world is changing. As the old order changes -- or more frequently crumbles altogether -- I offer a perspective on how we can transform ourselves in turn... for the better. Nothing on this site is intended as legal, financial or medical advice. Indeed, much of what I discuss amounts to possibilities rather than certainties, in an ever-changing present and an ever-uncertain future.

Monday, October 31, 2005

Feminism: Or... Keeping the Lights On -- Soc

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Maureen Dowd offers this retrospective on what she considers the modern retreat from feminism. Personally, I'm a feminist. And a proud one. There are moral and ethical reasons to support the equality of women and men (feminism), but there's also a very simple, selfish reason to do so.

Simply stated, if we give up half of our most brilliant minds by restricting their opportunities and potential, then we also give up half of our greatest scientists, artists, inventors, leaders, writers and so on who could otherwise illuminate our lives and in many cases save them.

I don't ever want to get an advantage over this girl or that women if the same system that promotes such inequality one day fails to offer me the cure to cancer or some other disease... because the person who should have made that breakthrough never got their scholarship or their tenure due to some form of inequality. I don't want to have the lights go out because the scientist who should have discovered an ideal source of alternative energy never got the job. I don't want to die on an operating table because the guy opening me up wasn't nearly as good as the woman who should have been there in his stead.

Quite simply, people should get earn their positions and status based on merit, not gender. Or race. Or inherited wealth or connections. Sexual equality is an obvious issue to most people because it's inescapable. No matter how you try to cloister yourself or eliminate other differences, there will always be two sexes who have to live with each other and get along as best they can. And hopefully gain from each others' differences, rather than merely tolerating them. You can try to retreat from that reality, but you'll quickly find there's nowhere to go. Unless you plan to hide in your room, and hope the lights stay on regardless.


Future Imperative

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