Meeting notice: The 02.August.20 meeting will be held at 7:30 p.m. at the Royal East (782 Main St., Cambridge), a block down from the corner of Main St. and Mass Ave. If you're new and can't recognize us, ask the manager. He'll probably know where we are. More details below. <-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-> Suggested topic: Do persistent worlds, aka massively multiplayer online role- playing games, constitute a useful proxy for life under "strong" nanotechnology (ie, machine- phase NT)? Persistent worlds support great powers of fabrication in theory, yet (almost) all subscribers cheerfully accept significant restrictions on those powers. All game sponsors struggle constantly against outlaw players who try to acquire more powers than the rules allow. Does the history of this effort have anything to teach us? We might also ask whether, given the power and flexibility of persistant worlds, we still need NT for much. The natural counter is that NT works in the "real world," but do we care? The typical player spends 20 hours a week on EverQuest and, according to one study, more than one in five would spend all their waking time there if they could. Perhaps that one in five represents nothing but the normal baseline of social defectives, but perhaps not. If not, as virtual worlds involve more and more of us for longer and longer it may become increasingly problematic which world is the "real" one. While it is true that our bodies are stuck on this side of the display, if you believe in uploading you probably have to be open to the possibility that we might end up identifying closely with our autonomous avatars. If we do that, many and maybe all possible applications for NT will come under question. As well as every other aspect of the economy. <-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-> In twenty years half the population of Europe will have visited the moon. -- Jules Verne, 1865 <-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-> Announcement Archive: http://www.pobox.com/~fhapgood/nsgpage.html. <-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-> Legend: "NSG" expands to Nanotechnology Study Group. The Group meets on the first and third Tuesdays of each month at the above address, which refers to a restaurant located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The NSG mailing list carries announcements of these meetings and little else. If you wish to subscribe to this list (perhaps having received a sample via a forward) send the string 'subscribe nsg' to majordomo@world.std.com. Unsubs follow the same model. Discussion should be sent to nsg- d@world.std.com, which must be subscribed to separately. You must be subscribed to nsg-d to post to it and must post from the address from which you subscribed (An anti- spam thing). Comments, petitions, and suggestions re list management to: nsg@pobox.com.