Meeting notice: The 03.Jan.07 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: NT and Utopianism As we have seen to the point of anesthesia, NT readily lends itself to dystopian fantasies. Is there a utopian element as well? Perhaps the idea of a million- year long lifespan might count as such for some, or even (in some circles) uploading or seeding the universe with your semantic DNA, but there is a difference between a utopia and a good thing. A utopia is a social vision; it is about the right way for humans, or indeed social beings generally, regardless of provenance, to live together. Does NT, which after all is at bottom only a manufacturing technology, have anything to sell from that shelf? The question arrives at a time when the idea of utopia itself is in some flux. Until recently the concept expressed the assumption that certain sets of social values (Communism, Christianity, Scientology) could be arranged in a hierachy, with a "utopia" being those societies fortunate enough to be guided by the set in first place. At some point in the last few decades this idea was replaced (so far as the members of this list go, anyway) by the definition of a society that secured for its members the largest possible scope of action or freedom, as measured, presumably, by the range of individual differences. Is NT utopian in this sense? Can you make the claim that the NT era will inspire a sufficently large expansion in the number of ways to be human that it can be called utopian? The problem is that there is an outer bound to the range of tolerable variation, that defined by the threat of NT-equipped sociopaths (i.e., teenagers). It is hard to imagine a response to this threat that does not involve constant surveillance of the most intimate sort, and it is probable, though not certain, that such surveillance will inhibit people from developing enough degrees of weirdness for the society to qualify in any obvious way as a utopia. . On the other hand perhaps a utopia might be defined not as the largest possible range of individual differences, but the largest possible range of group differences. Imagine a society in which individuals either belonged to groups or did not. (There might be many points in between.) Each group can be as weird as it likes, saving only that it accept joint responsibility for the acts of its members; if one of its members blows up a planet, or whatever, everyone in the group must accept some penalty, which could be severe. Those who are unwilling to accept joint responsibility for each other have to walk around with a full video/audio feed tied to their ear, or whatever the state feels is necessary. Perhaps this model might be iterated on a more general level; with aggregates of groups taking responsibility or each other, or not. Would something like this work? <-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-> The concept of a word whose sound reflects its meaning ("quack") has a label, but how about words or phrases whose usage reflects their meaning? One example is 'tragedy of the commons'. The right loved the idea because it seemed to speak to the inviability of public property; the left, because it suggested that the government needs to regulate everything. Everyone grabbed and pulled the term in all directions until the phrase just died from overuse, succumbing to the tragedy of the commons. Another example is paradigm or paradigm shift. When Kuhn thrust the word into general usage he changed the way everyone thought about intellectual change. The term generated an example of itself. What do we call phrases like these? Any other examples? <-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-> 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.