What is the Point of this Blog? Tuesday, May 6 2008
meta 6:01 am
What is the point of this blog?
1. To provide an outlet for me to post random things I think of,
2. To create a forum to bring together a wider group of transhumanists,
3. To legitimize the topics of discussion in the eyes of the wider Internet,
4. To get current transhumanists more energized about our cause,
5. To bring more futurist-oriented intellectuals into the transhumanist fold.
Thought I would lay out the reasons, to make them more clear.
What is this blog not for? I don’t write it to provide easy-to-digest intellectual entertainment and gadget fetishism, because that’s what news outlets like WIRED and popular blogs like Engadget already do. It’s not to post news items and add a sentence or two of commentary. It’s not to tell you about my other interests that have nothing to do with transhumanism or futurism. It’s about an unfiltered look at philosophy, emerging technologies, and their relevance to the present and future of humanity.
May 6th, 2008 at 6:24 am
Sadly, it had to be said.
May 6th, 2008 at 9:18 am
Blogs need a point? When did this happen? Why wasn’t I informed?
May 6th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Couldn’t “gadget fetishism” or posting news items contribute to your five goals? By making your posts more popular like that, you might legitimize transhumanism and bring more people into the fold.
May 6th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
Re: gadget fetishism
Don’t go down that path. Unless, of course, the gadgets are transhumanist in nature. Otherwise, you run the risk of becoming a boingboing style link blog.
(To whom it may concern: my blog has been wrongly marked by google as a ‘bad site’. I’m working on getting removed. Not that there was any legitemate reason for the black mark in the first place…)
May 6th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
Tess, only once in a rare while. There are many, many other blogs that post stuff like that. I also believe most of the blogosphere is just the echoing of news items that most people get from superior consolidated sources anyway. People post links that are a few days old, and then actually think we haven’t seen them already…
Jonathan, if you’re using Wordpress, it has to be the latest version, otherwise malware is invisibly installed by spammers. This happened to Tom McCabe.
May 6th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
…let your work speak for itself.
May 7th, 2008 at 12:54 am
Hi, Mike (is it presumptions of me to, not only use your first name, but to shorten it?)
As I understand it, this blog is already pretty popular; which typically means people are finding something here that they can’t get elseware (if you only talked about gadgets or news items, that probably wouldn’t be so.)
Namely, they come to this blog to hear from you. I do that myself; the subjects you bring up are nearly always interesting (I even like when you talk about news or gadgets.) That’s why I link to your blog.
Oh, and there is something to be said about posting and reposting news stories. A lot of people use their blogs as a kind of scrapbook for their interests; others use it for an outlet for their thoughts; a tool to become a better writer; a way of networking with people; or to promote a cause, raise awareness, and get their voice out there (I myself am probably a little of all these things.)
For whatever reasons, I think blogs have helped connect the world, and have resulted in better and better information. Information on a blog helps spread it. It took a blogger, not a major news source, to inform people that The Washington Times was founded by the Moonies; and that American politicians crowned their leader the “king of peace” (something I reported on my blog, for further spreading.)
In any case, keep on bloggin’ Mike; I and a lot of other people enjoy hearing what you have to say.
P.S. – I’m afraid I’ve given the wrong impression of myself, I use my blog as a kind scaptbook/diary/journal/notebook/thought-dumper and not as entertainment or information for others.
That’s why I don’t go to any real lengths to promote it.
May 7th, 2008 at 8:19 am
Michael,
This night of political results has me wondering– have you thought about specific transhumanism-related questions you’d like to ask political candidates?
It seems like the politicians we’re about to elect are going to shepherd in a new era of technology. Genetic and other sorts of enhancement, the beginnings of nanofabrication, etc. How our politicians choose to approach issues surrounding these technologies will set the tone (and regulatory precedent) for how these techs are thought of and used.
I doubt you could get any major candidate to answer a list of transhumanism-related questions, but I think it’d be an interesting exercise and would make for an interesting blog post.
May 7th, 2008 at 11:35 am
I notice that engaging, informing, and possibly recruiting laypeople is absent from that list. Are non-transhumanists, non-futurists, and non-intellectuals part of your target audience?
One thing that strikes me about the transhumanist culture is how unwelcoming it is to new members. That doesn’t apply to this blog officially, I’ve found your writing to be entertaining, informative, and quite accessible. However, I have seen a lot of resistance to ‘newbies’ from commenters, and on other similar blogs. Naive questions mocked, etc.
Legitimizing transhumanism will be a very difficult task if it is seen as a closed group hostile to curious newcomers.