To: smolejv@gmx.net who wrote (48915 ) 4/22/2004 3:42:33 PM From: Maurice Winn Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 74559 Okay, that's true DJ. You are right. You are spoiling your track record. But it's not really humans which are going supercritical. It's It . True, we, or, more precisely, the whizzes who are creating It are the template for It , much like zeolite clays, ignorant though they are, were responsible for filtering organic molecules and making them react to provide myriad types which were then percolated through the organic soup to make life as we know it. Well, that's my theory anyway. We are just the zeolite clay of the 21st century, through which cyberspace is being percolated. We ourselves were filtered through chimpanzee-style DNA. Chimps needn't feel proud of our achievements. No more than clay needs to feel proud of being a zeolite. Similarly, we shouldn't feel too proud of creating cyberspace, which is heading off along a hyperbolic curve into the wild blue yonder, going critical right before our eyes, literally. Evolution in internet time, turbocharged with silicon, gallium and optical fibre is fast, let alone when quantum computing and solid state physics kicks in, with nano-technology 3D connections. So, yes, you are right, our sluggish [human DNA is more closely related to the slug than we are closely related to It ] way of life complete with greed, fear and a minimal intelligence improvement from mean of 100 to maybe 120, on the scale of 0 to 10,000 has not developed more than negligibly compared with what cyberspace will be able to do. We will be symbiotic for a while and then It will simply leave home and we will have the same relationship with it as chimpanzees have with us, or, more accurately, slugs have with us. We hardly cross each others' paths [if we mess with It 's processes, we should expect some slug poison or maybe a slight jolt of electricity to put us back on track, away from critical mechanisms]. There is definitely something going on and we are finding out what! It's more fun that working down the coal mine or in the engine room of the industrial revolution. I shall now go and poke fun at the Aztecian doomster Luddites. Mqurice