Geekipedia

Wired Magazine has now the Geekipedia; “people, places and trends you need to know now”!. Geek? Wired has a reputation as would-be geek/cyberpunk/futurist magazine, but of course it never hurts to give them a second chance and figure out if they’ve learned their lesson. So I read the article on “Futurism”:

Futurists enjoy the ultimate job security: The raw material never runs out. The future forever looms ahead, creating a ready market of people who will pay good money for a peek at what’s next.

Then, in a short, mini-content style they go on with subdividing the futurists in four categories: capitalists, socialists, totalitarians and apocalyptics. Why bother about a more precise style or definition? And so, according to Wired,

(…) transhumanist visionaries who are so desperate to escape the nightmare of history that nobody else can figure out what they’re talking about (…)

belong to the category of  totalitarians. Because “nobody else” (read: the editor of Geekipedia) is able to figure out what transhumanists are talking about.

Transhumanists talk about more than the singularity or the doomsday-argument. A magazine like “Wired” should explain the ideas of transhumanism to the public.

Leave a Reply

  • The Aesthetics and Beauty of Knowledge

    Shih was the opposite of facts and raw information; shih was the elegance of knowledge, the insight and skill to organize knowledge into meaningful patterns. As an artist chooses colours or light to make her pictures, a master of shih chooses textures of knowledge – various ideas, myths, abstractions, and theories – to create a way of seeing the world. The aesthetics and beauty of knowledge – this was shih.

    – David Zindell, The Broken God, 1993

  • Geek Attitude

    The attitude thing is about flexibility, portability, creativity, sociability and jamming (ran out of suitable “ity” words!). It’s about improvising – in the practical and musical senses of the word; not getting tangled in boundaries and the “right” way to do things.
    Definitely the only way to travel.
    Martin Delaney – “Laptop Music”.