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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jürgen Hubert" data-source="post: 3586044" data-attributes="member: 7177">"The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside..."- H. P. LovecraftTranshuman Space has sometimes been described as "optimistic" or even "utopian". Certainly, the vast majority of humans are far better off than they are now. They live longer, are healthier, have access to more conveniences, and technology empowers them like never before to let them do what they want.Look at that last sentence again."Technology empowers them to let them do what they want."Does that worry you even a bit?Fifth Wave technology gives people unparalleled freedom to shape their own lives. But does it also make them more responsible?Or does it only let them shed their last few inhibitions?Mind-altering substances are so commonly available that it becomes hard to figure out who someone - even yourself really is. Is your sense of self as variable as the chemicals you imbibe? Thanks to advances in cybershell and virtual reality technology, almost any sexual perversion can be played out and be perfectly legal in many places. Scenarios involving rape, pedophia, bestiality and worse things can easily be acted out with the right technology. Will there be anyone left to object to such things when no human is actually harmed? Radical bodily alterations are becoming more and more common - even turning into a creature of pure data is possible. Humanity seems eager to create more and more variants of sapient creatures to share the world with. But who can say in such a world what is "human" and what isn't? Each generation becomes stranger than the preceding one - but now the older generations don't die off but shuffle on as their whole world increasingly turns into something uncomprehensibly alien.Humanity becomes less and less willing to accept any restraints. Perhaps this will be the coming Singularity of which Vernor Vinge spoke - the day when humanity at last breaks down all barriers it has placed on itself and truly does become "free and wild and beyond good and evil".Welcome to the world of Transhuman Space. If you aren't worried, you just haven't thought it through.Sorry, but I somehow felt compelled to write that. Make of this what you will...</blockquote>

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