Embrace The Pop, Ctd.

In addition to a nice shout-out for this blog, Anissimov expands his quip:

I just don’t think that transhumanists should exclusively focus on the pop culture side of things. In the old days, it seemed like everyone used to read and love papers. Papers by Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Robert Freitas, et al. It was normal. Nowadays it seems like paper-reading is becoming an ever-rare art.

I read Digg and WIRED pretty regularly for several years, to get a feel for exactly what the mainstream was like, and now check them out at least weekly. Clearly I don’t object to pop culture — I just posted some random Invader Zim mp3s — it’s just that it has to go along with more serious stuff or the thinker lacks depth.

Agreed. Futurehype and gadget fetishism also plague the movement. We’ve got a lot to work on. Clearly, I’m blundering along here trying to find my niche and having bloggers like Anissimov, Dvorsky, Hughes, and the whole IEET crew to build on (and against) is great. Nothing like the internet for community building (except perhaps a lock-in at the rec center). I’ll do my best to bring pretentious “isms” and highfalutin “ologies” to bear on whichever delicious flavors of the week I happen to be sampling.