As long as our society is structured in a hierarchical fashion, the well-laid plans are never going to work out well for us.

One of the Libertarian favorite boogeyman quotes, and they have a point, is “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help you.”

It’s no less scary when it comes from Musk or Zuckerberg, than when it comes from a Clinton.

Yeah. Elon’s version of automation isn’t what we should be gleeing about.

Richard Wolff’s version is the one we should embrace—

When a company acquires a tool or technology that brings them the same profit or more with fewer bodies, generally that means that people are dismissed. A better choice is to embrace the technology AND those whose workload could be reduced, by giving them more time off.

Automation should lead to the lifestyle of the Jetsons. Less time spent producing a widget, and more time spent doing the things we love — more attention to our children, painting, exploring, researching, programming, writing. Embracing who we are, who we really are.

I’m not in agreement with Caitlin about sticking around, especially if there are other lifeforms out there, more advanced & kinder than we are. I’m outta here, and so are many other loners who have had enough, in the first open source spaceship that doesn’t have billionaire strings attached.

Getting implants from Google or Musk or ANY corporation, is a guaranteed road to disaster. Improving ourselves, augmenting our senses, is a good thing in itself. More nuanced flavored experiences to choose from. But there is a wrong way to do it.

The model for human augmentation should be that of Lepth Anonym, not Google or Three Square Market, or whatever Musk has in mind.

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Tangent point— I truly can’t understand why, when we have celebrations about ‘independent women’, it’s usually female corporate masters, or women with political accomplishments. But somehow, Lepht is never thrown into that mix.

This young women struggled through poverty and mental illness and outright physical pain, to let us know what it was like to feel the world through other senses. She was as curious as any scientist, and exemplified Skin in the Game, by being her own guinea pig. She helped to inspire the biohacking movement.

And she’s fully cognizant of the dangers of augmenting our senses, with tools ‘freely’ provided by THEM.

For some reason, that isn’t as sexy as being a tennis pro or CEO or presidential candidate with a squeaky voice who supported Hillary instead of Bernie.

When it’s time to proudly hail that Women Can Do Cool Things Too, curiously there’s NO mention of this pioneer of DIY biohacking.

That has never made any sense to me. And it makes me wonder if the underlying sentiment is really Women Power, or something else entirely.

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None of this invalidates what Caitlin is saying. I’ve always thought that we need Virtual Reality first, before we irreversibly modify our biological substrate. We need to experience our fantasies without guilt or limitations, to learn in environments that are uniquely favorable to our individual intellects, to express and explore and shout out loud and jump up & down without embarrassment, and to know what it feels like to be James/Jane Bond.

Reaching our emotional & intellectual potential with what we have now, should be a prerequisite to moving to a nonbiological substrate.

In any case, if our evolution is driven by Capitalism & Corporatism, then the hierarchy isn’t going anywhere.