Article 19 of alt.extropians:
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From: pandit@crash.cts.com (Pandit Singh)
Newsgroups: alt.extropians
Subject: some good info
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Date: 1 May 93 08:39:32 GMT
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From: whitaker@eternity.demon.co.uk (Russell E. Whitaker)
Subject: Forwarded article.
To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu
Date: Mon, 19 Oct 92 21:00:52 GMT


This article was forwarded to you by whitaker@demon.co.uk (Russell E. Whitaker):

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From: BEEKMAN@econ.umd.edu
Newsgroups: alt.bbs.internet
Subject: RE: Federal BBS
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I've noticed a lot of questions about Federal Government BBS's.  Here's
a listing that I got off of the Commerce Department's BBS.  I don't see
where any of them have Internet access, but maybe if enough people ask...

-Kevin Beekman
beek@wam.umd.edu



                 THE ECONOMIC BULLETIN BOARD (EBB)

                  U.S. Department of Commerce
                  Office of Business Analysis
                         (202)482-1986

BULLETIN #32  GOVERNMENT BULLETIN BOARDS
Last updated:  July 23, 1992


Department of Agriculture

1.   Agricultural Library Forum (ALF)
     Voice Number:  301-504-5113
     Data Number:   301-504-5496
     Describes specific information products, such as "Quick
     Bibliographies" and "Special Reference Briefs" offered by
     the National Agricultural Library.

2.   Human Nutrition Information Service BBS
     Voice Number:  301-436-8491
     Data Number:   301-436-5078
     Covers topics related to food and nutrition research.
   
3.   Commercial Information Delivery Service (CIDS)
     Voice Number:  202-720-5505
     Data Number:   Must subscribe first
     CIDS contains government information about developments
     and statistics dealing with the agriculture industry.  


Bureau of the Census

1.   Bureau of Economic Analysis BBS
     Voice Number:  301-763-7554 (contact John Rowe)
     Data Number:   301-763-7554
     Contains business and industry information collected by the
     U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Economic Analysis. 
     Offers trade opportunities also found on the Economic
     Bulletin Board.

2.   State Data Center/Business-Industry Data Center
     Voice Number:  301-763-1580
     Data Number:   301-763-7554 (9600 Baud)
     This BBS includes Bureau of the Census economic reports,
     geographic electronic mapping, and any press reports dealing
     with Census surveys.  Public domain software is available 
     which allows users to transfer any census data.

3.   Census Bureau Personnel Vacancy Board
     Voice Number:  301-763-4950
     Data Number:   301-763-4574
     Posts all Census Bureau position vacancies.

4.   Office Automation BBS
     Voice Number:  301-763-4950
     Data Number:   301-763-4576
     Lists all new technology dealing with office automation.
     Allows users to transfer messages.

Department of Commerce

1.   Economic Bulletin Board (EBB)
     Voice Number:  202-482-1986
     Data Number:   202-482-3870
     Provides current information on the U.S. economy and trade
     situation as released by Federal agencies, as well as trade
     leads from the U.S. and Foreign Commercial Service, the U.S.
     Department of Agriculture, and USDOC's Eastern European
     Business Information Center.

2.   Patent Licensing Bulletin Board (PLBB)
     Voice Number:  703-487-4650
     Data Number:   703-487-4061
     Assists companies in finding government-owned inventions
     from federal laboratories that are available for licensing. 
     Summarizes each invention and gives supporting material.

3.   Office of Budget Planning and Organization Bulletin Board
     Voice Number:  202-482-2949
     Data Number:   202-482-1423
     A communications and discussion forum for planning and
     budget issues of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

4.   Climate Dialup Services (CDUS)
     Voice Number:  301-763-4670
     Data Number:   301-899-0827 (300-1200 baud)
                    301-899-1173 (1200 baud)
     Fee-based bulletin board providing daily/weekly/monthly
     weather information collected by the National Weather
     Service.

5.   Fire Research BBS
     Voice Number:  301-975-6891
     Data Number:   301-921-6302
     Focuses on the use of computers in fire research.
     This BBS also includes info. on EMS updates as well as 
     offering programs that simulate correct emergency 
     procedure in various situations.


U.S. Customs Service
     
1.   Customs Electronic BBS
     Voice Number:  202-376-7039
     Data Number:   202-376-7100
     A complimentary service which provides information on
     currency exchange rates, quota thresholds, and federal
     register notices.  Also contains related news     
     releases about global trade.

Defense Department

1.   ELISA (Export License Info. Status Advisor)
     Voice Number:  703-693-1098 (contact Ken Freshwater)
     Data Number:   703-697-6109
     Permits exporters to monitor the status of their export
     license applications as they are processed through the
     Department of Defense.

2.   JAG-NET (Navy Judge Advocate General Bulletin Board)
     Voice Number:  703-325-8312     
     Data Number:   703-325-0748
     Provides information for those seeking software related to
     time organization, record keeping, and work management
     programs.

3.   Defense Logistics Agency DASC-ZE Bulletin Board
     Voice Number:  703-274-5757
     Data Number:   703-274-5863
     Contains files on presentation graphics, telecommunications,
     statistics programs, and a directory of all Federal
     Information Centers.

4.   Naval Computer and Telecommunications Station (NCTS)
     Voice Number:  202-475-7685
     Data Number:   202-475-7885
     Provides marketing information and technical support for
     Department of the Navy facilities.  Contains files of both a
     technical and general business interest.


Department of Education

1.   Office of Educational Research Improvement BBS
     Voice Number:  202-219-1526
     Data Number:   202-219-2010/2011
     Contains statistics on all aspects and levels of education. 
     Includes a directory of libraries throughout the U.S., as
     well as a directory of education grants.
   

Department of Energy

1.   Energy Info. Admin. Electronic Publishing System (EPUB)
     Voice Number:  202-586-8800
     Data Number:   202-586-2557
     Contains selected energy related data from numerous energy
     publications.

2.   Megawatts One
     Voice Number:  202-586-2216
     Data Number:   202-586-0739
     Descriptions of recent energy-related publications       
     available through GPO.  Specializes in utilities and other
     software programs that deal with data management. 

3.   Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Issuance Posting System
     (FERC-CIPS)
     Voice Number:  202-208-2304
     Data Number:   202-208-1397 (2400 Baud)
                    202-208-1787 (9600 Baud)
     A source of intelligence on specific utility companies. 
     Contains texts of energy-related regulatory proceedings.

4.   Fossil Energy Telenews
     Voice Number:  202-586-6503
     Data Number:   202-586-6496
     Covers research and development on all fossil fuel issues.

5.   Minority Energy Info. Clearing House
     Voice Number:  202-586-5876
     Data Number:   202-586-1561
     Contains information on minority college programs,     
     educational seminars and research involving minority groups.

6.   OCRWM-INFOLINK
     Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management
     Voice Number:  202-586-2835
     Data Number:   202-586-9359
     Provides current information and DOE positions on waste
     management developments, OCRWM press releases, selected
     speeches, technical papers, Congressional testimony and the
     current OCRWM Bulletin.  In addition, 


Environmental Protection Agency

1.   Clean-Up Information Bulletin Board (CLU-IN)
     Voice Number:  301-589-8368
     Data Number:   301-589-8366
     Designed to help hazardous waste cleanup professionals find
     current events information about innovative technologies,
     consult with each other on line, and provide access data
     banks.

Export-Import Bank

1.   EXIM Bank BBS
     Voice Number:  202-566-8818 (contact Susan Hein)
     Data Number:   202-566-4699
     Contains program information, seminar schedules,
     press releases dating back six months, and bulletins of      
     special interest (e.g. city-state programs).


Federal Communications Commission

1.   FCC Public Access Link (PAL)
     Voice Number:  202-653-6288 or 202-632-0002
     Data Number:   301-725-1072
     Contains information on Federal Communications Commission
     rulemaking, including specific references to investigative
     dockets.  Also contains telecommunication topics of special
     interest. 


Federal Reserve Bank

1.   Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED)
     Voice Number:  314-444-8562 (contact Tom Pollmann)
     Data Number:   314-621-1824
     Contains information on banking, interest rates and the
     economy.  Operated by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
     

General Services Administration

1.   GSA Information Resources Service Center (GSA-IRSC)
     Voice Number:  202-501-1404 (contact Joe McGuire)
     Data Number:   202-501-2014
     Provides GSA schedules and products which are authorized for
     purchase by the federal government.


Department of Health and Human Services

1.   FDA Center for Devices and Radiological Health BBS
     Voice Number:  301-443-7004     
     Data Number:   301-443-7496
     Contains information about the FDA's procedures for
     evaluating and approving medical devices.

Department of the Interior

1.   Geological Survey BBS
     Voice Number: 703-648-7300
     Data Number:  703-648-4168 (9600 Baud)
     Consists of public domain files dealing with mapping and
     earth science information.

2.   Mines-Data System
     U.S. Bureau of Mines
     Voice Number:  202-501-9554
     Data Number:   202-501-0373
     Contains data from research reports dealing with mineral
     production, availability, and demand.


Department of Justice

1.   National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS)
     Voice Number:  301-251-5269 (contact Irene Pappas)
     Data Number:   301-738-8895
     Contains current news, announcements, and on-line
     publications about justice and crime.

2.   Bureau of Prisons BBS
     U.S. Bureau of Prisons
     Voice Number:  202-307-3104 (contact Janet Peterkin)
     Data Number:   202-514-6102/6103
     Provides an overview of BOP programs and access to Shareware
     and Freeware software.

3.   Civil Rights Division
     Voice Number: 202-307-2215
     Data Number:  202-514-6193
     Provides a listing of automated data processing related
     materials available to the public and regulations regarding
     technical data.

4.   Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys
     Voice Number: 202-501-8220
     Data Number:  202-501-7521 or 501-7616
     Provides a conglomeration of word processing, database,
     spreadsheet, utilities, management and other software.

Department of Labor

1.   Labor News Bulletin Board
     Voice Number:  202-523-7343     
     Data Number:   202-523-4784
     The Labor News Bulletin Board contains press releases from   
     the Department of Labor as well as a labor-oriented          
     legislative calendar.


Library of Congress

1.   Automated Library Information Exchange (ALIX)
     Voice Number:  202-707-4848/4800
     Data Number:   202-707-4888
     A source for developments in information sciences.


NASA

1.   NASA Headquarters Information Technology Center BBS
     Voice Number:  Via on-line E-Mail
     Data Number:   202-453-9008
     One of the most used resources on this bulletin board is
     ITC Times which provides current information on computer     
     applications.


National Institute for Standards and Technology

1.   Microcomputer Electronic Information Exchange
     Voice Number:  301-975-3359
     Data Number:   301-948-5717 (2400 Baud)
                    301-948-5718 (9600 Baud)
     Describes software, systems, and techniques that combat
     unauthorized access to your computer, and contains files
     that describe computer viruses and how to prevent           
     them.

2.   NIST/NCSC Data Management Information Exchange
     Voice Number:  301-975-3272
     Data Number:   301-948-2048 or (2049)
     Serves as a forum for exchanging information on data
     management including program languages, data dictionaries,
     and computer graphics.

Small Business Administration

1.   SBA Central Office Bulletin Board
     Voice Number:  202-205-6253
     Data Number:   202-205-6269
     Open to government agency personnel and SBA contractors. 
     Contains a wealth of computer applications, text files, and
     software for communications, graphics, word processing,
     spreadsheets, anti-virus programs, and other functions.


State Department

1.   Automated License Status System (ALISS)
     Voice Number:  703-875-7391 (contact Jim DePalma)
     Data Number:   703-875-7350
     Permits exporters to monitor the status of their export
     license applications as they are processed through the State
     Department.


Department of Transportation

1.   Federal Highway Administration Electronic BBS (FEBBS)
     Voice Number:  202-366-9022
     Data Number:   202-366-3764
     Provides information on the federal highway and motor
     carrier programs and the information technology that        
     supports them.


Department of the Treasury

1.   BXR Info. Corner
     Voice Number:  703-756-6280
     Data Number:   703-756-6109
     Contains information on the IRS's electronic filing system,  
     taxpayer assistance programs, and changes in taxpayer forms. 
     Provides files for use with WordPerfect, IRS's standard word
     processing program.

2.   Customs Electronic Bulletin Board
     Voice Number:  202-376-7039
     Data Number:   202-376-7100
     Includes information about trade, news releases of the
     Customs Service, speeches, trade meeting schedules, and
     currency conversion rates.

3.   FMS Inventory Line BBS
     Voice Number: 202-287-0769
     Data Number: 202-287-0767
     The FMS Inventory Line is operated by the Financial          
     Management Service and contains information on federal cash  
     management, as well as the current value of funds rate.


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From: whitaker@eternity.demon.co.uk (Russell Earl Whitaker)
Subject: What to do when they ask for your SSN...
To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu
Date: Tue, 27 Oct 92 11:10:31 GMT


This article was forwarded to you by whitaker@demon.co.uk (Russell Earl Whitaker):

--------------------------------- cut here -----------------------------

Xref: demon alt.privacy:594 misc.legal:6641 news.answers:2058
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Newsgroups: alt.privacy,misc.legal,news.answers,alt.society.civil-liberty,
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Path: eternity.demon.co.uk!demon!pipex!uunet!spool.mu.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!bloom-picayune.mit.edu!news
From: hibbert@xanadu.com (Chris Hibbert)
Subject: Social Security Number FAQ
X-Last-Updated: 1992/10/27
Message-ID: <ssn-privacy_720165616@athena.mit.edu>
Followup-To: alt.privacy
Keywords: Social Security Number, SSN, privacy
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[I no longer have a way to read usenet news.  If you have comments on  |
the following, please send them to hibbert@xanadu.com.]                |



       What to do when they ask for your Social Security Number

                           by Chris Hibbert

                        Computer Professionals
                      for Social Responsibility


Many people are concerned about the number of organizations asking for their
Social Security Numbers.  They worry about invasions of privacy and the
oppressive feeling of being treated as just a number.  Unfortunately, I
can't offer any hope about the dehumanizing effects of identifying you with
your numbers.  I *can* try to help you keep your Social Security Number from
being used as a tool in the invasion of your privacy.

Surprisingly, government agencies are reasonably easy to deal with; private
organizations are much more troublesome.  Federal law restricts the agencies
at all levels of government that can demand your number and a fairly
complete disclosure is required even if its use is voluntary.  There are no
comparable Federal laws restricting the uses non-government organizations
can make of it, or compelling them to tell you anything about their plans.
Some states have recently regulations on collection of SSNs by private
entities.  With private institutions, your main recourse is refusing to do
business with anyone whose terms you don't like.


                            Short History

Social Security numbers were introduced by the Social Security Act of 1935.
They were originally intended to be used only by the social security
program, and public assurances were given at the time that use would be
strictly limited.  In 1943 Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9397 which
required federal agencies to use the number when creating new record-keeping
systems.  In 1961 the IRS began to use it as a taxpayer ID number.  The
Privacy Act of 1974 required authorization for government agencies to use
SSNs in their data bases and required disclosures (detailed below) when
government agencies request the number.  Agencies which were already using
SSN as an identifier before January 1, 1975 were allowed to continue using
it.  The Tax Reform Act of 1976 gave authority to state or local tax,
welfare, driver's license, or motor vehicle registration authorities to use
the number in order to establish identities.  The Privacy Protection Study
Commission of 1977 recommended that the Executive Order be repealed after
some agencies referred to it as their authorization to use SSNs.  I don't
know whether it was repealed, but that practice has stopped.

Several states use the SSN as a driver's license number, while others record
it on applications and store it in their database.  Some states that
routinely use it on the license will make up another number if you insist.
According to the terms of the Privacy Act, any that have a space for it on
the application forms should have a disclosure notice.  Many don't, and
until someone takes them to court, they aren't likely to change.  (Though
New York recently agreed to start adding the notice on the basis of a letter
written by a reader of this blurb.)

The Privacy Act of 1974 (5 USC 552a) requires that any federal, state, or
local government agency that requests your Social Security Number has to
tell you four things:

1:  Whether disclosure of your Social Security Number is required or
    optional,

2:  What law authorizes them to ask for your Social Security Number,

3:  How your Social Security Number will be used if you give it to them,
    and

4:  The consequences of failure to provide an SSN.

In addition, the Act says that only Federal law can make use of the Social
Security Number mandatory.  So anytime you're dealing with a government
institution and you're asked for your Social Security Number, just look for
the Privacy Act Statement.  If there isn't one, complain and don't give your
number.  If the statement is present, read it.  If it says giving your
Social Security Number is voluntary, you'll have to decide for yourself
whether to fill in the number.

                        Private Organizations

The guidelines for dealing with non-governmental institutions are much more
tenuous.  Most of the time private organizations that request your Social
Security Number can get by quite well without your number, and if you can
find the right person to negotiate with, they'll willingly admit it.  The
problem is finding that right person.  The person behind the counter is
often told no more than "get the customers to fill out the form completely."

Most of the time, you can convince them to use some other number.  Usually
the simplest way to refuse to give your Social Security Number is simply to
leave the appropriate space blank.  One of the times when this isn't a
strong enough statement of your desire to conceal your number is when
dealing with institutions which have direct contact with your employer.
Most employers have no policy against revealing your Social Security Number;
they apparently believe that it must have been an unintentional slip that
you didn't give out your SSN.

Public utilities (gas, electric, phone, etc.) are considered to be private
organizations under the laws regulating SSNs.  Most of the time they ask for
an SSN, and aren't prohibited from asking for it, but they'll usually relent
if you insist.  Ask to speak to a supervisor, insist that they document a
corporate policy requiring it, ask about alternatives, ask why they need it
and suggest alternatives.


      Lenders and Borrowers (those who send reports to the IRS)

Banks and credit card issuers and various others are required by the IRS to
report the SSNs of account holders to whom they pay interest or when they
charge interest and report it to the IRS.  If you don't tell them your
number you will probably either be refused an account or be charged a
penalty such as withholding of taxes on your interest.

Many Banks, Brokerages, and other financial institutions have started
implementing automated systems to let you check your balance. All too often,
they are using SSNs as the PIN that lets you get access to your personal
account information.  If your bank does this to you, write them a letter
pointing out how many of the people you have financial business with know
your SSN.  Ask them to change your PIN, and if you feel like doing a good
deed, ask them to stop using the SSN as a default identifier.  Some
customers will believe that there's some security in it, and be
insufficiently protective of their account numbers.

When buying (and possibly refinancing) a house, most banks will now ask for
your Social Security Number on the Deed of Trust.  This is because the
Federal National Mortgage Association recently started requiring it.  The
fine print in their regulation admits that some consumers won't want to give
their number, and allows banks to leave it out when pressed.  [It first
recommends getting it on the loan note, but then admits that it's already on
various other forms that are a required part of the package, so they already
know it.  The Deed is a public document, so there are good reasons to refuse
to put it there, even though all parties to the agreement already have
access to your number.]


                     Insurers, Hospitals, Doctors

No laws require medical service providers to use your Social Security Number
as an ID number (except for Medicare, Medicaid, etc.)  They often use it
because it's convenient or because your employer uses it to certify
employees to its groups health plan.  In the latter case, you have to get
your employer to change their policies.  Often, the people who work in
personnel assume that the employer or insurance company requires use of the
SSN when that's not really the case.  When my current employer asked for my
SSN for an insurance form, I asked them to try to find out if they had to
use it.  After a week they reported that the insurance company had gone
along with my request and told me what number to use.  Blood banks also ask
for the number but are willing to do without if pressed on the issue.  After
I asked politely and persistently, the blood bank I go to agreed that they
didn't have any use for the number.  They've now expunged my SSN from their
database, and they seem to have taught their receptionists not to request
the number.

Most insurance companies share access to old claims through the Medical
Information Bureau.  If your insurance company uses your SSN, other
insurance companies will have a much easier time finding out about your
medical history.  You can get a copy of the file MIB keeps on you by writing
to Medical Information Bureau, P.O. Box 105, Essex Station, Boston, MA
02112.  Their phone number is (617)426-3660.

If an insurance agent asks for your Social Security Number in order to
"check your credit", point out that the contract is invalid if your check
bounces or your payment is late.  They don't need to know what your credit
is like, just whether you've paid them.


                                  Children

The Family Support Act of 1988 (42 USC 1305, 607, and 602) apparently
requires states to require parents to give their Social Security Numbers in
order to get a birth certificate issued for a newborn.  The law allows the
requirement to be waived for "good cause", but there's no indication of what
may qualify.

The IRS requires taxpayers to report SSNs for dependents over one year of
age, but the requirement can be avoided if you're prepared to document the
existence of the child by other means if challenged.  The law on this can be
found at 26 USC 6109.

                      Universities and Colleges

Universities that accept federal funds are subject to the Family Educational
Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (the "Buckley Amendment"), which prohibits
them from giving out personal information on students without permission.
There is an exception for directory information, which is limited to names,
addresses, and phone numbers, and another exception for release of
information to the parents of minors.  There is no exception for Social
Security Numbers, so covered Universities aren't allowed to reveal students'
numbers without their permission.  In addition, state universities are bound
by the requirements of the Privacy Act, which requires them to provide the
disclosures mentioned above.  If they make uses of the SSN which aren't
covered by the disclosure they are in violation.


           Why use of Social Security Numbers is a problem

The Social Security Number doesn't work well as an identifier for several
reasons.  The first reason is that it isn't at all secure; if someone makes
up a nine-digit number, it's quite likely that they've picked a number that
is assigned to someone.  There are quite a few reasons why people would make
up a number: to hide their identity or the fact that they're doing
something; because they're not allowed to have a number of their own
(illegal immigrants, e.g.), or to protect their privacy.  In addition, it's
easy to write the number down wrong, which can lead to the same problems as
intentionally giving a false number.  There are several numbers that have
been used by thousands of people because they were on sample cards shipped
in wallets by their manufacturers.  (One is given below.)

When more than one person uses the same number, it clouds up the records.
If someone intended to hide their activities, it's likely that it'll look
bad on whichever record it shows up on.  When it happens accidentally, it
can be unexpected, embarrassing, or worse.  How do you prove that you
weren't the one using your number when the record was made?

A second problem with the use of SSNs as identifiers is that it makes it
hard to control access to personal information.  Even assuming you want
someone to be able to find out some things about you, there's no reason to
believe that you want to make all records concerning yourself available.
When multiple record systems are all keyed by the same identifier, and all
are intended to be easily accessible to some users, it becomes difficult to
allow someone access to some of the information about a person while
restricting them to specific topics.

The market for stolen numbers increased in 1986, with the passage of the
Immigration reform law.  While making up a number is usually good enough to
fool the public library, employers submit the number to the IRS, which cross
checks with its own and SSA's records.  Because of the checks, illegal
workers need to know what name goes with the number so they won't be caught
as quickly.


                What you can do to protect your number

If despite your having written "refused" in the box for Social Security
Number, it still shows up on the forms someone sends back to you (or worse,
on the ID card they issue), your recourse is to write letters or make phone
calls.  Start politely, explaining your position and expecting them to
understand and cooperate.  If that doesn't work, there are several more
things to try:

1: Talk to people higher up in the organization.  This often works
        simply because the organization has a standard way of dealing
        with requests not to use the SSN, and the first person you deal
        with just hasn't been around long enough to know what it is.

2: Enlist the aid of your employer.  You have to decide whether talking
        to someone in personnel, and possibly trying to change
        corporate policy is going to get back to your supervisor and
        affect your job.

3: Threaten to complain to a consumer affairs bureau.  Most newspapers
        can get a quick response.  Ask for their "Action Line" or
        equivalent.  If you're dealing with a local government agency,
        look in the state or local government section of the phone book
        under "consumer affairs."  If it's a federal agency, your
        congressmember may be able to help.

4: Insist that they document a corporate policy requiring the number.
        When someone can't find a written policy or doesn't want to
        push hard enough to get it, they'll often realize that they
        don't know what the policy is, and they've just been following
        tradition.

5: Ask what they need it for and suggest alternatives.  If you're
        talking to someone who has some independence, and they'd like
        to help, they will sometimes admit that they know the reason
        the company wants it, and you can satisfy that requirement a
        different way.

6: Tell them you'll take your business elsewhere (and follow through if
        they don't cooperate.)

7: If it's a case where you've gotten service already, but someone
        insists that you have to provide your number in order to have a
        continuing relationship, you can choose to ignore the request
        in hopes that they'll forget or find another solution before
        you get tired of the interruption.

If someone absolutely insists on getting your Social Security Number, you
may want to give a fake number.  There is no legal penalty as long as you're
not doing it to get something from a government agency or to commit fraud.
There are a few good choices for "anonymous" numbers.  Making one up at
random is a bad idea, as it may coincide with someone's real number and
cause them some amount of grief.  It's better to use a number like
078-05-1120, which was printed on "sample" cards inserted in thousands of
new wallets sold in the 40's and 50's.  It's been used so widely that both
the IRS and SSA recognize it immediately as bogus, while most clerks haven't
heard of it.

There are several prefixes that have never been assigned, and which
therefore don't conflict with anyone's real number.  They include the
following patterns:

1.  Any field all zeroes (no field of zeroes is ever assigned)

2.  First digit "8" (no area numbers in the 800 series have been
    assigned)

3.  First two digits 73-79 (no area numbers in the 700 series have been
    assigned except 700-729 which were assigned to railroad workers
    until 1964)

Giving a number with one of these patterns rather than your own number isn't
very useful if there's anything serious at stake since they're likely to be
noticed .  Numbers beginning with 9 have never been assigned to individuals,
but some have been assigned to organizations and for other special purposes.
The Social Security Administration recommends that people showing Social
Security cards in advertisements use numbers in the range 987-65-4320
through 987-65-4329.

If you're designing a database, and want to use numbers other than Social
Security Numbers, you'd be better off generating numbers that are shorter
than 9 digits, so they won't be confused with SSNs.  If you have an existing
database using SSNs, and want to allow people to use a different identifier,
it's better to generate longer or shorter numbers or ones with letters
included rather than depending on these unused patterns.

The Social Security Administration recommends that you request a copy of
your file from them every few years to make sure that your records are
correct (your income and "contributions" are being recorded for you, and no
one else's are.)  As a result of a recent court case, the SSA has agreed to
accept corrections of errors when there isn't any contradictory evidence,
SSA has records for the year before or after the error, and the claimed
earnings are consistent with earlier and later wages.  (San Jose Mercury
News, 5/14, 1992 p 6A) Call the Social Security Administration at (800)
772-1213 and ask for Form 7005, (Request for Earnings and Benefit Estimate
Statement.)


             Some Legal Cases Currently (6/19/92) Pending

CPSR recently joined two legal cases concerning Social Security Numbers and
privacy.  One of them challenged the IRS practice of printing Social
Security Numbers on mailing labels when they send out tax forms and related
correspondence.  The other challenged Virginia's requirement of a Social
Security Number in order to register to vote.

Dr. Peter Zilahy Ingerman filed suit against the IRS in Federal District
Court in 1991, and CPSR filed a friend of the court brief in August '91.
The case was recently decided in favor of the IRS.  CPSR plans to appeal.

The Virginia case was filed by a resident of the state who refused to supply
a Social Security Number when registering to vote.  When the registrar
refused to accept his registration, he filed suit.  He is also challenging
the state of Virginia on two other bases: the registration form apparently
lacked a Privacy Act notice, and the voter lists the state publishes include
Social Security Numbers.



If you have suggestions for improving this document please send them to me
at:
                                       Chris Hibbert                |
hibbert@xanadu.com        or           Xanadu Operating Company     |
                                       1891 Landings Drive          |
                                       Mountain View, CA 94043      |



--------------------------------- cut here -----------------------------



--------------------------------------------------------------------


From: whitaker@eternity.demon.co.uk (Russell Earl Whitaker)
Subject: Forwarded article.
To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu
Date: Wed, 28 Oct 92 08:03:12 GMT


This article was forwarded to you by whitaker@demon.co.uk (Russell Earl Whitaker):

--------------------------------- cut here -----------------------------

Newsgroups: alt.bbs.internet
Path: eternity.demon.co.uk!demon!pipex!uunet!destroyer!fmsrl7!lynx!
lauger.mdc.com!user
From: Lauger%ssdvax.decnet@mdcgwy.mdc.com (John Lauger)
Subject: RE: Reps and Senators Phone/Fax Numbers
Message-ID: <Lauger-271092155653@lauger.mdc.com>
Date: Tue, 27 Oct 92 23:58:52 GMT
Organization: McDonnell Douglas Government Aerospace - West
Lines: 25

In article ,  wrote:
Addresses and phone/fax numbers for Congressmen are availabe via WAIS or
Gopher at:

(:source 
   :version  3 
   :ip-address "18.172.1.27"
   :ip-name "pit-manager.mit.edu"
   :tcp-port 210
   :database-name "congress"
   :cost 0.00 
   :cost-unit :free 
   :maintainer "jik@athena.mit.edu"
   :description "Server created with WAIS release 8 b4.1 on May 15 10:48:38
1992 by jik@pit-manager

This database contains the names, addresses and phone numbers of
members of Congress for all fifty states.  To find a particular
Congressman, you can search for his name; to find a particular state,
search for its name.

Opinions are mine or others but definately not MDGA-Ws!
Lauger%ssdvax.decnet@mdcgwy.mdc.com
McDonnell Douglas Government Aerospace-West, Huntington Beach, California,
USA


--------------------------------- cut here -----------------------------



--------------------------------------------------------------------


From: lefty@apple.com
Subject: Opportunity
To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu
Date: Wed, 28 Oct 1992 17:46:35 -0800

Just in case folks in the area didn't see this in the SJ Murky Snooze, I
thought I'd put this out to the list.  Please feel free to send resumes to
me; I'll see that they get every consideration...

===============================================================================

Macintosh Hardware

Help us continue to make Apple's personal computing systems the preferred
platform for communications and collaboration. Our objective is to maximize the
reach of information available to users, regardless of computer, peripheral or
location, while making the complexity of communication functions and tools
transparent. All with the famous Apple "Plug & Play" simplicity. If you are
interested in helping us create an unprecedented array of resources and
services for the desktop, send us your resume.

AppleTalk Engineer

You will work with a team developing an object-oriented AppleTalk(r)
protocol stack and low-level drivers for new RISC based products.  Most of
the development will be in C and C++.  You should have a BSCS or
equivalent; a minimum 3 years' related experience; and a background in
networking and/or real-time programming.  Object-oriented programming
experience is desirable.

Apple Computer has a corporate commitment to the principle of diversity. In
that spirit, we welcome applications from all individuals. Women, minorities,
veterans and disabled individuals are encouraged to apply. (c) 1992 Apple
Computer, Inc. Apple, the Apple logo, AppleTalk and "The power to be your best"
are registered trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc.

===============================================================================

The following is my "official" .signature...

--
David "Lefty" Schlesinger
Chief AppleTalk Bug Wrangler
Apple Computer, Inc.




--------------------------------------------------------------------


From: edgar@spectrx.Saigon.COM (Edgar W. Swank)
Subject: FDA BBS
To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu
Date: Thu, 22 Oct 92 03:54:30 PDT

On Oct 19, Russell Whitaker forwarded a long list of government
BBS's, none of which had 800 numbers. I'm aware of at least one
not mentioned which DOES have a (bank of?) 800 number(s).
 
FDA BBS       800-222-0185
 
Set your commo software to Even parity, 7 bits, 1 stop bit.
 
(most BBS's use no parity, 8 bits).
 
When prompted with "logon:" reply "bbs[enter]"
Then enter your first and last name.
when prompted for a password, if this is your first logon,
make up one and remember it.
 
I only logged on once, in Jan 92, so it may not still be around.
 
It has a lot of stuff about "enforcement actions" and recalls, so might
be of interest to people taking unorthodox meds.

--
edgar@spectrx.saigon.com (Edgar W. Swank)
SPECTROX SYSTEMS +1.408.252.1005  Silicon Valley, Ca



--------------------------------------------------------------------


From: sjw@liberty.demon.co.uk (Stephen J. Whitrow)
Subject: The Power of Delusion
To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu
Date: Mon, 02 Nov 92 22:00:35 GMT

A problem we often come across is that 'magical' memes seem so much easier
to sell than those based on empiricism, science and reason. Look at how
even cults such as the Eternal Flame, who hold that the act of believing
one will not age and die makes it reality, can attract many more supporters
than the cryonics movement. There is an interesting recent example of a mass
'magical' meme propagation, aided by the media.

In 1938 we had Americans believing they were being invaded by Martians,
following the Orson Welles radio play based on H.G.Wells' *The War of The
Worlds*. In Britain we've just had a modern-day analog - *Ghostwatch*. The
show that went bump in the night.

This was a Hallowe'en hoax by the BBC, presented by well-known television
personalities, for authenticity. A TV programme supposedly documenting an
investigation of the 'most haunted house in Britain'. Featuring an outside
broadcast at the site, in Northolt, West London, they had scratches and
blood appearing on a girl's face, collapsing cameramen and other 'ghostly
happenings' provided by the special effects department and its equipment
concealed in the house. Finally the programme was hit by 'supernatural
forces' which allegedly caused mayhem in the studio and prevented the
cameras from working.

The phones kept ringing at police stations and newspaper offices all 
over the country. And the BBC's own switchboard was jammed with calls
from anxious viewers, many of whom were close to tears. Scotland Yard
and the Northolt police were begged to help the fictitious family, 
played by actors who also filled the roles of the 'psychic experts'.  

(My source is a single newspaper article, so cannot vouch for its
complete accuracy.)

Steve Whitrow                         Note new preferred email address:-
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stephen J. Whitrow                  /------->>   sjw@liberty.demon.co.uk
preferred node is liberty   -------/          100034.3102@compuserve.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------


--------------------------------------------------------------------


From: whitaker@eternity.demon.co.uk (Russell Earl Whitaker)
Subject: Hypertext system: Hyperbole 3.05
To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu
Date: Tue, 03 Nov 92 16:34:58 GMT


This article was forwarded to you by whitaker@demon.co.uk (Russell Earl Whitaker):

--------------------------------- cut here -----------------------------

Xref: demon comp.emacs:1108 alt.hypertext:419 comp.infosystems:224
Newsgroups: comp.emacs,alt.hypertext,comp.infosystems
Path: eternity.demon.co.uk!demon!pipex!uunet!panther!mothost!pts1!pts1!ex594bw
From: ex594bw@pts.mot.com (Bob Weiner)
Subject: Version 3.05 of Hyperbole has been released.
Message-ID: <EX594BW.92Nov2193850@msn25.pts.mot.com>
Sender: usenet@pts1.pts.mot.com
Nntp-Posting-Host: 145.4.52.182
Reply-To: hyperbole@cs.brown.edu
Organization: Motorola Paging and Wireless Data Group
Date: Tue, 3 Nov 1992 00:38:50 GMT
Lines: 488

#
# FILE:         README
# SUMMARY:      Intro information on Hyperbole.  
#
# AUTHOR:       Bob Weiner
# ORG:          Brown U.
#
# ORIG-DATE:    19-Oct-91 at 03:27:47
# LAST-MOD:      2-Nov-92 at 17:53:35 by Bob Weiner

The author's work on this project has been sponsored by Motorola Inc.
under the Distinguished Student-Employee program.

We hope you enjoy using and developing with Hyperbole.  Suggestions and bug
reports are welcome, as described later in this document.  Feel free to
mail or post news containing this file wherever it may be of use.


           Outline
================================
* Hyperbole Overview
* What's New?
* How to Obtain
* Installation / Configuration
* Quick Reference
* Mail Lists
* Beta Tester Quotes
* Why was Hyperbole developed?
* Copyright
================================


* Hyperbole Overview

Hyperbole is an open, efficient information browsing and management system
based around a hypertext model.  It is intended for everyday work on any UNIX
platform supported by GNU Emacs (or Epoch from the University of Illinois or
Lucid Emacs from Lucid Inc).  Hyperbole allows hypertext buttons to be
embedded within unstructured and structured files, mail messages and news
articles.  It offers intuitive mouse-based control of information display
within multiple windows.  It also provides point-and-click access to ftp
archives, Wide-Area Information Servers (WAIS), and the World-Wide Web (WWW)
hypertext system through encapsulations of software that support these
protocols.

Hyperbole consists of three parts:

   1.  an interactive information management interface which anyone can use;

   2.  a set of programming library classes for system developers who
       want to integrate Hyperbole with another user interface or as a
       back-end to a distinct system.  (All of Hyperbole is written in
       Lisp for ease of modification.  Although Hyperbole is a
       prototype, it has been engineered for real-world usage and is
       well structured.)

   3.  A set of hyper-button-action types that provides core hypertext
       and other behaviors.  Users can make simple changes to button
       types and those familiar with Emacs Lisp can quickly prototype
       and deliver new types.

A Hyperbole user works with hypertext buttons; he may create, modify,
move or delete buttons.  Each button performs a specific action, such as
linking to a file or executing a UNIX shell command.

Presently, there are two distinct categories of Hyperbole buttons:
explicit buttons (the ones that Hyperbole creates) and implicit buttons
(buttons created and managed by other programs or embedded within the
structure of a document and recognized contextually by Hyperbole).
Explicit Hyperbole buttons may be embedded within any type of text file.

Hyperbole buttons may be clicked upon with a mouse to activate them or
to describe their actions.  Thus, a user can always check how a button
will act before activating it.  Buttons may also be activated from a
keyboard.  (In fact, all Hyperbole operations, including menu usage, may
be performed from any standard character terminal interface, so one need
not be anchored to a workstation all day).

Hyperbole does not enforce any particular hypertext or information
management model, but instead allows you to organize your information in
large or small chunks as you see fit.  Some of its most important
features include:

    Buttons may link to information or may execute procedures, such as
    starting or communicating with external programs;

    Buttons may be embedded within electronic mail messages;

    Other hypertext and information retrieval systems may be
    encapsulated under a Hyperbole user interface (a number of samples
    are provided).

Typical Hyperbole applications include:

    personal information management
       Overlapping link paths provide a variety of views into an
       information space.

       A search facility locates buttons in context and permits quick
       selection.

    documentation browsing
       Embed cross-references in your favorite documentation format.

       Add a point-and-click interface to existing documentation.

       Link code and design documents.  Jump to the definition of an
       identifier from its use within code or its reference within
       documentation.

    help/training systems
       Create tutorials with embedded buttons that show students how
       things work while explaining the concepts, e.g. an introduction
       to UNIX commands.  This technique can be much more effective than
       descriptions alone.

    archive managers
       Supplement programs that manage archives from incoming
       information streams by having them add topic-based buttons that
       link to the archive holdings.  Users can then search and create
       their own links to archive entries.


* What's New as of V3.05?

  (See "ChangeLog" for more complete details of changes.)

  BUTTONS

    - Site-specific document id implicit button type for creation of
      online libraries and card catalogs.  See "hib-doc-id.el".

    - New 'hibtypes:begin-load-hook' and 'hibtypes:end-load-hook' for better
      control over site-specific implicit button type priorities.

    - New 'hui:ebut-delete-confirm-p' flag by default prompts for confirmation
      of explicit button deletions.

  HELP

    - Expanded and clarified "DEMO" coverage.

  INSTALLATION

    - Further simplified.

  KEY BINDINGS

    - All default key bindings conditionalized so they do not
      overwrite any prior bindings.

    - Screen configuration save and restore keys.

  PROGRAMMING/DEVELOPMENT

    - Objective-C `#import' file directives can be browsed just like
      `#include' directives in C.

  ROLODEX

    - User documentation added to Hyperbole manual.

  SMART KEYS

    - {M-RET} = primary Smart Key; {C-u M-RET} = secondary Smart Key
      Bindings were swapped.

    - Additional Smart Key bindings permitted in read-only modes.

    - Context-sensitive Smart Key help available from keyboard.

    - Proportional scrolling option for end of line presses.

    - Modeline clicks and window drag events added to allow
      fast control of screen/window displays.  The Hyperbole DEMO
      includes samples of their use.

    - Screen saves and restores via mouse.

    - Hyperbole manual appendix with complete reference documentation
      for the Smart Keys. 

  USER INTERFACE

    - Support for Lucid Emacs.

    - Hyperbole menu functions can more easily be used by other packages.


* How to Obtain

Hyperbole is available across the Internet via anonymous ftp.  Do not send
requests to have it mailed to you since it won't be.  Instead have another
party who has Internet access obtain it for the both of you.

A server which sends the Hyperbole distribution in response to mail
requests may be put into service sometime in the first quarter of 1992.
The Free Software Foundation has expressed interest in distributing
Hyperbole as a separate add-on to GNU Emacs, once Hyperbole reaches a
stable point of maturation, so you may eventually be able to get it from
them.  Here is how to obtain it from the Brown software archive:

Move to a directory below which you want the 'hyperbole' directory to
be created.  Unpacking the Hyperbole archive will create this
directory and place all of the files below it.

   cd <LOCAL-LISP-DIR>

Ftp to wilma.cs.brown.edu  (Internet Host ID = 128.148.31.66):

   prompt> ftp wilma.cs.brown.edu

Login as 'anonymous' with your own <user-id>@<site-name> as a password.
   
   Name (wilma.cs.brown.edu:rsw): anonymous
   331 Guest login ok, send EMAIL address (e.g. user@host.domain) as password.
   Password:
   230 Guest login ok, access restrictions apply.

Move to the Hyperbole directory:

   ftp> cd pub/hyperbole

Set your transfer mode to binary:

   ftp> bin
   200 Type set to I.

Turn off prompting:

   ftp> prompt
   Interactive mode off.

Either retrieve just the Hyperbole archive and any diff-based patches:

   ftp> mget h*tar.Z
   ftp> mget diff*

or retrieve all of the files (the individual, non-tar files, are also
included in the above archive, so they are not strictly necessary):

   ftp> mget *

Close the ftp connection:

   ftp> quit
   221 Goodbye.

Unpack the tar archive with:

   zcat h*tar.Z | tar xvf -
or
   uncompress h*tar.Z; tar xvf h*tar


* Installation / Configuration

The Hyperbole Manual is included in three forms:
    "hypb.info"       - online version
     hypb.ps          - Postscript form
    "hypb.texinfo"    - source form

If you have just retrieved Hyperbole, see "hsite-ex.el" for installation and
setup instructions.  If Hyperbole has already been installed for use at your
site, you can manually invoke it from within GNU Emacs or Epoch by loading
the "hyperbole.el" code library file: {M-x load-lib RTN hyperbole RTN}.  {C-h
h} or {M-x hyperbole RTN} then brings up the Hyperbole main menu.  See the
section on 'Initializing' in the Hyperbole Manual for information on how to
set up for permanent Hyperbole use.

To add a pointer to the Info version of the Hyperbole manual within your Info
directory file, add the following two lines (the '*' should be in the first
column) to the menu within that file, substituting for <HYP-DIR>:

    * Hyperbole: (<HYP-DIR>/hypb.info).
        GNU Emacs-based extensible hypertext management system.


* Quick Reference

"MANIFEST" summarizes most of the files in the distribution.

See "DEMO" for a demonstration of standard Hyperbole button
capabilities.

Naming conventions:
  All Hyperbole-specific code files begin with an 'h'.
  Hyperbole user-interface files begin with 'hui-' or 'hmous'.
  Files that define implicit button types begin with 'hib'.
  Encapsulations of foreign systems begin with 'hsys-'.

Most of the standard Emacs user interface for Hyperbole is located in
"hui.el".  Most of the Hyperbole application programming interface can be
found in "hbut.el".  "hbdata.el" encapsulates the button attribute storage
handling presently implemented by Hyperbole.  "hmail.el" provides a basic
abstract interface for folding mail readers other than Rmail into Hyperbole.

See the "(hypb.info)Question and Answers" appendix in the Hyperbole manual
for information on how to alter the default Smart Key bindings.


* Mail Lists

There are several Hyperbole-related mail addresses.  Learn what each is
for before you contemplate mailing to any of them.


hyperbole-request@cs.brown.edu

   ALL mail concerning administration of the Hyperbole mailing lists
   should be sent here.  That includes addition, change, or deletion
   requests.  Don't EVER consider sending such a request to a Hyperbole
   mail list or people will think you can't read.  ONLY FULLY
   DOMAIN-BASED ADDRESSES WILL BE ACCEPTED (no UUCP '!' characters nor
   .UUCP pseudo-domain).  If you don't have such an address by now, you
   should get one.  Anyone else who wants to handle these other
   addresses is free to forward the contents of the lists to them.

   Use the following formats on your subject line to execute requests,
   where you substitute your own values for the <> delimited items.
 
   Subject: Add <your name> '<' <user@domain> '>' to <mail-list-sans-domain>.
   Subject: Remove '<' <user@domain> '>' from <mail-list-sans-domain>.
   Subject: Change '<' <user@domain> '>' to '<' <newuser>@<newdomain> '>' in
 <mail-list-sans-domain>.

   For example:
     Subject: Add Joe Williams <joe@cs.brown.edu> to hyperbole.
     Subject: Remove <joe@cs.brown.edu> from hyperbole.
     Subject: Change <joe@cs.brown.edu> to <joe@mot.com> in hyperbole.


hyperbole@cs.brown.edu

   Mail list for discussion of all Hyperbole issues.  Bug reports and
   suggestions may also be sent here.

   Always use your Subject and/or Summary: lines to state the position
   that your message takes on the topic that it addresses, e.g. send
   "Subject: Basic bug in top-level Hyperbole menu." rather than
   "Subject: Hyperbole bug".  Statements end with periods, questions
   with question marks (typically), and high energy, high impact
   declarations with exclamation points.  This simple rule makes all
   e-mail communication much easier for recipients to handle
   appropriately.

   If you ask a question, your subject line should include the word
   'question' or 'query' or should end with a '?', e.g. "Subject: How
   can man page SEE ALSOs be made implicit buttons?"  A "Subject: Re:
   How can ..." then indicates an answer to the question.  Question
   messages should normally include your Hyperbole and Emacs version
   numbers and clearly explain your problem and surrounding issues.
   Otherwise, you will simply waste the time of those who may want to
   help you.  (Your top-level Hyperbole menu shows its version number
   and {M-x emacs-version RTN} gives the other.)

   If you ask questions, you should consider adding to the discussion by
   telling people the kinds of work you are doing or contemplating doing
   with Hyperbole.  In this way, the list will not be overwhelmed by
   messages that ask for but provide no information.

   This list is now archived as a WAIS server.  Ask <wais-talk@think.com>
   if you have questions about what WAIS is.  The source entry for this
   server is:

(:source 
   :version  3 
   :ip-address "128.148.31.66"
   :ip-name "wilma.cs.brown.edu"
   :tcp-port 8000
   :database-name "hyperbole"
   :cost 0.00 
   :cost-unit :free 
   :maintainer "mlm@cs.brown.edu"
   :description "This WAIS server contains all messages sent to the Hyperbole
 mailing list.
Hyperbole is a flexible, information manager built on top of GNU Emacs.
It is available for anonymous ftp from /wilma.cs.brown.edu:pub/hyperbole.
See the README file there for details.
Server created with WAIS release 8 b3.1 on Feb 20 14:40:09 1992 by wais@wilma"
)


hyperbole-announce@cs.brown.edu

   Those who don't want to participate in the discussion but want to
   hear about bug fixes and new releases of Hyperbole should subscribe
   to this list.  Anyone on the 'hyperbole' list is automatically on
   this one too, so there is no need to subscribe to this one in that
   case.  This list is for official fixes and announcements so don't send
   your own fixes here.  Send them to 'hyperbole' instead.


* V2 Beta Tester Quotes

 "In general, Hyperbole is an embeddable, highly extensible hypertext
  tool.  As such, I find it very useful. As it stands now, Hyperbole is
  particularly helpful for organizing ill-structured or loosely coupled
  information, in part because there are few tools geared for this purpose.
  Hyperbole also possesses a lot of potentials in supporting a wider
  spectrum of structuredness, ranging from unstructured to highly
  structured environments, as well as structural changes over time.

  Major Uses:

  * Menu interface to our own Epoch-based collaborative support environment
    called CoReView: This interface brings together all top-level user
    commands into a single partitioned screen, and allows the end user to
    interact with the system using simple mouse-clicking instead of the
    meta-x key.

  * Gateway to internet resources: this includes links to major Internet
    archive sites of various types of information. Links are made at both
    directory and file levels.

  * Alternative directory organizer: The hierarchical nature of the Unix
    file system sometimes makes it difficult to find things quickly and
    easily using directory navigational tools such as dired. Hyperbole
    enables me to create various "profile" views of my directory tree, with
    entries in these views referring to files anywhere in the hierarchy.

  * Organizing and viewing online documentation: using Hyperbole along with
    Hyper-man and Info makes it truly easy to look up online documentation.
      
  * Other desktop organization tasks: including links to various mail
    folders, saved newsgroup conversation threads, online note-taker,
    emacs-command invocations, etc."

                                        -- Dadong Wan

-------

 "Hyperbole is the first hyper-link system I've run across that is
  actually part of the environment I use regularly, namely Emacs. The
  complete flexibility of the links is both impressive and expected -- the
  idea of making the link itself programmable is clever, and given that one
  assumes the full power of emacs.  Being able to send email with buttons
  in it is a very powerful capability.  Using ange-ftp mode, one can make
  file references "across the world" as easily as normal file references."

                                        -- Mark Eichin

-------

 "The Hyperbole system provides a nice interface to exploring corners of
  Unix that I didn't know existed before."

                                        -- Craig Smith

-------


* Why was Hyperbole developed?

Hyperbole has been designed to aid in research aimed at Personalized
Information production/retrieval Environments (PIEs).  Hyperbole is a
backend manager to be used in prototyping an initial PIE.

An examination of many hypertext environments as background research did
not turn up any that seemed suitable for the research envisioned, mainly
due to the lack of rich, portable programmer and user environments.  We also
tired of trying to manage our own distributed information pools with standard
UNIX tools.  And so Hyperbole was conceived and raved about until it
got its name.


* Copyright

The following copyright applies to the Hyperbole system as a whole.
Each file also bears its own copyright, e.g. the files based upon GNU
copyrighted code bear the same copyright as GNU Emacs.

Copyright (C) 1991, 1992, Brown University, Providence, RI

Permission to use, modify and redistribute this software and its
documentation for any purpose other than its incorporation into a
commercial product is hereby granted without fee.  A distribution fee
may be charged with any redistribution.  Any distribution requires
that the above copyright notice appear in all copies, that both that
copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting
documentation, and that neither the name of Brown University nor the
author's name be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to
distribution of the software without specific, written prior permission.

Brown University makes no representations about the suitability of this
software for any purpose.  It is provided "as is" without express or
implied warranty.
--
Bob Weiner, Motorola, 1500 NW 22nd Ave, MS-71, Boynton Beach, FL 33426-8753
Work: 407-364-2091   Fax: 407-364-3329  INTERNET:  <bob_weiner@pts.mot.com>


--------------------------------- cut here -----------------------------



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From: habs@acf3.NYU.EDU (Harry A. B. Shapiro)
Subject: Wallace  Steinberg, chairman of Healthcare (NYT) Full Text
To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu
Date: Tue, 3 Nov 1992 19:03:12 -0500 (EST)

The following text is presented for personal educational use only. It
is not to be copied or otherwise used in a manner which violates
rights of its copyright holders. This letter serves only as private
communication to readers of the Extropian Mailing List.
_________________________________________________________________

Someone had quoted this article the other day. Here is the full-text
/Harry

Copyright 1992 The New York Times Company

The New York Times

November 1, 1992, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

NAMES:  Wallace  Steinberg

SECTION: Section 3; Page 7; Column 1; Financial Desk

LENGTH: 1963 words

HEADLINE: Profile/ Wallace  Steinberg; Laying Pipe for the 
Fountain of Youth

BYLINE: By GINA KOLATA

BODY:

PRESIDENTIAL candidates who are younger than, say, 200 or 
250? In the future, says  Wallace  Steinberg, we will not even 
consider them. Far too immature.

"No one I know is really emotionally mature," Mr. Steinberg 
said. "I'm certainly not mature, and I'm 58." It might take him 
100 years or so to complete the maturation process, he said, 
insisting that the idea of living until the process is complete is 
not as bizarre as it sounds.

Mr. Steinberg truly believes that scientists are close to 
unlocking the secret of eternal life. And he truly believes he 
may be one of the first recipients of this largess.

Yes, it sounds a little crazy. But Mr. Steinberg, chairman of the 
Healthcare Investment Corporation, the largest venture 
capital fund devoted to  healthcare,  is absolutely serious. And 
he is ready to put money on it. He is looking for the right 
scientists to start a company devoted solely to turning back 
the biological clock.

Mr. Steinberg envisions a future in which lifespans will be 
extended and only the very old and the very wise will be 
considered mature enough to be our leaders. In the 
meantime, he is trying to keep his mind and body young to be 
ready for the discoveries to come.

As Mr. Steinberg acknowledges, he has always had a knack 
for persuading people to go along with him even against their 
better judgment. And he has often been proven right.

For example, he said, at Johnson & Johnson -- where he 
worked for 21 years before starting Healthcare Investment in 
1985 "to see how smart I really was" -- he was permitted to 
follow his hunch and develop the Reach toothbrush, the first 
one specially designed to remove plaque.  "The president, the 
chairman, the ex-chairman -- all were against it," he said. But 
Reach is now "the leading toothbrush in the world." He 
modestly credits the company with "giving management 
freedom and independence." A true believer still, Mr. 
Steinberg said "It's the only toothbrush I allow in my house."

Mr. Steinberg tells this tale over a salad of steak, corn and 
tomatoes, served by a uniformed butler at his mansion in 
Rumson, N.J. Mr. Steinberg; his wife, Maria, and a reporter are 
the only people dining, clustered at one end of a long table, 
near the swinging door to the kitchen. When a course is 
completed, Mrs. Steinberg rings a small bell.

It was a typical Friday for Mr. Steinberg, who works only 
Monday through Thursday at his office in Metro Park, N.J. It's 
all part of a master plan. Taking three days off a week to 
relax and play tennis on his private court helps him keep his 
mind young, he said, by encouraging a different sort of 
mental stimulus. He focuses on tennis strategies and dancing 
through the night with his wife at local discos.

Playing tennis with young men, as he is wont to do, helps 
keep his body young. And, in the meantime, he thinks of 
strategies to keep us all youthful. "I'm a jock who doesn't 
believe he'll ever grow old," Mr. Steinberg said.

Clad in shiny green warm-up pants, Mr. Steinberg actually 
looks more like a twinkly grandfather than either an athlete 
or the director of a fund with more than $350 million to 
spend on the 36 companies in which it has invested so far.

HIS surroundings tell a lot about him. His 80-year-old home 
in an old estate village nestled between the Navesink River 
and the Atlantic was built by Thomas McCarter, the father of 
a boyhood friend of F. Scott Fitzgerald. "It is alleged that 
McCarter was a model for Thomas Buchanan in 'The Great 
Gatsby' and that this house was a model for Buchanan's 
house," Mr. Steinberg said.

The Steinbergs are taking great pains in restoring the house, 
buying magnificent antique furniture and even X-raying the 
walls to find the original paint.

Surrounded by the trappings of the past, however, the 
Steinbergs lack no creature comforts. They are building a 
replica of a 1910 tennis court, complete with wooden lattices, 
for example, but they eschewed grass courts of the sort the 
McCarters would have played on. Instead, they put in 
artificial turf over sand. That way, Mrs. Steinberg said, when 
it rains, "the sand soaks up the water" and you can play five 
minutes after the rain stops.

No expense is spared, no detail skipped. A tennis pro watches 
Mr. Steinberg play doubles with his son and two other young 
men. There are a StairMaster and Trotter in the master 
bedroom.

Resplendent in his cocoon, Mr. Steinberg does one of the two 
things he says he does best -- thinking. (The other, he says, is 
managing.) "I think with simple clarity," he declared. A 
favorite topic: How to defeat aging and death.

"I have this theory that death is a genetic disease," he said. 
"There is no religious, preordained reason to die." And, he 
added, it should be possible to stop aging by creating a 
continuous supply of new body cells and reviving aging cells.

SOME cells are genetically programmed to grow old and die at 
a particular time. Others, like a minute fraction of cells that 
make antibodies, are potentially immortal.

So, Mr. Steinberg reasons, the information to combat aging 
and death is really all there in the genes. And with gene 
therapy and all the advances coming from molecular genetics, 
nothing, he insists, is impossible.

Mr. Steinberg is also fascinated with human growth hormone, 
which actually seems to change body composition. Volunteers 
injected with the hormone lost flab and grew muscle, 
essentially rolling back the clock on their bodies. A derivative 
of vitamin A, retinoic acid, rejuvenates aging skin cells, he 
said.

The program fits well with Mr. Steinberg's general philosophy 
of how to run his business. "Occasionally, when people come 
to us, they say, 'You're a seed fund,' " Mr. Steinberg said. "We 
say, 'No, we're not.' The basis of Healthcare Investment is to 
conceive of where medicine is going before anyone else thinks 
of it and to have a fund that produces above-average returns 
by creating whole new categories of companies." The concept, 
he added, "is very, very bold and obviously risky."

The trick, of course, is to hit on the right ideas. Mr. Steinberg 
reads voraciously and, as he says, "optically scans" journals 
like Science and Nature, clipping articles that fire his 
imagination. But, he said, he has often thought that one good 
way to get ideas for new companies would be to "bring in a 
group of smart kids, who have not been taught what's 
impossible, and ask them for suggestions."

He created Diacrin Inc., which is experimenting with making 
cells that can be readily transplanted into patients without 
the need for drugs that suppress the immune system. 
Another company, Medimmune Inc., is making drugs that kill 
cells infected with viruses or that are cancerous. And 
Cytomed uses immune-system hormones to combat 
inflammatory and immune-system disorders. Pharmavene 
Inc. is making drugs to treat cocaine and other addictions. All 
these, too, are still in the experimental stage.

In forming companies, Mr. Steinberg said he is guided by his 
belief that

health care  and medicine are rapidly changing and that "after 
the year 2000, the players will change."

In addition, Mr. Steinberg looks for products to cut costs. "A 
lot of people in the industry are afraid of the impact of the 
compelling demand to reduce

health care  costs, without recognizing it as an extraordinary 
business opportunity," he said. He always asks whether a new 
technology will reduce costs. "If I don't get the right answer, I 
get out." And not only is that good business, Mr. Steinberg 
said, it is "what's likely to happen, and what morally and 
ethically ought to happen."

For Mr. Steinberg, a company is a success only if it is a roaring 
success. "We don't view anything as having paid off until it 
reaches $1 billion in sales," he said. So far, Mr. Steinberg said, 
it is too soon to say which of his companies will pay off in his 
terms. The first handful went public just over a year ago.

In the meantime, while he waits for the first burbles from the 
fountain of youth, Mr. Steinberg plans to keep his own body 
going with spare parts, if necessary. One of his companies, 
Biotransplant Inc., of Charlestown, Mass., is growing specially 
bred miniature  swine.  Their organs, Mr. Steinberg said, will 
eventually be accepted by humans without the need for 
powerful drugs to suppress the immune system.

MR. STEINBERG confidently predicts rapid progress in the 
biotransplant research, led by Dr. David Sachs, formerly of the 
National Institutes of Health.

"This is not something that is going to be 10 or 20 years in the 
future," Mr. Steinberg said. "I would say there's a 75 percent 
probability -- but not 100 -- that sometime in the next 6 to 
24 months we'll see the first human studies."

Although the company is meant to supply parts for people 
who now receive human organs, Mr. Steinberg puckishly 
envisioned using the organs himself.

He says he has told Dr. Sachs, who is in his mid-50's, "At the 
age of 70, I am going to take your hand in mine and you and I 
will walk into Massachusetts General Hospital. We will get a 
room with two beds and we'll both have a prophylactic heart 
and kidney transplant."

Forever young.

WHAT VENTURE CAPITAL CAN DO

WALLACE  STEINBERG is high on the power of venture capital. 
His creation of Biotransplant, he said, illustrates what can be 
done.

It all began with some simpleminded discussions at his 
Healthcare Investment Corporation. Mr. Steinberg said to his 
colleagues: "Suppose there is a way of taking an animal organ 
and being able to use it in a human without 
immunosuppression. Is that possible?" If it was possible, Mr. 
Steinberg reasoned, it should represent the future of organ 
transplants, solving the perennial problem of the shortage of 
human organs. He estimates that it would save 30,000 to 
300,000 lives a year and make transplants much less 
expensive as well. Even if he charged $50,000 for an animal 
organ, which he thinks is likely, Mr. Steinberg still says the 
organs will save money by alleviating the need for expensive 
immunosuppressive drugs and the elaborate network to 
distribute scarce human organs.

Mr. Steinberg began asking scientists who the best person 
would be to direct such a seemingly outlandish effort. From 
them, he got the name of Dr. David Sachs, a leading researcher 
at the National Institutes of Health. And the best medical 
center to do the clinical work, he learned, was the 
Massachusetts General Hospital.

Next, Mr. Steinberg lured Dr. Sachs away from the N.I.H. by 
putting together a faculty position at Harvard Medical School 
and the Massachusetts General Hospital and a position as head 
of the scientific advisory board of the nascent company.

Then Mr. Steinberg hired a a chief executive, Dr. Elliot 
Lebowitz, who was division manager of New England 
Nuclear's medical products division and a vice president for 
research and development at C.R. Bard Inc. Within six months, 
Mr. Steinberg had invested $6 million in Biotransplant and 
gotten the Sandoz Corporation, a leader in transplant 
medicine, to chip in an additional $5 milllion. He had also set 
up collaborative agreements with Massachusetts General and 
Charles River Breeding Laboratories. And he had acquired and 
renovated an 1860 building to house the company, just 50 
yards from Massachusetts General, and hired top scientists to 
conduct the clinical research.

"We formed what to my knowledge is the first company ever 
created in this field," Mr. Steinberg said. "We have the most 
important program in the world. And it took putting those 
pieces together to make it happen."

But would such a research progam have happened anyway, 
with talented scientists who happened to get their money 
from Federal grants?

"Absolutely not," Mr. Steinberg said. "It was seen as too 
visionary."

GRAPHIC: Photos:  Wallace  Steinberg, chairman of Healthcare 
Investmen; At 58, in search of maturity. (Photographs by 
John Sotomayor/The New York Times)

TYPE: Biography

SUBJECT: Terms not available 

-- 
habs@acf3.NYU.EDU
habs@gnu.ai.mit.edu
habs@well.sf.ca.us
habs@panix.com


--------------------------------------------------------------------


From: eder@hsvaic.boeing.com (Dani Eder)
Subject: Re:  The Nanotech Singularity
To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu
Date: Wed, 4 Nov 92 09:19:42 CST

Tim May emntioned two things in his last message that I have to
comment on.  These were the controlled fusion 'product desert', and
nanotech funding itself through intermediate products.

I am aware of two approaches to controlled fusion that are different
than the mainline Tokamak proposal, and which have the potential
of drastically reducing the difficulty of achieving fusion.  These
approaches make physical sense to me as a person with a BS in
physics, and I have talked with principals in both research projects
to make sure I understand the physics.

The first is called the 'Plasmak', or plasma torus approach.  In a
Tokamak you have a current running the long way around the donut
in the plasma.  This current generates a magnetic field which helps
to contain the plasma.  Currents going the short way around the
donut (through the hole and around the cross section), are carries
by solid conductors.  In the plasma torus approach, the circumfrential
currents are also carried in the plasma.  Now you are not limited
to the maximum current a solid conductor can manage or a solid
magnet can withstand before exploding.  In fact the resistive heating
of the currents makes the plasma hotter, which is a good thing.
The plasma donut is floating in a neutral gas (on the time scale
of the fusino burn).  Mechanical gas pressure then compresses and
heats the plasma to reach the fusion point (both the neutral gas
and plasma follow the same PVT gas relationaships under compression).
The plasma burn then heats the surrounding gas, which is used to
generate power.

The trick is generating the plasma with currents running the proper
ways.  If you do a literature search an/or patent search under the
name Paul M. Koloc, you will find details on how to do this.

The second approach is 'electric fusion'.  The principal is this:
Set up a chamber with electrons bouncing inside a magnetic field
in a radial direction.  The chamber is roughly spherical.  The
electrons will be denser in the center, and form a negative potential
well.  Make the potential well 100keV deep.  Now drop deuterons
into this potential well.  As they drop, they pick up kinetic
energy.  If you get two D-T particles to collide, they will have
200 keV energy with respect to one another, which is enough to get
fusion.  If a particle misses, it just continues to bounce around
until it does hit something.  For a measure of how hard it is to
contain 100 keV electrons, think on the fact that your television
deflects 30keV electrons in the picture tube through a pretty big
angle.  The advantage of this fusion concept over the Tokamak
is like this: the Tokamak tries to directly deflect D-T particles.
electrons are much lighter, and thus easier to deflect with
magnetic fields.  If you contain the electrons and use them to
contain the deuterons-tritium, you make the job easier by the
ratio of charge/mass of electrons to deuterons (3600:1).

The work on this concept has been funded by DARPA, although it is
about to be cut off, as the current head of DARPA thinks that fusion
should be done by the Dept. of Energy (where it will get swamped by
the Tokamak herd).  I am on the list to get the final report in a
month or two when it comes out.

On nanotech funding:  I don't see nanotechnology as being devloped
as a separate field from other engineering.  Instead, I see it as
arising at the endpoint of a technical evolution that is already
occurring, and which has plenty of economic motiviation.  One example
is the steady decrease in feature size in micro-electronics.  As long 
as there is competitive advantage to be had from shrinking electronic
components, there will be lots of money thrown in that direction.
This includes the development of atomic-scale tools; if for no other
reason than to have things like tunneling microscopes and such to
characterize the microcircuits.

In the biotech regime, there is lots of money in the health field,
which ensures that large amounts of research money goes into
understanding proteins, DNA, etc.

Diamond coatings is a rapidly developing field, because people understand
the physical advantages of that material, and now that there are
reasonable methods of depositing the stuff, it is only a matter
of time before diamond-reinforced materials are available.

Today we can't put together the first assembler.  But think about this:
In 25-30 years, we have modeled the assembler in our 1000x more powerful
workstations in our lab.  We use a DNA sequencer to generate 1000
codon chunks of instructions to make the assembler proteins.  The
chunks are shotgunned into yeast where a few end up with the right
DNA incorporated.  The yeast make usable quantities of assembler
parts.  We dump some of the assembler parts onto a surface, and
use scanning tunneling microscope- based tweezers to position the
components, while we flush in chemicals to cause the parts to 
react to merge, or alternatively just mechanically assemble the
parts.  

These steps are just extrapolations of today's technologies, and
we just have to wait until the computer power to model the design,
and the other tools get good enough.  At that point, it should be
a 1-5 lab scale project (i.e. at most a cross-department collaboration
in a large university) to get the first assemblers built.  As usual
grad students will do most of the grunt work.

Dani Eddr
Dani Eder


--------------------------------------------------------------------


From: habs@acf3.NYU.EDU (Harry A. B. Shapiro)
Subject: Forbes on NYC Subway - Don't let gov. run a business
To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu
Date: Sun, 8 Nov 1992 15:22:47 -0500 (EST)

Below Forbes details many of the failures of the NYC subway - most of
which if not all will not be surprising to readers of this list.

What makes me even more angry however, is that as the article points
out that technology good go alone way in making things better (even if
no jobs are removed).

The following text is presented for personal educational use only. It
is not to be copied or otherwise used in a manner which violates
rights of its copyright holders. This letter serves only as private
communication to readers of the Extropian Mailing List.
_________________________________________________________________

Copyright 1992 Forbes, Inc.

Forbes

November 9, 1992

SECTION: SIDE LINES; Pg. 10

LENGTH: 184 words

HEADLINE: "The union wouldn't like it"

BYLINE: James W. Michaels, EDITOR

BODY:

THE DISTINGUISHED PHOTOGRAPHER Claudio Edinger was shooting pictures
for FORBES at Manhattan's 34th Street and 7th Avenue subway station
when he was hailed by a subway system bureaucrat.  Recalls Edinger:
"'Did I have permission to shoot?' the bureaucrat demanded.
Fortunately, I did.  Why did I need permission to take pictures on
public property?  Because the unions run the system, and they don't
want the public to see photographs of filthy, run-down premises.  I
had had similar experiences in Sandinista Nicaragua and in Brazil
under military dictatorship, and I realized the New York subway is
just like a dictatorial system: The bosses want to keep the public in
the dark as far as possible." Edinger politely asked a platform
sweeper if he could photograph him. "'No, no,' the sweeper told me.
'The union wouldn't like it.'"

Because the union, not management, is the boss of this so- called
public service, fares rise faster than inflation and yet the system
soaks up more and more public largesse.  Jerry Flint's " Subway
robbery," with photographs by Edinger, begins on page 134.

Forbes, November 9, 1992



Copyright 1992 Forbes, Inc.

Forbes

November 9, 1992

SECTION: LAW AND ISSUES; Pg. 134

LENGTH: 2061 words

HEADLINE: Subway robbery

BYLINE: By Jerry Flint

HIGHLIGHT: If you really believe that increased government spending
solves problems, read this story.

BODY:

TIME: morning rush hour.  Scene: the underground platform of the West
103rd Street station of the New York subway systems Broadway local.
It's gritty and hot, but the riders are accustomed to that.  What has
them in a foul mood today is that no train has appeared in the past 20
minutes.  Their already taut nerves pushed to the anger point, a good
part of the mob marches upstairs and shouts at the token seller,
demanding passes so they can walk seven blocks down to the express
station at 96th Street.

Either because she is terminally stupid or because she has total
contempt for her customers, the token seller sits calmly in her
bulletproof Plexiglas booth, seeing nothing, refusing to act.
Finally, a subway cop takes the passes and hands them out.  But the
ill will lingers.  It's not the delays, New York's beleaguered subway
users expect delays, it's the clerk's deliberate not-my-responsibility
attitude.

Is it any wonder that the voters become skeptical these days when
politicians promise them heaven if only they will pay a bit more in
taxes?  New York City's taxpayers are already taxed to the ears to
subsidize their filthy subways -- with upstate New Yorkers and even
the federal taxpayer also kicking in.  And fat little they get out of
it.

New York City's transit agency manages the subway and bus transit
systems and runs an operating budget of $ 2.7 billion a year,
excluding capital spending.  Of that, about 20% goes for power,
maintenance materials, liability and things like that.  The other 80%,
or $ 2.2 billion, is wages, salaries and fringes.  Total employment is
around 44,000 (that excludes 5,000 subway police), handling 1.5
billion passenger trips a year in what should be a highly automated
business.  Twenty-five years ago fewer workers, just 40,000, handled
more riders, 2.1 billion passenger trips.

The system's operating income, mostly from fares, at $ 1.25 a ride
currently, is about $ 1.7 billion, or $ 1 billion short of the
operating costs.  New York State and local subsidies fund about 90% of
that shortfall.  Federal subsidies make up the rest.

Are taxpayers, from the schoolteacher in Montana to a farmer outside
Syracuse, subsidizing the New York City subway rider?  Not really.

If it were run like a real business, the subway system could get by
with maybe two-thirds of those 44,000 employees.  So the taxpayer
aren't really subsidizing the subway.  They are paying the salaries
and generous fringe benefits for that snotty West 103rd Street transit
clerk and thousands like her, who owe their livelihood not to the fact
that they are needed but to the fact that they belong to a powerful
union that holds the world's greatest city to ransom.

Let's look at the numbers.

A train operator makes $ 50,000 a year.  A conductor, who is the
second guy on the train, the one who leans out to see if the doors are
clear, makes $ 40,000.  A token seller makes $ 33,000, a mop-and-broom
guy or gal makes $ 31,000.  Additional labor costs -- Social Security,
pension costs, medical insurance -- run $ 7,000 to $ 10,000 per
worker.  These are the figures given by the system, by the way; actual
costs are probably somewhat higher.

That token clerk?  She gets $ 33,000 for breaking a $ 20 bill.  This
isn't rocket scientist work.  A bank teller handles much more
complicated transactions and gets $ 18,000 a year with little job
security.  Yet these $ 18,000-a-year tellers and others like them must
ride the subways to work; so they are taxed to pay people who earn
nearly double what they do and do not work as hard.

There are 3,837 of these token sellers, pulling down at average $
40,690 a head (pay, plus those other costs), for a total of $ 156
million.  Any modern, automatic system selling tickets or electronic
debit fare cards out of a machine -- and they've been available for
years in subway systems from San Francisco to Washington to Paris to
Tokyo -- would reduce the number of people needed, probably by half.
You could easily cut $ 100 million off the wage bill by modernizing
the token selling system.

Why doesn't New York's Transit Authority management offer large
volumes of tokens at a discount to loyal merchants, who would retail
them to riders along with newspapers and lottery tickets and thus cut
the frustrating wait in line to buy tokens?  Because until very
recently, the union would not allow it.

Over 35 years, from 1954 to 1989, New York's transit workers' pay went
up 123%, after adjusting for inflation.  In real terms, therefore, the
average wage more than doubled.  Meanwhile, the average American
worker's paycheck went up 14%, adjusted for inflation.

Productivity?  Measured in revenue miles per employee, the transit
system workers' productivity went up 5%.  That's not 5% a year, but 5%
in toto over 35 years.

Guess what happened?  The system sank deep into the red, reaching ever
deeper into the pockets of taxpayers in Arizona and Georgia as well as
in New York City.  Over those 35 years the subsidies grew from very
little to $ 1 billion. A clear transfer of income from every American
to a relative handful of workers. Says Dick Netzer, professor of
economics and public administration at New York University and a
student of the New York transit system: "Most of the subsidies [from
1954 to 1989] went to wages."

Well, why should subway workers make good money?  It's not terribly
pleasant work, and it costs plenty to exist in New York City.  Wages
aren't the only problem in the swollen labor costs.  Productivity is
also a problem. McKinsey & Co., the management consulting firm, made a
study two years ago and concluded that in comparison with other
cities' transit systems, New York's big cost bloat was not in wages
per se but in work rules and fringes.

What are these fringes and work rules that caught the attention of
McKinsey's researchers?  Here are some of the more obvious ones:

Swing pay. In transit you have a morning rush hour and an evening rush
hour and much less demand in between.  A practical way to handle peak
loads would be a small core of full-time operating people and lots of
part-timers.  Other urban transit systems have 10% to 15% part-timers,
which holds down the pension, vacation and other fringe costs, too.
But New York's transport workers' unions have successfully fought the
use of part-time workers; the New York transit system uses very few or
none.  Instead, a New York bus driver, for example, is on call for 11
hours a day but actually works only 7 hours.  But he or she is paid
for 9 hours.  Nine hours' pay for 7 hours' work.  Most other transit
systems don't pay for swing time.

Vacation. After three years on the job, every city transportation
worker gets four weeks' paid vacation.  At a typical New York City
bank, hardly a model of labor exploitation, a clerical worker must
work 15 years to get four weeks off. Other cities give their transit
workers only two weeks off after four years.

Sick pay. In New York, 12 paid sick days.  If they get swing time,
they are paid for nine hours -- extra pay for a day they don't work.

Night pay. In the other cities that McKinsey looked at, night pay ran
between 4 cents and 10 cents an hour above the standard day rate.  In
New York City the shift premium came to $ 1.27 an hour more.

Manning. All New York subway trains have two-member crews at all
times; sometimes you may need two -- a peak hours, or with curved
stations.  But some experts argue that single-manning is possible a
good part of the time.  The Washington, D.C. and San Francisco subway
systems already use such one-man crews.

Some of the New York system's costs are tied to the 24-hour- a-day
service, meaning it takes enormous costs -- in labor and equipment --
to move a few riders.  McKinsey's researchers figured that the real
cost of carrying a late-night rider in from the outer boroughs as
$29.12.

Is bad management partly to blame?  One of the people who worked on
that McKinsey study says this: "Some of the best managers I ever met
are in the [New York] subway system.  The crap they have to put up
with its enormous.  The riders are always belligerent and think the
worst.  The press is always talking about overpaid managers, when in
private business they could have earned more. And labor is always
recalcitrant."

But you can't blame labor, either.  We all try to maximize our income
by whatever means are at our disposal.  The difference is that in
transit systems -- and educational systems and other public services
-- wages and policies aren't set by the market.  They are set by
politicians.  The bottom line of politicians is not efficiency.  It is
votes.  the board that runs the system, the Metropolitan
Transportation Authority, is made up of 17 political appointes
handpicked by local politicians and the governor.  Try to close a
station, and local community groups will raise hell.  So will the
union leaders, who (correctly) equate station closings with less
demand for their workers.

Try to increase revenues and make things easier for frequent riders by
selling people tokens at discount (like 20 tokens for $ 20 rather than
$ 1.25 each), to cut the lines, and liberals will object that this
would only benefit the rich, because who else but the rich would have
$ 20 in their pocket?  And you wouldn't want to have zoned fares --
whereby fares are proportional to distance traveled -- because that
would be hurting the "geographically disadvantaged."

David Gunn has run Washington, D.C.'s subway system since 1991.
Before that, from 1984 to 1990, Gunn ran New York's Transit Authority.
He did a remarkable job of rebuilding a transit system that was
literally falling apart, ridding the system of graffiti and raising $
8 billion for new cars, track and other sorely needed capital
equipment to replace assets that had been run down over the years, as
revenues were diverted into workers' generous paychecks and pension
plans.

FORBES asked Gunn: When airlines have troubles, they lower fares and
work to improve themselves to get more money coming in; why can't the
subways do that? Gunn replied: "Airlines can go bankrupt.  That
cleansing process doesn't occur here [in the subways] .  Once you
declare something an 'essential service,' that option [of bankruptcy]
is gone."

It's easy to become churlish about such situations, but fairness
compels us to pay tribute to the New York subway system's harassed
managers.  they do what they can to improve things at the margin.  A
few good things are happening. More subway cops are in the stations
and seem to be doing a better job.

Subway maps are being installed on the platforms, where riders need
them. There are plans to upgrade the system's public address systems,
which now blast totally incomprehensible messages.  An automatic fare
system is being tested, and installation is to begin in 1993.

In an attempt to be more responsive to its customers, the transit
authority has recently appointed station managers and put their
pictures and phone numbers on the walls of the stations.  A FORBES
reporter called his station manager to complain about the unresponsive
clerk that morning at 103rd Street.  The reporter ended up leaving his
number with someone.  A miracle happened.  The station manager, Brian
Kaufman, actually called back.  He apologized, agreed the token seller
was wrong, said he'd make sure instructions were clearer so it
wouldn't happen again.

The fact, however, is that there is little he can do to discipline the
offender.  She owes her job not to the customers or to the management
but to her union and the politicians who bow and scrape to it.

This is a story about New York, but it's also about most goods and
services provided by the government, any government: They tend to be
grossly overpriced and grossly inefficient.  Pumping money into
education gave us better-paid teachers, not necessarily better
education.  Pumping money into the war on crime gave up better-paid
cops, not safer streets.  And pumping nearly $ 1 billion a year in
subsidies into New York City's mass transit system has given New
Yorkers better-paid transit workers, but not better transit.

It's what happens when citizens look to the government to solve their
problems instead of dealing with them through the marketplace.

GRAPHIC: Photograph 1, Taken for a ride, The taxpayers and fare payers
aren't really subsidizing the subway.  They are paying the salaries
and generous fringe benefits for thousands of unneeded workers.;
Photographs 2 and 3, Bathrooms are closed and converted, This one is
now a newsstand. Guess what happens?; Photograph 4, Gum in the works,
A transit system mop-and-broom guy or gal makes $ 31,000 a year, plus
over $ 7,000 in fringes.  With clean-up labor priced so high, it's no
surprise that the subways are so filthy.; Photograph 5, Drifters pass
the time, sprawl over seats, irritate the passengers and are difficult
to remove, In public works systems, wages and policies are set by
politicians. Their bottom line is not efficiency. It is votes.;
Photograph 6, Lining up to buy tokens, other cities' systems sell
electronic debit fare cards and tickets out of machines. But to
protect their 3,837 token seller members, New York's transit unions
have resisted machines.; Photographs 1 through 6 by Claudio
Edinger/Gamma-Liaison


--------------------------------------------------------------------


From: habs@acf3.NYU.EDU (Harry A. B. Shapiro)
Subject: Forbes on who Gov. weakens Afro-American community (Read This!)
To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu
Date: Sun, 8 Nov 1992 15:36:09 -0500 (EST)

	Showing Big Daddy the door

This is one of the most powerful "stories" about how the great
American Wellfare society has caused more harm than good. We all know
this to be "true" in our hearts, but here are the facts we need to
talk about how gov. programs have hurt the people who need the most
help!

The government that helps the least is the gov. that helps the most!

/Harry

The following text is presented for personal educational use only. It
is not to be copied or otherwise used in a manner which violates
rights of its copyright holders. This letter serves only as private
communication to readers of the Extropian Mailing List.
_________________________________________________________________

Forbes, November 9, 1992

Copyright 1992 Forbes, Inc.

Forbes

November 9, 1992

SECTION: LAW AND ISSUES; Pg. 149

LENGTH: 2386 words

HEADLINE: Showing Big Daddy the door

BYLINE: By Paul Klebnikov

HIGHLIGHT: Call it self-renewal, call it political conservatism.  Call
it what you will, there are growing signs that the American black
community no longer believes what its leaders and white liberals
preach.

BODY:

"EVER SINCE I was a girl I wanted to run my own business," says Pamela
Ferrell, a 33-year-old black woman in Washington, D.C.  "My
grandmother owned and operated a restaurant in Providence, R.I., and I
was involved in that ever since I was tall enough to look over the
counter."

IN 1980 Ferrell dropped out of college and estabished an African
hairbraiding salon called Cornrows & Co. in a black neighborhood of
Washington.  Today Cornrows does $ 500,000 in annual sales and boasts
of having trained 250 high-school- educated women in African
hair-styling techniques.

But Ferrell faced and faces tremendous obstacles.  Because of her skin
color? No.  Because of the same factors that inhibit and handicap
white entrepreneurs: increasing bureaucratic interference in every
facet of their business.  "The climate in this city is antibusiness,"
she complains.  "Everything is oriented toward government and
regulation."

Ferrell and her husband, TaalibDin Uqdah, were fined and nearly shut
down when the local cosmetology board complained that Cornrows
employees had not received standard cosmetology training.  Ferrell
claimed that the training, which would have cost several thousand
dollars per student, was irrelevant to the skill of African
hair-braiding.  The case is currently on hold, pending the resolution
of a suit brought by Cornrows against Washington, D.C. and the
consideration of a new bill before the city council on cosmetology
regulation. The legal bills mount.

"My difficulties have shown me firsthand how government works," says
her gravel-voiced, bespectacled husband.  In reaction he is running as
an Independent candidate for city council.  His platform?  School
choice, term limitation for politicians, cutting government
expenditures, lower taxes and looser regulation.

Do Ferrell and Uqdah sound like conservatives?  In many ways they are.
Along with many other African-Americans, they have embraced not the
current black leadership but the older ideas of Booker T. Washington,
Marcus Garvey and Malcolm X.  A hot new seller at sidewalk booksellers
in New York City, for instance, is Black Economics. Written by black
nationalist educator Jawanza Kunjufu, the book gives advice on how to
draw up a family budget, how to accumulate savings, how to invest in
mutual funds and how to start you own business.

Since 1965 federal, state and local governments have poured an
estimated $ 2.5 trillion into antipoverty programs.  Yet, even while
demanding more money, the loudest proponents of these programs claim
that poverty is increasing.  An excellent case can be made that
antipoverty programs have institutionalized poverty.

"There's been a massive destruction of the social and moral
infrastructure of black society," fumes Robert Woodson Sr., a black
sociologist and president of the National Center for Neighborhood
Enterprise, a Washington-based think tank.  "Slick academic social
planners have imposed their will on the black community. The community
was essentially raped.  It's the worst case of being hurt by the
helping hand I can think of."

While the white liberal-dominated media continue to give a platform
chiefly to those African-Americans who demand yet more government
programs to help the poor, more and more American blacks are turning
away from these self-appointed advocates.  A survey from the Joint
Center for Political & Economic Studies found that 33% of blacks,
especially young blacks, considered themselves "conservative"; another
30% considered themselves to be "moderate."

While prominent black "leaders" and their white liberal allies oppose
the death penalty as racist, a plurality of the polled blacks
supported the death penalty and opined that welfare mothers should not
receive additional benefits if they continue having children.  To the
horror of the powerful U.S.  educational lobby, 88% of the polled
blacks who had heard of the concept of school choice favored it.

Even some old-line civil rights activists are stressing traditional
values. Listen to Roy Innis, head of the Congress of Racial Equality.

"The Civil Rights Revolution in the 1950s and 1960s was a victory, and
we won," he says.  "But many black political leaders today are not
aware of their victory.  Racism is still regarded as the only evil.
The new battlefield, however, is not against evils external to our
community [such as racism], but against evils internal to it:
black-on-black crime, drugs, lack of discipline, poverty of values."

The Age of Aquarius was not kind to black America, and many black
pastors see white middle-class permissiveness as contributing to the
disintegration of the traditional moral fabric of black society.
Black churches are often much tougher than are whites with freeloaders
and antisocial types.

Walter Williams, a black economics professor at George Mason
University, points out that values championed by black parents and
churches are often undermined by the perverse economic incentives of
government programs.  People receiving welfare, Medicaid, public
housing benefits or other types of aid are often cut off from these
funds if they get a job or accumulate savings. Effectively, poor
people who try to improve their condition face marginal tax rates of
up to 100%.

But isn't government intervention needed for a society that lacks its
own self-help institutions?  Perhaps because they do not have a high
opinion of organized religion, most liberals overlook the pivotal role
played by the churches.  Black churches are spearheading a lot of the
economic revival in the inner cities.  The more enterprising are
establishing credit unions, food co-ops and co-ops to trade in
second-hand clothing.  Others are getting into real estate
development.

St. Stephens Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky., for example, is using
local unemployed workers to help build a large auditorium; the church
also bought a dozen computers and is using professionals from the
congregation to tutor neighborhood children in their use.  Detroit's
Hartford Memorial Baptist Church fixed up its neighborhood, pushed out
the crack dealers, and is developing a local commercial strip.

In Meridian, Miss. the Greater Christ Temple Church has established a
kind of kibbutz to get its 200 members off welfare.  The pastor,
Bishop Luke Edwards, declares: "Our people could be just as successful
as any other race, but our leaders have allowed us to be entrapped by
government handouts."

Edwards' self-sufficiency program began in 1977, when the church
organized cooperative food purchases at wholesale prices.  The church
later bought a local supermarket and even began growing its own
produce.  Today the church owns 4,000 acres of farmland, 8 tractors,
1,000 head of cattle, 2 meat-processing plants and 3 restaurants.
While 96% of the congregation were on welfare or food stamps in 1977,
today no one is.

Because of their bias toward government programs, the media harp on
black problems.  And there are plenty of them.  One- third of all
blacks live below the poverty line.  In 1989, 43% of children lived in
poverty, and the number may have increased.  Nearly two-thirds of all
black children are born to unwed mothers.

Between 1969 and 1988 roughly 195,000 black men and women were
murdered, mostly by other blacks.

But what the media rarely concentate on is that the majority of
American blacks have made impressive progress over the past several
decades.  A solid black middle class has emerged.  Between 1981 and
1991 the total income of blacks grew 38%, from $ 209 billion to $ 288
billion, faster than that of the white population.  Over a quarter of
black families earn incomes above the American average.  In 1987, 43%
of all black householders owned their own homes; the number of
black-owned businesses was 424,000, nearly double the number a decade
earlier.

How do you bridge the gap between the successful blacks and those left
behind?  Reverend J. Alfred Smith Jr., co-paster of the Allen Temple
Baptist Church in Oakland, Calif., says: "Our church is located in the
heart of the low-income area of Oakland, but now 50% of our members
are commuting from suburbia."

Smith's congregation is tapping its talent.  Joseph Villa is president
of the church's credit union.  Villa, 63, retired as a master sergeant
in the Army, established a real estate brokerage and was elected
president of the Oakland Board of Realtors.  In 1980 he joined the
Allen Baptist Church.  Within a few years he was asked to take over
the church's fledgling credit union.  Says Villa: "They had made a lot
of bad loans, and they weren't following the proper procedure for
making loans.  The church had the choice to either shut it down or
really change things." Villa changed things.  Just $ 294,000 in 1986,
the credit union's assets are $ 1.9 million today.  Every Sunday and
three evenings of the week, Villa drives his Cadillac from his Oakland
Hills home to take care of the church's credit union.

The church makes use of other talented members of its congregation,
who include a chemist from the Lawrence Livermore Laboratories,
lawyers, doctors and businessmen.  Many give afterschool tutorials to
several hundred neighborhood children or work to rehabilitate former
prison inmates.  And once a month scores of male parishioners, young
and old, gather for a breakfast to exchange views and advice.

Reverend (and now Democratic congressman) Floyd Flake was once a
marketing analyst at Xerox and dean of students at Boston University.
He decided to get a divinity degree and, in 1976, become pastor of the
Allen A.M.E. Church in Queens, N.Y.  Flake soon turned his run-down
neighborhood into a little tornado of enterprise, increasing his
church's membership more than fivefold.  Using bank loans and a bit of
equity from the church, he established a home care agency, an old
people's home, a bus company and a fuel co-op.  He also set up a
private school across the street, attended by 480 neatly uniformed
children. Next he bought some nearby property, where he developed a
small commercial strip with 17 business, including a dental office, a
law firm, an insurance company and a dry cleaning establishment.
Counting donations, leases and fees, the church's revenues grew from
about $ 250,000 in 1976 to $ 21 million last year.

Far from encouraging this kind of enterprise, government regulation
often frustrates it.  The missionaries of Charity (Mother Teresa's
group) worked to rehabilitate two buildings in the South Bronx for the
homeless, but gave up the project when the government insisted that
the buildings be handicapped-accessible and equipped with elevators.

In Washington, D.C. a bootblack named Ego Brown started a business
network of a few dozen teenagers and homeless people, whom he provided
with shoeshine kits and tuxedos and sent out to shine shoes.  An
archaic law prohibiting bootblacks from doing business on the street
drove Brown's operation underground; it too some two years to rescind
the law.

Complains Harlem's Reverend Calvin Butts: "This community has become
the dumping ground for every social service in the world.  Harlem's
salvation is not more AIDS hostels, drug rehab centers, homeless
shelters or low-income housing, but more businesses and middle-class
people who buy condos or co-ops."

The U.S. Secretary of Housing & Urban Development, Jack Kemp, is
trying to transfer public housing to tenant management and eventually
to tenant ownership. "I don't think people should be forced to live on
the government's plantation," he says.  "I think it's true what a
black congressman told me, that whoever controls your home, controls
your life."

Kemp cites as a better way Kenilworth-Parkside, a once run- down,
crime-ridden development in Washington.  In the late 1970s the
464-unit project became so neglected that the drug trade flourished on
its streets and heat and hot water were often unavailable for days at
a time.

The tenants formed an association to push for their rights and chose
as their leader Kimi Gray, a single mother of five.  Gray faced
resistance from the local bureaucrats but got support from HUD, and
the tenants finally negotiated an agreement to manage the development
themselves.  They got all residents to sign a contract to maintain
stricter rules of conduct.  those households that violated the rules
by selling drugs or engaging in vandalism were evicted.  HUD chipped
in with an estimated $ 28 million to rehabilitate the dilapidated
housing complex, and now it is financing its conversion into co-ops.

To keep order, the tenants association instituted a curfew (9:30 p.m.
on weekdays and midnight on weekends).  It also established a string
of activities, from a football league for the boys to day care and job
counseling for the adults.  Result: a neighborhood that maintains
standards.  "You can't do nothing without someone snitching on you,"
says Tony Starr, a 16- year-old resident.  "It keeps everyone
positive."

But Kenilworth-Parkside is an exception.  Kemp's home ownership
program has only recently received funding from Congress, and so far
only a few thousand residential units have been slated for
privatization.

Nevertheless, it seems clear that the are powerful forces of
self-renewal at work in the black community, forces that the
politicians and the media prefer to ignore.

Says Tony Brown, producer of the public TV talk show Tony Brown's
Journal: "Most of the resources have gone to the black ruling class.
It's been a pattern of simply giving money to certain organizations
and then you're not boycotted or picketed.  It's the old
management-union relationship: if you take care of certain guys in the
union, you don't have a strike."

In agreement is Elizabeth Wright, publisher of a New York- based black
newsletter called Issues & Views: "Although the black political elite
and old institutions like the NAACP give lip servcie to self-help . .
. an NAACP has nothing to gain from blacks' developing a strong
capitalist class."

Wright adds of the mainstream black politicians and organizations:
"There whole source of power is a dependent race of people." What they
forget is that in winning the battle for civil rights, they paved the
way for the dependent people to become independent.

GRAPHIC: Photograph 1, Reverend Floyd Flake of the Allen A.  M. E.
Church, A $ 21 million church enterprise.; Photograph 2, Abyssinian
Baptist Church's Reverend Calvin Butts; Photographs 3 and 4, Self-help
at the Allen A.M.E. Church, Single mothers' class, preschool care.;
Photographs 1 through 4 by Rex Miller



-- 
habs@acf3.NYU.EDU
habs@gnu.ai.mit.edu
habs@well.sf.ca.us
habs@panix.com


--------------------------------------------------------------------


From: more@chaph.usc.edu (Max More)
Subject: Cancel party plans
To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu
Date: Sun, 8 Nov 92 21:03:45 PST

With regret I feel I must cancel my earlier New Year's extro-party
invitation.  There has been far too much shooting by gangs right outside
our house.  It seems that this area has lately become contested
territory between the 18th St gang and some other group.  There have
been two major shootouts in three days.  THe body count is one - they
don't seem ot be very good shots.  Last night (3am, the car carrying the
shooters stopped immediately outside our house, and they fired at someone
hiding behind my housemate's vehicle.  If I'd only had a rocket-launcher...

If there is anyone in the Southern California area who is lives in a safer 
neighborhood and who is willing to host a party, please let me know.  I
would be happy to help with organization.

Regretfully,

Max More		more@usc.edu		AMIX:MMORE
Executive Director
Extropy Institute (ExI)



--------------------------------------------------------------------


From: kwaldman@tanstaafl.extropy1.sai.com (Karl M Waldman)
Subject: Nov IEEE COMPUTER Molecular Computing
To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 92 21:29 EST


Re:Table of Contents from November 1992 IEEE Computer Magazine  
Special Issue on "Molecular Computing"

        It will probably take me weeks to read this so I'll post the
        TOC for your enjoyment. Glancing over these articles and seeing
        the number of organizatoins working on these leads
        me to believe that we might see "basic molecular machines"
        sooner than we think.  [All typos are mine]

        Articles

        6       Guest Editor's Introduction
                Molecular Computing Paradigms
                Michael Conrad

        11 Molecular Computing: The Lock Key Paradigm
                Michael Conrad
        The powerful information-processing capabilities of biological
        systems derive from molecular mechanisms unique to carbon polymers.
        This article discusses how these mechanisms can combine to yield
        networks that perform useful computational functions.

        22 Biologic Computational Building Blocks
        Myles H. Capstick, W.P.Liam Marnane, Ronald Pethig
        The electron kinetic behavior of enzymes controls cell bioenergetics.
        It also defines a molecular-level logic that has evolved over 
        millions of years and may support future computational structures.

        30 Modelus for Molecular Computation:
        Conformational Automata in the Cytoskeleton
        Stuart Hameroff, Judith Dayhoff, Rafael Lahoz-Beltra, Alexei Samsonovich
        and Steen Rasmussen
        This article proposes computation within networks of filamentous
        polymers in the cell cytoskeleton. Information can be represented
        and transmitted via progagated conformational changes of the polymers'
        subunits.

        41 Interconnection-Free Biomolecular Computing
        Takafumi Aoki, Michitaka Kameyama, and Tatsuo Higuchi
        Interconnection problems limit current VLSI systems. Addressing this
        limitation, the authors describe a computing model based on the 
        massive natural parallelism between enzymes and their substrates.

        51 An approach to Computational Complexity:
        Nondiscrete Biomolecular Computing
        Nikolay Rambidi
        Nondiscrete biomolecular information processing devices can effectively
        solve some problems with high computational complexity - for example
        image processing operations such as contour enhancement and line
        extraction

        56 Protein-Based Optical Computing and Memories
        Robert Birge
        The retinal pigment rhodopsin helps vertebrates see in dim light.
        A similar biological material, the light-harvesting protein
        bacteriorhodopsin, shows promise for optical data storage
        and manipulation.

-----------------------------------------------
posted with out permission as a private communication to
the "extropians" group

Karl

Personal:kwaldman@tanstaafl.extropy1.sai.com
Business:kwaldman@bbn.com
Amix:kwaldman



--------------------------------------------------------------------


From: carlf@ai.mit.edu (Carl Feynman)
Subject: The Secret Money Market
To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 92 19:09:32 EST


This is a review of 

   "The Secret Money Market: Inside the World of Tax Evasion, Financial
   Fraud, Insider Trading, Money Laundering and Capital Flight." by
   Ingo Walter.  400 pp, 1989, Harper Business Press.  paperback.

This is a book about moving money between countries secretly.  It
contains many fascinating case studies, a how-to guide for opening a
Swiss bank account, and a description of the strategies and
counterstrategies of cryptofinanciers and governments.  

The author describes the rise and fall of various overseas cash
havens, like the Bahamas, Switzerland, and the Cayman Islands.  A
country with good banking secrecy laws attracts lots of money, and,
after a lag of about ten years, the attention of the US government,
which then attempts to choke off all the activities which might permit
its subjects to escape surveillance.  The Feds eventually win and the
secret money moves someplace else.  I'd love to know where it's going
right now, but of course I don't; bank havens don't advertise.

There is a tradeoff between secrecy and security.  If you give your
money to someone in another country, how do you know it will still be
there when you go to get it?  Even worse, what if you die and your
heirs have to get it?  The world financial system has come up with a
wide variety of institutions that fall at various points on the
secrecy/security spectrum.

The author is an economist, not a journalist, so the book is not as
lurid as the title might make you believe.  The case studies are based
on newspaper accounts, not personal interviews.  As a professional
economist, the author is obliged to provide a mathematical model of
the costs of secrecy.  I didn't find the model very enlightening, but
it's in an appendix, so you don't have to read it if you don't want
to.  The book is a second edition, originally published in 1985, and
apparently not much updated since then.  For example, it doesn't
include the more recent revelations of the Marcos family holdings.

This book is filled with useful hints for anyone planning to set up a
secret bank, a Temporary Autonomous Zone, or a simple overseas
tax-free acoount.  

--carlf

"Take only drugs prescribed for you by your boss or supervisor."



--------------------------------------------------------------------


From: hal@alumni.cco.caltech.edu (Hal Finney)
Subject: Re: How to recognize self awareness
To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu
Date: Sat, 14 Nov 92 08:33:04 PST

From: ddfr@aol.com

> I suppose a low tech version of my example would be a two way radio, turned
> on, with a fluent liar at the other end. It passes the Turing test. A
> conscious entity is involved, but the machine that "claims" to be self
> conscious isn't. 
> 
> Programs can lie, and liars can program.
> 
> David Friedman

The point of the Turing test is not whether the particular device you are
talking to (your radio, or the computer terminal in Turing's paper) is
intelligent, but whether you are interacting with an intelligent,
conscious being.  Turing is trying to answer the question, "can machines
think," and more specifically, "when would we be justified in saying that
a particular machine can think".  Saying that a midget could hide in the
computer box and fool us doesn't go to the heart of his argument.  You
have changed the conditions of his test in offering a living, _thinking_
human to create the responses.

The crux of the issue Turing has raised, IMO, is whether conversation
requires consciousness.  It's like the zombie issue that was brought up
earlier.  Is it logically possible for a zombie, one without
consciousness and self-awareness, to go through life without anyone
noticing this lack?  And more specifically, could a person lose his
self-awareness without it changing any of his actions?  By my use
of self-awareness, this would be impossible.

In the same way, I claim that conversation, being a specific, complex
form of information processing, cannot occur without self-awareness
happening as part of that information processing.  Your radio, or my
midget in the box, just serves to illustrate the correctness of the test.
The fact that this "system" was able to converse with me led me to
conclude that there was an intelligence conversing.  And I was right.

Hal
hal@alumni.caltech.edu


--------------------------------------------------------------------


From: pcm@cs.brown.edu (Peter C. McCluskey)
Subject: Re: human brain usage (was dolphin info (long))
To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 92 17:41:48 -0500

 pgf@srl03.cacs.usl.edu  (Phil G. Fraering) writes:
>That one was inexcusable. In revenge, I'll stipulate that it's
>possible that dolphins aren't really intelligent; possibly they use
>only 2 % of their brains; the rest, just like humans, is taken up
>by the Operating System.

 I don't know what this reference to an operating system is
intended to mean, but according to James Anderson, a professor
of Cognitive Science here at Brown, the rumors that humans use
only [2, 10, or 15] % of their brain are nonsense. Natural
selection does not tolerate that kind of waste. If there is
some waste, we don't understand the brain well enough to measure
it.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
  >> Peter McCluskey >> pcm@cs.brown.edu >>   Reunite Gondwanaland!
----------------------------------------------------------------------


--------------------------------------------------------------------


From: szabo@techbook.com (Nick Szabo)
Subject: Re: The Nanotech Singularity
To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 02:03:32 -0800 (PST)


Derek Zahn writes:

> I thought that D[rexler] would discuss some A.I. topics in the
> new book... no.  He wants computer CAD systems that warn designers
> if their designs are ludicrous ("unstable"), and that's a pretty
> interesting problem, but little call for software more advanced
> than the (pretty cool) MM2 molecular mechanics stuff is made.  How
> can I help? And make a living. 

We all must prune our search trees somewhere.  Drexler
is concentrating on the mechanical aspects of nanotech.  
A number of important topics are up to the rest of us to 
solve, to wit:

* Intermediate advances in biotech, lithography, etc.
* The actual design for a self-replicating universal 
  (or at least very flexible) constructor.  We want
  flexibility among a number of areas, including 
  shapes, materials, assemblies, etc. This is any 
  extremely tough problem, with few working on it.
* Control mechanisms and/or circuitry.  Once we get to
  the nanoscale our normal control circuitry becomes
  quite cumbersome.  The controllers for AFMs and STMs
  dominate the device.
* How to handle the complexity of a design with millions
  of moving parts.  Compilers are a good model for 
  mechanical design generation, but so are expert systems, 
  search/learning algorithms, etc.  There are also a wide
  variety of weird techniques used in silicon and software
  compilers themselves.

I too went into computer science mainly for "AI", but I've
found having a wider scope in computer science, a-life, and
technology in general to be more productive than traditional AI.  
I see a large number of potential breakthrough apps:

* The application of search/learning techniques like genetic algorithms
  (see below), simulated annealing, neural nets, etc.  Layering of
  these techniques, eg subsumption architecture.
* Non-anthropomorphic robots.  It is doubtful that the human limbs
  are anywhere near optimal for most tasks.  Drexler gives the example 
  of the Stewart platform, and Hans Moravec the Christmas Bush.  Another 
  example, of which I wish I had more details, is an IBM electromagnetically 
  levitated "arm" that can do various kinds of circuit board assembly 
  and/or soldering operations with an accuracy of 500 nm.  I envision
  a future levitated tool performing operations in five or more 
  degrees of freedom with Mhz frequency.  Yet more examples: automatically 
  guided vehicles (AGVs) and CNC machinery in general: programmable lathes, 
  mills, presses, lasers, etc.

Most combinations of the above probably haven't been tried yet:
Stewart platforms and CAM machinery with subsumption architecture, 
e-mag floating tools with neural nets trained to minimize soldering
mistakes, etc.

In general, sensory-rich machines tied to adaptive architectures are 
just starting to be explored.  The biggest cost remaining in factories 
is the detection and correction of errors.  Adapative machines 
combined with massives numbers and varieties of microfabbed sensors 
could do wonders for automation.

My favorite area is the use of search/learning algorithms to assist 
in design work in new territories.  Engineer defines new territory
and search spaces within it.  Computer goes off and searches 
various important spaces in the new territory & brings back some 
interesting solutions.  The human designer tweeks the solutions & search 
parameters.  Repeat until design is ready to implement. 

Search/learning algorithms have already rediscovered various scientific 
laws, eg Kepler's third law, and various efficient algorithms.  They might 
not be able to discover new techniques until we make them an integral 
part of the engineering process.  I am currently designing software
that will integrate search algorithms with a simplified version
of process or metabolic design.  The target application is the design 
of optimally self-replicating and flexibly-manufacturing factories,
but the software may end up being more generally useful.  If anybody 
is interested in this, and experienced in computer science and/or 
manufacturing, I'd love to have somebody to bounce the ideas and
designs off of.

Final note: I've mentioned genetic programming, now you can buy the 
book!.  GP, a generalized form of simulated evolution (aka genetic
algorithms) is the technique of using the parse tree of a language 
(or S-expressions in LISP) as a genetic code and evolving an optimal 
program against a fitness function.

Date: Mon, 16 Nov 92 17:13:11 PST
From: John Koza <koza@CS.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: New Book and Videotape on genetic Programming

BOOK AND VIDEOTAPE ON GENETIC PROGRAMMING

A new book and a one-hour videotape (in VHS NTSC, PAL, and SECAM 
formats) on genetic programming are now available from the MIT 
Press.

NEW BOOK...

GENETIC PROGRAMMING: ON THE PROGRAMMING OF COMPUTERS BY 
MEANS OF NATURAL SELECTION

by John R. Koza, Stanford University

The recently developed genetic programming paradigm provides a 
way to genetically breed a computer program to solve a wide variety 
of problems.  Genetic programming starts with a population of 
randomly created computer programs and iteratively applies the 
Darwinian reproduction operation and the genetic crossover (sexual 
recombination) operation in order to breed better individual 
programs.  The book describes and illustrates genetic programming 
with 81 examples from various fields.

840 pages.  270 Illustrations.  ISBN 0-262-11170-5.

Contents...

1   Introduction and Overview
2   Pervasiveness of the Problem of Program Induction
3   Introduction to Genetic Algorithms
4   The Representation Problem for Genetic Algorithms
5   Overview of Genetic Programming
6   Detailed Description of Genetic Programming
7   Four Introductory Examples of Genetic Programming
8   Amount of Processing Required to Solve a Problem
9   Nonrandomness of Genetic Programming
10  Symbolic Regression - Error-Driven Evolution
11  Control - Cost-Driven Evolution
12  Evolution of Emergent Behavior
13  Evolution of Subsumption
14  Entropy-Driven Evolution
15  Evolution of Strategy
16  Co-Evolution
17  Evolution of Classification
18  Iteration, Recursion, and Setting
19  Evolution of Constrained Syntactic Structures
20  Evolution of Building Blocks
21  Evolution of Hierarchies of Building Blocks
22  Parallelization of Genetic Programming
23  Ruggedness of Genetic Programming
24  Extraneous Variables and Functions
25  Operational Issues
26  Review of Genetic Programming
27  Comparison with Other Paradigms
28  Spontaneous Emergence of Self-Replicating and Self-Improving 
    Computer Programs
29  Conclusions

Appendices contain simple software in Common LISP for 
implementing experiments in genetic programming.

ONE-HOUR VIDEOTAPE...

GENETIC PROGRAMMING: THE MOVIE

by John R. Koza and James P. Rice, Stanford University

The one-hour videotape (in VHS NTSC, PAL, and SECAM formats) 
provides a general introduction to genetic programming and a 
visualization of actual computer runs for 22 of the problems 
discussed in the book GENETIC PROGRAMMING: ON THE PROGRAMMING 
OF COMPUTER BY MEANS OF NATURAL SELECTION.  The problems 
include symbolic regression, the intertwined spirals, the artificial 
ant, the truck backer upper, broom balancing, wall following, box 
moving, the discrete pursuer-evader game, the differential pursuer-
evader game, inverse kinematics for controlling a robot arm, 
emergent collecting behavior, emergent central place foraging, the 
integer randomizer, the one-dimensional cellular automaton 
randomizer, the two-dimensional cellular automaton randomizer, 
task prioritization (Pac Man), programmatic image compression, 
solving numeric equations for a numeric root, optimization of lizard 
foraging, Boolean function learning for the 11-multiplexer, co-
evolution of game-playing strategies, and hierarchical automatic 
function definition as applied to learning the Boolean even-11-
parity function.

---------------------------ORDER FORM----------------------

PHONE: 800-326-4471 TOLL-FREE or 617-625-8569
MAIL:  The MIT Press, 55 Hayward Street, Cambridge, MA 02142
FAX:  617-625-9080

Please send
____ copies of the book GENETIC PROGRAMMING: ON THE 
PROGRAMMING OF COMPUTERS BY MEANS OF NATURAL SELECTION by 
John R. Koza (KOZGII) (ISBN 0-262-11170-5) @ $55.00.
____ copies of the one-hour videotape GENETIC PROGRAMMING: THE 
MOVIE by John R. Koza and James P. Rice  in VHS NTSC format 
(KOZGVV) (ISBN 0-262-61084-1) @$34.95  
____ copies of the videotape in PAL format (KOZGPV) (ISBN 0-262-
61087-6) @$44.95
____ copies of the videotape in SECAM format (KOZGSV) (ISBN 0-
262-61088-4) @44.95.

Name __________________________________

Address_________________________________

City____________________________________

State_________________Zip________________

Country_________________________________

Phone Number ___________________________

$ _______ Total
$ _______ Shipping and Handling ($3 per item. Outside U.S. and 
Canada, add $6 per item for surface rate or $22 per item for airmail)
$ _______ Canada - Add 7% GST
$ _______ Total due MIT Press

__ Payment attached (check payable to The MIT Press in U.S. funds)
__ Please charge to my VISA or MASTERCARD credit card

Number ________________________________
Credit Card Expires _________________________________
Signature  ________________________________

------------------------------

*******************

Nick Szabo				szabo@techbook.com


--------------------------------------------------------------------


From: "Andrew I Cohen"                            <UANDCOH@UNC.OIT.UNC.EDU>
Subject: Stop making sperm, live longer
To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu
Date:    Thu, 03 Dec 92 16:48 EST


The following is intended only as a private
communication to each subscriber to the Extropians
list.

I saw an interesting article in Raleigh's "News &
Observer" today (12/3/92, p. 9A).  The text follows:

"Research on worms links sperm production to life
span"  New York Times News Service

The simply act of making sperm substantially
shortens a male worm's life span, a researcher has
discovered in results that overturn accepted
biological dogma about the relative cheapness of a
male's ejaculation compared with the preciousness
of a female's egg.

The scientist studying simple but revealing worms
called nematodes found that males live much longer
than their mates, and he has traced that
discrepancy to sperm production.

When he experimentally manipulated males so they
lost their capacity to make sperm while retaining
their taste for intercourse, the altered nematodes
lived at least 50 percent longer than the normal,
fertile males.

The results suggest that creating sperm is far
more difficult than scientists had imagined,
demanding a diversion of resources that might
otherwise go into insuring a male's long-term
health.

"These results are the last thing I had expected
when I started doing the experiment," said Wayne
A. Van Voorhies of the University of Arizona.
"They were so startling that I did the work over
four times to make sure I got it right.  They
basically say a lot of our preconceived notions
just do not hold up."

Van Voorhies, a graduate student who expects to
receive a doctorate in May, is the sole author of
the report, which appears today in the journal
Nature.

Other scientists familiar with the work have
expressed their astonishment at the discovery, and
they are unsure what its wider implications may
be.

Although they strongly caution against inferring
too much about human life spans from worms no
bigger than the comma at the end of this clause,
they say that evolution tends to conserve many
physiological traits and that it is possible that
at least a fraction of the difference in life span
between men and women just may be linked to sperm
production.  Women on average live about six years
longer than men.

"This is a fascinating and a very clear
observation," said Dr. Philip Anderson of the
University of Wisconsin at Madison, who studies
the same organisms, known scientifically as
Caenorhabditis elegans.  "Those of us working with
nematodes hold it as an article of faith that the
genes and biochemical processes nematodes use are
the same as those that humans and other mammals
use.  But, gosh, I hope it isn't true in this
case.  It would be awful to make the suggestion
that one way to live longer is to castrate
yourself at a young age."

For the experiments, Van Voorhies compared the two
genders of nematodes, males and the far more
common hermaphrodites.  Hermaphroditic worms
possess both eggs and small amounts of sperms,
with which they can fertilize themselves, but they
prefer to mate with real mates when possible.

His work suggests that ceaseless sperm production
takes its toll on a male, perhaps requiring the
use of complex enzymes or biochemical processes
that have harmful metabolic byproducts.

Van Voorhies cautions that among higher animals,
females pay other physiological costs of
reproduction beyond making and nourishing eggs,
complicating the application of the work to human
beings.

-- end of article --

OK gang: here's the marketing idea:  figure out a
way to stop sperm production without gross
physiological and psychological adverse side
effects.  Now, take some sperm from a man shortly
after he hits puberty.  Freeze it.  Charge him
fees annually.  Now he stops making sperm (using
that clever procedure).  He gains a few years on
his life.  Whenever he wants to father a child,
defrost a few of the buggers.  But think of the
fees you can collect by keeping his sperm in cold
storage. . . .

Of course, we still need that little "technique"
of stopping sperm production without castration.
Remember:  boo castration.  Booooo.

Andrew Cohen
uandcoh@unc.bitnet



--------------------------------------------------------------------


From: bradcox@sitevax.gmu.edu (Dr. Brad Cox; 703-968-8229)
Subject: Kiersey Sorter (Myers Briggs Personality)
To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu
Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1992 09:03:54 -0500

Someone asked about the Kiersey Sorter (Myers-Briggs Personality testing).

Archie database shows nothing for PeeCees; only Macintosh. I can provide
the latter if you like (send email to me, not the list).

telnet archie.rutgers.edu
login: archie
archie> prog kiersey
# matches / % database searched:    0 / -4%
# No matches were found.
archie> prog briggs
# matches / % database searched:   11 / -4%
Host scavengerhunt.rs.itd.umich.edu   (141.211.164.153)
Last updated 12:23 25 Jun 1992

    Location: /mac/utilities/organization
      FILE      rw-rw-r--    127217  Jun  6  1991   myersbriggsscorer.sit.hqx

Host serv1.cl.msu.edu   (35.8.2.41)
Last updated 01:29 11 Nov 1992

    Location: /netstat
      FILE      rw-r--r--     86970  Nov 11 06:02   eholmes-lbs:briggs1.hist

Host van-bc.wimsey.bc.ca   (192.48.234.1)
Last updated 18:47 16 Nov 1992

    Location: /pub/crypto/bignum
      FILE      rw-r--r--     30105  Apr 27  1992   briggs_arith.pas

Host cl-next1.cl.msu.edu   (35.8.4.21)
Last updated 21:40 23 Feb 1992

    Location: /math
      FILE      rw-r--r--     30105  Apr 29 13:56   briggs_arith.pas

Host scavengerhunt.rs.itd.umich.edu   (141.211.164.153)
Last updated 12:23 25 Jun 1992

    Location: /mac/00newfiles/NEW.month-by-month/9205
      FILE      rwxr-xr-x        52  May 31 04:01   meyers-briggs.cpt.hqx
-> ../..
/../etc/medical/hypercard/meyers-briggs.cpt.hqx
      FILE      rwxr-xr-x        48  May 31 04:01   meyers-briggs.dsc ->
../../../
etc/medical/hypercard/meyers-briggs.dsc
    Location: /mac/etc/medical/hypercard
      FILE      rw-rw-r--     28769  May 30 20:58   meyers-briggs.cpt.hqx

Host ra.nrl.navy.mil   (128.60.0.21)
Last updated 00:55 10 Nov 1992

    Location: /MacSciTech/psychology
      FILE      rw-r--r--     82572  Jun 28 14:49   meyers-briggs.sit.hqx

Host akiu.gw.tohoku.ac.jp   (130.34.8.9)
Last updated 06:18 29 Sep 1992

    Location: /user
      FILE      rw-rw----     82572  Jul  5 07:21   meyers-briggs.sit.hqx

Host sunsite.unc.edu   (152.2.22.81)
Last updated 01:41 13 Nov 1992

    Location: /pub/academic/medicine/mac-medical/hypercard
      FILE      r--r--r--     47474  Jul  2 15:10   myers-briggs.cpt.hqx

Host wuarchive.wustl.edu   (128.252.135.4)
Last updated 22:53 30 Sep 1992

    Location: /mirrors3/archive.umich.edu/mac/misc/medical/hypercard
      FILE      r--r--r--     47474  Jul  2 06:10   myers-briggs.cpt.hqx

archie> quit
--
  Brad Cox; bradcox@sitevax.gmu.edu; 703 993 1142 secy 703 968 8229 evenings 
 George Mason Program on Social and Organizational Learning; Fairfax VA 22030





--------------------------------------------------------------------


From: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)
Subject: Winograd and Flores on Heidegger
To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 92 12:38:02 PST


Attached below is an excerpt from Winograd and Flores.

It's not complete, of course, as it picks up on page 33 of their book
(described below). But their description of an ordinary office meeting
has always impressed me, so this is the section I'm including.

Enjoy!



The following is from pp. 33-37 of "Understanding Computers and 
Cognition: A New Foundation for Design," Terry Winograd and 
Fernando Flores, 1986, Ablex Publishing Company.

3.3  An illustration of thrownness

Many people encountering the work of Heidegger for the first time 
find it very difficult to comprehend. Abstract terms like 'Dasein' 
and 'thrown-ness,' for instance, are hard to relate to reality. 
This is the opposite of what Heidegger intends. His philosophy is 
based on a deep awareness of everyday life. He argues that the 
issues he discusses are difficult not because they are abstruse, 
but because they are concealed by their 'ordinary everydayness.'

In order to give more of a sense of the importance of thrownness 
(which will play a large role in the second half of the book), it 
may be useful to consider a simple example that evokes experiences 
of thrownness for many readers.

Imagine that you are chairing a meeting of fifteen or so people, at 
which some important and controversial issue is to be decided: say, 
the decision to bring a new computer system into the organization. 
As the meeting goes on you must keep things going in a productive 
direction, deciding whom to call on, when to cut a speaker off, 
when to call for an end of discussion or a vote, and so forth. 
There are forcefully expressed differences of opinion, and if you 
don't take a strong role the discussion will quickly deteriorate 
into a shouting match dominated by the loudest, who will keep 
repeating their own fixed positions in hopes of wearing everyone 
else down.

We can make a number of observations about your situation:

You cannot avoid acting. At every moment, you are in a position of 
authority, and your actions affect the situation. If you just sit 
there for a time, letting things go on in the direction they are 
going, that in itself constitutes an action, with effects that you 
may or may not want. You are 'thrown' into action independent of 
your will.

You cannot step back and reflect on your actions. Anyone who has 
been in this kind of situation has afterwards felt "I should have 
said..." or "I shouldn't have let Joe get away with..." In the need 
to respond immediately to what people say and do, it is impossible 
to take time to analyze things explicitly and choose the best 
course of action. In fact, if you stop to do so you will miss some 
of what is going on, and implicitly choose to let it go on without 
interruption. You are thrown on what people loosely call your 
'instincts,' dealing with whatever comes up.

The effects of actions cannot be predicted. Even if you had time to 
reflect, it is impossible to know how your actions will affect 
other people. If you decide to cut someone off in order to get to 
another topic, the group may object to your heavy-handedness, that 
in itself becoming a topic of discussion. If you avoid calling on 
someone whose opinion you don't like, you may find that he shouts 
it out, or that a friend feels compelled to take up his point of 
view. Of course this doesn't imply that things are total chaos, but 
simply that you cannot count on careful rational planning to find 
steps that will achieve your goals. You must, as the idiom goes, 
'flow with the situation.'

You do not have a stable representation of the situation. In the 
post-mortem analysis, you will observe that there were significant 
patterns. "There were two factions, with the Smith group trying to 
oppose the computer via the strategy of keeping the discussion on 
costs and away from an analysis of what we are doing now, and the 
Wilson group trying to be sure that whether or not we got the 
computer, they would remain in control of the scheduling policies. 
Evans was the key, since he could go either way, and they brought 
up the training issue because that is his bailiwick and they knew 
he wouldn't want the extra headaches."  In a sense you have a 
representation of the situation, with objects (e.g., the two 
factions) and properties (their goals, Evans's lack of prior 
loyalty, etc.), but this was not the understanding you had to work 
with as it was developing. Pieces of it may have emerged as the 
meeting went on, but they were fragmentary, possibly contradictory, 
and may have been rejected for others as things continued.

Every representation is an interpretation. Even in the post-mortem, 
your description of what was going on is hardly an objective 
analysis of the kind that could be subjected to proof. Two people 
at the same meeting could well come away with very different 
interpretations. Evans might say "Smith is competing with me for 
that promotion, and he wanted to bring up the training issue to 
point out that we've been having difficulty in our group lately." 
There is no ultimate way to determine that any one interpretation 
is really right or wrong, and even the people whose behavior is in 
question may well not be in touch with their own deep motivations.

Language is action.  Each time you speak you are doing something 
quite different from simply 'stating a fact.' If you say "First we 
have to address the issue of system development" or "Let's have 
somebody on the other side talk," you are not describing the 
situation but creating it. The existence of "the issue of system 
development" or "the other side" is an interpretation, and in 
mentioning it you bring your interpretation into the group 
discourse. Of course others can object "That isn't really an issue  
you're confusing two things" or "We aren't taking sides, everyone 
has his own opinion." But whether or not your characterization is 
taken for granted or taken as the basis for argument, you have 
created the objects and properties it describes by virtue of making 
the utterance.

Heidegger recognized that ordinary everyday life is like the 
situation we have been describing. Our interactions with other 
people and with theinanimate world we inhabit put us into a 
situation of thrownness, for which the metaphor of the meeting is 
much more apt than the metaphor of the objective detached scientist 
who makes observations, forms hypotheses, and consciously chooses a 
rational course of action.

3.4  

Breaking down and readiness-to-hand

Another aspect of Heidegger's thought that is difficult for many 
people to assimilate to their previous understanding is his 
insistence that objects and properties are not inherent in the 
world, but arise only in an event of breaking down in which they 
become present-at-hand. One simple example he gives is that of a 
hammer being used by someone engaged in driving a nail. To the 
person doing the hammering, the hammer as such does not exist. It 
is a part of the background of readiness-to-hand that is taken for 
granted without explicit recognition or identification as an 
object. It is part of the hammerer's world, but is not present any 
more than are the tendons of the hammerer's arm.

The hammer presents itself as a hammer only when there is some kind 
of breaking down or unreadiness-to-hand.  Its 'hammerness' emerges 
if it breaks or slips from grasp or mars the wood, or if there is a 
nail to be driven and the hammer cannot be found. The point is a 
subtle one, closely related to the distinction between thrownness 
and reflection on one's actions, as discussed above. As observers, 
we may talk about the hammer and reflect on its properties, but for 
the person engaged in the thrownness of unhampered hammering, it 
does not exist as an entity.

Some other examples may help convey the importance of this 
distinction. As I watch my year-old baby learn to walk and pick up 
objects, I may be tempted to say that she is 'learning about 
gravity.' But if I really want to deal with her ontology--with the 
world as it exists for her--there is no such thing as gravity. It 
would be inappropriate to view her learning as having anything to 
do with a concept or representation of gravity and its effects, 
even though she is clearly learning the skills that are necessary 
for acting in a physical world that we (as adult observers) 
characterize in terms of abstractions like 'gravity.' For the 
designer of space vehicles, on the other hand, it is clear that 
gravity exists. In anticipating the forms of breaking down that 
will occur when the normal background of gravity is altered, the 
designer must deal with gravity as a phenomenon to be considered, 
represented, and manipulated.

If we turn to computer systems, we see that for different people, 
engaged in different activities, the existence of objects and 
properties emerges in different kinds of breaking down. As I sit 
here typing a draft on a word processor, I am in the same situation 
as the hammerer. 1 think of words and they appear on my screen. 
There is a network of equipment that includes my arms and hands, a 
keyboard, and many complex devices that mediate between it and a 
screen. None of this equipment is present for me except when there 
is a breaking down. If a letter fails to appear on the screen, the 
keyboard may emerge with properties such as 'stuck keys.' Or I may 
discover that the program was in fact constructed from separate 
components such as a 'screen manager' and a 'keyboard handler,' and 
that certain kinds of 'bugs' can be attributed to the keyboard 
handler. If the problem is serious, I may be called upon to bring 
forth a complex network of properties reflecting the design of the 
system and the details of computer software and hardware.

For me, the writer, this network of objects and properties did not 
exist previously. The typing was part of my world, but not the 
structure that emerges as I try to cope with the breakdown. But of 
course it did exist for someone else--for the people who created 
the device by a process of conscious design. They too, though, took 
for granted a background of equipment which, in the face of 
breaking down, they could have further brought to light.

In sum, Heidegger insists that it is meaningless to talk about the 
existence of objects and their properties in the absence of 
concernful activity, with its potential for breaking down. What 
really is is not defined by an objective omniscient observer, nor 
is it defined by an individual  the writer or computer designer--
but rather by a space of potential for human concern and action. In 
the second part of the book we will show how shifting from a 
rationalistic to a Heideggerian perspective can radically alter our 
conception of computers and our approach to computer design.


-- 
..........................................................................
Timothy C. May         | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,  
tcmay@netcom.com       | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
408-688-5409           | knowledge, reputations, information markets, 
W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA  | black markets, collapse of governments.
Higher Power: 2^756839 | PGP Public Key: by arrangement.









--------------------------------------------------------------------


From: whitaker@eternity.demon.co.uk (Russell E. Whitaker)
Subject: Why uploading?  Well...
To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 92 10:01:17 BST

> 
> Confused and angry? Maybe, but not that much, I hope.
> A question: If we find a cure for aging, who needs uploading?
> 
> Krzys'
>

Speaking for myself, I'd like a better body and mind with which to
experience the world outside myself.

For a conservative start, I'd prefer a cranium that doesn't crack easily
in a rock-climbing accident.  Having at least part of my brain in my
thorax would help spread the risk, too.

I'd prefer to be able to hold more than 5 percepts in my visual field.
And be able to look at Sol with my unaided eyes.  All 4 of them.  And
see the scintilla of high-energy particles inpinging on Earth's upper
atmosphere, and pick out the individual convection cells on the sun's
surface.  *This* would be a good thing to look forward to, at the end of
an afternoon's casual climb, naked, without oxygen equipment, alone, to
the top of Everest.

And have the mind to appreciate the view when I get there.

Like I said... a conservative start.  Can't do that with my present
body, even as well kept as it is.

;-)

 

Russell Earl Whitaker                   whitaker@eternity.demon.co.uk
Communications Editor                       71750.2413@compuserve.com
EXTROPY: The Journal of Transhumanist Thought         AMiX: RWHITAKER
Board member, Extropy Institute (ExI)
================ PGP 2.0 public key available =======================


--------------------------------------------------------------------


From: whitaker@eternity.demon.co.uk (Russell Earl Whitaker)
Subject: Forwarded article.
To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 92 14:40:36 GMT


This article was forwarded to you by whitaker@demon.co.uk (Russell Earl Whitaker):

--------------------------------- cut here -----------------------------

Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Path: eternity.demon.co.uk!demon!pipex!uunet!uchinews!lucpum.it.luc.edu!
lucpul.it.luc.edu!hmiller
From: hmiller@lucpul.it.luc.edu (Hugh Miller)
Subject: Re: PGP for the MACINTOSH
Message-ID: <hmiller.724028326@lucpul.it.luc.edu>
Sender: root@lucpum.it.luc.edu (System PRIVILEGED Account)
Organization: Loyola University Chicago
References: <1g504cINNc6j@roche.csl.sri.com> <9234
4.1050402958804@QUCDN.QueensU.CA>
Distribution: na
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1992 22:58:46 GMT
Lines: 53

In <92344.1050402958804@QUCDN.QueensU.CA> <2958804@QUCDN.QueensU.CA> writes:

>Can anyone tell me where to find the latest version of PGP that will run
>on the MACINTOSH computer?  I'd really appreciate it.  Thanks, Paul.

    Good news!  PGP has been ported to the Apple Macintosh (a nontrivial
feat)!  The following note is from Zig Fiedorowicz, the implementer:

    "A Macintosh port of PGP 2.0 has been placed in the
    /mac/util/encryption directory of mac.archive.umich.edu.  It has a
    modest Macintosh interface. It has not been tested extensively and
    should be considered a beta version. Bug reports are welcome.  More
    work on MacPGP is planned and later versions will be more widely
    distributed." --Zig Fiedorowicz (zigf@mps.ohio-state.edu)

    The Mac version has also been posted for anonymous ftp at the following
sites:

    plaza.aarnet.edu.au
        /micros/mac/umich/util/encryption/macpgp2.0.sit.hqx

    pencil.cs.missouri.edu
        /pub/crypt/macpgp2.0.sit.hqx

    wuarchive.wustl.edu
        /mirrors3/archive.umich.edu/mac/util/encryption/macpgp2.0.sit.hqx

    src.doc.ic.ac.uk
        /computing/systems/mac/umich/util/encryption/macpgp2.0.sit.hqx.Z

You can also get it at the following site by logging in as "iscabbs" (i.e.,
not as "anonymous":

    grind.isca.uiowa.edu  (128.255.19.233)
        /mac/macintosh/app/mac-pgp-20.dst

    America Online also carries the Mac PGP 2.0.  I do not know the exact name
under which is carried, but I imagine subscribers should have no problem
finding it.

    If none of these sites do it for you, let me know.  Film at 11.

    Best regards!
    -=- Hugh

P.S.:  If you come across sites where it's posted -- especially FREE ACCESS
sites -- please drop me a line (info-pgp-request@lucpul.it.luc.edu).
I'd like to maintain a current list as part of a PGP FAQ list.  Thanks to the
many correspondents who have helped to contribute to this list on an almost
daily basis!
-- 
Hugh Miller         | Dept. of Philosophy | Loyola University of Chicago
Voice: 312-508-2727 |  FAX: 312-508-2292  |    hmiller@lucpul.it.luc.edu


--------------------------------- cut here -----------------------------



--------------------------------------------------------------------


From: habs@acf3.NYU.EDU (Harry A. B. Shapiro)
Subject: Re: Weird, odd, scary Zendik stuff (Communiatrian)
To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1992 19:29:48 -0500 (EST)

A conscious being, Bill Eichman, wrote in a previous message:

> Can you explain, Harry, what it is that you find wierd, odd, and scary 
> about this 'zendik' stuff? Please be specific, if you can. I would very 
> much like to analyse this.

The scary part is that these people have been able to put their
ideas into action, actually use cable access and other "professional"
means communication. They also seem to endorse technological education.
What is scary is they have a good change of thriving. We want to run
half way arround the world, and they are building here. I can see time
growing then entering a period of rapid decline, but I can't predict
that.

The scary part is, for all our "smarts," skills, talent, etc. we have
very little to show. They are actually supporting people (farming, etc.).
We don't generate enough money to pay for a full-time executive director,
let alone a "training camp."

How many of us are willing to pledge $1,000 a year for 10 years
to get ExI really going. If 25% of us did that would be $50,000
a year? What would that buy? What kind of research? What kind
of media access? Many on this list are students who will earn
"the big bucks" when they graduate -how many are willing to put
their money on the line? At what return?

There is a fine-line between communitrian and libertian - one
wants you to do the best for the ideal society you want to live in
by doing what is best for the society. The other says you WILL do the
best for the idea society you want, and there  by end up doing what
is best for society, by doing what is in your true self interest.

Eveyone here knows which view I support. Never-the-less, a 100 years
after a nanomachine revolution I can imagine both groups would look
very similar.

> One of my fields of interest is intentional communities. Is this a 
> problem?

intentional = spontanous or planned ?

I believe in living in a community that is designed

/Harry

> Later, Bill
> 
> 


-- 
habs@acf3.NYU.EDU
habs@gnu.ai.mit.edu
habs@well.sf.ca.us
habs@panix.com


--------------------------------------------------------------------


From: price@price.demon.co.uk (Michael Clive Price)
Subject: Sink Oceania! (was Re: Weird, odd, scary Zendik stuff)
To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 92 00:54:06 GMT

Harry, talking about the Zendiks:

> The scary part is that these people have been able to put their
> ideas into action, actually use cable access and other "professional"
> means communication. They also seem to endorse technological
> education.  What is scary is they have a good change of thriving. 
> We want to run half way arround the world, and they are building here.

I don't want to run halfway around the world.  It's a childish, immature
idea and labels us as crackpots to mainstream entrepreneurs - the very
people we look to to save the world from the eco-freaks and state.  To
change the world extropian ideas have to be accepted as mainstream.  If
this was 1492 then fair enough.  Or if we had cheap interstellar travel
*now* - but we haven't.  The way things are going the singularity will
arrive before commercial spaceflight.

The quickest way of killing the community of extropians would be to try
to form a physical island community.  Other people have enumerated the
disadvantages of living on the margins of society.  All the talk of
fighting off an armed invasion by US marines or the King of Tonga makes
me shudder - from embarrassment.  As an email community we stand a much
better chance.  Our agents are located in universities and colleges
around the world - fertile recruiting ground.  From there they move into
well-paid jobs and join the capitalist world.  Put away your sea maps
and pick up your market tracts.  Sailing away in pea-green boats is the
stuff of fantasy.

It's debatable, but I believe only hi-tech capitalism will destroy the
state (from within).  In the EEC we can see this process start, as
country after country is being forced to leave the ERM due to pressure
generated by the market on currencies pegged at artificial levels.  When
the ERM was first begun exchanges were pegged world-wide.  Following the
relaxation of the currency and capital markets controls in the 1980s
their power has grown and grown.  Now many countries find the tables
turned and economic policy has to be formulated with an eye on the
markets.  The markets have tasted blood and they still hunger!

[I also don't go along with any of this market-meltdown in 1995 stuff.
But I concede that for those that do Oceania would look a more
attractive prospect]

> The scary part is, for all our "smarts," skills, talent, etc. we have
> very little to show. They are actually supporting people (farming,
> etc.). We don't generate enough money to pay for a full-time executive
> director, let alone a "training camp."

Look at the 'success' of the Zendiks: 45 people after 20 years!  And
their main income is from the sale of their magazine (not from farming).

Look at extropy/Exi: ^250 members after less than 2 years on the Net. 
Sales of Extropy are rising very nicely (exponentially?).  Wanna place
bets on who's going be around in 20 years?

> habs@acf3.NYU.EDU
> habs@gnu.ai.mit.edu
> habs@well.sf.ca.us
> habs@panix.com
> 

Mike Price (price@price.demon.co.uk)


--------------------------------------------------------------------


From: pavel@PARK.BU.EDU (Paul Cisek)
Subject: "Semantic systems" [LONG]
To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu
Date: Sun, 15 Nov 92 14:57:05 -0500


I'd like to submit the following speculation to the list, hoping
to get some feedback.  I'm especially interested in opinions
from those of you who are better read in philosophy than I am.
Those interested in AI may have some strong opinions on the
issue I raise below, and others may just want to speculate on
some of its implications...  I apologize for lingering on
trivialities or for being unnecessarily obscure...

Semantic Systems:

   Before defining what I mean by a semantic system, let me
first mention some of the reasons for pursuing these questions,
and then describe some of the assumptions that led me to the
speculations below.
   I am interested in artificial intelligence.  In pursuit of
this goal I have gained a degree in computer science, resulting
in, however, little more than disillusionment.  I'd rather not
go into the common criticisms of traditional artificial
intelligence approaches here, as those familiar with the field
have already heard them, either agree or disagree, and I have
nothing new to tell them.  However, I would like to describe
what I consider the fundamental reason why I see little chance
of AI, especially symbolic AI, of achieving what I would
consider "intelligence".
   Let me qualify the above statement a little better.  I
don't mean that AI, expert systems, neural networks, etc. cannot
solve interesting engineering problems, or even be capable of
complex reasoning.  That has already been achieved by many
people's definition.  However, what I am really interested in
are machines that can understand the world in which humans live,
not any arbitrary simplified world of a particular problem
domain.

   This brings me to some of the assumptions upon which my
speculations are based.  I welcome and appreciate any criticism
or expansion of these.
   First and foremost is my belief that the reality in which
we live is quite different from whatever "real", "physical"
world exists "out there".  This much seems obvious.  We know how
much of our sensory process is creative.  Color as a three-
dimensional entity does not exist in the physical universe.
Boundaries between objects are fractal, not discrete.  Quality
(in Pirsig's sense) cannot be measured by a physicist's
instruments.  How much of our perceived world then is the same
as the real?
   Qualitatively, I would say very little of it.  Consider the
question of "meaning".  Is there meaning in the universe?  No.
Just like Pirsig's Quality, meaning is an event between an
observer and a subset of the physical world.  Further, it is the
observer that determines which subset of the world the meaning
is assigned to.  In other words, the observer decides which
spatial or temporal scale is appropriate to the "object" he/she
is perceiving, and where the boundary is drawn.
   As my second assumption I suggest that our world is defined
primarily in terms of meanings.  If this is true, than already
we see that it differs in a fundamental way from the actual,
physical, statistical world.  We can study the physical world,
but only by creating abstractions (assigning meanings such as
physical laws) that are no more than very useful metaphors.  Our
very notion of understanding is semantically based and thus
ultimately inadequate to represent the real world.  This does
not prevent physicists from deriving mathematical models that
exhibit stunning predictive abilities.  We must not forget
though that they are only models and that's all we can ever
expect to come up with.
   Here is where the notion of a semantic system comes in.
Organisms developed a meaning-based model of physical reality (a
semantic system) as a survival scheme.  It allowed more complex
interactions than simple stimulus-response reflexes.  It allowed
the creatures to create "metaperceptions" and internal behaviors
that would result in external behavior that would further
increase the probability of the survival of their genes.  This
progressed into structures of increasingly higher levels of
abstraction.  Thus, I believe that simple perception and
behavior and meaning are points on a continuum of complexity.
But meaning in the physical universe is an illusion based on
faulty assumptions that we made long before we were human.
   How is the semantic system constructed by an organism?  It
certainly has to be input driven and reinforced by evolution.  I
suggest that a semantic system is defined by the interface
between an organism and its environment (by interface I mean the
sensory input, motor output, reinforcement, survival criteria,
etc.).  Thus, it is derived from the physical world through at
least two levels of indirection: the evolutionary solution to
perception and response; and the neural solution to
representation.  At each there is a highly arbitrary process at
work.  Thus we can see that there is a great number of semantic
systems (and thus realities) possible, and evolution has come up
with one that works within the constraints of the material and
the problem at hand.
   Since, according to the above, a semantic system is input
driven, and since (as I would argue) one's values are based on
one's semantic system, we can understand why people can
construct such different value systems given different
backgrounds.  It is easy for us to over-emphasize these
differences, while not noticing how the vast bulk of our
semantic systems overlap (and not only among humans).
   How does this pertain to artificial intelligence?  Consider
Block's World, a classic problem solved long ago (Block's World
consists of a set of blocks and an entity whose purpose is to
arrange these in some desired pattern).  We have already created
geniuses in that world, but we are not impressed by their
intellect.  Some say that the definition of intelligence is
being redefined as soon as some problem is solved.  I disagree,
suggesting instead that AI research has mostly progressed
towards intelligences that bear no resemblance to ours.  I would
also say that this is a fundamental error, since we really are
interested in issues within our semantic system, with all its
ambiguity, complexity, and evolutionary bias.  (When I say "we",
I mean those AI researchers who claim to study the mind, not
those who are interested in novel engineering solutions).
   So how do we create "organisms" that have a semantic system
sufficiently similar to ours?  By using evolution and physiology
as our guidelines.  I suggest that the concept of "meaning"
within a humanlike semantic system can be studied quantitatively
and even empirically.  But the path that we follow should begin
with simple organisms and should progress with a rigorous
adherence to the rules that constrained the evolution of higher
organisms.  I do not mean that we must meticulously simulate
some virtual world with every blade of grass carefully
specified.  We can allow ourselves to abstract out basic
principles while making assumptions about peripheral issues.  We
must however always consider an entire organism in our model
instead of simulating some single module or subsystem.  While I
believe that much useful data can be gained from the study of
say, the visual system, in the end one cannot avoid the issue of
meaning.  And as I discussed above, I believe meaning can only
arise within a framework of environmental input and reaction.
   As to how exactly does meaning "arise" in an organism, I
believe that is the key question that AI research should strive
to answer.  I have my own thoughts on such mechanisms, but they
are undeveloped, vague, and certainly significantly inaccurate.
I would suggest however, that the mind is best modeled as a
dynamical system and not as a set of discretely defined
heuristics or "neural" matrix transformations.
   (There has been some discussion on this list of the analogy
between a brain and a computer.  While this may seem natural, it
is really caused more by confusion of terminology and not any
fundamental structural similarity (ex: memory vs. RAM).  This
common mistake is particularly painful to me because I had made
it myself in the past...)
   In conclusion, I submit that what we want to create is a
machine that is capable of understanding within the context of a
semantic system similar to ours, and that to build such a
machine we should study the particular architecture that
evolution came up with.

   So what do we gain if we ever succeed in creating these
humanlike semantic models?  Will they be as crippled and skewed
in thought as humans are and if so, aren't there better methods
of creating intelligence?  Here is where I believe Extropians
can have some very creative input.  We can all obviously see
various applications of machines that "understand" in a human
sense.  We can envision "giant brains" that benevolently solve
all the world's problems.  We can also get excited about the
possibilities of enhancing our own minds.
   What about completely novel semantic systems?  Is it
possible to alter our own minds in such a way as to exist in a
completely different reality?  I do not mean "normal :)" virtual
reality, but something fundamentally different from our world of
objects and processes.  Although exciting, this possibility can
be quite troubling.  Does mental enhancement cause a radical
shift in the semantic system of the recipient and thus eradicate
his/her "consciousness"?  Without stirring up this familiar can
of worms, let me just point out a potential paradox.  How can
one make a choice to shift their subjective reality to a state
that makes the choice meaningless?  How can one rationally
choose to enter a state of being that one cannot previously
judge to be "better" or "worse"?
   Perhaps another application of the study of general
semantic systems could be the study of very large adaptive
systems such as societies or ecosystems.  While I agree that
these systems would have radically different "subjective"
realities than that which we have, we may be able to apply the
same research process to better understand their "behavior".
Perhaps (and I quote Alex Chislenko) "we could use cognitive
psychology to teach the UN".  This may sound bizarre, but if a
"mind" is defined by the functional connectivity of its
implementation components, then societies, sciences, mimetic
structures, are examples (Although we'd probably want to invent
another term; "mind" is already taken to mean a lot of
things...).  The possibilities here are fascinating.
   Technology seems to be reaching a kind of critical mass.
An example is the approaching nanotechnological "event horizon"
discussed on the list.  Perhaps science is also reaching some
kind of critical point after which possibilities are
unimaginable.  I perceive a convergence in several traditionally
seperate disciplines such as physics and psychology, as well as
crucial advances in enabling fields such as mathematics and
computer technology.  Is another informational revolution
imminent, or am I just perceiving this as I learn more about
these fields?

   Comments?












--------------------------------------------------------------------


From: pgf@srl03.cacs.usl.edu (Phil G. Fraering)
Subject: Re: META:Uploading, indianmythology, relativity, celtic mythology
To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu
Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1992 19:17:25 -0600 (CST)

> Did Hans Moravec take incidents from the Mahabharata and regurgitate
> them ala computer-speak?

The territory covered by mythology is so great that
it's impossible to discuss future technology without
covering the same ground.

> While several on this list have debated the issue of whether a copy is
> "me" both pro and con, apparently no one is aware that in India
> spirtual adepts have been creating "copies" of themselves.

I'm not aware of the reality of this; I am aware of the myth, though,
_and_ the fact that a transfer of conciousness _or_ even basic
personality traits rarely occurs.

Interestingly enough, I have heard that Hans Moravec, WHO IS ON
THIS LIST AND WILL DOUBTLESS CORRECT ME IF I AM WRONG, is a devout
Catholic. There are lots of stories from the *Catholic* tradition
about Saints and the like being in two different places at the
same time.

> Not only has it been documented in recent yogic literature, the
> age-old Mahabharata itself describes "copying" (well before transistors,
> not even to speak of nanotech!)

If THAT'S your standard of evidence, I'd like to remind you that
the stories in the Mabinogeon supposedly go back almost to the 
Neolithic, and "describe" life extension (the cauldron of Llyr)
or revival, and even contain the sophisticated "modern" concept
of neural damage as being relatively unrepairable compared to
damage of other tissues. (I think that was in the tale of Nuada;
the physician was able to heal his own injuries up to the point
where the membrane surrounding the brain and the brain itself
was damaged).

I'm not sure if I should bring up the time dilation factor you
get when you visit the Sidhe ;-).

> Yet another example of a Westerner putting a "spin" on India's spiritual
> heritage and fooling a bunch of extropians.

Wake up and smell the coffee;  Westerners have their own spiritual
traditions, in fact a great many of them; and some of them probably
have ancestors in common with Indian traditions. Just because we
resist efforts to use these to justify caste systems or other political
power structures doesn't mean they aren't there.

> Thus the core or fundamental axiom of Max More's "transhuman" philosophy -
> that advanced technology is necessary to improve on the human form 
> in order to attain "long life", "think faster" , etc. can be thrown
> out the door. 

> More to come...

Oh, please do, it'll give me an opportunity to bore everyone to
tears with accounts of Western non-technological transhumanism
as if this and not the Arthurian mailing list is the correct
place.

Phil Fraering
In the country of the blind....
60 minutes doesn't run stories about people trying to ban hearing
implants!


--------------------------------------------------------------------


From: hkhenson@cup.portal.com
Subject: Method for making STM tips
To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu
Date: Sun, 15 Nov 92 23:17:43 PST

Please note that this is a *private* message being sent to a list of
people.  HKH.

---
Proposed Method for making STM Tips.

I recently visited a local company which makes ion milling equipment 
for doing engineering mods on ICs.  The ion source is a gallium-wet 
needle which they operate at a modest positive voltage.  Electrostatic 
forces acting against the liquid metal surface tension shape up the 
tip to a one atom point--from which ions leave.  Slick gadget.  There 
may be additional markets for this thing in the interface between 
current micro and the nanotech world.  I can send a contact to anyone 
with a need. 

But that is not what this posting is about.

A friend of mine (Mark Voelker) has been complaining about the 
difficulty of making good STM tips for quite a while.  (It is quite a 
black art).  A week or so after I learned about the ion source, it 
occurred to me that *any* liquid metal under a strong field should 
take on the same shape--and might keep the shape if you cooled it to 
the solid state.  Gallium is *way* too soft even frozen to be of 
interest as an STM tip, but a modest pulse of energy from a laser beam 
or a pulse of electrical energy in the form of a spark or a burst of 
electrons should melt the end of a tungsten or platinum STM tip.  If 
the tip cooled with enough voltage to shape it up to an ion emitter, 
it should end in a single atom. 

According to Mark, typical STM tips are 20 mil of (mostly) platinum 
alloy wire.  Converting to metric, that would be 20/1000*2.54 or about 
.05 cm.  Melting the end of the tip would involve a volume of roughly 
(.05) exp 3, around 1*10 exp -4 cm cube.  This times a density of 
about 20 gives a mass of about 2/10000 of a gram.  The delta T 
involved in round number is 2k degrees, the specific heat of Pt in the 
range of interest is about .04, and the heat of fusion is about 30.  
So, 2k*2/10000*.04 is .016 cal plus 30*2/10000 or about .02 cal, or .1 
joule.  I.e., in the range of tenth of a watt-second.  (Assuming I did 
not drop a decimal or two.) 

Since the energy stored in a capacitor in watt-seconds is 1/2 CV exp 2,
0.1 watt-second would take a modest 20 uF charged to 100 volts. 

The tip should be heated fast compared to its cooling time.  The area 
of this speck (considered as a cube) is 6*.0025, or about .01 square 
cm, or 1 * 10 exp -6 square meters.  A square meter at 2k deg absolute 
would radiate (2k) exp 4 * 5.67 * 10 exp -8 watts per square meter, or 
about 1 * 10 exp 6 watts.  A cooling time of a second is implied.  
(Ignoring conduction.)  This is not out of line with the time it takes 
ordinary incandescent lamps of similar wire size and temperature to 
cool, implying that a heating time in the low tens of milliseconds 
would be ok.  With the time set at 1/100 second, and the voltage at 
100 volts, the required current is 100 mA.  

Tip heating could be accomplished by laser, a spark in an inert 
atmosphere, or electrons in a vacuum.  The current is well within the 
output of medium sized vacuum tube cathodes.  After the heating pulse, 
the tip would have to be maintained at a high enough positive voltage 
to emit ions until it cooled. 

For all I know, this may be a well known method for forming tips, but 
if so, Mark was not aware of it being used and there was nobody at the 
recent nanotech conference (not even the Japanese representative) who 
knew of it being used.  I am posting this note to get a widespread 
time stamp of when this method was conceived, and a request to the 
community to let me know if this is already in use.  It may be 
patentable, so such rights are reserved. 

Keith Henson 11/14/92
...


--------------------------------------------------------------------


From: pandit@crash.cts.com (Pandit Singh)
Subject: META:UPLOADING ACHIEVED IN INDIA
To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu
Date: Sun, 15 Nov 92 0:43:09 PST

Did Hans Moravec take incidents from the Mahabharata and regurgitate
them ala computer-speak?

While several on this list have debated the issue of whether a copy is
"me" both pro and con, apparently no one is aware that in India
spirtual adepts have been creating "copies" of themselves.

Not only has it been documented in recent yogic literature, the
age-old Mahabharata itself describes "copying" (well before transistors,
not even to speak of nanotech!)

Yet another example of a Westerner putting a "spin" on India's spiritual
heritage and fooling a bunch of extropians.

Thus the core or fundamental axiom of Max More's "transhuman" philosophy -
that advanced technology is necessary to improve on the human form 
in order to attain "long life", "think faster" , etc. can be thrown
out the door. 

More to come...
 


--------------------------------------------------------------------


From: price@price.demon.co.uk (Michael Clive Price)
Subject: Copying in mythology
To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 92 08:28:44 GMT

Just a follow to the claim that only Hindu mythology contains the idea of
copying.

Egyptian myths contain an explicit mention of the idea.  I'm a bit hazy on some
of the details but here's the gist:

Paris abducts Helen and sets sail for Troy, but winds up in the Nile Delta
region.  For some reason I can't recall (his crew has gone AWOL and clain
asylum in Egypt?) Paris finds himself arguing the justice of his claim to Helen
(and some gold he stole from Menelaus) in court to Pharaoh.  Pharaoh remains
unconvinced (Paris used force to remove Helen against her wishes and betrayed
Menelaus's hospitality) but is unsure whether to create a political incident
out of it.  Thoth and Isis intervene to save the day and create a copy/partial
of Helen.  Paris is unaware of this subterfuge [another nail in the sarcophagus
of the bicameral mind thesis] and returns to Troy with Helen2.  Helen1 remains
behind in the Temple of Isis practising some life-extensionist regime [the
Egyptians were pretty keen on immortalism] and is worshiped as an avatar of
Isis.  Meanwhile the Trojan War is fought.   Menelaus is reunited with Helen2
and sails back to Sparta.... But on the way (you've guessed it!) they are
diverted by storm and beach on an island in the Delta.  Helen2 wanders off and
disappears.  Helen1 is told in a dream of Menelaus's return and they are
eventually reunited [sub-plot of the new Pharaoh's amorous intentions towards
Helen1 deleted].  Menelaus is a bit disconcerted to find that the Trojan War
has been fought over a partial (well, he uses the expression phantom, but I
guess he meant partial :-) ), but happy to find that Helen1 hasn't aged in the
meantime.  Pharaoh also restores the gold Paris stole and which has remained
in the royal treasury for the interim.  Menelaus departs with much pomp for
Sparta and re-enters Greek mythology.

Egyptian mythology makes frequent references to various peoples Ka's who remain
behind in their tombs whilst the 'original' lives it up in the Land of Duat
(Land of the Dead).  The Ka seems to have the same memories and personality as
the original, but bound to the tomb, guarding the body remains and accepting
offerings.

Mike Price (price@price.demon.co.uk)


--------------------------------------------------------------------


From: Hans Moravec <moravec@Think.COM>
Subject: Re: META:Uploading, indianmythology, relativity, celtic mythology
To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 92 22:14:38 EST


Phil Fraering writes:
> Interestingly enough, I have heard that Hans Moravec, WHO IS ON
> THIS LIST AND WILL DOUBTLESS CORRECT ME IF I AM WRONG, is a devout
> Catholic. There are lots of stories from the *Catholic* tradition
> about Saints and the like being in two different places at the
> same time.

Whoa!  I was raised in Catholic schools, and took my catechism quite
seriously (though my parents were not religious, though nominally
catholic).  But I read a lot of subversive science and science fiction, and
at the usual age (about 14) switched my allegiance and became a devout
athiest scientific materialist (I'm sure the devout part is a holdover).
But perhaps you heard about my wife, who has just finished her master's
thesis in biblical studies, and is a serious evangelical episcopalian
(but not narrow minded).			-- Hans




--------------------------------------------------------------------


From: yanek@novavax.nova.edu (Yanek Martinson)
Subject: Private E-mail (re: Ban on cash transactions)
To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu
Date: Wed, 25 Nov 92 3:08:28 EDT

> Does there exist a crypto mail system that can be set up by 
> lawyers, psychiatrists, journalists, etc. for secure net
> communications with clients, assuming no computer skills beyond 
> e-mail?  The winds seems to be pointing at the need to get
> a wide user community ASAP:

PGP is the only widely available system that I know of, but it is NOT 
very easy to use for naive users. And it is very easy to use incorrectly,
thus believing you are secure while you are not.

I came up with an idea for a hardware based solution, which would work with
ANY type of computer, e-mail or BBS software. And in the case of a terminal
(or a PC with a modem that emulates a terminal) connected to a multiuser
system, you don't even have to trust the host, since the plaintext never
appears anywhere on the connection between you and the host.

I attach my original post to CypherPunks list below:


From: yanek@novavax.nova.edu
Subject: RS232 crypto dongle

A very useful device for people who can not trust the host they are
talking to such as users of multiuser unix systems, or low security BBS
systems, or "public access" workstations or PC-s, (this includes almost
every single person that uses e-mail, except probably for users of a
high-security mainframe communications system) would be an RS232 crypto
"dongle" that would sit between the terminal (or modem) and the remote
system.

It would contain some tamperproof (write and decrypt only, can not be
read out without a great deal of trouble) memory (as someone at the
midnight crypto session at Hackers was talking about) for storage of
the private key, some nonvolatile memory (flash eprom?) for the public
key ring, and a processor to do the encryption/decryption.

It would look (if all that can be fit into a small enough space) like a
null modem or a gender changer.  (or an RS232 break-out box). If crypto
tech ever becomes illegal, it could even be disguised as one, with some
special signal combination enabling the crypto function.

It should also contain some out-of-band signal such as an LED to
indicate that it is actually doing the decryption, instead of the host
mimicking it.

If introduced now or in near future, this device could become
incredibly widespread, since most everybody that is accessing any form
of e-mail goes at some point through an RS-232 link (either a terminal
hanging off a terminal server, or a PC connected to a modem).

Also, it would not require ANY special software on the host or the pc,
nor any special terminal.  Thus it would work with any of the great
variety of e-mail and BBS sysetems that exist, instead of having to
deal with each of them individually as a purely software-based approach
would have to.  It would also be completely independent of the type of
computer/terminal or operating system used.

You would send the usual mail command to the host, type the magic
sequence to the encryption device (or even better, flip a little
switch), and then type your message.  The device would send to the host
the ciphertext, while echoing the plaintext to your terminal so you can
see what you are typing.  The plaintext would never travel further than
the RS232 connection between your terminal and the encryption device.

When you receive an encrypted message, flip the switch on your device
to "decrypt", and tell the host to send you the message.  The host and
any intervening networks would only see the ciphertext.  The only place
the decrypted text appears is on your terminal.  I think this is as
secure as you can get (until a decryption implant can be put in your
head :-).

Now, to allow the use of existing tools (pagers, editors, mailers, etc)
the device should be completely transparent except when performing the
crypto function.  Even then, careful design should make it pretty
transparent.  For example if it passed all control characters intact,
it could be used with a text editor that uses control key sequences for
movement.  It could be programmed for most common arrow key sequences,
and for commands for editors such as EMACS, vi, etc, to pass them
through unchanged.

Same thing for receiving. When decrypting, it should pass through
unchanged any characters passing through the other way, and should not
interfere with terminal control characters, so any mail viewing program
would not be affected.

Additional functions it might include are generation and verification
of signatures, an echo mode with decrypt/encrypt (so you could store
the encrypted texts on your local drive, and to view would just "ascii
upload" them to the device while in a comm program; also you could
prepare the text of a message locally, while storing the encrypted text
echoed back. Then you could upload the cyphertext to the system), a
simple local editor and viewer, and anything else we have the ROM space
for.  Once the basic hardware is developed, there is nothing to stop
one from including any desired features.

Is anyone here already working on something like this?  If not, is
anyone interested in working with me on developing this kind of a
device?  I have the design pretty much thought out (this post is just a
summary).  I also have a clear picture of the prototyping and
development process, and am capable of writing the software part.  I
would like to work with a partner who knows the hardware part of all
this.  I.E. the RS232/UART control, PCB layouts, that kind of stuff.
Also, I know almost nothing about the technology of tamperproof memory
storage.

The main objective of this is not to make loads of money (though that
would not hurt either) but to increase widespread accessibility and use
of good crypto technology.  So I would make the schematics and code
available, in case anyone wants to be SURE and build one themselves.
This could probably also be made available in kit form, that could be
assembled by the user.  (an interesting parrallel: this is how the
personal computer was first distributed... look at the prevalence of PC
use today!) This way they can be more sure that it does what it says it
does.

So, if you have read this far you are probably interested in this.
PLEASE reply to me or to the list.  If you are the person I am looking
for to help with the development, please contact me soon, using one of the
addresses or numbers listed in the signature. 

If you think you would be interested in buying or using such a device
when it is ready, please let me know.

If you have any improvements to the idea, or other comments, or reasons
why you think this device would not be useful or could not work, please
let me know too.

Waiting for your feedback....

--
Yanek Martinson    mthvax.cs.miami.edu!safe0!yanek     uunet!medexam!yanek
this address preferred -->> yanek@novavax.nova.edu <<-- this address preferred
Phone (305) 765-6300 daytime   FAX: (305) 765-6708  1321 N 65 Way/Hollywood
      (305) 963-1931 evenings       (305) 981-9812  Florida, 33024-5819


--------------------------------------------------------------------


From: wce@hogbbs.scol.pa.us (Bill Eichman)
Subject: Re: Extropian Collective Action?
To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu
Date: 	Sun, 6 Dec 1992 19:43:04 -0500

szabo@techbook.com (Nick Szabo) writes:

> First, I hope there's no feeling that collective action is
> generally bad.  This mailing list, ExI, every market, my 
> family, etc. are all collective activities.  Hyper-individualism 
> is quite counter-productive; we should frown on _forced_ 
> relationships, and encourage voluntary, rational relationships.

I've mentioned the crucial economic influence of 'collective action' 
(which I label 'organized group effort') a number of times on this list, 
to the response of deafening silence.

At this time, I see this as the "shadow", the weakest link, in extropian 
philosophy. Over-emphasis on 19th century capitalism and classical 
libertarianism is self-contradictory and self-destructive in a 
technological society, where virtually every advance and development 
comes from the super-collectives of the corporations and the 
universities. 

Some more intelligent and adaptive philosophical and pragmatic 'bridge' 
is needed to deal with this "hyper-individualism". Otherwise, we all 
default to a de facto dependence and indenture to the super-collectives 
of corp, college, and state. 

If we're not clever enough to establish our own _organized group 
efforts_, then we deserve the salaryman's fate. 

My grandfather's name is on three dozen chemical engineering patents. He 
invented expanded bead polystyrene technology, and made the world's first 
styrofoam cup. But all the profit's from those patents went to the 
incorporations he worked for, and all his cleverness only bought him a 
stock portfolio and a little retirement home in florida. He was the 
archetypal salaryman. 

I rely on myself, and I'm every bit as concerned about return on 
investment as the most securely tenured and retired on this list. 
However, without organized group effort, we'll all end up dying in little 
retirement homes in florida. Therefore, I am willing to tackle the 
-CONTRACTS- that might just possibly make organized group efforts 
feasible.

> Finally, on t-bills: we just got done taling about U.S. government 
> bankruptcy.  Hyperinflation would bury 7% t-bills.  Government debt is 
> _not_ a zero-risk investment, even for no-bankruptcy-in-95 optimists 
> like me.

Whereas I reject T-bills on principle, despite their tax benefits. I get 
a lot more joy out of investing in coins and income-producing tools.

More rabblerousing later, Bill


--------------------------------------------------------------------


From: jrk@information-systems.east-anglia.ac.uk (Richard Kennaway)
Subject: Re: Understanding Computers and Cognition
To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu
Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1992 13:20:18 +0000

Paul Cisek writes:
>I'd like to make the very "disrespectful" statement that in a way,
>the invention of computers has had a negative effect on studies of
>the mind.  I say this because they suggest various analogies to be
>made, most of which are quite inaccurate.  For example, I've heard
>people use the CPU as a metaphor for consciousness!  (Not here...)
>Aside from such obvious fallacies, there are many more subtle ones
>that continue to be made, if only because in our quest for
>understanding we are eager to draw upon metaphors.

The history of attempts to understand the mind can be seen as a succession
of metaphors, each of them being no more than the state of the art of the
time in information processing.  Telephone exchanges, steam-engine
governors, Jacquard looms, punched-card tabulators, stored-program
computers, holograms, LISP, logic programming, expert systems, parallel
hardware of various sorts, fuzzy logic, neural nets, genetic algorithms...

I am cynically inclined to divide these into two classes: failed, and not
yet failed.  If there were any long-lived members of the latter class (as
tools for understanding the mind, rather than merely as tools for practical
computation), I might attach more worth to them, but there don't seem to
be.  For this reason, I am pessimistic about AI in the short term (while
being more hopeful in the long term, simply because the long term isn't
knowable).

Some predictions (remember, you heard it here first :-)): The next item in
the list will be: chaos.  It will go through the usual cycle of neat demo
applications -> hype -> a few useful engineering or programming tools ->
gone with the hula hoop.

After that will be: nanotechnology.  I see this as having a better chance
than any of the previous attempts, as there's a clear technological path to
creating a fully functioning brain-equivalent, simply by replicating the
functions at cell-level.  No understanding of higher-level functions is
required.  However, given the past record of the rest of that list, I can't
regard its success as a foregone conclusion.

--                                ____
Richard Kennaway                  \  /__    School of Information Systems
Internet:  jrk@sys.uea.ac.uk       \/  /    University of East Anglia
uucp:  ...mcsun!ukc!uea-sys!jrk      \/     Norwich NR4 7TJ, U.K.



--------------------------------------------------------------------


From: Robin Hanson <hanson@ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov>
Subject: Re: Tenure
To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu
Date: Wed, 9 Dec 92 14:20:08 PST

I know the discussion on Tenure died down, but I just came on a
relevant post to another list, which is now discussing tenure.

>From: ACHiggins <ACH13%ALBNYVMS.BITNET@pucc.Princeton.EDU>
Sender: Discussion of Fraud in Science <SCIFRAUD%ALBNYVM1.BITNET@pucc.Princeton.EDU>
Reply-To: Discussion of Fraud in Science <SCIFRAUD%ALBNYVM1.BITNET@pucc.Princeton.EDU>
To: Multiple recipients of list SCIFRAUD <SCIFRAUD%ALBNYVM1.BITNET@pucc.Princeton.EDU>
Message-Id: <9212090637.AB18012@ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov>
Date:         Wed, 9 Dec 1992 01:23:00 EST
Subject:      Quotes From Anderson

                       Anderson On Tenure

     I thought it might be instructive to quote from a recent
source in opposition to the tenure system.  Here then are some
selections from Martin Anderson, Impostors in the Temple, (New
York:  Simon & Schuster, 1992).

                           ++++++++++

     Tenure is relatively new in America's universities,
     become a faculty right less than fifty years ago.
     Ostensibly put in place to guarantee academic freedom,
     to prevent a professor from being first for such things
     as unpopular political views, tenure quickly
     transformed itself into a "job for life," immunity from
     being fired for professor's conscience is the main
     guardian of the standards of teaching and research, for
     if his or her only sin is not teaching very well or not
     producing important writing, not much can or will be
     done by the university administrators.
          Tenure is what really separates the universities
     from business corporations.  That, and the fact that
     there are no clear-cut owners to answer to, has created
     a free-floating, self-governing organization that
     pretty much can do as it wishes. (p. 39)


          The dirty secret of the academic intellectuals is
     that much of what they write and hold up to themselves
     and to the rest of the world as the highest expression
     of what they do is inconsequential and trifling.
          The work of scholars that is relevant to the
     critical issues facing Americans is almost
     nonexistence.  As Derek Bok, president of Harvard
     University, wrote in 1990, "Armed with the security of
     tenure and the time to study the world with care,
     professors would appear to have a unique opportunity to
     act as society's scouts to signal impending problems
     long before they are visible to others.  Yet rarely
     have members of the academy succeeded in discovering
     emerging issues and bringing them vividly to the
     attention of the public."
          Taken as a whole, academic research and writing is
     the greatest intellectual fraud of the twentieth
     century. (p. 85)


          Tenure is a relatively new innovation in American
     higher education for we have lived with it long enough,
     almost fifty years.  It is time to pass judgment.  Lot
     a lot of bad ideas, it began with good intention--the
     preservation of academic freedom and protection of
     professors from outside political pressures.  Today
     that threat is obsolete and the effect of tenure is the
     opposite for which it was created.  Tenure is
     corruptive;  it gives academic intellectuals almost
     unlimited license to do as they please with no fear of
     consequences.  Its major effect is to encourage sloth.
     In a nutshell, professors who are good don't need
     tenure, and those who need tenure aren't very good. (p.
     121)
          We should also consider some fundamental changes
     in the way faculties organize themselves.  The main
     business of higher education should be teaching and
     learning.  There is a great pretense today that its
     main business is the production of new learning, new
     knowledge.  That pretense is pernicious myth...
          (Faculty)...should be teachers.  Teaching is what
     faculty are supposed to do, and "teachers" is what they
     should be called.  To be a college or university
     teacher is an honorable calling, and it should be
     recognized as such by title as well as monetary
     rewards.  Being a teacher should be the most
     prestigious post on campus, and the most highly paid.
     (p. 121)


          Whatever tenuous justification existed for
     establishing tenure some fifty years ago is gone, and
     the corrupting influence of a guaranteed job for life
     far outweighs any arguments in support of the idea.
     Governing boards can easily establish policies that
     will protect against arbitrary dismissal for unpopular
     political or social views, or anything else that is
     deemed worth protecting, but which will allow dismissal
     for such things as incompetence or neglect.  Perhaps
     professors who already have tenure will have to be
     "grandfathered" and allowed to keep their sinecure, but
     the future of American education belongs to those who
     are good enough to keep their jobs on the basis of
     performance. (p.  208)

                           ++++++++++

        ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
        +                     A. C. Higgins                    +
        +         SS 361  SUNYA  Albany, New York 12222        +
        +   E-mail:  ACH13@ALBNYVMS;  ACH13@UACSC1.Albany.edu  +
        +    Phone: (518) 442 - 4678; FAX: (518) 442 - 4936    +
        +                   SCIFRAUD@ALBNYVM1                  +
        ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


--------------------------------------------------------------------


From: pandit@crash.cts.com (Pandit Singh)
Subject: Copying achieved in India, importance of brahmacharya
To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 92 22:22:19 PST

> 
> > Did Hans Moravec take incidents from the Mahabharata and regurgitate
> > them ala computer-speak?
> 
> The territory covered by mythology is so great that
> it's impossible to discuss future technology without
> covering the same ground.
> 
> > While several on this list have debated the issue of whether a copy is
> > "me" both pro and con, apparently no one is aware that in India
> > spirtual adepts have been creating "copies" of themselves.
> 
> I'm not aware of the reality of this; I am aware of the myth, though,
> _and_ the fact that a transfer of conciousness _or_ even basic
> personality traits rarely occurs.

A more contemporary book which describes how several Indian yogis 
had the capability to make copies of themselves is "Autobiography of a Yogi",
by Paramahansa Yogananda. This book has been distributed internationally.
Perhaps Hans read this book?

> 
> Interestingly enough, I have heard that Hans Moravec, WHO IS ON
> THIS LIST AND WILL DOUBTLESS CORRECT ME IF I AM WRONG, is a devout
> Catholic. There are lots of stories from the *Catholic* tradition
> about Saints and the like being in two different places at the
> same time.
> 

Hans has already corrected you. What I would like to know is whether 
Hans believes that the stories about the Catholic saints are true?

> > Not only has it been documented in recent yogic literature, the
> > age-old Mahabharata itself describes "copying" (well before transistors,
> > not even to speak of nanotech!)
> 
> If THAT'S your standard of evidence, I'd like to ...
Look Phil, all of the mail on the Extropian list from the past two
years as well as all future mail will never amount to one page of the
Mahabharata. The Mahabharata stands out as one of the all time outstanding
texts in the entire history of human civilization. 

> > Thus the core or fundamental axiom of Max More's "transhuman" philosophy -
> > that advanced technology is necessary to improve on the human form 
> > in order to attain "long life", "think faster" , etc. can be thrown
> > out the door. 
> 
> > More to come...
> 
> Oh, please do, it'll give me an opportunity to bore everyone...  
> 

You speak for yourself, not for the entire mailing list. The fact
is that copying has already been achieved, without computers,
without nanotechnology, without Phil Fraering or Hans Moravec!

It was achieved with advanced yogic techniques.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Live long - preserve your semen

As was pointed out recently, Taoist masters have known for quite some
time of the importance of semen.

Please note however that the understanding of the subtle energy contained
in semen - "OJAS" - is widely understood and acknowledged in various
yogic disciplines.

This information has been distributed in various yoga books in the US;
Muktunanda once made an analogy likening semen to gold.

Physical longevity is only one aspect of how the energy in semen affects
the human body. The other aspects relate to consciousness, memory and
spiritual strength.


=== pandit
 



--------------------------------------------------------------------


From: zz@garnet.berkeley.edu (Zachary Zaidman)
Subject: Re: Copying achieved in India, importance of brahmacharya
To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 92 00:13:31 -0800

===pandit writes:
"
You speak for yourself, not for the entire mailing list. The fact
is that copying has already been achieved, without computers,
without nanotechnology, without Phil Fraering or Hans Moravec!

It was achieved with advanced yogic techniques.
"

I do not believe that you are serious... If you are, then I must, as politely
as I can, question your epistemology.  Yoga, as many other mystical practices
makes a lot of claims none of which have EVER been proven.  Somebody help me
understand why they continue to be so damn popular!  I have been waging my own
private war against pseudoscience and mysticism for years now and I don't think
I have won more than one battle :-(...  I frame this in the context of war 
because I have come to recognize the enemy so easily and ubiquitously by now.
Are we loosing?  
The sight of pseudoscience and mysticism on this list is especially frightening
to me.  The fringe nature of many extropians is in and of itself a defining
attribute of this 'community', but blurring the line between the fringe and
nonsense is a danger I did not think I would have to face HERE...

-Zak
:-) CAUTION! NO FLAME WAR INTENDED :-)


--------------------------------------------------------------------


From: zz@garnet.berkeley.edu (Zachary Zaidman)
Subject: Re: Copying achieved in India, importance of brahmacharya
To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 92 00:36:56 -0800

More on mystical wisdom...

=== pandit also writes:
"
Live long - preserve your semen

As was pointed out recently, Taoist masters have known for quite some
time of the importance of semen.

Please note however that the understanding of the subtle energy contained
in semen - "OJAS" - is widely understood and acknowledged in various
yogic disciplines.

This information has been distributed in various yoga books in the US;
Muktunanda once made an analogy likening semen to gold.

Physical longevity is only one aspect of how the energy in semen affects
the human body. The other aspects relate to consciousness, memory and
spiritual strength.
"

OK NOW what is the scientific validity of ANY of this?  If there is, then 
I am willing, no, VERY willing to hear about it ;-) !!! What is happening
to me everytime I loose some of this prescious "gold?" no, SEMEN!  I was
told as a child that wasting semen was against "The [religious] Law". BUt 
then again, there were rumors that I would grow hair on my hand if I did not
refrain from, well, masturbating...  PLEASE, I am trying to be respectful here
but what the hell to Taoist masters know about the importance of semen? Who told
them? Did they run any tests? Did they learn through meditating under a tree
about the ten thousand something or other?  And what is "OJAS", can I see it
with a microscope, can it be defined in terms that I can validate?  While I
am at it, how did Yogis learn about this "subtle energy"? or about anything
else for that matter?  Why does it take so long and so much work to unlock 
the secrets of memory and consciousness in the Cognitive Psychology labs when
the Yogis and the Taoists and my middles school sexual issues counselor 
representing no one else but god him/herself have, reportedly, special access
to all the answers for centuries now?  There is only one way to find out
about the world, and to the best of my knowledge I am sad to say that there are
no shortcuts.

-ZAK




--------------------------------------------------------------------


From: wce@hogbbs.scol.pa.us (Bill Eichman)
Subject: Weird, odd, scary communities stuff
To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu
Date: 	Mon, 14 Dec 1992 15:14:28 -0500

>From:   habs@acf3.NYU.EDU (Harry A. B. Shapiro)
>Subject: Re: Weird, odd, scary Zendik stuff (Communiatrian)
>
>The scary part is that these people have been able to put their
>ideas into action, actually use cable access and other "professional"
>means communication. They also seem to endorse technological education.
>What is scary is they have a good change of thriving. We want to run
>half way arround the world, and they are building here. I can see time
>growing then entering a period of rapid decline, but I can't predict
>that.

I don't want to go halfway around the world. I'm starting my own
projects right here in the central Pennsylvania mountains, tapping into
the information nexus of Penn State. In time, I'm expecting to spend
winters, and eventually the whole year, in the caribbean, but that's
just my trip, my hobby, and maybe you or your kids can come vacation
at my Seacolony School someday.. I think there are huge oppurtunities
for an extropian lifestyle, wherever on the planet we are; and all
things considered, the US is at least as good a place to start as any.

If the Zendik's thrive, more power to them, I say. I'm a hardcore
freemarketeer-- let the marketplace decide. If they can sell their
philosophy and lifestyle, then they've proven their worthiness, as far
as I'm concerned. If I can't sell my philosophy and lifestyle, then I'm
doing a lousy job of marketing, and I deserve to crash and burn. I won't
hinder other marketer's, or invest in schemes to hinder other marketers.
I'm not going to waste my creative energy attacking; In my own eyes, the
only honorable way to deal with disagreeable memes and ideas is to
outcompete them in the free marketplace. No coercion. No initiation of
violence, either physical or memetic. (With a strong emphasis on
powerful self defense, if attacked.)

The Zendik's are as successful as they are because they have two
leaders, Wulf Zendik and Arol Wulf, with a lot of practical knowledge,
who had money at the right time, and the right place. They bought a
little parcel of land in Ca, parleyed that into a bigger parcel, then an
even bigger parcel in Tx. Without their skills, knowledge, and
leadership nothing that the Zendik's have accomplished would have been
possible.

>The scary part is, for all our "smarts," skills, talent, etc. we have
>very little to show. They are actually supporting people (farming, etc.).
>We don't generate enough money to pay for a full-time executive director,
>let alone a "training camp."

That is scary, isn't it? Not that they have been successful, despite or
due to their philosophy; but that Extropy I., with all these prestigious
and powerful people, has been able to accomplish relatively little. Not
even a FAQ yet. To my mind, this is a major question. What's actually
happening here??

>How many of us are willing to pledge $1,000 a year for 10 years
>to get ExI really going. If 25% of us did that would be $50,000
>a year? What would that buy? What kind of research? What kind
>of media access? Many on this list are students who will earn
>"the big bucks" when they graduate -how many are willing to put
>their money on the line? At what return?

It would be a lot easier for me to think about pledging money if i
didn't worry about being 'burned as a heretic'.

Nor would I even consider it if I didn't have some guarentees as to what
my money would be used for. The thing to do is to establish some
organizational goals, write up a proposal outlining the financial
elements of acheiving those goals, and publicize your process, and
request donations or sell shares.

In a few paragraphs I'm going to post some writing about "corporate
communities", which I think offers one solution to ExI's problems.

>There is a fine-line between communitrian and libertian - one
>wants you to do the best for the ideal society you want to live in
>by doing what is best for the society. The other says you WILL do the
>best for the idea society you want, and there  by end up doing what
>is best for society, by doing what is in your true self interest.

I suspect that, however well meant, this is 'merely rhetoric', and that
it doesn't adequately describe the real structures and behaviors of
either type of society. I don't care to argue it-- if this is what you
want to sell, then sell it, and may the best product win.

>> One of my fields of interest is intentional communities. Is this a
>> problem?
>
>intentional = spontanous or planned ?
>
>I believe in living in a community that is designed

"Intentional" is just the word that is used, the 'technical description'
found in books on this subject.

I myself am interested in relatively thoroughly planned communities,
with plenty of room for spontaneous and creative developments. Most of
the people I discuss communities with think I am hopelessly rigid-- they
want a Thoreauvian lifestyle, wheras I tend to be rather high-tech and
planetary.

To give you an example of my thinking, I'm appending the introduction
that I wrote for the "Corporate Communities" monograph that I had
mentioned that I might post to Exi-Essay. I decided against posting the
whole thing-- it's not really suited to the Extropian discussions going
on here in the list.

However, I suggest that if ExI were to incorporate, and sell shares, in
a way similar to that which I describe below, that could solve some of
ExI's money problems. (Of course, in a sense all that happens is that
ExI would jump into a new batch of money problems...)


Later, Bill
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
      wce@hogbbs.scol.pa.us     Bill Eichman, State College, Pa
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

    -------------------------------------
    SECTION ONE   THE CORPORATE COMMUNITY
    -------------------------------------




    While the distant future looks extremely bright, as a result
    of the spread of post-industrial science and technology
    around the planet, in the short term US society may be
    facing some tremendous handicaps.

    What are these handicaps? Well, it's a very complicated
    picture, but, for the purposes of this monograph, they boil
    down to the following:

       (1) Shortage of Capital. This is partly due to the large
    share of debt that has been purchased, and continues to be
    purchased, by the US federal government. Demographics have
    a strong influence; a growing class of elderly feeds capital
    into service industries, and changes the availablity patterns
    of venture capital.This will be complicated by a trend towards
    conservatism in the banks, stung by the excesses that led to
    the S&L scandal, et al.

       (2) Changing Business Trends and the Export of Automated
    Industry to the Third World. The entire planetary economy,
    including the US economy, is undergoing the transformation
    of Industrial Planetization. This movement of industrial
    production to the undeveloped nations will throw the US economy
    into various levels of turmoil for several decades.

       (3) Changing Patterns of Opportunity. This is a corollary
    to the second handicap. The planetization of the economy
    will take millions of jobs away from US people, but at the
    same time it will create opportunities for millions more new
    jobs. However, these new jobs and careers will come with no
    guarantees, and no 'operating manuals'. The new
    opportunities will require very different types of skills,
    education, and mindsets than those we've been trained for in
    our schools and colleges. It will take bravery, luck, risk-
    taking, and clever thinking to find the jobs and careers
    with long-term profitability and growth.

    In this paper I propose a new entrepreneurial strategy, the
    "Corporate Community", as a possible solution to these
    handicaps.

    ---

    The Corporate Community, as presented here, is a voluntary,
    contractual, and essentially capitalistic association of
    free individuals and families for mutual benefit.

    It is a modern version of the extended family and the
    'village' or 'tribal' lifestyle, adapted to the needs of a
    planetary economy. It has the toughness and protections of
    the Incorporation, and adopts some of the "corporate family"
    attitudes of the Japanese businesses. At the same time, it
    provides a support system and an attitude of family and


