What is extropianism? Who are extropians? What do they believe? What is their general polical thought?(I'll give you a hint, this site is about it)... Extropians believe in life-extenstion, cryogenics/cryonics, mind-uploading, artificial intelligence, bionics, etc... I am a limited extropian, and soon, I will have an extropian story written up exclusively for the web(well, maybe not soon, but eventually), based on the non-linear concept of space/time found on the WWW.
Here's more info on Extropianism, who knows, maybe this will fascinate you like it does me.
Virtual Chaos
Virtual Chaos is a site which tries to present a GUToE(Grand Unified Theory of Everything) to the reader. It tries to combine modern science, math, religion and philosophy into one whole. It uses a different mathematical concept than the norm. It's pretty deep stuff, so put on your thinking cap before you go.
Mind Uploading
Mind uploading is the biggest thing that interests me in extropianism. In fact, that is what my story is going to be based upon. The basic idea is that mankind will eventually find a way to upload his mind into a computer. Most likely a computer network. The biggest question I see on this is theoretical/philsophical... once we upload our minds, are we a collective mind, or are we individuals, with our society inside of a computer? Are we pure information, with no body, or do we have "avatars" representing ourselves in a virtual world? How do we maintain the computer system? All this I will write about in my story, which will hopefully be interesting. Anyways, back on track... uploading the mind... Is it possible? If so, how? The Mind Uploading Home Page attempts to answer that with theories that have been tossed around... Ranging from cutting up the brain into slivers and scanning them, to injecting the body with nanites that will monitor our synapses/neural network, and simulate them in a computer.
The Nerd in the Noosphere
This site deals with the noosphere... A concept of a universal mind. This idea was hypothesized by Pierre Teillhard de Chardin... a french catholic priest, who claimed that eventually mankind will evolve into a global mind, called the Noosphere. I believe this has to do with mankind uploading it's mind into the internet. Some would have different theories, but this seems the most widely accepted.
Bionomics is kickin'!!!
Bionomics is a belief about the economy that sees it as a living being. Most economic theories treat the economy as a machine, which can be fine tuned. I've thought about this a few times, listening to the commentators talk about the dow jones... I thought... "It sounds like they're betting on a race or something... It's like the market is alive or something..." And little did I know there were actually people who took this a step further and said the economy is a living organism(or at least to treat it in such a way...) Of course, this leads to unbridled capitalism... The idea kicks arse!!! This is the homepage of the bionomics institute... Bionomics magazine articles are here, along with some special articles written by some of the people involved.
The dynamic Structure of Space
Now, I don't know if this is really an "extropian" site per se... In fact, it sounds a lot more like a quasi new-age thing, but it's still interesting, and it fits some extropian philosophies(at least in my eyes...) Quite interesting... Some graphics for explanation is included, etc...
The League for Programming freedom
The League for Programming Freedom is about ensuring that algorithms can't get patented. There is a little introduction on the page about this issue. Computer companies are trying to get patents on encryption algorithms, and I even heard that IBM has a patent on the color coding for syntax in editors(or something like that... If you're a programmer, I think you'll probably know what I mean. At least Borland has something like that. color coded syntax...) anyways, how can you patent a mathematical formula. You can't, and that's what computer companies are trying to do. Not all of them mind you, but certain ones are. Check this page out... And while you're at it, check out this page... The "FreeWin95" project. It's a group of programmers trying to create a free Win95 clone that runs even better than Win95(not like that's hard to do... ooh, a rip on Microsoft... (seriously, I do like microsoft, just not everything they do....))
