General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Ah how far technology advances... [View all]MisterP
(23,730 posts)New Jerusalem
what Charles Stross meant by that throwaway comment is that Kurzweil, George Gilder, and LaHaye all share a vision of a world driven by an innate teleology that ends in discorporation, in getting to heaven without having to die, in overcoming the resistance of material reality, in living in a perfect utopia; both are also driven by pants-piddling fear of death, a very strong predilection for neoliberal economics (Gilder and Reagan, LaHaye and Amway), and a bizarrely hermetic worldview: in Kurzweil's case, that we're really just software, in LaHaye's, that the entire cosmos is a clock wound up with events from Daniel and Revelations literalized and placed in neat order on the clock dial
here's something by Steven Shaviro on Kurzweil and Stross: http://www.shaviro.com/Othertexts/Singularity.pdf