And So It Begins...

http://eyetap.blogspot.com/2012/07/physical-assault-by-mcdonalds-for.html

This story is starting to gain momentum.  A man and his family were in a McDonalds in Paris, France.  The man has a medical vision implant.  All very legal, with documentation to authenticate his condition. And yet employees from a public company purposely destroy the papers, and physically attack this man, due to their narrow-mindedness.

Now I could imply that the employees were acting out of instructions from the franchise owner of not allowing public photography as it could be a ruse for undercover journalism.  The McDonalds Corporation has a policy of not allowing anyone to do a news story on their premises without previous authorization. And only interviewing the general manager of that particular restaurant, or the corporate rep. And I can understand the logic of this.  It controls libel or slander or simply misreporting facts.

But this is far more than a simple  "keep the media at bay" situation.  I think this man was attacked by people out of religious principle.  Attacked out of fear of loss of control of a perceived lifestyle that can no more be controlled now, than thousands of years ago.  Fundamentalism is equally narrow minded in Islam, Christianity, and Judasim.  And God forbid if you happen to be from the American continent.  It doesn't matter if you are a Yank or a Canuck.  Then you also fall under global sterotyping.

They tried to yank out a medical implant.  What is going to happen when Google releases their final version of the Glass technology?  And not just Google. You know that other companies are lining up to release their own version of augmentation.  Does it become a stand off between cyborgs and fundamentalists?  A holy war between transhumanists and the religious right wings?  Or something even more ludicrous as the tech public against corporate elites?

Some reading this will say "Hey, you work for McDonalds. Why aren't you supporting the company?".  I'm not real proud of this right now, for my own reasons.  Whether or not the McDonalds corporation makes this right for Dr. Steve Mann is besides the point.  At some time in the future this will become personal for everyone.  We will need to take up positions on whether we embrace technology and the direction it's taking us, or shun it from our lives.

On this, I stand solid with the transhumanists.

A Thought on Transhumanism and Second Life

I like Second Life.  Once I finally got used to the interface, it was easy to go from location to location, where I could earn Linden Dollars, and spend them just as fast.  What kept me there was being able to exchange the L$ for US$. The notecards, pop-up messages, maps, and heads up devices are a nice reminder of what will eventually happen in the default world  when augmented reality finally becomes mainstream.  As long as Google keeps working on a head mounted display, it will happen.  And everyone will jump on that bandwagon.   But I've been aware of the constant draw to return to live in-world recently.

Transhumanism is a large and broadly defined way of life.  There is no one way to achieve Transhumanism.  But the closest single thing to it in my opinion has been Second Life.  That system has it's own global structure, politics, law enforcement, economy, and lifestyle.  If physical reality didn't rear it's ugly head and make you eat and go to the bathroom, the average SL citizen could get lost in their computers for weeks at a time, if not months or years

I wouldn't mind living in Second Life.  There are TONS of opportunities in-world that I can take advantage of.  But I'm quite comfortable with my default world existence.  Outside of exchanging L$ for US$, there is really no way for me to personally interact with SL/default on the fly.  I need to set time aside to focus on SL and it's lifestyle.  Then I need to detach and refocus on physical reality..  I'm finding it to be disconcerting, because both require focus and attention to detail.

For the summer, I'm going to cut back my SL involvement.  And that probably includes third party websites and contacts.  I'm going to refocus on virtual worlds that let me slip in and out unobtrusively.  Work with stuff that doesn't make me feel like a Transhumanist.  Because I'm not a Transhumanist.  I'm still Human 1.0.