CLASSIFIED ADS

Spread your Extropian memes with “Neural Tweaker” greeting card themes!

For FREE catalog send SASE to: Neural Tweakers, c/o Kevin Brown, P.O. Box 781, Netcong, NJ 07857, USA.

Cross verbal swords in The (Libertarian) Connection, open-forum magazine since 1968. Subscribers may insert one page/issue free, unedited. Lots of stimulating conversation. Eight issues (one year) $20. Strauss, Box 3343X, Fairfax, VA 22038.

Forward! Upward! Outward! Into Your T-Shirt!

ExI proudly announces, for the first time ever, an opportunity to boldly show what no one has shown before. While others are wearing their hearts on their sleeves, you’ll be wearing your ideas on your torso. That’s right, official ExI T-shirts are now for sale. These shirts, in blue, feature the five-spiral ExI logo in black and gold up front, and the motto “Forward! Upward! Outward! Into the Future!” on the back. The cost is $16 per shirt ($14 for ExI members). Sizes are men’s large and extra-large. Send check or money order, in US dollars drawn on a US bank, payable to Extropy Institute, Dept. S, PO Box 57306, Los Angeles, CA 90057-0306.

CONTRIBUTORS

Hal Finney: Hal received a BS in Engineering from Caltech. He developed several commercial video games for Mattel, then went on to head the Operating Systems Group at Ametek, a major manufacturer of parallel computers. He co-developed Neuralyst, a commercial neural-network simulation package. Hal played a major part in the development of version 2.0 of Phil Zimmermann’s encryption program, PGP.

hal@alumni.caltech.edu

J. Storrs Hall: Moderator of the USENET sci.nanotech newsgroup and Extropy’s Nanotechnology Editor. josh@cs.rutgers.edu

David Krieger: David is Marketplace Administrator at the American Information Exchange (AMiX), Extropy’s Science Editor, an Extropy Institute director, and a former Technical Consultant to Star Trek: The Next Generation. dkrieger@netcom.com

Hans Moravec: Director of the Mobile Robot Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University, Hans is author of Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence. moravec@cs.cmu.edu

Max More: Editor of Extropy and Executive Director of Extropy Institute, Max received his BA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from St. Anne’s College, Oxford University in 1987, and now is writing his Ph.D dissertation on The Diachronic Self: Identity, Continuity, and Transformation at the Philosophy Department, University of Southern California. more@usc.edu

Mark Pius: Editor of Venturist Monthly News and Vice President of the Society for Venturism, Mark is manager of a small business. He hopes to have an e-mail address by next issue. PO Box 458, Wrightwood, CA 92397.

Harry Shapiro: Manager of the Extropians e-mail list, Harry is Manager of Computer Services for Warwick, Baker, Fiori, has consulted at Bell Laboratories, and worked in technical positions at E.F. Hutton and Shearson Lehman Brothers – the brokerage division of American Express. habs@panix.com

Extropy #10 was produced on a Gateway 486-50DX2 PC with 8Mb of RAM and a 200Mb hard disk, running Windows 3.1, and using Aldus Pagemaker 4.0, WinWord 2.0, and Aldus Freehand 3.1.

Print run this issue: 2500

Printed by Hollywood Stationery & Printing, Los Angeles, California.

47

EXTROPY #10 Winter/Spring 1993

ExI Audio Tapes For Sale

Everything is Getting Better and Better – I’ll Bet On It!

by Julian Simon.

Economist Julian Simon uses hard data to counter prevailing gloomy beliefs about the current state of the world and its direction. Practically all measures of human well-being substantiate the Extropian’s dynamically optimistic views: Life does tend to improve, though only through the efforts and applied intelligence of free persons. This tape makes an effective introduction to Simon’s ideas, and, lent out to your pessimistic friends, will serve as a valuable intellectual catalyst.

$10.95 (Members $9.95) EC1 (1-hour audio)

Bionomics On Trial: A Discussion With Michael Rothschild

Rothschild outlines the main contentions of his book Bionomics: Economy As Ecosystem, and responds to audience questions. Topics discussed include electronic ecosystems; how Bionomics effectively draws ‘liberals’ into support for free markets; the relation between Austrian/process economics and bionomics; the role of government; how far the economy as ecosystem analogy can be pushed.

$12.95 (Members: $11.50) EC2 (80 minutes audio)

Spontaneous Orders and Future Evolution

by Max More

In this talk, originally delivered to the Albert Jay Nock Forum, Extropy Institute CEO Max More poses and answers the question: “How is humankind to evolve, transform, progress, to change its nature, without the oppression of central control and social engineering?” More distinguishes the spontaneous order embodied in free markets from the constructed orders that are more visible to most people. More shows why spontaneous orders are underappreciated, analyzes the problems endemic in central control, and shows the diverse areas in which spontaneous ordering principles reveal themselves, including evolutionary theory, memetics, ecology, agoristic computing, neural networks, genetic algorithms, and computational ecosystems. Finally, methods of transforming human nature while respecting the constraints of spontaneous order are proposed.

$10.95 (Members $9.95) PH1 (1-hour audio)

Recreational Drugs and Smart Drugs: Paternalism and Responsibility

by Max More

An analysis of the drug policies of the DEA and FDA, beginning with arguments for decriminalization of recreational drugs. The FDA comes under fire, with a history of that agency’s increasing powers and growing safety fascism, the FDA’s effects on death rates and pharmaceutical innovation, and the motivations facing FDA bureaucrats. More goes on to explain how smart drugs differ from other drugs, and how the FDA has mounted a war on the freedom to use intelligence-enhancing substances. The policies of the FDA and DEA are accelerating the infantilization of the American people, undercutting their self-determination and denying their personal judgment. This tape is crammed with the facts, statistics, and arguments needed to blast the FDA and DEA out of the water.

$10.95 (Members $9.95) PL2 (1-hour audio)

Postage: $1 per tape. Overseas orders: Surface mail – $1.50 first tape, $1.25 each additional tape. Contact ExI for airmail rates. Check or money order in US dollars drawn on a US bank, payable to “Extropy Institute.” Mail your order to: Extropy Institute, Dept. S, P.O. Box 57306, Los Angeles, CA 90057-0306.

How to join the ExI Virtual Community

Extropy Institute now sponsors, through the generous efforts of ExI member and List Manager Harry Shapiro, a number of electronic fora for sharing libertarian, free-market, life-extensionist, and other Extropian ideas with bright, like-minded individuals around the globe. All of these services reside at gnu.ai.mit.edu, so the string @gnu.ai.mit.edu should be added to the boldface addresses below when sending requests.

The most popular service is the Extropian e-mail list, which contains lively discussion and debate on numerous topics. To join, send a request to extropians-request. This list also has a recently-added digest feature which, instead of sending each message to you as it comes in, batches a group of messages into a segment of about 50K. That means getting one to three messages a day. To join, send a message to exi-daily-request.

A more recent service is the ExI Essay list, for posting longer, more carefully prepared electronic manuscripts. To get on this list, send a message to exi-essay-request.

There is also an Extropian conference on the Well, one of the longest-running professionally run BBS systems. On the Well, send mail to habs.

Those ExI-Essay papers containing explicit notices granting permission for redistribution are available by anonymous FTP at lynx.cs.wisc.edu (IP address 128.105.2.216). A list of available essays along with their file names is in the file pub/ExI-Essay/INDEX. Any questions should go to Derek Zahn at derek@cs.wisc.edu.

There are also two “local” lists for announcements and discussions in the San Francisco Bay Area and the Boston area. To join these lists, send a message to exi-bay-request (Bay Area) or exi-bos-request (Boston area).