CLASSIFIED ADS:

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.

For sale: Laserjet II Plus 300dpi laser printer, with Postscript Pacific Page cartridge. Well under a year old. $500 or best offer. Contact the Extropy Institute office: 909-688-2323

Results of Exl Pledge Drive, held on the Extropians e-mail list from October 21-30. (Originally reported in Exponent #3) Our thanks again: Without you, this issue of Extropy probably wouldn’t exist.

Karl Waldman	$300**
“CAW member & Extropian”	$300
Harry Shapiro	$240+
T.O. Morrow	$100
Eirikur Hallgrimmsson	$100
Sam Shipman	$100
David Nelson	$100
Chris Moriondo	$100
Lee Nussbaum	$80++
Perry Metzger	$60
Tim May	$60
Bob Grahame	$53
Peter C. McCluskey	$50
Mark Desilets	$50
Mark Venture	$50
Fred Moulton	$50
Alexander Chislenko	$50
Kennita Watson	$50
Richard Kennaway	$50
Anthony Garcia	$50
Carl Feynman	$50
Steve Whitrow	$50
Bill Eichman	$30
Scott Meeks	$30
Robert Brooks	$30
Anonymous	$20
Anonymous	$20
Mike Linksvayer	$20
Kevin Q. Brown	$20
Andrea Gallagher	$20
Chris Rasch	$20

**pledge of $25/month for one year +matching grants totalling $20/month ++pledge of $50 now and $30 in March

Extropy #11 was produced on a Gateway 486 DX2 50 with 8Mb of RAM, a 230 Mb hard disk, 14” Crystal Scan monitor, using Pagemaker 5.0, Word for Windows 2.0 and Aldus Freehand 3.1. Proofs were printed at 600dpi on an HP Laserjet 4 with 6Mb RAM. Layout by Max More. This issue was printed on a web press by Canyon Printing, Inc., Anaheim, CA. Print run: 3,200

CONTRIBUTORS

Harry Shapiro Hawk is the Manager of Computer services at Warwick Baker & Fiore Advertising. He holds a Master degree in Interactive Telecommunication from New York University. He is the Electronic Communications Officer for Extropy Institute and manages the Internet based Extropians mailing list. habs@panix.com

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

Peter McCluskey: Peter received a B.S. in Biology from Yale in 1978, and an M.S. in Computer Science from Brown in 1993. His master’s thesis compared several neural network algorithms and genetic programming for predicting the stock market and other time series. He is currently designing financial software for the MacGregor Group in Boston. pcm@macgreg.com

Ralph Merkle: Dr. Merkle received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1979 where he co-invented public key cryptography. He pursued research in this area at Bell Northern Research until he joined Elxsi (a computer start-up) in 1981. He left Elxsi to join Xerox PARC in 1988, where he is pursuing research in computational nanotechnology. Dr. Merkle has six patents and has published extensively. merkle.pa@xerox.com

Max More: Editor of Extropy and President of Extropy Institute, Max received his BA in Philosophy, Politics, & Economics from Oxford University, and now is writing his Ph.D dissertation at the University of Southern California on “The Diachronic Self: Identity, Continuity, Transformation.” more@usc.edu or 76436.3157@compuserve.com

Mike Price: BSc and MSc in Theoretical Physics from Imperial College, London. Specialist interests in cosmology and quantum field theories. Freelance systems engineer, software engineer, and project manager. Next issue joins Extropy’s Editorial Committee as Theoretical Physics Editor. price@price.demon.co.uk

Julian L. Simon: Perhaps call him Senior Junior — teaches business administration at the University of Maryland. He studies the economics of population, and is now exploring and promulgating the resampling method of doing all statistics — a method (including the bootstrap) that he developed a quarter century ago. He invented and promoted the volunteer scheme for handling airline oversales, from which you may have benefitted.

Ralph Whelan: Vice President of Alcor Life Extension Foundation, Editor of Alcor’s Cryonics magazine, and a director of Extropy Institute. His main interest is music, which he views as a tremendously precise and complex form of thought/communication. His biggest distraction is computer art/animation 71532.2442@compuserve.com

Derek Zahn: Derek Zahn recently escaped the higher educational system, fortunately only suffering a master’s degree in Computer Science at the University of Wisconsin. He is presently Principal Optimist at Luminous Software, and maintains the Exl-Essay FTP archive. derek@cs.wisc.edu

47

EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993

Exl Audio Tapes, Books, T-Shirt

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)

Postage:

$1 per tape. Overseas orders: Surface mail – $1.50 first tape, $1.25 each additional tape. Contact Exl for airmail rates.

BOOKS AVAILABLE (postage rates in parentheses):

Maureen Caudill, In Our Own Image: Building An Artificial Person $23.00 ($2.00)

K. Eric Drexler, Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation $24.95 ($3.00)

Alan Lakein, How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life $4.95 ($1.00)

Marc Steigler, The Gentle Seduction $3.50 ($1.20)

Vernor Vinge, A Fire Upon the Deep $5.99 ($1.50)

Forward! Upward! Outward! Into your T-Shirt! Strike terror into the hearts of gloomy pessimists, life-haters, and statists!

Proudly display your transhumanist colors! Yes, Extropy T-shirts are once again available in both men’s Large and extra-Large. These shirts, in blue, feature the five-spiral Extropy 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 Exl members), plus $1 postage.

Check or money order in US dollars drawn on a US bank, payable to “Extropy Institute.” Mail your order to: Extropy Institute, Dept. S, 11860 Magnolia Avenue, Suite R, Riverside, CA 92503.

How to Join the Exl Virtual Community

Extropy Institute sponsors, through the endeavor of Exl Electronic Communications Officer Harry S. Hawk, a number of electronic fora for sharing libertarian, life-extensionist, pro-technology and other Extropian ideas with bright, like-minded individuals around the globe. The rapid evolution of these fora means that many of the details below have changed since last issue.

The most popular service is the Extropians e-mail list, which boils over with lively discussion and debate on numerous topics. To join, send a request to:

extropians-request@extropy.org

When sending your add request, indicate whether you want real time or digest mode. (If unsure, try the digest mode first!) The Extropians list is using the most advanced information-filtering software, allowing you to select which messages (topic, author, etc.) you receive and how you receive them.

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.

Another service is the Exl Essay list, for posting longer, more carefully prepared electronic manuscripts. To get on this list, send a message to:

exl-essay-request@gnu.ai.mit.edu

Those Exl-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/Exl-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 messages to:

exl-bay-request@gnu.ai.mit.edu

exl-bos-request@gnu.ai.mit.edu