I haven't been entirely thrilled with some of the presentations (wait for the article) — while there have been some really amazing people there talking, a lot of the folks don't seem even vaguely qualified to be speaking and are downright stupidiotic. One person had a bunch of “interviews with posthumans” which was her “interviewing” fictional and non-fictional robots and computer personalities (like Agent Smith, the Honda Robot, etc.). The ones that were real she misrepresented to the point where it was clear she had no comprehension of what they were or how they worked, and the fictional ones were at best shallow interpretations of the movie reviews. Her own “posthuman body design” included things like “turbocharged suspension” and other nonsensical technobabble.
Before her was a Christian geneticist talking about how we can use genetic engineering to make “virtuous” people who don't lie (by damaging their frontal lobe in effect). When people raised the objection that he was proposing genetic oppression, he made the statement that “even perfect pitch is oppressive because then you can't play punk music”… Yeah, and really strong people can't pick up light objects. Give me a break. I stood up at the end and told him that he was just talking about breeding a bunch of well-behaved losers and that humanity has never been driven forward by “virtuous” people — only by the selfish, self-obsessed, narcissistic, and agressive people.
On the interesting side though, I happened to sit next to the insurance salesman for Alcor, the cryogenics company, who was boisterously entusiastic about mods, and terribly thrilled about meeting Lukas Zpira who made it just in time for Stelarc's presentation. Anyway, I'm off now to catch a couple more presentations and then do a couple interviews.
Oh, and Phil, Derek, Ryan (check his page for cool job offers in Toronto), and I ate at Lucky Dragon afterwards which was a total fiasco. Almost nothing that we ordered came as we ordered it, and some of the dishes never showed at all, and mystery dishes were added. One of the vegan dishes that we ordered appeared to have pork in it.
Phil: What is in this dish?
Waiter: It's bean curd.
Phil: That really looks like pork.
Waiter: Yes, pork.
Phil: Didn't you just say “bean curd”?
Waiter: Yes, we ran out. Substitution. It's bean curd dish.
Phil: I can't eat it if it's pork. I'm a vegetarian.
Waiter: No, it's bean curd. We substitute pork.
Phil: I can't eat it if it's pork. I'm a vegetarian.
Waiter: It's ok, you eat it.
Phil: I. Can't. Eat. It. I. Am. A. Vegetarian.
Waiter: We are out of bean curd.
Phil: Just take it back and take it off the bill please.
Waiter: No, you eat half of it.
Phil: No, I can't eat it. I am a vegetarian. This has pork in it.
Waiter: It's OK, just eat half.
The waiter then left, leaving the dish with us.
Eventually we just paid our bill (having no idea what we actually got charged with) and left. Luckily Chinatown is pretty damn cheap either way, so even if we were overbilled it's still a cheaper meal than we would have had elsewhere.
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