🚀 go-pugleaf

> Meme theory may be subject to something like the "Gresham's Law" of
> economics--Bad money drives out good.  Possibly, Virtual Reality has
> received such a bad rap by having one Timothy Leary as a self-appointed
> spokesman.  IMHO Dr. Leary is basicly a nice guy but a pretty poor
> spokesman. 

I'd have to guess that Jaron Lanier had a vastly greater negative
impact on the image of VR than Tim Leary.  The current status of VPL
research could be considered to be a direct result of statements
Jaron made, implying that the state of the art in VR was vastly more
advanced than it, in fact, was.  I spoke with Tim Leary in Los Angeles
on December 6th, and he has now in fact distanced himself from some of
the more extravagant claims made by members of the VR community of
applications in fields like psychotherapy.  I'd say Dr. Tim is guilty
of nothing more than occasionally repeating claims made by others who
should have known better.  Overall, I'd call his bogometer surprisingly
sound.

> The fuse here is short.  Terrence McKenna (a so-called "Leary
> of the 90's) is quoted in _Unbounding the Future_ and nanotechnology
> receives a mention in McKenna's latest _Archaic Revival_.  Eventually Leary
> will hear of nanotech, and then we must be prepared to seize the memetic
> high ground.  

I'm sure Tim Leary probably heard of nanotech before most of the readers
of this mailing list -- he was writing about it as early as 1987.  There
are plenty of people who could do a lot more harm than Leary by embracing
what Thomas Donaldson calls "capital-N Nanotechnology".  For example, Pat
Robertson (televangelist) has mentioned "Engines" on his "700 Club" 
television program.

> Just for the record I did not suggest that nanotechnology be part of the
> plot or text of a rock video--just another background image amidst a welter
> of others.  Possibly response:  "What are those weird looking things back
> there?"  Of course Peter Gabriel is a part of Global Business Network....

Of course, one runs the risk of such imagery being misinterpreted -- one
recent commenter on sci.nanotech recently mistook for nano-bearings some
renderings of the molecular structure of various psychoactive drugs!

> Happy Holidays
> SunCat    kamchar@ibm.cl.msu.edu

					dk