19.
Hamish sometimes wished that he had a knack for specs, using them the way young zips, tenners, and twenners did nowadays, scanning a dozen directions at once, MT-juggling so many tracks and dimensions that it literally made your head spin. Which explained why some were switching to those smart new contaict lenses, nearly undetectable, except for the nervous way a user’s eyes would flit about, roaming the infosphere-perceiving a zillion parallels-while pretending to live in the organic here-and-now.
On the other hand, didn’t studies show a steep decline in concentration, from all this continuously scattered attention? After all, the initials for “multitasking” sounded like
– like when delivering a speech. Another reason why Hamish still did it with bare eyes, wearing only an e- earing to receive the most vital alerts. Vigilant from experience and focused on the real world, he scanned the audience in front of him, carefully attuned for reactions.
Of course, this was a tough crowd. Hamish didn’t expect to convert many of these extropians, singularitarians, and would-be methuselahs. His real audience would come later, when Tenskwatawa published an abridged version of this talk, to share with members of the Movement, reinforcing their determination and will.
He glanced at the lectern clock. Time to nail this down.
“Look, I’m not going to ask that you tweakers and meddlers and apprentice godmakers change your program or abandon your dreams. Utopians and transcendentalists have always been with us. Sometimes, their dissatisfaction with
“But, more often than not, the blithe promises turn sour. Certainties prove to have been delusional and side effects overshadow benefits. Religions that preach love start to obsess on hate. Industries that promise prosperity instead poison the planet. And innovators, with some way-cool plan to save us all, rush to open Pandora’s Box a little wider, whether or not others disagree.
“Today, there are scores-hundreds-of bright plans afoot, with promoters promising
“A scheme to spread dust in the stratosphere and reverse global warming
“A super-particle collider that might conceivably make micro black holes-
“We’re
“Radio messages, shouting
“Spreading fertilizer across the vast ‘desert’ areas of the ocean will
“Safeguards are
“… and yes, I see many of you smiling, because I wrote scary stories about most of those failure modes! Sold like hotcakes, and the movies did well, too! Well, except
Again, tense laughter, and Hamish felt pleased.
“But here’s the key point,” he continued. “Suppose we try a hundred ambitious things and each of them, individually, has a ninety percent chance of
Hamish paused amid silence.
And that was when Wriggles chose to speak, aiming a narrow cone of sound from his left earring, tuned to vibrate Hamish’s tympani.
Hamish grunted a query. Wriggles answered.
Hamish tried not to glance too obviously, while resuming his speech, on autopilot.
“I know that many of you say I’m a luddite, a troglodyte, even paranoid! I’ll take it under advisement. If the voices in my head let me.”
Again, smatters of appreciative laughter from the crowd. A jape, at your own expense, was the surest way to win back an audience, after challenging them. Only, this time it felt perfunctory, as he looked over the man who had poisoned Senator Strong. Sandy-colored hair, streaked with gray. A slender pair of specs, suitable for providing captions only, but not full VR. Unless they were actual, old-fashioned eyeglasses. Retro could sometimes look celero, and vice versa.
So, Betsby had come to the rendezvous, after all. The man might be crazy, but he sure wasn’t lacking in gall.
“I tell you what,” Hamish said, deciding to finish up the speech a couple of minutes early. “Let’s make a deal,
Hamish slowed down a little, telegraphing that the talk was nearing its end.
“If I’m right, and providing it isn’t already too late, then there remains a possible solution. The same method used in most human cultures, who had enough wisdom to worry about things going wrong. The
“Oh, we’ve walked on the moon, studied distant galaxies and plumbed the atom. Democracy is nice. So are mass education, the info-Meshes, and webs. Standing on the shoulders of those who went before, we achieved heights few dreamed. On the other hand, all our ancestors did one thing that most of
“They all survived to reproduce and to see their successors safely on their way. That’s what the word ‘ancestor’ means! Across centuries and millennia, they passed on their torch to new generations, who carried life and human culture forward to more generations, still. They died knowing at least the story would go on. It sounds like a simple a task. But it never was, for any of them. A gritty, essential challenge, it absorbed nearly all their lives. The core objective of any sane individual or civilization… or species, for that matter. A goal that you would-be godmakers and meddlers seem to forget, in your pell-mell rush for individual satisfaction, personal immortality and so-called progress.
“Indeed, it may be the one thing most endangered, as we journey together, into a perilous tomorrow.”
Audience applause, when it came, was mixed. Hamish saw equal numbers clapping or else sitting with folded hands, glowering back at him. Among the latter group was Roger Betsby, who watched from the second row with little expression.
Ripples of discussion coursed through the hall, some of it neighbor-to-neighbor, but also at the augmented- reality levels. People turned and pointed at others in the crowd, while mouthing silently, trusting their specs to
