Looking Back, Moving Forward

Last May, I was interviewed by Dr. Michio Kaku for a BBC special entitled Visions Of The Future.

It was a really weird experience -- exciting in some respects (as I got to talk about physics briefly with Dr. Kaku at one point when the cameras were off!), bewildering in others, and altogether not exactly the kind of thing I figure characterizes my day-to-day existence.

Below is a Youtube clip someone posted of the segment I appeared in. My bit starts (at about 4:14 minutes into the clip.



It's really, really weird to watch. Really weird. I actually only just watched the full clip this evening for the first time! Even though the BBC people sent me a DVD of the Biotech Revolution portion of the Visions series a while back, I've felt so strange about the whole thing that I've had to muster up a lot of willpower just to watch the full 2 minutes (or thereabouts) of my interview.

(And the main reason I've posted it here is because, well, I figure I might as well point it out myself than deal later on (potentially) with random other people pointing it out and asking me about it. I don't know if that's an autistic thing or an introvert thing or what, but there you go.)

So, now I've watched it, I figured this would be a good time to discuss it a bit and also get some relevant stuff out of my system that I've been trying for a while to put into words.

First of all, I still have no clue why they wanted to interview me (of all people). The BBC people basically found my blog, thought it was interesting, emailed me, and asked if it was OK if they sent Michio Kaku over to ask me some questions. After confirming that it wasn't someone trying to play a practical joke on me, I accepted, and everything else went by so fast I scarcely had time to catch my breath and figure out what the heck was actually going on.

Believe it or not, whether to agree to be in the piece was a really tough decision for me -- not because I was nervous or anything, but because I didn't feel like I was "notable" enough for something like an actual TV series where they were interviewing real scientists. I had to rack my brains and do a lot of reading and e-mailing before I was satisfied that nobody thought I had some kind of "credentials" I didn't actually have (they didn't, but I'm still glad I checked).

I also had to determine whether I wanted to deal with whatever level of "exposure" came about as a result of appearing in the series. I might not be shy (in fact, I'd say I'm pretty darn un-shy) but I am an introvert by nature and have never had any desire to seek some kind of permanent place in the spotlight. In particular, I didn't want to end up in a position of not being able to get away from certain kinds of overwhelming attention.

So, after all that, I ended up deciding to do the interview. I figured that not only was it an opportunity to experience something rather unique, it was also a way to actually participate in something that reminded me very much of the science-y shows I used to watch and enjoy as a child. As I wrote back in October 2007:

Overall, the description of the "Visions of the Future" series reminds me a lot of all those "Gee Whiz, What If This Happened?" speculative science shows I loved to watch as a youngster. That's one reason I thought it was a neat thing to participate in -- I remember watching an "invention" show called Beyond 2000 (lated renamed Beyond Tomorrow) over a period of several years, and I'm a bit of a "retro-future" enthusiast in that I love mining the Web and old basement boxes for magazine articles purporting to predict the Amazing Developments Just Around The Corner.

The interview itself actually took several hours to film -- I'm pretty sure that's usually the case with TV stuff, as they like to take a lot of film and then condense it down to "sound bites". But I'm not exactly Sound Bite Girl, so I'm sort of amazed at the fact that they managed to get even 2 minutes of usable content. When I'm expected to speak "off the cuff", I tend to either shut down (especially if I'm being asked about something I haven't done much thinking about), or ramble. I also rely heavily on memorized phrases, much moreso than I do when I'm writing; that's just how my brain works.

This interview is actually a fairly good example of that: I was kind of cringing while watching when I heard some of what I was saying, because frankly it sounds kind of facile. (The only thing I said that I'm glad I got a chance to say was that people shouldn't consider self-modification some kind of big, bad, evil thing likely to create wars and excessive factioning -- we already have those things, after all, and it's doubtful that more physical and neurological diversity would lead to new (and perhaps superlative) forms of conflict.)

I also inwardly went "argh!" when I heard myself referred to as "one of [transhumanism]'s most vociferous proponents".

I know, I know: make the bed and lie in it and all that, but honestly if I'd had any awareness last year of the wacky can-of-worms the word "transhumanism" actually was, I'd have avoided using it to describe my views.

I don't have any desire to warp time and go back and change anything, as I care much more about incorporating learning experiences into my mental repertoire than I do about "not looking silly", but I do have a desire to avoid baggage. So, at present, I am not using the word "transhumanist" to describe my own views.

Frankly it has more baggage attached to it than I'm currently willing to deal with.

All I ever really hoped (and all I thought in the beginning) was that being a transhumanist just meant having the same set of interests I'd already had since childhood (a sort of science-fiction influenced fascination with neat gadgets and very long potential lifespans and such).

I thought the term was something basically neutral and harmlessly descriptive, perhaps along the lines of "geek" (as it is presently used, not in the chicken-head-biting carnival sense).

But eventually I came to realize that it was more than that (in the sense of being cumbersome), and also less than that (in the sense of being vague to the point of ridiculousness).

Frankly, it's a lot easier to just explain what I do actually think than to attach some weird ideologically-tinged word to myself and have people in turn attach all kinds of assumptions about what I must think based on my use of that word.

I mean, as much as plenty of transhumanist-identified folks are probably (like me) just sci-fi geeks with a parallel interest in ethics and technological innovation, there are enough going around proclaiming things I most assuredly do not agree with that I'm not comfortable calling myself a transhumanist.

I'm not going to get hysterical if someone else calls me one -- as I'm guessing that could very well happen just on the basis of learning that I believe people should have the right to modify or not modify themselves per their own dreams, aesthetic preferences, goals, and desires -- but neither do I "claim the label" or embrace it.

That is my choice, and I sincerely hope that those who may have communicated with me in the past back when I thought the "t-word" was a reasonable one for me to use will respect the fact that there are always going to be people who try something out for a while, accept that it isn't for them, and move on.

There are some labels I do accept, so this isn't about trying to claim that I'm somehow "indescribable" in any useful sense. But the fact that I can see utility in some labels (when they are used descriptively) does not mean I am somehow obligated to embrace any label in particular -- much less in the "prescriptive" fashion that ideological labels in particular like to assert themselves as encouraging.

So, that's where I'm at now. And I'm quite enjoying being plain old Anne Corwin -- a randomly silly philosophically-inclined long-winded writer autistic geekgirl longevity advocate sci-fi-and-robots fan, among other things -- as opposed to, "Anne Corwin, Trans-Humanist". It feels much more "right" this way, somehow, and I look forward to seeing (a) where the future takes me, and (b) what all of us manage to make of it.