Last month I spent 4 days in Ethiopia — Addis Ababa and surrounds — soaking up the culture and getting to know the nascent Ethiopian futurist community. Inspired by this expedition, I’ve written an article for KurzweilAI on some of the potentials for AI and software development in Ethiopia. But I also thought it would be worthwhile to post a more personal record of what I saw and learned on this whirlwind tour; hence the current article….
From Max More
August 1999
Dear Mother Nature:
Sorry to disturb you, but we humans—your offspring—come to you with some things to say. (Perhaps you could pass this on to Father, since we never seem to see him around.) We want to thank you for the many wonderful qualities you have bestowed on us with your slow but massive, distributed intelligence. You have raised us from simple self-replicating chemicals to trillion-celled mammals. You have given us free rein of the planet. You have given us a life span longer than that of almost any other animal. You have endowed us with a complex brain giving us the capacity for language, reason, foresight, curiosity, and creativity. You have given us the capacity for self-understanding as well as empathy for others.
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