
The Extropian Roots of Bitcoin - jk4930
https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/extropian-roots-bitcoin/
======
waterlesscloud
Man, I wish I'd kept my Extropy magazines. I ditched them in a move about 15
years ago.

I haven't really thought about it, but it's likely I've taken to bitcoin so
easily because it's an idea I encountered so long ago. Just sort of inevitable
that it would come along, or so it's seemed.

Extropy, Transhumans, Cypherpunks, all those early 90s fringe technocultures.
Crazy, out there ideas that still had concrete directions to explore.

It feels to me like there's a sort of throughline from the late 60s
computer/counter culture mix, to the 70s/80s personal computer folks, to the
90s extropy people. But I'm not sure where it went after that. Surely there's
a current generation.

Cryptocurrency has some of it, especially in the more ambitious fringes, but
I've lost track of whatever group is on the broader picture of extreme
technological ambition.

~~~
kanzure
> Man, I wish I'd kept my Extropy magazines. I ditched them in a move about 15
> years ago.

Well, for what it's worth, here's the archives I have been collecting. I also
have other extropians-related files, but this is somewhat of a "I don't know
what I have" issue, so it will just take some more poking and prodding for me
to categorize and upload the rest.

extropians:
[http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/irc/extropians/](http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/irc/extropians/)

cypherpunks:
[http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/irc/cypherpunks/cypherpunks-199209-1...](http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/irc/cypherpunks/cypherpunks-199209-199812.tar.bz2)

> but I've lost track of whatever group is on the broader picture of extreme
> technological ambition.

Mostly it's the same groups, except not where you first found them. For
example, the cypherpunks and cryptography mailing lists haven't degraded as
terribly as extropy-chat/extropians.

There is a transhumanism/biohacking channel on irc.freenode.net ##hplusroadmap
which has logs here [http://gnusha.org/logs/](http://gnusha.org/logs/) since
2008. (Disclaimer, I am the resident optroll.)

... and there's a bitcoin/cryptography wizardry channel on the same server in
#bitcoin-wizards (but also #bitcoin is reasonable), logs can be found here:
[https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/wizards/](https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/wizards/)
In general, I would recommend #bitcoin for most messages.

As for the rest of the cryptocurrency world, that's a little more difficult to
explain and keep track of...

You know, the weird thing is that looking back on the extropians, they weren't
really all that ambitious. Sure, they would talk about DNA or something, but
did any of them ever bother to spend a few hours in a molecular biology lab?
And what about software, how many of them (who didn't already code) bother to
pick up code slinging to advance their interests? That's not to say that they
were unskilled-- many of them were extremely skilled, but they sort of showed
up like that, and didn't move the needle. Oh well, different times.

~~~
waterlesscloud
Fair point about not accomplishing a whole lot (outside of Finney). Ambitious,
maybe, but not so effective.

Also reminded me there's a DIY Bio mailing list, with lots of interesting bio-
hacking sorts of things going on.

------
Symmetry
I think my best memories from lurking on the Extropians mailing list Back In
The Day were hearing about the "Terrorism Futures Market" months before it
went public. All the objections that would later be made came up on the list
and Robin Hanson did a pretty good job of answering them. Too bad it didn't
take longer for the media to discover it.

------
jonmrodriguez
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extropianism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extropianism)

------
cookrn
A wonderful, albeit dense, read that touches on Extropianism among many other
things is Techgnosis

[http://www.amazon.com/TechGnosis-Myth-Magic-Mysticism-
Inform...](http://www.amazon.com/TechGnosis-Myth-Magic-Mysticism-Information-
ebook/dp/B00N6PBCP8/)

