Man, I was memorized watching this.
I know it's just a typo but this legit made laugh out loud, given the subject matter.
Even so, I too was quite ensnared by the video. For one thing, I already love Peter Watts (both as an author and as a generally cool/smart person -- his AMA's and blog are great) but I can't recall ever seeing him "live". He has a pretty strong stage presence though and seems well-equipped for delivering some pretty wild
seeming shit to a fairly casual audience.
It's a shame how little views this has, it seems to me that there is far, far too few people in the world who are discussing these sort of bleeding-edge topics that otherwise get a little airtime, short of a token Elon Musk quote here and there (and like most of the big voices that even come close to this stuff, he's nowhere
nearly troubled enough about the ramifications of mankind fucking with our own consciousness before we even know what the hell
consciousness is).
Watts is much like RSB in this regard. These guys are both talking about the same broad issue(s), even if their focal points are different -- RSB has his BBT obsession and is obviously more laser focused to subject matter surrounding that, but the subject matter itself is essentially the same sorts of things Watts touches on in his storytelling, and certainly in this talk. I would love to see these two just having a back-and-forth for an hour (or three), waxing about science and the possible looming disasters of the near future (at least, a future near enough that folks should be at least a
teensy bit more aware of it).
I hope PW does more of this, or a damn T.E.D. talk or something!