Everyman is not going to buy something that looks like, at *best*, either a rich-boy's toy or a messianic religion for persecuted nerds.

*Ouch*. But yes, they won't :).

On the other hand, I'm optimistic about his/her unbounded consumerist ethos and the deep need to look hip and get laid, as well as plain common sense.

Soccer moms of forty will want to look twentyfive. Seniors without health coverage will *need* to be productive again, whatever it means retroviral therapy, nootropics, whatever. At first only teenagers and nerds will use neural interfaces, then chinese workers, then American firms will hire the nerds because they'll be more productive, and then everybody will, if I may be excuse the wording, suck up and jack in. Then they'll discover wire sex and we'll have the opposite problem. Nootropics will be used by stock traders and surgeons, then college students, then the kids of rich parents, and then everybody will demand their kids to use them, as well as themselves. Just to Keep Up.

Given that people who use H+ tech get better jobs, more money and look better that people who doesn't, and assuming that the technologies become used *somewhere*, no matter where or in what context, my firm belief is that most people will flock to get them.

"Transhumanism" sounds scary. "Not losing your job to a chinese with touched up neurochemistry and a direct neural interface because *your* neurochemistry and interface are better" is the plain old American Way. Corporations will want enhanced employees and consumers for enhancements, and consumers will want jobs, better orgasms and kids who can qualify at least to run a McDonalds night shift.

They don't believe in it now (hell, hey don't believe in plain vanilla neodarwinian *evolution*, most of them), but they will *buy* it. They wouldn't have cared about ARPANET. They want eBay and porn sites. Etc.

The abstract is scary or meaningless. The concrete is shiny and sells.

Of course, none of this is relevant to the problem of helping public perceptions of transhumanism today; but I do think that we're in the worst patch of things, when the dangers sound scary and the payoffs are too abstract. Hold on. Keep at it. Things will get easier.

See the Trickle-down effect and Transhuman hacks.