An interesting story on transhumanism, virtual rape, and the thorny field of developing laws to protect people in virtual reality. This story first appeared in Australian print magazine Vertigo:
Transhumanist Hacking
Posted in transhumanism
Posted in transhumanism
An interesting story on transhumanism, virtual rape, and the thorny field of developing laws to protect people in virtual reality. This story first appeared in Australian print magazine Vertigo:
The blind can now see with the help of bionic eyes. In this edition of Wiring the World, Bloomberg’s Ramy Inocencio meets one man diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, an incurable form of eye decay, who sees his wife’s face, the ocean’s surf and fireworks for the first time. (Source: Bloomberg)
A long interview from Esquire on transhumanism, AI, life extension, my campaign, and thoughts on the future.
New story in The Huffington Post on transhumanism, life extension, and overcoming deathist culture:
Posted in futurism, robotics/AI, transhumanism
Edge of Dark is part space-opera, part coming-of-age story, and part exploration of the relationship between humans and the post-human descendants who may ultimately transcend them.
The book takes place in the same universe as Brenda Cooper’s “Ruby’s Song” books (The Creative Fire; The Diamond Deep). However, you don’t need to have read those books to enjoy this one. The story in Edge of Dark picks up decades after the earlier books.
The setting is a solar system in which the most Earth-like planet, once nearly ecologically destroyed, is now in large part a wilderness preserve, still undergoing active restoration. Most humans live on massive space stations in the inner solar system. A few live on smaller space stations a bit further out, closer to the proverbial “Edge”. And beyond that? Beyond that, far from the sun, dwell exiles, cast out long ago for violating social norms by daring to go too far in tinkering with the human mind and body.
As the story progresses, it becomes clear that those exiles have grown in strength and have become, in some cases, not just transhuman, but truly posthuman. What follows is a story that is rich in politics, and even more rich in plausible, fascinating, and nuanced tensions created by this juxtaposition of human and posthuman.
There are a tremendous number of stories out there that simple-mindedly posit post-humans as a grave threat and enemy to humanity. (Think “Terminator.”) There are others that take a view that human and post- or trans- human can all learn to get along. (Think “X-Men”.) Brenda Cooper has done something remarkable here: She’s given us a story that isn’t simple or moralistic. It’s complicated. At the beginning of the book, I expected a simple morality play with a specific outcome. Later, I changed my mind. Then I changed it again. What she’s presented is messy, just like real life. It’s wound up with politics, just like real life.
The early parts of the book introduce new characters and new settings. The later parts of the book are what grabbed me. In the end, I was extremely happy I read this. Edge of Dark is a unique view of the interaction of human and post-human in my experience. I recommend it highly.
Anyone who posts to the Lifeboat Foundation blog gets a chance to win a signed copy of Edge of Dark!
The deadline for the contest is June 30. If you need access to our blog, send an email with the subject of “Lifeboat Foundation blog” to [email protected].
Posted in astronomy, big data, computing, cosmology, energy, engineering, environmental, ethics, existential risks, futurism, general relativity, governance, government, gravity, information science, innovation, internet, journalism, law, life extension, media & arts, military, nuclear energy, nuclear weapons, open source, particle physics, philosophy, physics, policy, posthumanism, quantum physics, science, security, singularity, space, space travel, supercomputing, sustainability, time travel, transhumanism, transparency, treaties
Posted in astronomy, big data, complex systems, computing, cosmology, energy, engineering, ethics, existential risks, futurism, general relativity, governance, government, gravity, hardware, information science, innovation, internet, journalism, law, life extension, media & arts, military, nuclear energy, nuclear weapons, particle physics, philosophy, physics, policy, quantum physics, science, security, singularity, space, space travel, supercomputing, sustainability, time travel, transhumanism, transparency, treaties | 1 Comment on CERN-Critics: LHC restart is a sad day for science and humanity!
- Press release by our partner ”Risk Evaluation Forum” emphasizing on renewed particle collider risk: http://www.risk-evaluation-forum.org/newsbg.pdf
- Study concluding that “Mini Black Holes” could be created at planned LHC energies: http://phys.org/news/2015-03-mini-black-holes-lhc-parallel.html
- New paper by Dr. Thomas B. Kerwick on lacking safety argument by CERN: http://vixra.org/abs/1503.0066
The Mont Order Club hosted its first video conference in February 2015, as shown below.
Suggested topics included transhumanism, antistatism, world events, movements, collaboration, and alternative media. The Mont Order is an affiliation of dissident writers and groups who share similar views on transnationalism and transhumanism as positive and inevitable developments.
Participants:
For more information on Mont Order participants, see the Mont Order page at Beliefnet.
In a recent feature article at The clubof.info Blog called “Striving to be Snowdenlike”, I look at the example of Edward Snowden and use his precedent to make a prediction about “transhumans”, the first people who will pioneer our evolution into a posthuman form, and the political upheaval this will necessarily cause.
Transhumanism makes a prediction that people will obtain greater personal abilities as a result of technology. The investment of more political power (potentially) in a single person’s hand’s has been the inexorable result of advancing technology throughout history.
Politically, transhumanism (not as a movement but as a form of sociocultural evolution) would be radically different from other forms of technological change, because it can produce heightened intellect, strength and capability. Many have assumed that these changes would only reinforce existing inequality and the power of the state, but they are wrong. They have failed to note the political disconnect between current government authority figures and political classes, and those people actually involved in engineering, medicine, military trials, and the sciences. Transhumanism will never serve to reinforce the existing political order or make it easier for states to govern and repress their people. On the contrary, transhumanism can only be highly disruptive to the authorities. In fact, it will be more disruptive to current liberal democratic governments than any other challenge they have witnessed before.
There are several realities to this disruption that will convey a profound political change, and would do so whether or not transhumanism pursued political power in the form of the Transhumanist Parties (I still support those parties wholeheartedly due to their ability to raise awareness of transhumanism as a concept and an observation by futurists) or took a political stance for or against these realities. I would narrow the disruption down to these very compelling points of political significance. Please advise any more that you would like to bring to my attention:
Therefore, the posthuman elite will not be the current elite, but a completely different elite. Not only this, but they will have a completely different attitude towards authority that will be very disruptive to the status quo:
What happened with Snowden is not the first time we are going to witness a single heroic individual challenging existing power structures and winning against the world’s most powerful state.
If technology is going to invest greater power and responsibility into the hands of lone individuals who have been given privileges because of their personal abilities, those individuals are by definition going to be futuristic “insurgents”, at least some of whom will go as far as to dismantle the state. A government, being paranoid of anyone having merely the capability to undermine it, will by definition attempt to curtail the freedoms of enhanced people.
Posthumans, including their early predecessors, will find themselves in the same situation as the current-day “cypherpunk” elite consisting of whistleblowers and hackers. They will listen to few authority figures, they will have the utmost disrespect for the government, and they will be more interested in sharing their abilities indiscriminately with others than adhering to rules laid down by authority figures or obeying the state.
The evolution into posthuman forms will bring with it a clash of ideas about how society should be governed.