Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: transhumanism – Page 68

When Silicon Valley gets religion — and vice versa

Some of the tech world’s brightest luminaries hope to postpone the unpleasantness of death, or avoid it entirely. Calico, a secretive company founded by Google, is looking for ways to lengthen human lifespans. Billionaires Larry Ellison, Peter Thiel, and Jeff Bezos have all contributed huge sums for research into anti-aging treatments. Ray Kurzweil, one of the tech industry’s leading futurists, has described three scientific and technological “bridges” that might lead to radically longer life.

Devotees of many religions believe in a soul that lives forever. In transhumanism, techies have found their own version of eternal life — and it’s finding unlikely fans.

Istvan Contra McAfee

This is a fun new story to read, and highlights some interesting philosophical differences, especially as McAfee and I look at 2020 campaign possibilities: https://logosclubblog.com/2018/11/06/istvan-contra-mcafee/ #transhumanism

During 2016 presidential race, the majority of the US public were spellbound by the unlikely rise of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders and their various competing visions for the United States of America. Considerably less institutionally-heeled but far more imaginative and, some argued, outlandish, candidates, dead-ringer for the Dos Equis Man John David McAfee of The Cyber Party and Zoltan Istvan Gyurko of The Transhumanist Party. McAfee, a successful tech entrepreneur who worked with NASA between 1968 and 1970, was the more well-known of the two politicians, principally through the popularity (or infamy, depending on who one asked) of McAfee Antivirus Software. McAfee (the person, not the software) has also received a good deal of airtime and media attention for a scandal which saw him accused of murder and fleeing from the corrupt, Sinaloa-controlled Belize after the errant businessman found out about a government-sponsored plot to kill him.

Zoltan Istvan, a former NatGeo journalist and the founder of the US Transhumanist Party, though less well known than McAfee, garnered significant attention due to both his extraordinary statements concerning technological advancement and a 2015 four month campaign, wherein he drove around the country in a brown, coffin-shaped bus (dubbed ‘The Immortality Bus’) to bring awareness to his goal of working to end death itself through radical life-extension procedures. The Immortality Bus tour ended December 14, 2015, with Mr. Istvan delivering the Transhumanist Bill of Rights to the US Capitol Building in Washington, DC. The Verge dubbed him, a “modern-day Ken Kesey” referencing the beat generation countercultural figure, well known for his novel, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. The comparison was not entirely inaccurate as Istvan was also a novelist, having penned the highly contentious sci-fi novel, The Transhumanist Wager, in 2013.

Transhumanist Zoltan Istvan becomes advisor at “Brain Space”! Welcome!

I recently become an advisor at Brain Space, a new #blockchain company creating a better system to deal with copyrights and patents. They have an ICO coming up here very soon. Here’s an article (with a video I did) with more info: https://medium.com/…/transhumanist-zoltan-istvan-becomes-ad… AND CHECK OUT THEIR WEBSITE: https://brain-space.io/

Zoltan Istvan, an American-Hungarian, began a solo, multi-year sailing journey around the world at the age of 21. His main cargo was 500 handpicked books, mostly classics. He’s explored over 100 countries — many as a journalist for the National Geographic Channel — writing, filming, and appearing in dozens of television stories, articles, and webcasts. His work has also been featured by The New York Times, Outside, Wired UK, Slate, Vice, San Francisco Chronicle, BBC Radio, CNN, CBS, RT, Fox News, the Travel Channel, and in much other media.

More about Zoltan at https://www.linkedin.com/in/zoltan-istvan-78aa2964/

Link to ICO: https://brain-space.io/

Link to the test version of copyright protection: https://deposit.brainspace.world/register

Pursuing Outreach Opportunities

Today we have the transcript of “Pursuing Outreach Opportunities: Lifespan.io’s Experiences in Promoting Healthy Life Extension”, a talk that LEAF Outreach Director Elena Milova gave at TransVision 2018, a transhumanist conference in Madrid, Spain recently.

This is the transcript of “Pursuing Outreach Opportunities: Lifespan.io’s Experiences in Promoting Healthy Life Extension”, a talk that LEAF Outreach Director Elena Milova gave at TransVision 2018, a transhumanist conference in Madrid, Spain.

My name is Elena Milova, and I work with the Life Extension Advocacy Foundation, a non-profit organization headquartered in New York City. Our main activity is to support research on regenerative therapies that can possibly make human life healthier and longer. To do that, we have developed the non-profit crowdfunding platform Lifespan.io, and, as of now, we have gathered more than 300 thousand dollars in support of 7 scientific projects. We are currently running a campaign to support David Sinclair’s NAD+ Mouse project, a study of NMN and its effect on healthy lifespan in mice.

Another direction of our activity is to educate the public about the potential of rejuvenation therapies.

In a Transhumanist Future, Everyday Could Be Halloween

In the spirit of Halloween, where ghouls, ghosts, and vampires walk among us, our perception of reality will soon transform as well, forever possessed by the specter of Transhumanism!

Last year, I wrote about how people could transform themselves into one of my favorite horror creatures—a real-life werewolf—using modern science and tech. This merely scratches the surface, however, in terms of how far an individual can go. In a Transhumanist future, you’ll be empowered to not only question the extent of your humanity but equally put those questions into action.

The route one would be able to take would be in abundance. Some will choose a cybernetic route, replacing their organs and limbs for artificial machines, and even potentially adding newer organs and limbs alongside the ones they already have. Others may choose a more biological route by using gene-editing tech and synthetic biology, enhancing themselves at the genetic level and using stem cell therapies to maintain their bodily health for prolong periods of time.

And then there are those who’ll attempt to move far beyond their biological or technological state. Technologies like nanotech, mind uploading, etc. will allow individuals to downscale their physical appearance—or, perhaps, do away with it altogether; to become beams of light cascading across the digital world, living under the embodiment of code. And wherever that code resides, that’ll be your exterior shell. If you were to upload yourself into a smart home, for example, you would become that home, haunted by your digital presence.

Biohackers Are Implanting Everything From Magnets to Sex Toys

Biohacking raises a host of ethical issues, particularly about data protection and cybersecurity as virtually every tech gadget risks being hacked or manipulated. And implants can even become cyberweapons, with the potential to send malicious links to others. “You can switch off and put away an infected smartphone, but you can’t do that with an implant,” says Friedemann Ebelt, an activist with Digitalcourage, a German data privacy and internet rights group.

Patrick Kramer sticks a needle into a customer’s hand and injects a microchip the size of a grain of rice under the skin. “You’re now a cyborg,” he says after plastering a Band-Aid on the small wound between Guilherme Geronimo’s thumb and index finger. The 34-year-old Brazilian plans to use the chip, similar to those implanted in millions of cats, dogs, and livestock, to unlock doors and store a digital business card.

Kramer is chief executive officer of Digiwell, a Hamburg startup in what aficionados call body hacking—digital technology inserted into people. Kramer says he’s implanted about 2,000 such chips in the past 18 months, and he has three in his own hands: to open his office door, store medical data, and share his contact information. Digiwell is one of a handful of companies offering similar services, and biohacking advocates estimate there are about 100,000 cyborgs worldwide. “The question isn’t ‘Do you have a microchip?’ ” Kramer says. “It’s more like, ‘How many?’ We’ve entered the mainstream.”

Research house Gartner Inc. identified do-it-yourself biohacking as one of five technology trends—others include artificial intelligence and blockchain—with the potential to disrupt businesses. The human augmentation market, which includes implants as well as bionic limbs and fledgling computer-brain connections, will grow more than tenfold, to $2.3 billion, by 2025, as industries as diverse as health care, defense, sports, and manufacturing adopt such technologies, researcher OG Analysis predicts. “We’re only at the beginning of this trend,” says Oliver Bendel, a professor at the University of Applied Sciences & Arts Northwestern Switzerland who specializes in machine ethics.

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