March 17, 2008
In London the other day I had dinner with an engaging transhumanist and a couple of scholars who are somewhat skeptical of the transhumanist project (since it was London, perhaps I should say sceptical). Not all transies are equally engaging … Read More
March 10, 2008
A thoughtful piece in today’s New York Times has usefully brought the “enhancement” question into general discussion. It is a curious thing how little attention this clutch of questions has received, and how when attention has been evident it has … Read More
November 19, 2007
The 2003 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act, which set out a legislative framework for the National Nanotechnology Initiative, is up for re-authorization. This process offers a unique opportunity to those who have raised concerns about the implementation (and … Read More
October 29, 2007
The implications of our growing knowledge of the processes of the brain continue to unfold. It should be no surprise that marketers have been following along as neuroscientists have moved in on ever clearer understanding of just what happens on … Read More
August 1, 2007
The central theme of this blog has been the need for us to make future-minded choices – and to see the future as an arena for responsibility, as if it were another geographical area of our planet. That is of … Read More
July 17, 2007
Developments in such fields as information technology and biotechnology have already had profound effects on our lives as individuals and communities. There is general agreement that the compounding effects of “emerging technologies” (ET) will radically re-shape the future of human … Read More
June 14, 2007
News that the NSF is spending half a million dollars to improve our ability to create a virtual reality avatar is bizarre enough. Add the info that the avatar is intended to represent a senior NSF official and we start … Read More
June 11, 2007
With potential implications that could dwarf those of every other technology, the slow courtship of brain and machine continues . . . . Here is the latest: scientists in Israel have used live neurons to store information. According to the … Read More
April 27, 2007
No doubt about it: whatever the speed of change that gets us there – and we may well believe it will be slower than Kurzweilian singularity-speak suggests – the significance of artificial intelligence will grow and grow. And meanwhile, the … Read More
April 2, 2007
The report just issued by the Joint Economic Committee of Congress (a combined House/Senate group) makes bizarre reading. Like some of the other surreal documents that have resulted from the efforts of the National Nanotechnology Initiative, it is hard to … Read More
March 28, 2007
News of the new online risk-focused journal launched by Rice University’s NSF-funded Center on Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology and associated International Council on Nanotechnology (CBEN and ICON to their friends) is welcome, though I am puzzled why it should be … Read More
March 23, 2007
The low level of public attention being focused on the prospect of pandemic flu continues to surprise, though it meshes with the ambivalence with which various government entities have been seeking to catch our interest. The latest report on likely … Read More
March 7, 2007
We’ve had wires used to connect the brain to the PC, most celebratedly Kevin Warwick’s. We’ve recently seen a report of a wire being made out of neurons. Now we have an EEG skullcap – to be used for video … Read More
March 3, 2007
Reports keep coming on the efforts of some of our smartest people to reverse engineer the brain – the so-called Human Cognome Project. This one in Wired describes a Silicon Valley entrepreneur’s project to rebuild it from the bottom up. … Read More
February 28, 2007
No-one who has an eye on the spate of reports that every day demonstrate the range and vigor of emerging technologies can doubt that privacy is as good as over – or, to put it another way, that the passive … Read More
February 27, 2007
There is news from the UK, home of the ethical slippery-slope, that a campaign by scientists to undermine a highly unusual effort on the part of the government to say no to the production of hybrid embryos has paid off. … Read More
February 26, 2007
Savvy observers of the interface of humans and technology have been casting an eye on Second Life’s particular instance: that between humans and technologically-delivered virtual reality. In this LA Times story, the growing pains of the virtual community are under … Read More
February 22, 2007
This month is the 10-year anniversary of the momentous announcement that Dolly the sheep had been cloned. Her fatuous name (a foray into locker-room humor) and ever-placid face were soon familiar to billions of humans. And her human creators were … Read More
February 17, 2007
The movie Minority Report keeps tugging at today from tomorrow. The latest hook lies in a report on research that shows the possibility of predicting human action in advance by scanning the brain. 02:00 AM Feb, 14, 2007 Wired News … Read More
February 11, 2007
We should never be surprised when libertarians weigh in with radical questioning of the status quo. It is, as it were, their function. And the stronger the status quo, the more valuable the questioning. So the op-ed in today’s NY … Read More
February 9, 2007
It would seem that the fantastic voyage has arrived, or is at least about to depart. Not, initially, on the nanoscale, but the microscale – two hairs wide – and quite small enough to tour the circulatory system. For those … Read More
February 8, 2007
A report on Nanowerk notes that the NSF’s budget for next year includes additional spending on nanotechnology risk research. It reminds us that by a curious use of language this research is categorized by the NSF under its heading of … Read More
February 6, 2007
This story appeared in the New Scientist a week or two back and has, as they note, generated unprecedented interest. Part of its appeal, and problem, lies in the fact that the drug involved (DCA) is not patented, so development … Read More
February 3, 2007
The threat of a fresh outbreak of pandemic flu has been hovering over us for some time, but there are problems in the way of any proportionate response on our part to such a wide-scale emergency. They range all the … Read More
February 2, 2007
One reason it has been such good news to discover the extraordinary complexity of our genetic inheritance is that it frees us to accept the more evidently causal elements without feeling we have submitted to a reductionist model of human … Read More
