June 27, 2011
Hack your hand to learn the guitar
Instead of practicing for hours, a device can now teach you a tune by taking control of your hand. (New Scientist)
Transhumanism
June 23, 2011
The men and women who want to live forever
People have always dreamed of living for eternity, but it has always been a dream filled with Faustian bargains. Deep down, we want to believe that it’s possible to live forever, and many of us are willing to pay the … Read More
June 15, 2011
Primal Transhumanism
Primal transhumanism. Oxymoron? Maybe. Burgeoning lifestyle choice for a growing number of futurists? Most definitely. (IEET)
June 13, 2011
Humanity Plus: How Transhumanism Could Change the Human RaceHumanity Plus: How Transhumanism Could Change the Human Race
Human technology is an incredible phenomenon. It’s something that grows exponentially: for every advance we make, our next advances are more varied and easier to attain. (TNW)
June 3, 2011
‘X-Men’ and us: Are we all part superhero now?
When “X-Men: First Class,†a prequel to the popular series of comic-book adaptations, hits theaters this weekend, moviegoers will find themselves immersed in yet another superhero origin story, the fourth opening this summer, along with “Thor,†“Green Lantern,†and “Captain … Read More
May 9, 2011
Know and Remember Everything, Always and Instantly
Imagine you know everything on Wikipedia, in the Oxford English Dictionary, and the contents of every book in digital form. When someone asks you what you did 20 years ago, on demand you recall with perfect accuracy every sensation and … Read More
May 5, 2011
Look to the future: humans in 50 years
Will we become cyborgs? Will we be disease free? And what have vacuum cleaners got to do with it? John Holden asks scientists how humans might change over the next 50 years (IrishTimes.com)
May 5, 2011
Artificial Intelligence: If at First You Don’t Succeed…
The last symposium in M.I.T.’s 150-day celebration of its 150th anniversary (who ever said that geeks don’t like ritual?) is devoted to the question: “Whatever happened to AI?” Of course, that is a particularly appropriate self-introspection for M.I.T. because a … Read More
May 4, 2011
Robots Evolve to Look Out for Their Own
AÂ robot must protect its own existence. This mid-20th-century from science fiction author and biochemist Isaac Asimov seems cleanly in step with Darwinian theory and the biological world of survival of the fittest. (Scientific American)
April 25, 2011
Can We Develop and Test Machine Minds and Uploads Ethically?
A fundamental principle of bioethics requires the consent of a patient to any medical procedure performed upon them. A new patient will exist the moment a conscious mindclone arises in some academic’s laboratory or hacker’s garage. At that moment, ethical … Read More
April 21, 2011
Scientists take steps to making “bionic” leg
As 20-year-old Hailey Daniswicz flexes muscles in her thigh, electrodes attached to her leg instruct a computer avatar to flex its knee and ankle — parts of Hailey’s leg that have been missing since 2005. (Reuters)
April 13, 2011
Your brain signals can drive how the movie ends
Technology to be launched tomorrow will allow film viewers to control key plot developments using the power of emotion. The Myndplay system uses a headset to pick up the patterns of brain waves associated with different states of mind, and based … Read More
April 12, 2011
Debating Transcendent Man’s meaning
While it seemed the rest of London was out soaking up the springtime sun this past Saturday, roughly 100 people opted instead to pass their time in a basement lecture theatre at Birkbeck College – discussing the possibilities of human … Read More
April 11, 2011
The 10 Best Singularity Themed Star Trek Episodes
I am very excited to learn that starting in July, Netflix will have every Star Trek episode from every series available for instant streaming. And since I’ve been alluding to Star Trek quite a bit when touching on issues of … Read More
April 11, 2011
Technique for Letting Brain Talk to Computers Now Tunes in Speech
The act of mind reading is something usually reserved for science-fiction movies but researchers in America have used a technique, usually associated with identifying epilepsy, for the first time to show that a computer can listen to our thoughts. (Science … Read More
April 8, 2011
Submit Your Prediction for the Future of Health and Medicine to Win a Full Scholarship to FutureMed, Singularity University’s Future of Medicine Program
FutureMed today launched a contest to attend its newly launched executive program dedicated to where exponential technologies, medicine, healthcare and biomedicine collide and are headed. FutureMed is held at Singularity University on the NASA-Ames Research Park in Mountain View, CA … Read More
April 8, 2011
New Issue of Studies in Ethics, Law, and Technology is Now Available
Studies in Ethics, Law, and Technology (Volume 4, Issue 3) is now available by subscription only. Articles include: “Artificial Companions: Empathy and Vulnerability Mirroring in Human-Robot Relations” by Mark Coeckelbergh. “Brain Gene Transfer and Brain Implants” by Rolando Meloni, Jacques … Read More
April 6, 2011
How Virtual Reality Will Change Who We Are
Today marked the publication of the new book Infinite Reality: Avatars, Eternal Life, New Worlds, and the Dawn of the Virtual Revolution by Jeremy Bailenson and Jim Blasocovich. Infinite Reality gets inside all of the technologies and animation that we now take … Read More
April 5, 2011
Being John Malkovich: Personal Control of Individual Brain Cells
An advanced brain-machine interface enables patients to control individual nerve cells deep inside their own brains. In philosophy of mind, a “cerebroscope†is a fictitious device, a brain–computer interface in today’s language, which reads out the content of somebody’s brain. … Read More
April 1, 2011
Your Avatar, Your Guide: Digital Doubles Can Improve Social Skills—or Create False Memories
Your favorite coffee shop is crowded with harried people, and you are standing shoulder to shoulder in a slow-moving line. Each jostling shift of the crowd aggravates your severe social anxiety. You start gasping for air; your heart quickens and … Read More
April 1, 2011
Brain-computer interface guru featured on the Daily Show (and in Scientific American)
Miguel Nicolelis, a world leader in research that may one day allow paraplegics to control computers with their own thoughts, made a de rigueur stop for any new top-line author, visiting Jon Stewart last night on The Daily Show. (Scientific … Read More
February 15, 2011
Transhumanists Coming Out of the Closet
It wasn’t that long ago that listing transhumanism, human enhancement, the Singularity, technology-driven evolution, existential risks, and so on, as academic interests on one’s CV might result in a bit of embarrassment. Over just the past decade and a half, … Read More
October 8, 2010
Role-playing transhumanism: Not just a game
All it takes is a quick cyber-jaunt through the world of online gamer forums to see that, for many of the millions that play them, video and computer games are much more than simple diversions. Eidos Montreal’s smash hit, the … Read More
October 5, 2010
Defending Transhumanism
The blog Rationally Speaking has just posted two articles about the transhumanist movement, one by Julia Galef that defends transhumanism, and another by Massimo Pigliucci that dismisses transhumanism as “irrelevant,†among other things. (IEET)
September 22, 2010
Christianity Versus Transhumanism
Although the Vatican in 2008 issued a limited set of instructions on bioethics primarily dealing with in vitro fertilization and stem cell research (Dignitas Personae or “the Dignity of the Person†[pdf]) and a handful of Christian scientists, policy makers, … Read More
