topic: transhuman
Vingean Singularity
Wednesday, September 1, 2004 9:13 PM
topics:
definitions
books:nf
transhuman
related posts
Vernor Vinge's seminal paper "The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era."
Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.
Is such progress avoidable? If not to be avoided, can events be guided so that we may survive? These questions are investigated. Some possible answers (and some further dangers) are presented.
Despite the commonly held belief that the Singularity rests on the creation of an Artificial Intelligence, Vinge's vision of the event rests on the premise of the development of something broader, i.e. the creation of entities with greater than human intelligence. While these may be AI's, Vinge identifies several other possible triggers:
Large computer networks (and their associated users) may "wake up" as a superhumanly intelligent entity.
- Computer/human interfaces may become so intimate that users may reasonably be considered superhumanly intelligent.
- Biological science may provide means to improve natural human intellect.
Human chips more than skin-deep
Sunday, August 29, 2004 9:04 PM
topics:
ethics
transhuman
related posts
Human chips more than skin-deep. C|Net article discussing competing views of the insertion of RFID chips into humans for identification purposes. Advocates cite increases in personal safety and utility, opponents argue that the practices raises unacceptable privacy concerns.
George W. Bush Is Getting Brain-jacked
Sunday, August 29, 2004 8:49 PM
topics:
society
transhuman
George W. Bush Is Getting Brain-jacked. An extended discussion of the science policy of the Bush administration, the legacy of Vannevar Bush, and the internal cat-fight between politically appointed neo-luddites and scientists within the government.
In the past three years, the NBIC program has convened hundreds of researchers, entrepreneurs and policy wonks from academia, business, federal agencies and the military to brainstorm what will happen when petaflop chips running expert systems, back-engineered from the hippocampus, can be stuck into the brain as an internal modem using nanowires that are spit out by gene-tweaked extremophile bacteria. The NBIC's initial report stunned even the most optimistic techno-utopians with its predictions of rapid human enhancement, life extension and nano-neural interfaces in the coming decades. Turns out that when people on the cutting edge of the molecular, information and cognitive sciences begin to talk about merging their fields and applying them to extending the human body and brain, things get very transhumanist very fast—nanobots or no nanobots.
Transhumanism Evolves in Silence
Sunday, August 29, 2004 8:44 PM
topics:
transhuman
society
Transhumanism Evolves in Silence. Wrap-up report from TransVision 2004, a Transhumanist conference.
But looking at an audience of about only 150, I became deeply discouraged. I had been hoping for so many more. Here was an international conference in the heart of Toronto with some of the most important transhumanist thinkers on the planet talking about the future of our species—including Stelarc, cyborg Steve Mann, biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey, Extropian Max More, philosopher Nick Bostrom, computational neuroscientist Anders Sandberg, democratic transhumanism promoter and Betterhumans columnist James Hughes and many, many more—yet the event was unable to attract more than a handful of enthusiasts.
Mexican cops get themselves chipped
Sunday, August 29, 2004 8:12 PM
topics:
transhuman
cyborgs
related posts
Mexican cops get themselves chipped. First (publicly acknowledged) widespread deployment of RFID for personal identification.
