A blog focusing on some of the most prominent “-isms” surrounding humanity’s technological future: extropianism, transhumanism, posthumanism, the mouth-filling Singularitarianism, and others in that constellation.
September 15, 2011
A few days ago, on the tenth anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attack, George Mason University economics professor Robin Hanson, who is influential among transhumanists, wrote a blog post arguing that we should “Forget 9/11.” Why? Well, partly because of cryonics: In the decade since 9/11 over half a billion people have...
September 14, 2011
Speaking of good versus efficient, the webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal has a gem today (click to see the whole thing): I love the expression on the father’s face: truly efficient love. (P.S. Don’t forget the button.)
September 13, 2011
A lovestruck Romeo sings the streets a serenadeAt H+ Magazine, Katja Grace asks whether we are getting “better at romance,” or, more precisely, “more romantically efficient.” In case you’re wondering about the definition: A romantically efficient person gets more affection and orgasms for the same input of searching and pining,...
September 12, 2011
Isn’t it strange how this castle changes as soon as one imagines that Hamlet lived here? As scientists we believe that a castle consists only of stones, and admire the way the architect put them together. —Niels Bohr, to Werner Heisenberg, at Kronborg Castle Kevin Kelly recently declared that most of the value we place on historical...
September 7, 2011
Charles Stross recently claimed that he had found some roots for transhumanism in the relatively obscure Russian Orthodox writing of the idiosyncratic Nikolai Fyodorovich Fyodorov. Stross provocatively asks: So. Transhumanism: rationalist progressive secular theory, or bizarre off-shoot of Russian Orthodox Christianity? And should this...
September 6, 2011
Two popular articles on radical life extension have recently been making the rounds — dueling articles, in a sense, in dueling publications. Gustav Klimt, The Tree of LifeFirst, Sonia Arrison, H+/World Transhumanist Association board member and one of the founders of Singularity University, has an article in the Wall Street Journal on...
August 26, 2011
My last post, “Seven Scenarios for the Decline of Transhumanism,” prompted a number of comments. One in particular seems to get at the spirit of the general criticism of the others, and so to merit a response. Commenter gwern notes: It doesn’t need to win on every possible front against every possible enemy. The overall trend is...
August 23, 2011
I recently attended a rough-cut screening of Fixed: The Science/Fiction of Human Enhancement, a new documentary by filmmaker Regan Brashear. Her film tackles the vexed relationship between transhumanists and disability advocates.The film is framed around interviews with a number of members of the transhumanist, bioethics, disability, and...
August 19, 2011
Astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson looks through a window of the International Space Station. Image courtesy NASA. When I was growing up, this image was science fiction. Even now it is not at all clear what kind of future the accomplishments it represents will have. But here is an illustration of an extension of human ability and experience...
August 15, 2011
The Fall of Icarus Many of the things that transhumanism aspires to, like greatly extended life or special abilities, are not really new; expressing dissatisfaction with the human condition by rejecting some of its limits seems to be a perennial human possibility. So it is possible that something like transhumanism at least will never...