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.
August 7, 2011
Late last year, Fred Baumann offered in the pages of The New Atlantis a depiction of the complicated relationship between humanism and transhumanism. It is a wonderful essay, and we will have more to say about it here on Futurisms before too long. Meanwhile, though, I noticed that the new issue of The Humanist magazine has a book review...
August 4, 2011
Michelangelo’s David Next up in my coverage of the Alasdair MacIntyre conference is a talk by Irfan Khawaja of Felician College, addressing the question of whether we should judge moral character based on appearance. More specifically, as he puts it, “Does focal visual perception ever disclose evidence relevant to judgments about...
August 3, 2011
Robotic space exploration is better than no space exploration at all, and the Mars Rovers have proven to be particularly remarkable machines. Those who made and manage them deserve to be proud. The latest news is that the Opportunity rover has, after seven years, traveled a total of a little over twenty miles, some 50 times its design...
August 1, 2011
The first talk I’m covering for the ISME conference is by Bradley J. Thames, a Ph.D. student in philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, on “Virtuous Authenticity.” Thames is seeking to address an area I’ve always found to be a huge gap in MacIntyre’s work: the question of what role the individual plays in living virtuously....
July 29, 2011
I’ve been attending two conferences this week. First was the Tarrytown Meeting, organized by the Center for Genetics and Society and held in Tarrytown, NY. For the next few days, I’ll be at the conference of the International Society for MacIntyrean Enquiry (ISME), held at Providence College in Providence, RI. My original aim was to...
July 24, 2011
Robert Ettinger, whose 1962 book The Prospect of Immortality kicked off the cryonics movement, has died at the age of 92. His remains have reportedly been frozen, along with those of his mother and two wives, at the Cryonics Institute in Michigan. We will eventually have more to say in the journal about Ettinger, the feasibility of...
July 13, 2011
As a matter of clearing up the record, I’d like to point out a recent post by Michael Anissimov in which he points out that his blog’s server is still infested with malware. The post concludes: I don’t know jack about viruses or how they come about. I suppose The New Atlantis will next be using that as evidence that a Singularity...
July 8, 2011
As someone who is not exactly a touchstone for the feelings of others, I am intrigued by a New Scientist story by Sally Adee about technologies being developed by MIT Media Lab that can assist people at reading the emotions of others. These devices include a set of goggles that gives cues about the meaning of facial expressions, a badge...
June 23, 2011
What a difference a day makes! On Tuesday, Michael Anissimov posted a plea to his readers to aid the Existential Risk Reduction Career Network — either by “[joining] an elite group of far-sighted individuals by contributing at least 5% of your income” or, “for those who wish to make their lives actually mean something,” by...
June 23, 2011
One of the central beliefs of liberalism, as it is popularly formulated today, is that we should strive to tolerate people who are very different from us — even (intermingling with a much older formulation of this belief) that we should learn to appreciate and love people who are very different from us, just for who they are. This is...