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.
February 22, 2011
For reasons unrelated to the recent controversy surrounding the book, I’ve recently been rereading Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (the Norton Critical Edition, uncensored). Nonetheless, the controversy has been sharp in my mind as I’ve been reading, and it’s striking how deeply the change undermines some key passages from the book....
February 18, 2011
I’d like to point our readers to a couple articles of note about IBM’s Watson and its Jeopardy! win. First, transhumanist and AI researcher Ben Goertzel, writing at, of all places, KurzweilAI.net, seems to agree with my overall assessment of the significance of Watson: Ray Kurzweil has written glowingly of Watson as an important...
February 17, 2011
Yesterday, on Jeopardy!, a computer handily beat its human competitors. Stephen Gordon asks, “Did the Singularity Just Happen on Jeopardy?” If so, then I think it’s time for me and my co-bloggers to pack up and go home, because the Singularity is damned underwhelming. This was one giant leap for robot publicity, but only a small...
February 17, 2011
In response to my last post about transhumanist celebration of the self-harming behavior of one young woman, tlcraig comments: I have to say, I am tempted by the view that Lepht Anonym is simply more clear-sighted and thorough-going in her rejection of ‘the given’, or, more sharply put, her hatred of the body, than her fellow...
February 15, 2011
I had a look today at the disturbing, fascinating blog of Lepht Anonym, the young woman who recently caused a stir on transhumanist-leaning sites by performing various “enhancement” surgeries on herself at home. These surgeries typically involved implanting small devices in herself, such as magnets under her fingertips, meant to give...
February 11, 2011
Engadet reports that Wafaa Bilal is having trouble with the camera anchored to the back of his head. The post is a little vague, but to Laura June, it is “not really a surprise” that he should be removing the camera from the back of his head, and that the experience has been pretty painful. Still and all, she thinks the...
January 4, 2011
Wired has a story up by John Borland featuring one Lepht Anonym, who performs surgery on herself to implant various small devices intended to augment her sensory abilities. “You just have to get deep enough to open a hole and put something in,” she says. Take a minute and read this short article before continuing here,...
December 24, 2010
My apologies if this puts some coal in your stocking on Christmas Eve, but among the many wonderful tunes sung and played at Christmastime (the beautiful, transportive instrumental album Dulcimer Christmas comes highly recommended by yours truly), there is one that has never sat well with me: the story of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer....
December 21, 2010
I think I have mentioned before in this space that I’d be more than happy if mankind can achieve a Firefly-style future. Here, via Gizmodo, is another vision of things to come that I would happily endorse: [Video permalink here.]
December 16, 2010
With some irony, I expect, Gizmodo gave the following headline to a story this week about a rudimentary sprinting robot: “Someday, this robot will run faster than us all.” This week also brings the news that in a couple of months we will have a chance to see if IBM has made a champion artificially-intelligent Jeopardy player. I for...