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.
May 6, 2010
A recent article and subsequent Room For Debate piece in the New York Times look at the growing incorporation of cognitive and evolutionary psychology research into the work of English departments, and asks, “Can ‘Neuro Lit Crit’ Save the Humanities?” Answer: no. The crisis of the humanities implicit in the title of the Times...
May 1, 2010
Ari, your excellent post about cloning ends with a passing reference to the question of safety. I’d like to make two further broad points about the Bryan Caplan-inspired cloning debate, starting off with a few thoughts about safety, and then looking at the overall shape of Kyle Munkittrick’s argument. In his first post about this...
May 1, 2010
In a couple of posts last week (here and here), Kyle Munkittrick joined in on the recent blogospherical cloning debate, taking particular aim at our post on the subject. There’s a good deal of sloppiness in Mr. Munkittrick’s posts to nitpick (e.g., the Bioethics Council’s claim that “genetic uniqueness is an important source of...
April 27, 2010
According to NASA, a humanoid robot will be sent into space for the first time later this year. Perhaps fittingly enough, it will be on STS-133, the last manned space mission to be launched directly by NASA for the planned future. Wired magazine writes: James Hughes, who studies emerging technologies at Trinity University [College],...
April 22, 2010
Should we regulate? In a recent post here on Futurisms responding to a CNN interview about the pending “gamepocalypse,” I described some common moves that futurists make, including a kind of predictive overreach. But the CNN interview demonstrates another futurist trope. The basic formula of “this new thing will come, and it’ll...
April 22, 2010
President Obama recently announced the members of his new bioethics commission. We noted a few months ago that the new commission seems likely to focus on a few low-key policy questions, given the focus of its charter and the fact that both its chairman and vice chairman are busy university presidents. Nothing about its announced...
April 22, 2010
Bryan Caplan is an economics professor at George Mason University and a contributor to a group blog about economics. He and his co-bloggers are intelligent libertarian economists, and their blog is often clarifying on important questions of policy and economic theory. It is deservedly popular for its erudition and wit. On moral matters,...
April 9, 2010
CNN has a rather silly (what else?) piece up called “Why games will take over our lives,” interviewing Carnegie Mellon professor Jesse Schell. Among other things, it speculates that within the next five years, “toothbrushes will be hooked-up with Wi-Fi Internet connections,” so that when others know how often we brush, we will...
April 5, 2010
As in the other essays in his series on the problems of transhumanism, in “Liberal Democracy vs. Technocratic Absolutism” James Hughes wants to make the case that the family quarrels within transhumanism reflect family quarrels within the Enlightenment itself. In this case, Prof. Hughes writes as a lukewarm defender of what he takes...
March 26, 2010
Brandon Keim at Wired has a short piece and a gallery called “6 Ways We’re Already Geoengineering Earth,” related to the new conference on geoengineering being held at Asilomar: Scientists and policymakers are meeting this week to discuss whether geoengineering to fight climate change can be safe in the future, but make no...