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.
November 17, 2009
Adam already noted my brief response to a charge frequently made against “bioconservatives”: that we are against progress and for suffering. I’d like to say a little more in the hope of putting this tired rhetorical trope to rest. So let me just list, in no particular order and without any effort to be comprehensive or predictive,...
November 16, 2009
• Imagine the frat parties: Ted Greenwald, a senior editor of the print edition of Wired magazine, has been attending and covering Singularity University for Wired.com. We’ll have more on this in the days ahead. Meanwhile, Nick Carr suggests some mascots for Singularity U. • Squishy but necessary: Last month, Athena...
November 15, 2009
There is a poll over at Gizmodo asking readers What Percentage of Our Body Would Have To Be Replaced Before We Ceased Being Human? The options that the poll offers are mostly percentages — 10 percent, 20 percent, and so on — which is pretty silly, since it suggests that percentages are a useful way of talking about the human...
November 13, 2009
Keep your eyes peeled when you’re using Hulu and Vimeo these days and you may notice the latest step in the life-extension crowd’s attempt to march into the mainstream. The Methuselah Foundation has created four “public service announcements” that are now in rotation on the two sites. The four spots are here,...
November 12, 2009
Aubrey de Grey, a great advocate of immortality, is not worried about “immortal tyrants” for three reasons. First, because tyrannicide will still be possible. Second, because the spread of democracy will preemptively forestall tyranny. Third, because one immortal tyrant may not be so bad as a succession of tyrants, where the next guy...
November 12, 2009
Todd May has a short essay on death at the New York Times‘s Happy Days blog. The argument is age-old (so to speak), but he reiterates it in a concise, compelling, and beautiful way: Immortality lasts a long time. It is not for nothing that in his story “The Immortal” Jorge Luis Borges pictures the immortal characters as...
November 11, 2009
The Singularity Hub posts on a new program that can churn out sports news stories: Called Stats Monkey, the new computer software analyzes the box scores, and play by plays to automatically generate the news article. It highlights key players and clutch plays and will even write an appropriate headline and find a matching photo for a...
November 10, 2009
À la XKCD, several recent posts here on Futurisms have stirred up some lively debate in comment threads. In case you missed the action, the “Transhumanist Resentment Watch” has led to a deeper exploration of some of this blog’s major themes — resentment, disease, and normalcy. A post on magic pills has sparked a...
November 10, 2009
The recent incident at Fort Hood recalls to mind a proposition that has become a great truism since the terrorism attacks of September 11, one that should never be allowed to be merely a truism: how grateful we, usually civilians, should be to the first responders who run toward danger rather than away from it. The guardian virtues our...
November 10, 2009
Videos of the talks from the 2009 Singularity Summit, which we covered extensively on this blog, are now available here. A few videos are still missing, but most of them are up. The best videos (IMHO, as the kids say) are: David Chalmers on principles of simulation and the Singularity (video / post) Peter Thiel making the economic case...