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 6, 2015
A recent iPad Air 2 commercial (“Change is in the air”) features a song by The Orwells called “Who Needs You” with the following lyrics. The italicized portions are the lines actually used in the spot: You better toss your bullets You better hide your guns You better help the children Let ’em have some fun You better count your...
January 9, 2015
Transhumanists believe that natural human limitations can, or should, or even must be overcome, via biotechnology, nanotechnology, and other means. Yet many transhumanists emphasize that people should not be be forced into using enhancement technologies. Rather, individuals should be free to decide whether or not to transform themselves....
December 17, 2014
Nicholas Carr, whose new book The Glass Cage explores the human meaning of automation, last week put up a blog post about robots and artificial intelligence. (H/t Alan Jacobs.) The idea that “AI is now the greatest existential threat to humanity,” Carr writes, leaves him “yawning.” He continues: The odds of computers...
December 5, 2014
Margaret Atwood has been getting her feet wet in the sea of issues surrounding developments in robotics and comes away with some conclusions of corresponding depth. Robots, she says, are just another of the extensions of human capacity that technology represents, they represent a perennial human aspiration, maybe they will change human...
December 3, 2014
Sometimes, when we criticize transhumanism here on Futurisms, we are accused of being Luddites, of being anti-technology, of being anti-progress. Our colleague Charles Rubin ably responded to such criticisms five years ago in a little post he called “The ‘Anti-Progress’ Slur.” In his new book Eclipse of Man, Professor Rubin...
October 29, 2014
Since we launched The New Atlantis, questions about human enhancement, artificial intelligence, and the future of humanity have been a core part of our work. And no one has written more intelligently and perceptively about the moral and political aspects of these questions than Charles T. Rubin, who first addressed them in the inaugural...
September 23, 2014
The news that an American woman has reportedly decided to pursue plastic surgery to have a third breast installed may itself be a subject for discussion on this blog, and will surely remind some readers of the classic 1990 science fiction movie Total Recall. As it happens, last Thursday the excellent folks at Future Tense hosted one of...
July 28, 2014
Lucy is such a terrible film that in the end even the amazing Scarlett Johansson cannot save it. It is sloppily made, and here I do not mean its adoption of the old popular-culture truism that we only use 10 percent of our brains. (The fuss created by that premise is quite wonderful.) There is just no eye for detail, however important....
April 24, 2014
Editor’s Note: In 2010, Mark Gubrud penned for Futurisms the widely read and debated post “Why Transhumanism Won’t Work.” With this post, we’re happy to welcome him as a regular contributor. Okay, fair warning, this review is going to contain spoilers, lots of spoilers, because I don’t know how else to review a...
March 18, 2014
I’m not sayin’, I’m just sayin’. Another day, another cartoon supervillain proposal from the Oxford Uehiro “practical” “ethicists”: use biotech to lengthen criminals’ lifespans, or tinker with their minds, to make them experience greater amounts of punishment. (The proposal actually...