ave a cosmic responsibility, as James Lovelock argued. In his latest book “Novacene: The Coming Age of Hyperintelligence”, Lovelock says that the new forms of digital life we are developing will replace us: first they will collaborate with us because they will need us, then they will take control of their evolution and leave us behind. They will be the ones to conquer the stars and bring the universe to life. I like to think that this is the destiny and will of the universe: that intelligent life expands faster than biological life can.

Russian Cosmism

It seems to me farmore likely that a robotic existence would not be like a human one inany sense that we understand, that the robots would in no sense be ourchildren, that on this path our humanity may well be lost.

the trouble with that film is that maybe first of all no one who is an Evangelical Christian where I live is 00:06:00 actually going to watch that film second of all those guys already know in a way what the film is saying

I don't know that we can assume that some point A Thousand Years in the future is going to have the same moral political economic or social priorities 00:41:36 as we do

I think to me there's a tragic quality to that which we just have to embrace and we have to lean into you know the sort of the The Human Condition is in the sense a tragic one

a hundred thousand people die every single day from age-related causes

far 00:28:27 from delivering Utopia

you'd have to be wildly optimistic to think we can blithely Market marketize over greater swathes of our embodied selves without opening new Vistas for class asymmetry and exploitation 00:26:44 and it makes no sense to argue that we will stay well protected against such risks by moral safeguards at least not within a transhumanist paradigm because transhumanism itself requires an all-out assault on the 00:26:56 humanist anthropology that underpins those moral safeguards you can't have transhumanism without throwing out humanism

what replaces it isn't a human person free from nature but a market in which that nature 00:24:53 becomes a set of supply and demand problems

this era began in the mid-20th century before you and I were born with a biomedical Innovation

it is as if man had been suddenly appointed managing director of the biggest business of all the business of evolution appointed without being asked if he wanted it and without proper warning and preparation what is more he 00:05:49 can't refuse the job whether he wants to or not whether he is conscious of what he is doing or not he is in point of fact determining the future direction of evolution on this earth that is his 00:06:02 inescapable Destiny and the sooner he realizes it and starts believing in it the better for all concerns

If you want to share your wiki with someone, you can just email them the file and be virtually assured they can open it.

Senseplay is an all-in-one ecosystem of biosensing hardware and software SDK to build anything from brain-computer interfaces, neurogames, biofeedback controlled installations and educational applications.

Extropians and other early transhumanists also had a longstandinginterest in self-historicisation. Theyseemed to have a feeling that what they were doing at the time was important and that one day people would want to know about it.

In retrospect, such a meme, then all in fun,now seems to pose a significant PR problem for transhumanists. Despite their youthfully optimistic parties and wordplay, extropianism always had a serious and strongly academic side and, over time, in keeping with its principle of self-transformation, the handshakes and the outfits fell away. This is perhaps part of the reason that some former extropians and early transhumanists, who remain active transhumanists today, rarely mention Machado and her antics when reflecting on the early days of transhumanism.

These ideals were first promoted by The Church of Venturism, which was founded in 1986. However, the ‘Church,’ which promoted rational thinking and decried mysticism, soon changed itsname tothe Society for Venturism.

Ed Regis also reported that, as a student at Oxford, More “kept a heart-lung resuscitator in hisdorm room, just in case.”513More has also noted that his undergraduate dorm room was a source of fascination to many of his peers as it housed “several shelves of bottles and pills, and people would come to my room and goggle-eye at them.”

To all this, the extropians said no. There is more to come, and better things lie on the horizon. Evolution mandates change, and “in the long run the positive potentials for intelligent beings are virtually limitless.” Believing that they were theagents of their own destiny, extropians aimed to be catalysts for progressive change, adopting “a positive, dynamic, empowering attitude,” while rejecting, “gloom, defeatism, and the typical focus on the negatives.”

Extropymag was one of the two main mediums in which extropian ideas were circulated—the other was, of course, the Internet. The first issue of Extropyin 1988 had a print run of 50 and interest was scant. Speaking about the first editions, More recalls, “we basically forced them on people.”444By 1992,the editors were churning out 750 copies,445and in the subsequent Winter/Spring edition of 1993, the output more than trebled to 2,500.446In 1992 a separate newsletter, Exponent, was launched and circulated bi-monthly, and in 1993 Extropywas printed in colour for the first time. By 1995, the print run per issue was 4,500.447Althoughthese are ultimately small print numbers, every increase was seen by Extropy’s founding editors as an important milestone in the pursuit of what More referred to as the “inexorable advance”448of extropianism.

While still a student at MIT, a young Eric Drexler met O’Neill, for whom he worked as a research assistantat Princeton in the summer of 1974, funded by the wealthy patron and influential space colonisation spokeswoman, Barbara Marx Hubbard(another devotee of Teilhard’s ideas).408Drexler“went on to develop plans for lunar factories, solar sails, and methods to mine asteroids for mineral resources” and “was one of the L5 Society’s most articulate and vocal advocates for an expanded human presence in space.”409Butby the late 70s,Drexler began to turn his attentionto a new concept, nanotechnology, which fed into the space colonisation dream, but also broadened the emphasis of the L5 space-age, human potential movement, into something that underpinned cryonics and life-extensionist ambitions,and other facets of what later became a distinctly transhumanist vision of the future.

Although Haldaneobserved thatthe progress of science had been staggeringly rapid in the last hundred and forty years, he considered it, “quite as likely as not that scientific research may ultimately bestrangled in some such way as this before mankind has learned to control its own evolution.”

John Burdon Sanderson Haldane was the son of the leading Scottish physiologist, John Scott Haldane, from whom J.B.S. learned “the fundamentals of science,”an education that began very early in his life.Throughout the younger Haldane’s youth, the pair undertook many “legendary and daring physiological experiments,”

Teilhard consistentlyargued that,“the main movement in the universe has been, and is, a groping towards consciousness.”262Evolution, in hisview, exhibits a tendency towards increasing complexity and “cerebralisation.”263To date, this process has resulted in the emergence of humans, highly complex creatures thathave in turn given rise to a new “‘thinking layer,’” or noosphere—the complex web of collective thought and technologies that have dramatically extended humanity’s reach within the biosphere.264

The most impressive, I might say startling, of these changes have been brought about in the course of the last two centuries; while a right comprehension of the process of life and of the means of influencing its manifestations is only just dawning upon us.

TheIndustrial Revolution isthe first strong historical analog for the modern phenomenonof a quantum leap in human progress, resulting in radically altered ways of life in a short span of time.

Godwin wasn’t convinced. Hiscounterargument, neatly summarised by Porter, was that “such a threat would be averted by the simultaneous withering away of sexual desires—a proposal which notoriously reduced Malthus to guffaws.”

Another thinkerof the period, whose life also extended into the nineteenth century,was the British philosopher and novelist William Godwin (1756-1836). Godwin was the father of Mary Shelley, the author ofthe classic gothic novel,Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus(1823). Hewasalsoan ardent believer in the power of reason and mind to improve the human condition. According to the Stanford Encyclopediaof Philosophy, Godwinwas a prolongevist who:... looked forward to a period in which the dominance of mind over matter would be so complete that mental perfectibility would take a physical form, allowingus to control illness and ageing and become immortal.

O that moral science were in as fair a way of improvement, that men would cease to be wolves to one another, and the human beings would at length learn what they now improperly call humanity!

Today, Mr. Machine, as La Mettrie mechanically dubbed himself, finally has his audience.

He theorised at length about the preservative properties of the cold in his History of Life and Death, enthusiasticallyremarkingthat fruits and nuts have been known to have fallen in the snow, or have sometimes been buried in purpose built ice vaults. When recovered months laterthey have been found to be “as fresh and fine as if they had been picked yesterday.”

14Like all other ideas and movements, transhumanism is a product of its time. Transhumanist ambitions of radical life extension, brain uploading, intelligence augmentation, and space colonisation, could not be taken seriously as realisticprojectsbefore the invention of modern computers and rockets, the discovery of DNA, or the rapid increases in computing power and the declining cost of computation—all of which took place in the twentieth century

Being, as the basic theme of philosophy, is no class or genus of entities; yet it pertains to every entity. Its ‘universality’ is to be sought higher up. Being and the structure of Being lie beyond every entity and every possible character which an entity may possess. Being is the transcendens pure and simple.42 And the transcendence of Dasein’s Being is distinctive in that it implies the possibility and the necessity of the most radical individuation. Every disclosure of Being as the transcendens is transcendental knowledge. Phenomenological truth (the disclosedness of Being) is veritas transcendentalis.

When an assignment to some particular “towards-this” has been thus circumspectively aroused, we catch sight of the “towards-this” itself, and along with it everything connected with the work—the whole ‘work-shop’—as that wherein concern always dwells. The context of equipment is lit up, not as something never seen before, but as a totality constantly sighted beforehand in circumspection. With this totality, however, the world announces itself.

A. The Concept of Phenomenon H. 29 The Greek expression φαινόμενον, to which the term ‘phenomenon’ goes back, is derived from the verb φαίνεσθαι, which signifies “to show itself”. Thus φαινόμενον means that which shows itself, the manifest [das, was sich zeigt, das Sichzeigende, das Offenbare]. φαίνεσθαι itself is a middle-voiced form which comes from φαίνω—to bring to the light of day, to put in the light. Φαίνω comes from the stem φα—, like φῶς, the light, that which is bright—in other words, that wherein something can become manifest, visible in itself. Thus we must keep in mind that the expression ‘phenomenon’ signifies that which shows itself in itself, the manifest. Accordingly the φαινόμενα or ‘phenomena’ are the totality of what lies in the light of day or can be brought to the light—what the Greeks sometimes identified simply with τὰ ὄντα (entities). Now an entity can show itself from itself [von ihm selbst her] in many ways, depending in each case on the kind of access we have to it. Indeed it is even possible for an entity to show itself as something which in itself it is not. When it shows itself in this way, it ‘looks like something or other’ [“sieht”… “so aus wie…”]. This kind of showing-itself is what we call “seeming” [Scheinen]. Thus in Greek too the expression φαινόμενον (“phenomenon”) signifies that which looks like something, that which is ‘semblant’, ‘semblance’ [das “Scheinbare”, der “Schein”]. Φαινόμενον ἀγαθόν means something good which looks like, but ‘in actuality’ is not, what it gives itself out to be. If we are to have any further understanding of the concept of phenomenon, everything depends on our seeing how what is designated in the first signification of φαινόμενον (‘phenomenon’ as that which shows itself) and what is designated in the second (‘phenomenon’ as semblance) are structurally interconnected. Only when the meaning of something is such that it makes a pretension of showing itself—that is, of being a phenomenon—can it show itself as something which it is not; only then can it ‘merely look like so-and-so’. When φαινόμενον signifies ‘semblance’, the primordial signification (the phenomenon as the manifest) is already included as that upon which the second signification is founded. We shall allot the term ‘phenomenon’ to this positive and primordial signification of φαινόμενον, and distinguish “phenomenon” from “semblance”, which is the privative modification of “phenomenon” as thus defined. But what both these terms express has proximally nothing at all to do with what is called an ‘appearance’, or still less a ‘mere appearance’.22

The work produced refers not only to the “towards-which” of its usability and the “whereof” of which it consists: under simple craft conditions it also has an assignment to the person who is to use it or wear it. The work is cut to his figure; he ‘is’ there along with it as the work emerges. Even when goods are produced by the dozen, this constitutive assignment is by no means lacking; it is merely indefinite, and points to the random, the average.

overcome fundamental human limitations, and the related study of the ethical matters involved in developing and using such technologies

Perpetual progress is a strong statement of the transhumanist commitment to seek “more intelligence, wisdom, and effectiveness, an open-ended lifespan, and the removal of political, cultural, biological, and psychological limits to continuing development. Perpetually overcoming constraints on our progress and possibilities as individuals, as organizations, and as a species. Growing in healthy directions without bound.”

Transhumanists regard human nature not as an end in itself, not as perfect, and not as having any claim on our allegiance. Rather, it is just one point along an evolutionary pathway and we can learn to reshape our own nature in ways we deem desirable and valuable. By thoughtfully, carefully, and yet boldly applying technology to ourselves, we can become something no longer accurately described as human – we can become posthuman.

Mein neuester Roman "Walkaway" ist ein optimistischer Katastrophenroman über bohemehafte Verweigerer, die sich vom Spätkapitalismus abwenden, wo sie nicht mehr gebraucht werden, und die gestohlene Software und Ruinen, die durch Umweltzerstörung hinterlassen wurden, benutzen, um vollautomatische kommunistische Luxusresorts auf Brachflächen zu bauen.

Machines are learning to do things that once could only be done by humans, and I see no obvious endpoint to their progress.

Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and Loser in the Age of Smart Machines

It is by now close to certain that there are millions of people currently in high school and college who are fine-tuning their skills for steady-looking careers that will, following technological breakthroughs, dissipate by the time they retire.

The Trending algorithm is clearly not ready for prime time

The computer isn’t some self-aware agent here, of course.

one could argue that the erasure of embodiment is a feature common to both the liberal humanist subject and the cybernetic posthuman.

what will happen to Tesla and the progress of autonomous driving as more people use Autosteer in situations it’s not good at

ensure that you’re solving the right problem

It’s a human/machine partnership that works as follows.

But “digital humanities” in the guise of “humanities computing,” “big data,” “topic modelling,” “object oriented ontology” is not going to save the humanities from the chopping block.

became an inevitability