Democrats have Andrew Yang. Republicans have Zoltan Istvan.

Both men are running for the presidency as political outsiders and pitching radical, future-focused ideas to voters. For Yang, its universal basic income and a slew of other technocratic policy proposals.

Istvan also supports a form of universal basic income, but his primary focus is even wilder he wants the country to prepare for the transhumanist future.

Istvan defines transhumanism as the movement to upgrade human bodies and lives with technology. He predicts a future in which our bodies will be significantly augmented, such as with robotic arms or computer displays in our eyes.

He expects human life spans will drastically increase and robots will take on more humanlike characteristics, including consciousness.

Outside of science fiction entertainment, these are not ideas most Americans think about as public policy issues.

When I was traveling in Iowa and told people about it, they thought I was on some other space ship, Istvan told me during a phone interview last week.

Istvan ran for president in 2016 under the Transhumanist Party, and ran in the California gubernatorial primary with the Libertarian Party last year. Hes not a traditional Republican, but hopes to find allies among GOP primary voters.

As an entrepreneur Ive always been fiscally conservative. Totally socially liberal. Libertarian to the core when it comes to social ideas, Istvan said.

There is a great deal of disagreement about whether and how soon the huge technological developments Istvan discusses might be achieved. It might be 10 or 20 years as he predicts, but also could be more than 100 years away, or never.

Nevertheless, some form of transhumanism and an increasing level of artificial-intelligence-aided automation already are upon us. Istvan warns that the United States will be ill-equipped to manage social and economic changes.

Im worried were going to wake up in four or eight years and China will be the dominant player in the world both culturally and with innovation and with money and the economy, Istvan said.

To prepare, Istvan suggests several steps that will make many Americans uncomfortable.

As a few examples, the transhumanist campaign proposes mandatory college attendance for most people, licensure testing for parents and merging the United States, Canada and the European Union into a joined partnership.

Istvan wants to partially fund the government through leasing federal lands, vast spaces of which sit mostly unused in the western United States with trillions of dollars of natural resources. He has no affinity for nature, which he sees as antagonistic and immoral.

And Istvan would radically expand the use of police surveillance technology, including facial recognition and tracking devices. He generally wants to rollback privacy norms that inhibit technology.

I think these are ideas whose time might never come, but Istvan predicts the rest of us will eventually come around.

ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ADVERTISEMENT

The transhumanist age will be upon us sometime. People will remember Zoltan has been out there talking about these ideas for a long time, he said.

(319) 339-3156; adam.sullivan@thegazette.com

Read more:

GOP candidate pitches robots and immortality to Iowa voters - The Gazette

As we careen into another decade of bioengineering advances, questions about how, and how much, we ought to manipulate our own biology grow more urgent. Thankfully, the books, movies, and TV series exploring such questions have never been smarter. For proof, check out these underrated biohacking titles from the past few years.

A transhumanist entry in the recent surge of feminist reinterpretations of classics

If youve ever marveled at the timelessness of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelleys Frankenstein, at how forward-thinking and eternal the young (20-year-old!) writer was for her early-19th-century time, this novel from celebrated queer novelist Jeanette Winterson will delight you. It feels inaccurate to call Frankissstein a novel, thoughcall it more of an act of modernization, of revivification, a fitting ritual for a story that changed societys views about transcending the laws of nature.

The book jumps between two timelines, the first being a fictionalized diary of Mary Shelleys, from that one summer in which she wrote Frankenstein for husband Percy Shelley, stepsister Claire Claremont, and friends Lord Byron and John Polidori, all the way to her (imagined) meeting of computing godmother Ada Lovelace, the daughter abandoned by Lord Byron. The other is a retelling, of sorts, of both history and novel: in the near future, trans doctor Ry Shelley becomes involved with cis futurist Victor Stein, a Silicon Valley visionary seeking to recreate the brain of his mentor, a collaborator of Alan Turing. The two stories are elegantly similar; Winterson continues Shelleys line of philosophical inquiry and shows just how little weve figured out in the intervening two centuries.

The Hunger Games meets Orphan Black

If you want to get your kid thinking about the possibilities that await them, or if you are just a sucker for smart adventures, check out Emily Suvadas post-apocalyptic biohacking trilogy. In a future America where everyone is implanted with a panel in their forearm at birth, people are able to hack their own DNAor to be more precise, theyre able to wrap their own DNA in custom mods, as long as theyre proprietary apps made by Cartaxus, an Amazon/Apple-type megacorporation that ends up having just about as much ethical fortitude as youd expect from an Amazon/Apple-type megacorporation with a name like Cartaxus.

Not everyone sticks with out-of-the-box mods; fringe groups experiment with high-concept hacks like feathers (!) while people with debilitating diseases too rare to interest Cartaxus set out to design their own cures. Oh, also: A massive global pandemic is making people first hunger for human flesh, then explode into vapor, so Cartaxus is providing refuge to people in massive underground bunkersprovided they wipe their panels of any non-Cartaxus code first. The protagonist, 18-year-old Catarina Agatta, is the daughter of one of the worlds best gene hackers and has a disease that prevents her from accepting any mods; Cartaxus has re-requisitioned her father, allegedly to work on a cure for the explosion disease, and Cata biotech genius in her own rightis stuck out in the world working on a cure herself.

The series is meticulously researched without being weighed down by hard-sci-fi exposition; its exciting without being simple, and best of all, the technology, and the way it perpetuates inequality, feels plausible. Plus, youer, your kidwill learn something about the science of gene hacking along the way. The third installment, This Vicious Cure, will be released on January 21, so you(r kid) have a couple of weeks to get caught up.

Imagine Altered Carbon with a distinctly French malaise

People angry about the Gen Z retort OK, boomer dont know how good they have it. In the future imagined by this French series, the youths are literally killing themselves to escape the hellishness their parents have left for them. Its a future that might even seem desirable to the transhumanists of today: Biotechnology has uncovered a gene in jellyfish that has been reverse-engineered into a process allowing people to stay youthful, ostensibly forever. (Its not too far into the future; the oldest woman on earth is only 169.)

For the kids born into this world, however, its an eternal prison. Society has started treating childhood like a waiting room for the day one is able to start the anti-aging treatments, and even then, some people are ruled genetically incompatible and forced to live a normal life alongside immortals. So when a bunch of youths wash up dead on a beach, seemingly as a result of a mass suicide, one detective must track down the leaders of a death cult. He enlists the help of Christa Novak, a 20-year-old former member of the cult who has been institutionalized since the last mass suicide and has her own reasons to catch the leader. Where Altered Carbon thought about biohacked immortality through the lens of radical inequality, Ad Vitam presents a slightly tweaked view, in which the dangers of consumer biotech lie not just in the berpowerful demigods of the .00001%, but also in the more gradual, banal effects invited by everyone else.

Its like a super-feminist episode of Black Mirror

Jennifer Phangs film about a 40-something mother who runs out of options will haunt you for years to come. In a future in which women are becoming increasingly infertilelike right before Margaret Atwoods Gileadone biotech company has finally cracked the code on human consciousness transfers. A few weeks before the procedures commercial launch, the company lays off its spokeswoman, Gwen, implying that shes too old (and too Asian) to be the face of a product designed to eliminate aging altogether. Her daughter Juleswhose existence is itself a privilege only the rich can affordhas just been accepted to an expensive prep school; moreover, it quickly becomes clear that her former employer is railroading her into having the consciousness-transfer procedure done in exchange for having her job back.

With her daughters future on the line, Gwen makes a choice that, in reality, is no choice at all. Equal parts gorgeous and harrowing, the film is a reminder of the ways that purported biotech utopias can diminish human diversity.

A Black Mirror spin-off series about love and privacy

Look, the French are doing the most when it comes to transhumanist television. Osmosis is the most recent of the bunch. (See also: Transfers, about illegal consciousness transplantsbasically Travelers without all the time-travel insanity.) The Netflix original from showrunner Audrey Fouch imagines a near-future Paris where rising-star supergenius Esther Vanhove has developed Osmosis, a technology that uses nanobots that implant themselves in your brain; capture every fleeting desire youve ever had, conscious or subconscious; and sift through social networks to single out your soul mate. Once matched, even if youre separated by distance your respective implants link to create a virtual space where you can meet for some very sexy, emotional time together.

Together with her brother and business partner Paul, a sentient voice assistant Martin, and a few elite employees, she conducts a beta test with a handful of all-too-willing subjects, and it goes just about as smoothly as youd expect it to.

Think of the Spider-Man meme, but with two Paul Rudds

OK, so this Netflix series uses biohacking more as dark-comedy device than realistic concept. That doesnt mean its not delightful. Paul Rudds character Miles has hit a serious rough patch in his life: despite having the exact life he chose for himselfwith a high-paying job at an ad agency and a beautiful wife (Aisling Bea) and a gorgeous house in the suburbshes become depressed, listless, and close to losing it all.

Does he consider medication and therapy, you may ask? Of course not! When a colleague comes into the office one day with an entirely new, sparkling personality, Miles decides thats the kind of magical, extremely expensive fix he needs, so he gathers the savings he and his wife have collected for fertility treatments and goes to a spa, where instead of getting a really good massage (or, you know, Lexapro), he wakes up buried alive in the woods. Turns out the treatment facility is two dudes conducting a very illegal operation wherein they clone you but take out all the bad parts of your brain, leaving the best version of yourself to go back to your life none the wiser, while they kill the hard copy. Except it didnt take in Miles case, and now hes stuck fighting with a New Miles for control of a life the latter is easily better at leading. Its a light, funny snack of a series that gets at the heart of what we really mean when we say we want to use biotech to improve ourselves.

See the original post here:

6 Books, Movies, and Shows to Bend Your Neocortex This Winter - NEO.LIFE

Zoltan Istvan, a transhumanist journalist, is running for the U.S. presidency as a Republican in 2020, challenging President Donald Trump in the primary.

Istvan, who also ran for president in 2016 on a lesser scale, has written for The New York Times, Vice, and National Geographic, and describes himself as the founder of the Transhumanist Party, the original author of the Transhumanist Bill of Rights, and a frequently interviewed expert on AI, genetic editing, tech policy, and futurism.

His campaign policies for 2020 range from the relatively normal to the quite absurd, from ending the drug war, beating China in the artificial intelligence race, restoring the environment, and providing universal basic income for all, to the development of artificial wombs, nearly open borders, stopping mass shootings and terrorism with drones, robots, AI scanners, and other technology, and licensing parents, or as Istvan explained, requiring prospective parents to pass a series of basic tests, similar to a DMV driving test, to quality and get the green light to get pregnant and raise children.

As a passionate transhumanist (or, as philosopher Max More explains, someone who supports the evolution of intelligent life beyond its currently human form and human limitations by means of science and technology), reportedly with a microchip in his hand that allows him to open doors and use his phone, Istvan also wants the Republican Party to reclaim transhumanism from the far-left.

This week, Mediaite got the opportunity to talk with Istvan about his 2020 campaign and the policies within.

Your campaign policies are very interesting. Typical libertarian policies mixed with some quite out-there stuff like artificial wombs, nearly open borders, and stopping borders with drones. What was the inspiration behind such an odd variety of campaign focuses?

I was busted for dealing marijuana I guess maybe 26 years ago, where I was convicted of a felony conviction for distribution of narcotics, which also made me highly libertarian kind of from the start of my adult years. And then as I went through the National Geographic days I began to try to think about what would be better policy so we didnt get in these wars all the time and the government sort of left us alone. But at the same time, its not that I want to be left alone entirely. I think there should be some safety nets.

If you look through some of my 2020 plans youll see theres a lot of liberalism built into it, so it kind of tries to take the very best parts from all the different ideologies that are out there and put it in one. To be honest, I just dont understand why there cant be conservative people like myself who are totally socially liberal, and while thats classic libertarianism, the reality is that the Libertarian Party just doesnt have enough connections, money, and all these other things to run campaigns that can actually win office, which is ultimately why Im now with the Republicans trying to make a difference, trying to get people that might be fiscally conservative to have some sensibility when it comes to being more open-minded.

You say on your campaign website that youre trying to reclaim transhumanism from the far-left. What do you mean by that?

Thats probably my number one policy goal right now, and its because whats happened recently, at least in the last four or five years, is it seems like transhumanism has been growing dramatically. Im excited about that, but its also growing dramatically to the left, and if it continues to grow and grow in that direction it means that it will be almost this socialist dystopia, in my opinion, where everyone thinks they own everything and they can just do what they want.

Innovation, capitalism and Im saying this from an entrepreneur of twenty years it requires free markets in many ways to come up with these creative ideas in the first place. We all love going to Europe. We all love the quasi-socialism that they have there when were there. But Europe hasnt really created anything innovative in fifty years. I mean not much when you compare to, lets say, America. We want to be careful that in order for transhumanism to survive, it doesnt fall into the hands of the new breed of socialists that America is contending with. Silicon Valley is going that direction, Ive been watching that happen over the last ten years, and so I thought it was finally time somebody stood up and said, Wait a second, we need a better balance here. We need a balance of people who are willing to innovate in libertarian-minded economical ideals without bowing down to the far left.

So do you think transhumanism would die out if we did end up with a socialist society?

No. I dont think it would die out. I just think so you gotta understand the number one goal of transhumanism is really to try to overcome biological death by finding technology. And really, what happens when you put socialism into medicine and some of these other things, innovation dramatically stops. So somebody like myself whos 46-years-old, and of course all the other older people that have been involved in the movement forever, if innovation and science and all that other stuff stopped just even for ten or fifteen years, or doesnt go as fast as it is, a huge amount of extra people wont make it to this new generation where well have all these different techniques to keep people alive.

So theres actually a race going on. A race to keep transhumanism in kind of this capitalistic, libertarian somewhat framework so that innovation continues to move forward and that people like myself will have a chance in thirty years to actually benefit from these life extension medications and innovations that come out.

If we are able to overcome death with science by 2030 versus the year 2050, over one billion lives will be saved. So the meaning here is incredibly important, which is why Im very cautious about socialists being in charge.

Are you not worried that we could end up with a Fallout: New Vegas Mr. House situation, where you have a really really rich guy, or a bunch of rich people who are practically living forever, while no one else can get access to this technology?

That is one of my number one fears.

First of all, from a transhumanist perspective, if everyone lives forever, were going to have overpopulation problems, and I already believe we have overpopulation problems. You can see the climate changing and things like that.

But I think the other one is, whats to keep the Mark Zuckerbergs and the other people of the world from taking this radical technology, using it on themselves, and leaving the rest of us behind? This is where I lose a little bit of my libertarianism, and all the libertarians get mad at me. I actually think under these circumstances there should be some government mandate when it comes to healthcare, when it comes to different types of rights to life extension. That we should all have some type of a universal right to life extension and some of these medicines, even it requires government grants and things like that, because the very last thing that I want to do is create a world where only the one percent has access to these technologies, or even beyond the one percent, and the rest of the people get left behind in some kind of dystopia.

So, this is where I kind of break down and say a little bit of big government is fine, especially if its going to protect and make sure everyone has benefits to this new future that were talking about: the Transhumanist Age.

Do you think there are already some minor life extension schemes going on in the one percent?

I dont believe that theres a conspiracy going on with the one percent, because if it is, I havent heard about it. There are companies like Human Longevity. They cater only to the very wealthy But its not that they dont cater to the super poor, its just that their prices are expensive and theyre not covered by insurance, so only the very wealthy use them.

I would be very surprised if even someone like Peter Thiel has a very strict regiment of kind of undercover, secretive longevity people. I think were all working on this together. We realize the humanitarian aspects of making us all live longer. The person who could come up with the magic pill, or 3D-printing organs, however were going to keep ourselves alive longer, I think not only is it the most important capitalistic thing someones going to become a trillionaire off these kinds of innovations but I also think theres a very deep humanitarian aspect to share with your family, your friends. So I dont think people are hording this technology. I just dont think weve come up with the right technologies yet.

But if you look at the statistics, five years ago this was maybe a one or two billion dollar industry when you talk about longevity, and Bank of America recently said its going to be a 600 billion industry by 2025. I mean it is skyrocketing in terms of venture capital and investment. A lot of money is coming into it, so I hope by now in the next two to five years youre going to have a lot more innovation and announcement.

It seems like youre putting up more of a fight this primary to beat President Trump. Last election you put up a fight, but you werent listed on the ballots, whereas this time youre going to be listed on some the ballots, right?

Yeah, were going to be on basically all the ballots we can be until Super Tuesday, and were going to see how we do. Were spending a lot of our funding for ballot access right now, but thats okay. What happened is the first time around, I had some unique ideas. Of course, I had been a writer for a lot of major media, and so people listened and they liked those ideas, but for the Transhumanist Party as an independent, you really cant make any ground unless you have ballot access.

Were hoping that if we do well in New Hampshire, and were hoping that if we do well in Iowa, maybe get a few delegates here, then we could all of a sudden take it to the next level and make a real push to try to compete against Trump.

Id be lying to you if I said, Look, I think were going to win this thing. Thats not really what were trying to do. What were trying to do is get the attention of the Republican Party and say, Isnt it time there could be a new way of looking at things? Does it always have to be fiscally conservative and also conservative moral values? Why doesnt the Republican Party open itself up to socially liberal values? They would make a lot more room for people like myself who fit right there in the middle. Who dont want to necessarily give up all their money to the government, but also want to say to people, Hey you can do exactly what you want to do with your body. This is something that I dont think the Republican Party has had yet from any kind of public figure or anyone whos run a real viable campaign.

If you could address Republican voters right now with a short statement, what would you say?

The premise here with Trump is that we were promised greatness, and that sounded kind of neat in the beginning, and I was excited not to have an attorney at the top of the chain of command in America, but it turns out that Trump didnt really deliver that.

All we have are these squabbles in America. It seems like peoples views are just attacking each other. I really think its time not only just for a professional to be in the White House, but for somebody with really brand new ideas. And I dont mean empty the swamp. I mean lets fly above the swamp. Why do we even need to be in the swamp anymore? This is the kind of thing Im trying to bring.

Photo courtesy of Zoltan Istvan.

This interview has been edited and condensed for content and clarity.

Have a tip we should know? [emailprotected]

Go here to read the rest:

Meet the Microchipped Transhumanist Cyborg Whos Running Against Trump in the 2020 GOP Primary - Mediaite

Zoltan Gyurko Istvan

SAN FRANCISCO (PRWEB) November 19, 2019

Born in California, Istvan is a former journalist for National Geographic and has recently penned articles for The New York Times opinion section. In 2013, Istvan published his novel The Transhumanist Wager, which became a #1 Philosophy and Science Fiction bestseller on Amazon. The book has been compared more than 1,000 times to Ayn Rands Atlas Shrugged. Istvans most recent book of political essays titled Upgrading America was a #1 bestseller in Politics on Amazon.

Istvan has become known around the world for spearheading the multi-million person transhumanism movement, which aims to upgrade the human body with science and technology. The #1 goal of transhumanism is to overcome biological death. While still outside the political mainstream, the worlds largest companies such as Apple, Google, and Microsoft are key innovators in the transhumanist movement.

Istvan has consulted for the U.S. Navy and given speeches at conferences around the world, including for institutions such as the World Bank and the World Economic Forum. Istvan has traveled to over 100 countries and is a former director of a major wildlife organization, WildAid. He has a degree from Columbia University in Philosophy and Religion. A successful entrepreneur with multiple businesses, Istvan lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his physician wife and two young daughters.

Istvans 20-point political platform, available on his campaign website http://www.zoltan2020.com, advances ideas that so far have been absent in the Republican primaries. Although his years as a businessman have made him fiscally conservative, Istvan supports a Universal Basic Income that is based off monetizing government resources, called a Federal Land Dividend. He proposes ending the war on drugs, making public preschool and college both free and mandatory, and licensing parents to make sure they are ready to raise children. He supports artificial wombs as a third option in the pro-life vs pro-choice debate, and would like to cut the military budget in order to create a science industrial complex in America. He aims to fight climate change with geo-engineering and end the IRS with a straightforward national sales tax. He favors nearly-open borders, tort reform, deregulation, banning private prisons, and using AI-operated drones and robots to stop mass shootings in public places and schools.

Istvan is also worried that China is beating America on the technological front in areas such as artificial intelligence, genetic editing, and neural prosthetic development. As president, he promises to get America innovating again, because once the Chinese take a lead in innovation, the United States may never get it back.

Pratik Chougule, Istvans campaign manager, says that Istvan is running as a new type of Republican politician. He expects Istvans bold ideas about the countrys future will resonate with a wide cross-section of Americans.

Istvans campaign slogan is: Upgrading America.

For more information, contact campaign manager Pratik Chougule at: pc@zoltan2020.com

To schedule an interview or talk to Mr. Istvan, email: info@zoltanistvan.com or call: 415-802-4891http://www.zoltan2020.comTwitter: @zoltan_istvan

Share article on social media or email:

See the article here:

Zoltan Istvan, a Leader in Science and Technology, Will Run for US President and Challenge Trump in the 2020 Republican Primaries - PR Web

Someday, artificial intelligence could become so advanced that it gains the ability to think creatively and, perhaps, so vastly surpasses humanitys artistic abilities that it would have to explain its creations to our squishy, primitive brains.

At least, thats one of the predictions that physicist, philosopher, and creativityscholar Arthur Miller makes in his new book, The Artist in the Machine. The book, released last month, details how machines are starting to demonstrate creativity, from learning to improvise music to pulling together insights from seemingly unrelated fields of research and suggests how the trend might continue.

Futurism caught up with Miller to chat about his book and his thoughts on art and the future of creativity. While some of the technology Miller describes, like artificial general intelligence, is probably hiding in thedistant future, he argues that todays technology may be more creative than most assume.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Futurism: In your book, you describe creativity as the amalgam of a long list of traits and characteristics is a simpler definition possible, and does it change when youre describing a machine versus a person?

Arthur Miller: Its essentially going beyond what you know. Similarly in a machine: to go beyond its algorithm to produce some new form of the arts. Creativity is accomplished by problem solving.

F: I understand the argument that seeing an algorithm make jumps beyond its explicit programming or drawing connections among different wells of data resembles human creativity. But isnt there an argument that doing that arriving at the most elegant solution to a problem as in when playing chess or Go is exactly what AI and machine learning tools are programmed to do, even if that elegant answer is a different solution than what humans found?

AM: When you talk about AlphaGo, the algorithm that cracked Go, what it essentially did was jump its program. It wasnt supposed to make a key move. In fact, it was considered to be a bad move the Go team thought it had glitched. It won based on calculating the odds of a human making that move to be one in 10,000. Thats more than a glimpse of creativity.

There are experiments with language which I find extremely interesting. What machines can do is create prose with wordplay that were not used to. Machines can investigate into that fine line between whats sense and whats nonsense.

This shows that machines can transform the landscape of language. The endpoint of this could well be that when we have sophisticated machines that can produce prose that is meaningful to them, they may have to translate it for us. They would have to educate us this is far in the future and we might even agree that what they produce is more sophisticated or more interesting than what we do.

For me, we should always have in mind the big question: can machines be creative, can machines produce art? But also, the question can we learn to appreciate it?

F: At one point in your book, you write When machines reach our level of creativity, they will be able to develop a creativity of their own creativity that at present we are not equipped to imagine. What will that new level of creative thinking look like? When you talk about needing translations, are you suggesting that AI might someday conjure truly exotic creations, or is it more that we wont understand the logic that a machine used along the way?

AM: It is a mix of both. In my view, what will happen is when machines have fluency in the English language, good natural language processing, theyll read the web very quickly. Machines will contain more knowledge than we could gather in a lifetime.

Theyll see things like love and emotion, and say Gee isnt that cool, lets look into it, and theyll convince us they have these things. Machines will eventually be able to duplicate our emotions, our intelligence, our creativity. Thats something called artificial general intelligence: when the machines are as smart as us.

And then they may evolve a creativity that goes beyond us because machines have the potential for unlimited creativity. What I mean by that is when you do research in an area, you do research based on cumulative knowledge. The machines will have more cumulative knowledge and a greater capacity for creativity through problem-solving.

F: Is finding a way to program consciousness the key to building truly creative AI? Can a non-conscious technology be truly creative?

AM: Why should the property of sentience be attributed only to human beings? As we move along, the concept of what it means to be a human will be transformed.

The transhumanist line, for example, predicts well replace parts of our brains with chips. We will reach a point where machines and humans are working together, and then machines will drift over and work by themselves. So we will have three groups. The humans left behind, the humans who work with machines, and the machines.

Theres no reason a machine cant be sentient. The definition of what it means to be human is rapidly changing. And what it means to be sentient that definition has been changing as well.

F: So lets talk about a future where the human mind is at least partially merged with machinery. How would that merger work? Is it a matter of machines bringing new skills to the table?

AM: Theres a nice example in my book of a device called the Continuator, created by Franois Pachet. At one point he was interested in coming up with a device that could aid musicians, mostly in creativity, in improvising. A pianist sits down at a piano and starts playing, and the notes are fed into the Continuator. It turns them into phrases, and the Continuator produces its own improv based on what the musician had played. And then the pianist will play more, and the cycle continues. Improvisation becomes a conversation between musician and machine.

F: When we talk about musical improv, theres randomness and surprise within a phrase, but theres also order behind it. Can a computer know when to follow the rules of musical theory and when to break them?

AM: These machines have no awareness. It, so to speak, chugs along, looks for recurring patterns and analyzes them. There is surprise in the humans face because the human has a sense of self-awareness, but the machine doesnt.

F: If the machine is just doing pattern analysis, does its value come from us interpreting it as improvisation?

AM: We look for patterns in whatever we do its a built-in survival mechanism, actually. The audience responds and the musician responds, but the machine isnt aware of what sort of music is improvised, even if it sounds pleasant. Its the sort of music we would expect, it isnt really pioneering. But someone standing in the next room cant tell whether the human is playing or the Continuator is playing, so in this way the computer passes a musical Turing test.

F: Is there a way to assign value to robotic art without comparing it to a humans creation?

AM: I think its wrong to assess the work of an AI on whether it can be distinguished from the work of a human. Because whats the point? You want AI to create works of art that you cant even imagine right now. To define what is art is impossible. Picassos artworks were considered a joke at the time he did them.

F: Todays technology can already help people boost their creativity and give people new tools with which to create art, and there are rudimentary tools out there that create things on their own. Where does the line between creator and tool end? When does the technology itself become the creator?

AM: You start crediting the machine when the machine produces works that are generally accepted in the art world and when you learn to accept it as a work of art even though it was done by a machine.

F: Are we there yet?

AM: The art world is coming to that point, but were not quite there. We cant even imagine what that new art will be. Maybe it will be 3D 3D-printed art.

F: This is a debate already happening developers are fighting the patent office over whether they or an algorithm should get credit for the algorithms output.

AM: I think I know what youre talking about. Theres an algorithm where you put in the qualities of a chair and it creates two million chairs. At least at this point the machine and the engineer should share the credit.

But I would almost weigh in on the side of the machine, actually. The machine was generating three-legged chairs and weird designs that the human wouldnt have. So the machine has creative license because its jumping its algorithm its going beyond its programming. It produced something that was not in the gamebook.

Futurism Associate Social Media Editor Natalie Coleman provided significant research assistance for this story.

More on creative AI: Will the Next Mozart be a Robot?

Read more:

Someday, Robot Artists May Have to Explain Their Creations to Us - Futurism

The future isnt an accident, its something we create and it seems our goal is to hack what it means to be human. What was once science fiction is now reality: the first cyborgs are here. A revolution is unfolding in operating rooms, labs, artist, and designer studios across the world.

Scientists and entrepreneurs are on a quest to unlock the secrets of the human brain through implantable technology. The documentary I am Human by Elena Gaby follows three people with varying degrees of disabilities who have been implanted with brain-computer interfaces allowing them to achieve what was once impossible. Programmes such as BrainGate, Synchron, and Neuralink are among the neurotech organisations working to restore communication, mobility, and independence in people who have lost movement due to paralysis, limb loss, or neurodegenerative disease.

In the documentary, Stephen, who is blind, has a retinal implant which connects to electrodes in his brain. Elsewhere, Anne who suffers from Parkinsons Disease is considering whether to have deep brain stimulation through inserted electrodes. These brain implants come with great societal implications as groundbreaking neurotechnologies could gradually branch out into the general population when people adopt how transformational they can be.

A future where we can type or control our cars with our mind is within reach and if the technology were to make it outside the medical domain, the future is one of brain-to-brain communication, enhanced memory, and cognition where even speaking to each other may not be as necessary. In her recent article for the Guardian, Zoe Corbyn features Dennis Degray, a paraplegic man who was able to send text messages, shop on Amazon, and stack blocks by controlling a robotic arm through the neurons of his mind. Brain implants could revolutionise the way we connect to the world around us. If harnessed, for example, in the military, in retail, the workplace or train stations, they could become the new standard for interactions between people, machines, and products.

But cognitive enhancements, although still in experimental stages, should make us question the deep implications of self-governance and privacy. In our cyber future, will humans or technology prevail? Daniela Skills short film featured on Nowness portrays a future where humanity battles with cyborgs and robots in a quest for co-existence. This appears to be a far-fetched scenario, but if we observe the signals of today and operate as cultural listeners, we can see a tipping point between humanity and machines through the rise of neurotechnology.

Bionic humans and intelligent robots are here, and you better get used to them; you might even become one of them in the future. Companies such as Youbionic aims to democratise smart prosthetics in an effort to enhance the human intellect and physiology its recent invention, the Youbionic Paw Arm, is now available through open sourcing. Another open-source, artificially intelligent prosthetic leg designed by scientists Levi Hargrove and Elliott Rouse at the University of Michigan and Shirley Ryan Ability Lab will be released to the public and scientific community. This naturally redefines the changing boundaries between the human and the machine, the animate and inanimate, controller and controlled, and how accessible this may all become.

In our quest to merge the physical, digital and machine, ancient themes of Animism dating from ancient civilisations and religions such as the Golem are being played out with todays toolbox. Creatives like Princess Gollum illustrate our fascination with giving life to non-living things. Humans cannot help but explore their power and their fears in a bid to take control of the inevitable: the degradation of the human body and mind. This need for eternity has inspired us to create human-like creatures with special abilities from Frankenstein to todays alien Avatars such as Galaxia.

In her art installation Homemade RC Toy, Geumhyung Jeong questions our relationship with machines by interacting naked with homemade robotic sculptures. Flowing Water Standing Time by fashion designer Ying Pao is a robotic garment which moves according to colour and is inspired by the work of neurologist Oliver Sacks. We could see the development of garments that can be a tool for navigation, communication, and as an amplifier for VR spaces with projects like Ava Aghakouchaks soft wearable Sovar.

Meanwhile, Ai-Da, the worlds first humanoid robot artist, has had her first solo exhibition of eight drawings, twenty paintings, four sculptures and two video works. There was debate about granting personhood to AI in the EU courts in 2017. This was ultimately rejected; however, recently two professors from the University of Surrey filed patents on behalf of an AI system. They are arguing it should be recognised as inventor, and although the Patents offices in the UK, EU and US insist innovations are attributed to humans only, this now seems to be an outdated notion.

So, what does this mean for the human body, intelligence and emotions? In What humans will look like in the next 100 years, we discussed the acceptance of baby androids in our society and the manufacturing of cyborgs by 2048. The project Replika by Pleun Van Dijk, commissioned by Roskilde Festival, echoes this transhumanist concept. By staging a human production-line, designers act as gods and stage a future where human shells are reshaped by industry and capital. New research shows that we may also be able to regenerate human tissue and body parts, as scientists have discovered the human body can renew like salamanders.The paper, published in Science Advances, explains we have the same healing process as amphibians and this previously unknown ability might be exploited to enhance joint repair and establish a basis for human limb regeneration.

Science fiction artistEsmay Wagemans explores a parallel concept of re-creating body parts in a race to res-culpt humanity. This idea, paired with the developments of soft computers such as the Octobot, a chemically powered robot which can essentially take any shape, points to the potential for merging soft wearables with Augmented Reality, social media, and Artificial intelligence. This could lead to a new way of communicating and representing ourselves in which our skins would become screens reflected in Aposema, a facial prosthesis which acts as an external emotional indicator. The project speculates on our ability to empathise in an age where people prefer technological devices over in-person interactions. Built using soft robotics prosthetics, biometric sensors and an augmented reality digital layer, Aposema would translate facial expressions when we are no longer able to understand emotions.

How we relate to other humans and our own physicality is changing deeply as we race to virtualise and reinvent our body. The democratisation of technologies ranging from robotic limbs to mixed realities, coupled with the progress of 3D scanning and modelling, are suggesting the possibility of a human body that is modifiable, customisable and open source. New beauty standards will emerge out of this transhumanist scenario in which mutant creations would colonise our current traditional sense of reality.

We are creating another dimension, another human nature before our eyes. The speculative design studio Imprudence explores future beauty products with their online store selling items ranging from cat eye DNA, nano filter make-up to a skin scanning soap. Face filters are a key illustration of the viral desire for wearing 3D makeup as seen in Ines Alphas recently launched collaboration with the fashion brand Bimba y Lola.Through her digital creations, digital artist Ksenia Trifonova engages with a future where images will be projected onto our faces and give us the ability to transform and communicate data, style, social media posts on our skins.

Our clothing will not be immune to the changes in our reality paradigm. Rflctv Studios streetwear collection transforms into interactive hyperreal dichroic garments through augmented reality. Moin Roberts-Islam of the London-based Fashion Innovation Agency recently featured a prototype scanner for human body augmentation and customisation created by Cyberpunk 3D artist Rafe Johnson. It could offer new ways of trying on jewellery, accessories and tattoos.

And with Virtual humans, avatars will not only populate our feeds, but they will also enter customer service applications as we are now able to replicate human emotion and mimic meaningful and authentic interactions. Soul Machines enables highly realistic Autonomous Animations of humans through an AI-powered Digital Brain. The avatars are already planned to be rolled out in customer service for Natwest. Concurrently, Facebook has outlined its plans to turn us into holograms in a future communication where instead of using Skype, we could be teleported to our parents living room for dinner across the world. The holographic avatar in Blade Runner or the loveable operating system in Her are here.

Western philosophy makes an absolute distinction between the living and the non-living. We presumed that humans were the only thinking things but now machines think, they will sense, feel, reflect, even have a sense of self, through avatars like Josefin Jonssons virtual humans, cyborgs and humanoids. As we use advanced technologies to push the edges of humanity, machines are becoming like us. The question now is, where do we end and where do they begin? And is this a true advancement for society?

Originally posted here:

The transhuman future is here - Dazed

In todays future-facing era, phenomena once relegated to the world of science fiction are starting to edge their way into reality.

We have scientists growing brains from stem cells in petri dishes; robots are being granted national citizenship; virtual intelligences experience and expressanger.

For the past 50 years, the microprocessorthe chip that processes information in a computerhas doubled in capacity at least everyyear to two years. Experts predict that machine intelligence will be smarter than humans by 2030.

So heres my question: When the machines weve created possesses an intelligence that equals ours, will they deserve our protection?

Will they desire it? Maybe even demand it?

This should be your question, too. Because in a little longer than a decades time, well need answers if want to avert moral and civil rights mishaps.

Futurists and technologists have been working to prepare the world for radical new sapient technologies and intelligences with publications such as the Cyborg Bill of Rights V1.0 which advocates equality for mutants.

Beyond the microprocessor, instrumental in catapulting machine intelligence to new levels through its ever-increasing speed for calculations, weve seen accelerating advances in genetic editing, stem-cell research, and 3D bioprinting, each which will help to create entities that have both consciousness and intelligence. This year 3D bioprinting has come so far that a team of Israeli scientists were able to successfully print part of a human heart.

Netflix released a popular four-part documentary series called Unnatural Selection on the topic.

Scientists are already wading into murky waters when it comes to the rights of these new intelligent organisms that we create. AtYale University brains from deceased pigs are being stimulated in a vat, which has prompted controversy in the animal rights world.

Do the brains of these animals, once dead, now represent live animals? And if so, do they receive the same legal rights that have informed laws that protect animals against harmful animal testing and animal cruelty?

As a result of these emerging ethical issues, were seeing more debates about new terms of futurist-oriented rights.

But the fact remains that there are few, if any, actual rules for most of our new scientific realities.

This is largely what inspired me to come up with theTranshumanist Bill of Rights, which Wiredpublished in full in 2018. The document recently underwent its third rendition via crowdsourcing.

When the machines weve created possesses an intelligence that equals ours, will they deserve our protection?

Like many of the cyborg bills that existthere are about half a dozen significant ones floating around the internetthis bill includes legal protections for thinking robots, gender explanations for virtual intelligences, laws for genetically engineered sapient creatures, defense of freedoms allowing biohackers to modify their bodies, and many other protections. It even includes policies to fight off environmental destruction and planetary existential threats such as asteroids, plagues, nuclear war, and global warming.

In 2015, Iwalked up to the US Capitol building holdinga single-page print out of the document I had written. The machine gun-toting police standing guard just feet away from me threatened arrest, but there was little need; the taped-on page quickly fell off the building, fluttered off the wall in the wind.

I wasnt arrested. The police and journalists surrounding me chuckled at the bungled ceremonial moment.

I recall that I couldnt help but smile myself at the idea of getting a futurist bill of rights to become a fixed part of US governing policy at the time.

But four years later, with machines showing ever increasing sophisticationhumans are even marrying robotsin some parts of the worlda bill of rights is not as wild as it once sounded. We could easily say the same for genetically-modified babies being born, which happened for the first time inChinalast year.

In my work, I meet with people around the world who are interested in answering not if we need a futurist bill of rights, but when we will need it, from Harvard Universitys Kennedy School of Government to theCato Institute to theWorld Economic Forumto European ministries.

If you look through the various cyborg-inspired bills of rights already out there, youll find that a major goal is to include cyborg and transhumanist rights in the UNs 1948Universal Declaration of Human Rights one day.

The ideas of personhood, a right to education, and freedom of speech were once considered unattainable in some countries. Now these basic human rights are common, and at least some of this change is due to the powerful legal influence of the UNs universal bill, often seen as a blueprint for governments and laws around the globe.

Interestingly, one of the challenges of getting a transhumanist bill of rights taken seriously comes from minorities groups, when its perceived that futurist rights will undermine movements of historically marginalized peoples. While plenty of transhumanists are members of the LGBTQ community, the community has been reluctant to wander intofuturist LGBTQissues, such as nongender roleplaying as different species in virtual environments.

LGBTQ friends of minewhile often sympathetic to transhumanist goalshave told me that they believe that after their historic quest for rights in America especially, they still need to focus on progress for their own movement and its goals. They perceive a futurist bill of rights as a distraction.

I respect and agree with this. Minorities in the US and around the world face social discrimination and violations of rights that warrant our attention. But it wont slow down the trajectory of radical technologies, which is spurring a growing futurist community to call for its own set of rights, rules, and protections.

I understand that at times it seems preposterous to believe the world will need to consider whether super intelligentrobots can vote, or whether human heads can betransplantedto waiting tech-engineered bodies, or if four years of college education canbe downloadedinto human brains.

But these realities are likely to occur long before the century is out.

If society doesnt accept that new sapient lifeformswhether its an autonomous digital avatar living in a supercomputer, or a biological creature with human-level intelligence that genetic editing createdalso need rights, or that new forms of engineered conscious intelligences will walk among humans on Earth as a result of scientific progress, society will undergo another wave of civil strife as we scramble to play catch-up to whats fair and moral.

At the very least, societies and governments need more comprehensive plans to formally deal with these new realities. That begins with a Congressional dialogue and forming preliminary legal documents outlining potential rights for the evolving future.

Ultimately, it comes down to how humans believe new intelligent life deserves to be treated.

Follow this link:

Do transhumanists need their own bill of rights? - Quartz

Read Story Transcript

Canadians are heading to the polls in two weeks, but one futurist argues that one day we'll be casting our votes for a robot prime minister.

"At some point we're going to create a machine that's better than the human brain, and that machine is going to be better at running the planet and running the world," said Zoltan Istvan.

"You really have an opportunity here to maybe get what we can see as true leadership, for the very first time in perhaps everyone's lifetime."

Istvan ran in the 2016 U.S. presidential election under the banner of the Transhumanist Party, a group that believes in using technology to modify and enhance our intellect and bodies as long as no harm results to anyone else. He is not running in the 2020 campaign.

He said people he met along the campaign trailwere skeptical of the Transhumanist pitch, but argued that people underestimate how quickly technology is advancing.

He told The Current's Laura Lynch that "almost every single action that a human does, a machine can almost certainly do dramatically better."

"When you talk about running a country, you talk about governing for the greatest good," Istvansaid. "Amachine is going to have better algorithms."

He added that one benefit of robot leaders would be that they could improve over time, weeding out idiosyncrasies or issues experienced by previous iterations.

A robotprogrammed to lead wouldn't necessarilybe stuck behind a desk on Parliament Hill it could beartificial intelligence that you could access anywhere, like a smart speaker in your living room.

The implication for democracy would be that "in the future, an AI will be able to keep on millions and millions of close relationships with its voters base," Istvansaid.

It "might be campaigning right in your living room," he added.

"That's where this becomes really interesting, is a really direct relationship with a potential AI political leader."

Kerstin Dautenhahn, Canada 150 research chair in intelligent robotics, said she "would definitely not want political leaders to be robots."

She told Lynch that "we need to maybe be realistic on what machines are good at, and what humans are good at."

"AI is certainly very good [at] enhancing vast amounts of data, so for example, recognizing one face in a million different faces, or collecting data on people's habits and then recognizing patterns," said Dautenhahn, director of the social and intelligentrobotics research lab at the University of Waterloo.

"What machines are not very good at is common sense and general intelligence, so for example machines lack compassion, they lack empathy."

Dautenhahn said those common sense decisions are vital for politicians "because they are dealing with incomplete information, they have to make quick decisions, they have to make predictions."

"That's what people are very good at and it is because we are human beings," she said.

Istvan argued that decisions based on emotion can lead to "total chaos."

"That's why we want pure reason, pure statistical analysis," he said.

He told Lynch that "even if the picture is incomplete, a statistical analysis of that would make a much better decision than something that comes out with emotions."

"Frankly, the last thing I want is [U.S. President Donald] Trump to be emotional as he's making decisions with the military and things like that."

Istvan said the qualities needed for leadership could eventually be programmed into robots, but Dautenhahn warned that the people programming them could unwittingly introduce their own biases.

"I would certainly not vote for a robot because ... there's no such thing as pure rational decision-making," she said.

Dautenhahn acknowledged that humans make mistakes, but perhaps robotics could be used to help us make better-informed decisions, rather than just making them for us.

"I think humans are pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good in what they're doing, and they can certainly be complemented by AI, in areas where the AI is very good."

Written by Padraig Moran. Produced by Ben Jamieson.

Read more:

Could a robot be prime minister? Machines will soon be smart enough to run the world, says futurist - CBC.ca

by David Lewin

Should we expect the schools of the future to be saturated with technology? It has been widely reported (e.g. https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/319288) that some leaders within major Silicon Valley tech companies have, rather hypocritically, chosen to limit the influence of their products on their own children, by restricting access to screen time and social media. Take the following report:

You cant put your face in a device and expect to develop a long-term attention span, [said] Taewoo Kim, chief AI engineer at the machine-learning startup One Smart Lab A practicing Buddhist, Kim is teaching his nieces and nephews, ages 4 to 11, to meditate and appreciate screen-free games and puzzles. Once a year he takes them on tech-free silent retreats at nearby Buddhist temples. (https://www.businessinsider.com/silicon-valley-parents-raising-their-kids-tech-free-red-flag-2018-2)

Other educational spaces also appear to provide shelter from technology saturation, for instance Waldorf schools, which prioritise outdoor learning and low-tech play. This concern to shelter students reflects certain perceived risks of technology saturation: distractedness and diminished attention span, heightened depression and anxiety, poor health and obesity and, in extreme cases, suicide. Limiting access to technology has become newsworthy because of the prevailing assumption that technology enhances education. Whatever the truth of the matter, we currently know little about the long-term impact of many technologies on the educational formation of young people: the influence of technology seems widespread, indeterminate, and seldom given sufficient justification. This knowledge gap is by no means unique to modern technologys educational interventions, but is at the foundation of education itself: there is an interpretive gap between what educators intend and what students learn.

This raises two general questions: First, how do we justify influencing others? If the answer to this question is basically consequentialist (because the outcomes of influence are good), then we are presented with a second question which problematizes this response: namely, what are we to make of the gap between our intentions to influence or enhance, and the outcomes of these intentions?

I would argue that human enhancements have existed as long as education itself. Nick Bostrom and Anders Sandberg (https://nickbostrom.com/cognitive.pdf) have suggested that education may be usefully labelled as a conventional means of human enhancement, as distinct from nominally unconventional means of enhancement, such as nootropic drugs, gene therapy, or neural implants. This distinction has its place, though Bostrom and Sandberg acknowledge the continuum between enhancements that are conventional (working through education) and unconventional (drawing upon recent technologies), making the distinction fluid, indeterminate and contextual. Caffeine is one thing, but gene editing for purposes of non-therapeutic interventions (e.g. selecting or removing traits in reproduction) remains controversial. Of course, convention is a rather unstable form of justification. In general, the question of the justification of unconventional enhancement parallels that of conventional enhancement. It is one of the key questions that shapes education theory: namely, how are our intentions to influence justified?

The gap between the intentions and the outcomes could be understood as a weakness or risk intrinsic to education. Gert Biesta speaks of the beautiful risk of education (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMqFcVoXnTI), arguing that it is a misconception to see education as a stable relation between inputs and outputs in which we can eliminate the unexpected or the risky. To construe education without risk is to miss something of its beauty. Education can make use of, or better, relies on this gap in order to create spaces that are essentially open to something unbidden, an opening that involves, as Hannah Arendt puts it, the coming of the new and young. By contrast, the sciences of learning have worked to eliminate this gap through the development of what is known as the behavioural objectives model in which measurable educational objectives and outcomes are made explicit and become the sole target of education. The behavioural objectives model can be interpreted as the expression of technical subjectivity in which all forms of insecurity are eliminated in favor of pure transmission, and the risks of exposure to the unbidden are minimised. The idea that behavioural objectives ensure control of the educational process is seductive but, illusory and ultimately corrosive since, as Arendt, Biesta and others have argued, the educational event itself depends upon the introduction of something radically new. What makes the new radical here is that there is a discontinuity between the conditions in which newness may arrive, and the very arrival itself. Something about the new is necessarily unanticipated. Without the new, education becomes the reproduction of the old which, echoing Adornos critiques of Halbbildung (half-education), is only ever half the educational story.

This gap between educational intention and what actually takes place demands something of those involved: speculative, or interpretive judgements. We might say that interpretation constitutes the pedagogical relation between educator and student: the educator speculates that the student is educable, projecting ideas about what capacities the student could realise through certain educational influences; the student speculates about what the educator intends and is capable of, e.g. that they are (or are not) both interested in and able to support the students growth. Then there is speculation about the outcomes of the educational event: the enhancement of a capacity may not be immediately obvious to the student or educator, taking days, months or even years to be properly realised or recognised. In short, there is a great deal of faith in pedagogical structures, processes and relations. This is significant because unconventional means of enhancement likewise involve speculation, risk, and judgement. Just as writing may enhance or diminish human memory, so ubiquitous access to google may extend and undermine certain cognitive capacities; at least an ambivalence should be noted. Unconventional means of enhancement through, for instance, drugs like Ritalin or Modafinil, might be thought to involve unacceptable risks in comparison to conventional schooling, but risks are part of any effort to influence because they are defined by the gap described between intention and outcome.

In her essay The Crisis in Education, Arendt says that hope always hangs on the new which every generation brings; but precisely because we can base our hope only on this, we destroy everything if we so try to control the new that we, the old, can dictate how it will look. Indeed, the older generation cannot fully anticipate changes brought on by the young but can, indeed must, show the world and let go, hoping that in doing so conditions are created in which the new may arrive. Education involves creating conditions in which it is possible for the new to come in to the world, conditions that might also be described in terms of openness: openness to the mystery, the unbidden, the Other, or as self-transcendence.

I would not be the first to challenge the view that the technologically defined immortality of transhumanism would be an enhancement, though my challenge is based on educational insights. Specifically, the transhuman quest for immortality, in which the old seeks to sustain itself indefinitely, seems to oppose the radical renewal of education described by Arendt and others. There is the basic problem of resources: the old must make space for the new by the renewal of life through death, which perhaps could be solved by extraterrestrial colonization or through digitization and uploading. However, the educational principle that life is constituted by a creative tension between those coming in to the world (the young) and those going out (the old) is a basic condition for life itself. The necessity of education correlates with the necessity of the renewal of the world.

Rather than being regarded as revolutionary or radical, transhumanism is, then, fundamentally and ruinously conservative: it seeks to sustain what is, as it is. Transhumanists sometimes berate those who are hesitant about the scale and scope of technological change as bio-conservative, though maybe the transhuman community itself that is the most conservative of all: it fails to see how the preservation of the old world is an affront to the ongoing renewal that sustains the world.

This renewal is not a case of the new entirely replacing or displacing the old, as a cult of youth might have it. By no means does this jettison tradition and the past. In order for children to arrive in the world, they must, says Arendt, be introduced to it. Herein lies the legitimate but limited authority of educators: that, by showing the world, they are able to take responsibility for it, while letting the forces of renewal remake it. Arendt ends her Crisis in Education essay with the following appeal to love:

Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it and by the same token save it from that ruin which, except for renewal, except for the coming of the new and young, would be inevitable. And education, too, is where we decide whether we love our children enough not to expel them from our world and leave them to their own devices, nor to strike from their hands their chance of undertaking something new, something unforeseen by us, but to prepare them in advance for the task of renewing a common world.

For Arendt, this renewal is not realised in a techno-utopia in which we may exist indefinitely, but a common world in which the old order is in constant transformative renewal. This means convention and tradition provide the ground for representing the world to the young, who then are able to introduce something new through invention and transformation. This balance between old and new, past and future, makes education both necessary and possible.

My concerns are less that transhuman prospects for extended or unending life are real possibilities than what these prospects indicate about contemporary attitudes to human formation and education: namely, the current technologisation of education disregards the interpretive gap which makes education more than a mechanical process of construction. Bringing to view the interpretive gap reminds us that renewal is both possible and essential in order to exceed the conservative forces that seek only to recreate the patterns of the past.

Every parent, educator and transhumanist has an idea of the good and a belief or hope in the possibility of realising it; what might be called a faith in the future. Faith is necessary because of the gap between our intentions to make change, and the outcomes of those intentions. There is a twofold problem: we often dont know whether change is good, and even if we did know this, we often dont know if change can, or has, been realised. It is the human condition to live in this gap, a gap that requires us to live between the conventions and traditions that ground us, and the inventions and transformations that develop us. This gap ensures that, thankfully, the influences of the old on the young are not entirely mechanical or predictable, and that our humanity is staked upon a wager to affirm the world without hanging on to it indefinitely. Because of this gap, it is incumbent upon us to reflect upon the judgements that we must inevitably make, and the possible futures in which we put our faith, hope and love.

Read the rest here:

Education and Enhancement in a Transhuman Future - Patheos

Transhumanist politics constitutes a group of political ideologies that generally express the belief in improving human individuals through science and technology.

The term "transhumanism" with its present meaning was popularised by Julian Huxley's 1957 essay of that name.[1]

Natasha Vita-More was elected as a Councilperson for the 28th Senatorial District of Los Angeles in 1992. She ran with the Green Party, but on a personal platform of "transhumanism". She quit after a year, saying her party was "too neurotically geared toward environmentalism".[2][3]

James Hughes identifies the "neoliberal" Extropy Institute, founded by philosopher Max More and developed in the 1990s, as the first organized advocates for transhumanism. And he identifies the late-1990s formation of the World Transhumanist Association (WTA), a European organization which later was renamed to Humanity+ (H+), as partly a reaction to the free market perspective of the "Extropians". Per Hughes, "[t]he WTA included both social democrats and neoliberals around a liberal democratic definition of transhumanism, codified in the Transhumanist Declaration."[4][5] Hughes has also detailed the political currents in transhumanism, particularly the shift around 2009 from socialist transhumanism to libertarian and anarcho-capitalist transhumanism.[5] He claims that the left was pushed out of the World Transhumanist Association Board of Directors, and that libertarians and Singularitarians have secured a hegemony in the transhumanism community with help from Peter Thiel, but Hughes remains optimistic about a techno-progressive future.[5]

In 2012, the Longevity Party, a movement described as "100% transhumanist" by cofounder Maria Konovalenko,[6] began to organize in Russia for building a balloted political party.[7] Another Russian programme, the 2045 Initiative was founded in 2012 by billionaire Dmitry Itskov with its own "Evolution 2045" political party advocating life extension and android avatars.[8][9]

Writing for H+ Magazine in July 2014, futurist Peter Rothman called Gabriel Rothblatt "very possibly the first openly transhumanist political candidate in the United States" when he ran as a candidate for the United States Congress.[10]

In October 2014, Zoltan Istvan announced that he would be running in the 2016 United States presidential election under the banner of the "Transhumanist Party."[11] By May 2018, the Party had nearly 880 members, and chairmanship had been given to Gennady Stolyarov II.[12] Other groups using the name "Transhumanist Party" exist in the United Kingdom[13][14][15] and Germany.[16]

According to a 2006 study by the European Parliament, transhumanism is the political expression of the ideology that technology should be used to enhance human abilities.[17]

According to Amon Twyman of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET), political philosophies which support transhumanism include social futurism, techno-progressivism, techno-libertarianism, and anarcho-transhumanism.[18] Twyman considers such philosophies to collectively constitute political transhumanism.[18]

Techno-progressives also known as Democratic transhumanists,[19][20] support equal access to human enhancement technologies in order to promote social equality and prevent technologies from furthering the divide among socioeconomic classes.[21] However, libertarian transhumanist Ronald Bailey is critical of the democratic transhumanism described by James Hughes.[22][23] Jeffrey Bishop wrote that the disagreements among transhumanists regarding individual and community rights is "precisely the tension that philosophical liberalism historically tried to negotiate," but that disagreeing entirely with a posthuman future is a disagreement with the right to choose what humanity will become.[24] Woody Evans has supported placing posthuman rights in a continuum with animal rights and human rights.[25]

Riccardo Campa wrote that transhumanism can be coupled with many different political, philosophical, and religious views, and that this diversity can be an asset so long as transhumanists do not give priority to existing affiliations over membership with organized transhumanism.[26]

Some transhumanists question the use of politicizing transhumanism.[who?] Truman Chen of the Stanford Political Journal considers many transhumanist ideals to be anti-political.[27]

Democratic transhumanism, a term coined by James Hughes in 2002, refers to the stance of transhumanists (advocates for the development and use of human enhancement technologies) who espouse liberal, social, and/or radical democratic political views.[28][29][30][31]

According to Hughes, the ideology "stems from the assertion that human beings will generally be happier when they take rational control of the natural and social forces that control their lives."[29][32]The ethical foundation of democratic transhumanism rests upon rule utilitarianism and non-anthropocentric personhood theory.[33] Democratic transhumanist support equal access to human enhancement technologies in order to promote social equality and to prevent technologies from furthering the divide among the socioeconomic classes.[34]While raising objections both to right-wing and left-wing bioconservatism, and libertarian transhumanism, Hughes aims to encourage democratic transhumanists and their potential progressive allies to unite as a new social movement and influence biopolitical public policy.[29][31]

An attempt to expand the middle ground between technorealism and techno-utopianism, democratic transhumanism can be seen as a radical form of techno-progressivism.[35] Appearing several times in Hughes' work, the term "radical" (from Latin rdx, rdc-, root) is used as an adjective meaning of or pertaining to the root or going to the root. His central thesis is that emerging technologies and radical democracy can help citizens overcome some of the root causes of inequalities of power.[29]

According to Hughes, the terms techno-progressivism and democratic transhumanism both refer to the same set of Enlightenment values and principles; however, the term technoprogressive has replaced the use of the word democratic transhumanism.[36][37]

Hughes has identified 15 "left futurist" or "left techno-utopian" trends and projects that could be incorporated into democratic transhumanism:

These are notable individuals who have identified themselves, or have been identified by Hughes, as advocates of democratic transhumanism:[38]

Science journalist Ronald Bailey wrote a review of Citizen Cyborg in his online column for Reason magazine in which he offered a critique of democratic transhumanism and a defense of libertarian transhumanism.[22][23]

Critical theorist Dale Carrico defended democratic transhumanism from Bailey's criticism.[39] However, he would later criticize democratic transhumanism himself on technoprogressive grounds.[40]

Libertarian transhumanism is a political ideology synthesizing libertarianism and transhumanism.[28][41][42]Self-identified libertarian transhumanists, such as Ronald Bailey of Reason magazine and Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit, are advocates of the asserted "right to human enhancement" who argue that the free market is the best guarantor of this right, claiming that it produces greater prosperity and personal freedom than other economic systems.[43][44]

Libertarian transhumanists believe that the principle of self-ownership is the most fundamental idea from which both libertarianism and transhumanism stem. They are rational egoists and ethical egoists who embrace the prospect of using emerging technologies to enhance human capacities, which they believe stems from the self-interested application of reason and will in the context of the individual freedom to achieve a posthuman state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. They extend this rational and ethical egoism to advocate a form of "biolibertarianism".[43]

As strong civil libertarians, libertarian transhumanists hold that any attempt to limit or suppress the asserted right to human enhancement is a violation of civil rights and civil liberties. However, as strong economic libertarians, they also reject proposed public policies of government-regulated and -insured human enhancement technologies, which are advocated by democratic transhumanists, because they fear that any state intervention will steer or limit their choices.[45][46][23]

Extropianism, the earliest current of transhumanist thought defined in 1988 by philosopher Max More, initially included an anarcho-capitalist interpretation of the concept of "spontaneous order" in its principles, which states that a free market economy achieves a more efficient allocation of societal resources than any planned or mixed economy could achieve. In 2000, while revising the principles of Extropy, More seemed to be abandoning libertarianism in favor of modern liberalism and anticipatory democracy. However, many Extropians remained libertarian transhumanists.[28]

Critiques of the techno-utopianism of libertarian transhumanists from progressive cultural critics include Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron's 1995 essay The Californian Ideology; Mark Dery's 1996 book Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the End of the Century; and Paulina Borsook's 2000 book Cyberselfish: A Critical Romp Through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High-Tech.

Barbrook argues that libertarian transhumanists are proponents of the Californian Ideology who embrace the goal of reactionary modernism: economic growth without social mobility.[47] According to Barbrook, libertarian transhumanists are unwittingly appropriating the theoretical legacy of Stalinist communism by substituting, among other concepts, the "vanguard party" with the "digerati", and the "new Soviet man" with the "posthuman".[48] Dery coined the dismissive phrase "body-loathing" to describe the attitude of libertarian transhumanists and those in the cyberculture who want to escape from their "meat puppet" through mind uploading into cyberspace.[49] Borsook asserts that libertarian transhumanists indulge in a subculture of selfishness, elitism, and escapism.[50]

Sociologist James Hughes is the most militant critic of libertarian transhumanism. While articulating "democratic transhumanism" as a sociopolitical program in his 2004 book Citizen Cyborg,[31] Hughes sought to convince libertarian transhumanists to embrace social democracy by arguing that:

Klaus-Gerd Giesen, a German political scientist specializing in the philosophy of technology, wrote a critique of the libertarianism he imputes to all transhumanists. While pointing out that the works of Austrian School economist Friedrich Hayek figure in practically all of the recommended reading lists of Extropians, he argues that transhumanists, convinced of the sole virtues of the free market, advocate an unabashed inegalitarianism and merciless meritocracy which can be reduced in reality to a biological fetish. He is especially critical of their promotion of a science-fictional liberal eugenics, virulently opposed to any political regulation of human genetics, where the consumerist model presides over their ideology. Giesen concludes that the despair of finding social and political solutions to today's sociopolitical problems incites transhumanists to reduce everything to the hereditary gene, as a fantasy of omnipotence to be found within the individual, even if it means transforming the subject (human) to a new draft (posthuman).[51]

See the rest here:

Transhumanist politics - Wikipedia

Frank Sulloway once said: Ninety-nine per cent of what Darwinian theory says about human behavior is so obviously true that we dont give Darwin credit for it. Ironically, psychoanalysis has it over Darwinism precisely because its predictions are so outlandish and its explanations are so counterintuitive that we think, Is that really true? How radical! Freuds ideas are so intriguing that people are willing to pay for them, while one of the great disadvantages of Darwinism is that we feel we know it already, because, in a sense, we do.

Suppose you find an unconscious six-year-old girl lying on the train tracks of an active railroad. What, morally speaking, ought you to do in this situation? Would it be better to leave her there to get run over, or to try to save her? How about if a 45-year-old man has a debilitating but nonfatal illness that will severely reduce his quality of life is it better to cure him, or not cure him?

Oh, and by the way: This is not a trick question.

I answer that I would save them if I had the power to do so both the six-year-old on the train tracks, and the sick 45-year-old. The obvious answer isnt always the best choice, but sometimes it is.

I wont be lauded as a brilliant ethicist for my judgments in these two ethical dilemmas. My answers are not surprising enough that people would pay me for them. If you go around proclaiming What does two plus two equal? Four! you will not gain a reputation as a deep thinker. But it is still the correct answer.

If a young child falls on the train tracks, it is good to save them, and if a 45-year-old suffers from a debilitating disease, it is good to cure them. If you have a logical turn of mind, you are bound to ask whether this is a special case of a general ethical principle which says Life is good, death is bad; health is good, sickness is bad. If so and here we enter into controversial territory we can follow this general principle to a surprising new conclusion: If a 95-year-old is threatened by death from old age, it would be good to drag them from those train tracks, if possible. And if a 120-year-old is starting to feel slightly sickly, it would be good to restore them to full vigor, if possible. With current technology it is not possible. But if the technology became available in some future year given sufficiently advanced medical nanotechnology, or such other contrivances as future minds may devise would you judge it a good thing, to save that life, and stay that debility?

The important thing to remember, which I think all too many people forget, is that it is not a trick question.

Transhumanism is simpler requires fewer bits to specify because it has no special cases. If you believe professional bioethicists (people who get paid to explain ethical judgments) then the rule Life is good, death is bad; health is good, sickness is bad holds only until some critical age, and then flips polarity. Why should it flip? Why not just keep on with life-is-good? It would seem that it is good to save a six-year-old girl, but bad to extend the life and health of a 150-year-old. Then at what exact age does the term in the utility function go from positive to negative? Why?

As far as a transhumanist is concerned, if you see someone in danger of dying, you should save them; if you can improve someones health, you should. There, youre done. No special cases. You dont have to ask anyones age.

You also dont ask whether the remedy will involve only primitive technologies (like a stretcher to lift the six-year-old off the railroad tracks); or technologies invented less than a hundred years ago (like penicillin) which nonetheless seem ordinary because they were around when you were a kid; or technologies that seem scary and sexy and futuristic (like gene therapy) because they were invented after you turned 18; or technologies that seem absurd and implausible and sacrilegious (like nanotech) because they havent been invented yet. Your ethical dilemma report form doesnt have a line where you write down the invention year of the technology. Can you save lives? Yes? Okay, go ahead. There, youre done.

Suppose a boy of 9 years, who has tested at IQ 120 on the Wechsler-Bellvue, is threatened by a lead-heavy environment or a brain disease which will, if unchecked, gradually reduce his IQ to 110. I reply that it is a good thing to save him from this threat. If you have a logical turn of mind, you are bound to ask whether this is a special case of a general ethical principle saying that intelligence is precious. Now the boys sister, as it happens, currently has an IQ of 110. If the technology were available to gradually raise her IQ to 120, without negative side effects, would you judge it good to do so?

Well, of course. Why not? Its not a trick question. Either its better to have an IQ of 110 than 120, in which case we should strive to decrease IQs of 120 to 110. Or its better to have an IQ of 120 than 110, in which case we should raise the sisters IQ if possible. As far as I can see, the obvious answer is the correct one.

But you ask where does it end? It may seem well and good to talk about extending life and health out to 150 years but what about 200 years, or 300 years, or 500 years, or more? What about when in the course of properly integrating all these new life experiences and expanding ones mind accordingly over time the equivalent of IQ must go to 140, or 180, or beyond human ranges?

Where does it end? It doesnt. Why should it? Life is good, health is good, beauty and happiness and fun and laughter and challenge and learning are good. This does not change for arbitrarily large amounts of life and beauty. If there were an upper bound, it would be a special case, and that would be inelegant.

Ultimate physical limits may or may not permit a lifespan of at least length X for some X just as the medical technology of a particular century may or may not permit it. But physical limitations are questions of simple fact, to be settled strictly by experiment. Transhumanism, as a moral philosophy, deals only with the question of whether a healthy lifespan of length X is desirable if it is physically possible. Transhumanism answers yes for all X. Because, you see, its not a trick question.

So that is transhumanism loving life without special exceptions and without upper bound.

Can transhumanism really be that simple? Doesnt that make the philosophy trivial, if it has no extra ingredients, just common sense? Yes, in the same way that the scientific method is nothing but common sense.

Then why have a complicated special name like transhumanism ? For the same reason that scientific method or secular humanism have complicated special names. If you take common sense and rigorously apply it, through multiple inferential steps, to areas outside everyday experience, successfully avoiding many possible distractions and tempting mistakes along the way, then it often ends up as a minority position and people give it a special name.

But a moral philosophy should not have special ingredients. The purpose of a moral philosophy is not to look delightfully strange and counterintuitive, or to provide employment to bioethicists. The purpose is to guide our choices toward life, health, beauty, happiness, fun, laughter, challenge, and learning. If the judgments are simple, that is no black mark against them morality doesnt always have to be complicated.

There is nothing in transhumanism but the same common sense that underlies standard humanism, rigorously applied to cases outside our modern-day experience. A million-year lifespan? If its possible, why not? The prospect may seem very foreign and strange, relative to our current everyday experience. It may create a sensation of future shock. And yet is life a bad thing?

Could the moral question really be just that simple?

Yes.

Read the original here:

Yudkowsky - Simplified Humanism

The human microchipping agenda has a new face: Nanochips & Smart Dust. What are they? Are you being set up to be a node on the grid? What can you do?

are the new technological means for the advancement of the human microchipping agenda. Due to their incredibly tiny size, both nanochips and Smart dust have the capacity to infiltrate the human body, become lodged within, and begin to set up a synthetic network on the inside which can be remotely controlled from the outside. Needless to say, this has grave freedom, privacy and health implications, because it means the New World Order would be moving from controlling the outside world (environment/society) to controlling the inside world (your body). This article explores what the advent of nanochips and Smart dust could mean for you.

Humanitys history is filled with examples of societies where the people were sharply divided into 2 categories: rulers and slaves.In the distant past, the slaves have usually been kept in place because the rulers had access to and control over the resources, such as money, food, water, weapons or other necessities of life (control of the environment).In our more recent history, control was implemented not only by monopolizing resources but also via propaganda (control of the mind). This has manifested itself in many ways, e.g. the caste system in India (you must remain in your position on the hierarchical ladder for life), the royal bloodlines in Rome, the Middle East and Europe (who claimed an inherent and divine right to rule), the centralization of power in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia during the 1930s (where a single autocrat or a small committee decided the fate of millions), and finally in the West (especially in the US) with the advent of specialized PR and mind control techniques that were refined by the CIA. Projects like MKUltra gave the NWO controllers unheard of power to remotely and subconsciously influence people without them ever knowing, including the ability to create sex slaves and sleeper assassins.

Project MKUltra was at its height 60+ years ago, and things have moved on a lot since then. We are now entering an era where technological advancements are giving the NWO conspirators influence over a new realm control of the emotions, or more accurately, control over the entire mind-emotion nexus in the human body. I am talking about microchips, tiny electronic devices which can be embedded under your skin, and which receive and transmit information. Although microchips have been around awhile, they are now outdated. What we are facing is something much tinier than a microchip, and therefore much more of a threat: nanochips and smart dust.

The components of a Smart dust sensor or mote. Image credit: CatchUpdates.com

So what is ananochip? The word nano is 3 orders of magnitude smaller than micro. Nano means one billionth while micro means one millionth. While microchips are about the size of a grain of rice and measured in millimeters, nanochips are completely invisible to the human eye. Some nanochips are far smaller than human hair (e.g. the -chip that is 0.4 x 0.4 mm). In 2015, IBM announced thatthey had developed functional nanochips measuring just 7 nm or nanometers (7 billionths of 1 meter). In comparison, a strand of human DNA is about 2.5 nm and the diameter of a single red blood cell is about 7500 nm! These nanochips power themselves from their environment (they dont need batteries) and have a 100 year life span. They are slated to be rolled out first on products (so the corporatocracy can have total knowledge of consumer behavior in real time) before they can be used inside peoples bodies. Did you know that nerve cells grow onto/meld with the chip?

In this Leak Project video, the presenter claims that the NWO aimto introduce 100 trillion nanochips into the world, so that literally every single thing in the world is tagged, including you. He includes many patents and other docs as proof of this agenda. He singles out the company HP (Hewlett Packard) as being the executor of the plan to construct a synthetic central nervous system for the Earth linking all resources and people in real time.

Smart dust. Image credit: Waking Times

You may already be familiar with the Smart agenda or better put the Smart Deception. For those new to this, the Smart agenda is to create a giant electromagnetic grid or network that encompasses the entire Earth. Everything that moves is to be made or injected with some kind of sensor or motethat connects it to the grid including household products, appliances, food/drink items, animals, plants and humans too. Smart dust is another name for these motes which will act as mini computers, broadcasting and receiving. They aresmall wireless microelectromechanical sensors (MEMS). As of 2013, a mote was about the size of a grain of rice, but with technology advancing all the time, these will keep on reducing in size. Motes can be ingested through food (as will be discussed below).

The Smart agenda is basically synonymous with the UN Agenda 21 or Agenda 2030, and the Smart grid is synonymous with the IoT (Internet of Things) which is also going to use the new 5G network to achieve its desired saturation levels.

While this kind of technology can be used for the benefit of mankind, like many things today, it has been weaponized. The existence of smart dust forms a massive threat against the sovereignty of every human being alive. What we are up against is nothing less than the attempted technological possession of humanity.

In a fundamental way, vaccines, GMOs, bioengineered food and geoengineering/chemtrails are all connected, as they are delivery systems whereby this miniature technology of nanochips and Smart dust is planned to be inserted into our bodies. Some chemtrails contain Smart dust motes which readily infiltrate the body, communicate with other motes in your body, set up their own network and which can, unfortunately, be remotely controlled.Even if you are fastidious about what you eat and what you expose yourself to, it is difficult to see how you can avoid breathing in a mote of smart dust that was dropped on you by a plane spraying chemtrails.

With nanochips and motes inside your body, the NWO criminals can combine the IoT smart grid with brain mapping and other technological information in their attempt to pull off their ultimate endgame: to remotely influence and control an entire population by overriding (and programming) the thoughts, feelings and actions of the masses.

(The rabbit hole definitely does not stop at nanochips and Smart dust. An entire new category of lifeforms are being forged via synthetic biology.Morgellons fibers are self-aware, self-replicating and are likely assisting the dark agenda to remotely control the thoughts, feelings and bodily functions of the entire population. This will be explored in other articles.)

Naturally, the full scope and goal of this agenda will not be revealed to the public as the technology is rolled out. Instead, we will continue to be told how wonderful, cool, trendy and efficient it all is. Note especially how all of this will be promoted under the banner of speed and convenience (while people unwittingly flush their freedom, health and privacy down the toilet). Yes, being surrounded by fields of manmade EM radiation everywhere you go will be disastrous for your health too.

The nanochips will also be pushed using peer pressure, encouraging people to get in the game out of social conformity. Like many governmental programs, the chips may initially be voluntary before they become mandatory. There is already a segment of society that is willingly chipping itself using tattoo ink. Recently, a company in Wisconsin (Three Square Market or 32M) introduced such an internal system and began encouraging its employees to get chipped. Although it was not mandatory, reportedly about half of them (41 out of 85) stepped forward and chose to get chipped!

So what can you do about this? Firstly, get informed and make sure you understand the true nature and danger of nanochip and smart technology. Secondly, make sure you never acquiesce to getting chipped, no matter what reason youre given. Doing so is tantamount to opening yourself to being remotely controlled without your knowledge. Thirdly, if you do discover a chip inside your body, get it removed. There are various ways to do. Some people crudely cut the chips out if they are large enough (i.e. a microchip instead of a nanochip). Other people claim you can used magnets such as neodymium magnets to render the nanochips useless. Hopefully, there will be intelligent inventors to step forward with new technologies that we can use to deactivate, disable and remove nanochips inside of our bodies.

The human microchipping agenda is really the same thing as the transhumanist agenda to turn mankind into machine which will ultimately mean becoming not superhuman but subhuman.

We need to be very careful and think critically as we go forward into a world of fantastic technology. Like the surgeons knife, it can heal or it can kill. Given everything we know, it would be nave to believe that nanochips will only be used for good. If were not aware, this technology will be used by the power-hungry to enslave us by tricking us with promises of utopia. Nanobots are already being used in Western medicine for all sorts of diseases. Once the smart grid is established, how will you avoid being monitored, tracked and influenced 24/7 every day of the year?

No matter how good the technology becomes, it can never replace the spirit of consciousness inside of you, which is your true power.

*****

Want the latest commentaryand analysis on Conspiracy, Health, Geopolitics, Sovereignty, Consciousness and more? Sign up forfree blog updates!

Makia Freeman is the editor of alternative news / independent media siteThe Freedom Articlesand senior researcher atToolsForFreedom.com(FaceBookhere), writing on many aspects of truth and freedom, from exposing aspects of the worldwideconspiracy to suggesting solutions for how humanity can create a new system of peace and abundance.

Sources:

*http://www.newsweek.com/nano-chipnanochips7nm-chipnanotechnologymacbookiphone-6ibmmoore039s-law-602458

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5OeZWfRhhs

*http://freedom-articles.toolsforfreedom.com/smart-deception/

*http://freedom-articles.toolsforfreedom.com/agenda-21-human-habitat/

*http://freedom-articles.toolsforfreedom.com/5g-iot-technological-control-grid/

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-svcCIDvvk

*http://freedom-articles.toolsforfreedom.com/people-voluntarily-chipping-themselves/

*http://www.chicagotribune.com/bluesky/technology/ct-wisconsin-company-microchips-workers-20170801-story.html

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FEWrnPHFPw

*http://www.thetruthdenied.com/news/2014/11/11/how-to-remove-an-rfid-implant/comment-page-1/

Read this article:

Nanochips & Smart Dust: New Face of the Human ...

The Space Fence is not just to track and catalog space debris. Its an overarching program that connects the geoengineering, surveillance and transhumanist and AI agendas.

is a massive, planetary-wide, space surveillance system currently being constructed that aims to monitor you all the way down to your DNA. Officially, the Space Fenceis, according to Wikipedia, a 2nd generation space surveillance system being built (started in 2014) by the US Air Force and Lockheed Martin to track artificial satellites and space debris. Itsbudget is US$1.594 billion, its expected to be operational in 2019and the Space Fence facility will be located in the MarshallIslands along with an option for another radar site in Western Australia. The Space Fence is a resurrection of a program started by Reagan in the 1980s called SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative), commonly known by its nickname Star Wars.However, like many exotic weapons of the New World Order, it has a cover purpose and a real purpose. This article exposes the grander implications of the Space Fence and how it connects to other technology that could be used to enslave you.

Although the USAF and Lockheed Martin tell us that the purpose of the Space Fence is to detect, track and catalog space debris, we must acknowledge that the MIC (Military Intelligence Complex) is at the helm of the New World Order and is routinely engaged in psychological operations against the rest of the population. The Space Fence is the answer to the prayers of a control-freak conspiratorial class. It will have the capacityto surveil everything on Earth. Like Skynet in the fictional Terminator films, it could becomesurveillance beyond comprehension. How?The Space Fence is designed to operate inLEO (Low Earth Orbit). It isdesigned to be one big interconnected machine, run by AI and joined to current (weaponized) technology by interacting with cell phone towers, Gwen Towers, Nexrad Towers, metal particulates and more to create a giant wireless network that manipulates us through the ionization of our atmosphere.

According to Elena Freeland, author ofChemtrails, HAARP, and the Full Spectrum Dominance of Planet Earthwho is soon to release a book on the topic, the Space Fence will eventually develop into a conductive Saturnian ring around the Earths equator. From there, it could be used to facilitate a complete lockdown on planetary communications (including our DNA communications, since we are electrical creatures), in line with the MICs C4 objectives (Command, Control, Communications and Computers). Freeland states that the Space Fence will have the power to totally transform the entire environment of the planet. It thus is a tool of the AI/Transhumanist agenda to merge man into machine.

Everyone loves the acronym of HAARP but it was just one installation/project. These days its more accurate to call these weapons ionospheric heaters. According to HAARP insider Billy Hayes, there are 200+ of them worldwide.

The Space Fence seems to tie many aspects of the worldwide conspiracy together. Two aspects to pay attention to are ionization and conductivity. To ionize is to create polarity within a substrate. Some things are naturally non-ionized, so to ionize them is take them out of their natural state. To make something conductive is to change it so that it can conduct electricity. The NWO controllers have been unleashing a torrent of light and heavy metals (aluminum, barium, strontium and more) into our environment and thus into our bodies for decades via industrial output, chemical-laden products, vaccines and chemtrails.

Ionization and conductivity crop up again and again when investigating the Space Fence. Thereason the NWO conspirators are so obsessed with these concepts is because they have weaponized them. Ionization is linked to weather control. Ionospheric heaters (the most famous of which is HAARP) are now deployed around the world to heat and ionize layers of the atmosphere. Once ionized, it can be directed in line with geopolitical goals of the controllers, which can equate to earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, floods and droughts. In 2014, we were told that HAARP was being shut down, however since HAARP-like technology is the ultimate weapon of the globalists, does anyone in their right mind really think they are just going to give it away due to lack of funding or because they are supposedly finished with it? Former HAARP insider Billy Hayes (who worked on constructing the original installation in Gakona, Alaska) claims there are over 200 HAARP-like facilities around the world which are fully operational.

Conductivity is linked to both mind control and holographic manipulation (a la Project Bluebeam). It is theorized that, with nano metal particulates everywhere including inside of peoples bodies, the masses are easier to mind control, since the metals act as receivers of wireless transmissions. There is evidence that the more metal particulates in the air, the easier it is to projectholograms onto it (e.g. see the 36:30 minute mark of this Elena Freeland presentation). As this Leak Project video revealed, HP (Hewlett Packard) is literally releasing billions if not trillions of nano sensors (smart dust) into the environment. Is one of the purposes to prepare for a Project Bluebeam scenario?

A close up of a plasma ball, showing electrified plasma gas.

The ionization of our skies means that the air is transformed into plasma,the 4th state of matter. Plasma is defined as an ionized gas consisting of positive ions and free electrons in proportions resulting in more or less no overall electric charge, typically at low pressures (as in the upper atmosphere and in fluorescent lamps) or at very high temperatures (as in stars and nuclear fusion reactors). In simple terms, it isionized air. Plasma keeps our atmosphere thick. It is a medium where electrons can be moved around. Altered plasma means dramatic earth changes via the troposphere and magnetosphere.According to Freeland, the Space Fence will also ionize the outer part of our planet.

Was the SDI only put on hold until they worked how to ionize the atmosphere (see Bernard Eastlands patents for HAARP), then re-activated?

In this context, you can look at Space Fence as the controlling hub which is designed to capitalize upon and control the tremendous transforming and terraforming of our planet which is happening right before our eyes. How can inundating our world with billions of metal particulates, nano chips and smart dustpossibly be a good idea?

Chemtrails: one of several delivery systems. Fancy some black heavy metals for dinner?

The Space Fence is not only connected to HAARP; its also connected to geoengineering / chemtrails, GMOs and vaccines. How? Because all of these things are delivery systems by whichmetal nanoparticles are injected into our atmosphere, water, food, air and, in the end, our bodies. Look at chemtrails now coming out of ships as well as planes infusing the air with all sorts of toxic metals like aluminum, barium and strontium, as well as synthetic biological lifeforms. Look at GMOs all sprayed with toxic metallic and synthetic pesticides which invades our bodies. Look at vaccines the injection of aluminum, mercury and more straight into our bloodstreams.The net effect of all of this is to create one huge wireless metallicized network to surround, engulf and permeate us.

In conclusion, its vital to look just beyond the Space Fence project and see the bigger picture. The Space Fence involves absolute control over space, chemtrails, nanotechnology, terraforming, genetic alteration, transhumanism and AI. The endgame is to control our nervous systems and our very DNA. The question for an awakened humanity is now: what can we do to thwart this agenda?

*****

Want the latest commentaryand analysis on Conspiracy, Health, Geopolitics, Sovereignty, Consciousness and more? Sign up forfree blog updates!

Makia Freeman is the editor of alternative news / independent media siteThe Freedom Articlesand senior researcher atToolsForFreedom.com(FaceBookhere), writing on many aspects of truth and freedom, from exposing aspects of the worldwideconspiracy to suggesting solutions for how humanity can create a new system of peace and abundance.

Sources:

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Fence

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RX3IOHpe6sY

*http://freedom-articles.toolsforfreedom.com/geoengineering-haarp-and-chemtrails-ultimate-weapon-globalists/

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kQ_s_usST8

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSgZPwArtpk

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5OeZWfRhhs

*http://freedom-articles.toolsforfreedom.com/nanochips-smart-dust-microchipping/

Read the original post:

Space Fence: Connecting the Surveillance and Transhumanist ...

Just when you thought the transhumanist craze had died down and was a "passing" fad of science fiction prognostication, this article from the U.K.'s Daily Mail comes along to dispel all the calm (shared by Mr. V.T.):

Bodies kept alive in plastic bags and lifeless 'blank' humans ready for a new consciousness to be uploaded: Controversial booth at CES claims to offer IMMORTALITY - but is all as it seems?

Now, the article is clear: this is all just a "marketing gimick" to promote a "new television show":

Murmurs of I dont like this, and no, this is too much for me, could be heard as CES attendees crowded around the Psychasec setup, greeted by what appeared to be lifeless human forms on display in large glass cases.

During a brief tour through the booth, exhibitors dressed in all white sold the idea of immortality, through a plan to upload human consciousness to human sleeves of whatever design you desire before concluding around the display of Joel, a fresh sleeve' in a vacuum sealed bag, breathing and eating through a tube.

All is well, however, since the whole exhibit and booth was nothing but a marketing scheme for a new series on Netflix:

It may be one of the most bizarre Netflix marketing schemes yet, going as far as plastering posters with Boycott #Psychasec and Immortality is Immoral along the outside of the booth (though an exhibitor insisted to Dailymail.com that this had been done by anti-Psychasec protestors).

The dystopian sci-fi Altered Carbon is set to premier on Netflix February 2.

But I have to wonder, is it really the case that all is well? Frankly, I find the idea of such a "marketing scheme" to be almost as abhorrent as the reality.

Why?

Because notice what is being done: downloading and uploading of "consciousness" is now being promoted as a service to be performed: it is being made a commodity which, to be downloaded and uploaded, means ultimately that it can be bought and sold. Similarly with the "sleeves," the "genetically engineered bodies", are reduced to so much material to be bought and sold - perhaps organ-by-organ. And with these possibilities comes another: that one enters into contractual arrangements with a mega-corporation encompassing all physical and non-physical (or spiritual if you will) aspects of human existence itself.

In other words, the meme is being planted, and given the nature of such television shows, a platform is being created not only to explore all these implications and speculations but more importantly to drive the conversations in a certain way toward the goal of making humanity itself, in all its parts, a commodity to be bought and sold and "serviced" by the corporate world.

So in other words, folks, transhumanism is no longer a rarefied academic or hypothetical discussion. It is now going to be promoted and driven into the public consciousness. I've pointed out several times, beginning with my very first book in this strange world of "alternative research," The Giza Death Star, that virtual immortality, or even a drastic improvement of human longevity to, say, hundreds of years, has a moral implication, for long ago, the Christian Church Father, St. John Chrysostom, pointed out that death, really, is an antidote to endless progress in evil. His point was, as I observed in that book, and as I have observed in prior blogs about this and related subjects, is that one can imagine an Albert Schweitzer or a Mother Teresa, having not decades, but perhaps centuries, to do their good works. But similarly, one can imagine a Chairman Mao or Joseph Stalin, or other genocidal mass murders having a similar opportunity to "perfect" their particular "inclinations."

See you on the flip side...

About Joseph P. FarrellJoseph P. Farrell has a doctorate in patristics from the University of Oxford, and pursues research in physics, alternative history and science, and "strange stuff". His book The Giza DeathStar, for which the Giza Community is named, was published in the spring of 2002, and was his first venture into "alternative history and science".

Go here to read the rest:

THE TRANSHUMANIST SCRAPBOOK: ARTIFICIAL BODIES WAITING FOR ...

Officers

Gennady Stolyarov II ChairmanBobby Ridge SecretaryB.J. Murphy Director of Social MediaFranco Cortese Director of ScholarshipDinorah Delfin Director of Admissions and Public RelationsArin Vahanian Director of MarketingSean Singh Director of Applied InnovationKenneth Alum Director of PublicationEmanuel Iral Director of Visual Art

Foreign Ambassadors

Keoma Ferreira Antonio BrazilAngel Marchev, Sr. BulgariaAria Cheng CanadaAiken Nen Iavarrone ChileAbdul-Rahman Essam Saleh EgyptChris Monteiro EnglandPam Keefe Hong KongPalak Madan IndiaDenisa Rensen JapanOjochogwu Abdul NigeriaBobby Pembleton ScotlandJos Luis Cordeiro Spain

Representatives of the Worldwide Transhumanist Movement

Alexandr Putyatinskiy Representative of the Transhumanist Movement in Kazakhstan

Officers

Gennady Stolyarov II (G. Stolyarov II) became the second Chairman in the history of the Transhumanist Party in November 2016. Mr. Stolyarovis an actuary, independent philosophical essayist, science-fiction novelist, poet, amateur mathematician, composer, and Editor-in-Chief of The Rational Argumentator, a magazine championing the principles of reason, rights, and progress. Mr. Stolyarov regularly produces YouTube Videos discussing life extension, politics, philosophy, and related subjects.

In December 2013, Mr. Stolyarov published Death is Wrong, an ambitious childrens book on life extension. Death is Wrongcan be found on Amazon in paperback and Kindle formats, and can also be freely downloaded in PDF format in the English, Russian, French,Spanish, and Portuguese languages.

Mr. Stolyarov is the Chief Executive and one of the founding members of the Nevada Transhumanist Party, established in August 2015.

Mr. Stolyarov has contributed articles to the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET), The Wave Chronicle, Le Qubcois Libre, Brighter Brains Institute, Immortal Life, Enter Stage Right, Rebirth of Reason, The Liberal Institute, and the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

Mr. Stolyarov holds the professional insurance designations of Fellowof the Society of Actuaries (FSA), Associate of the Casualty Actuarial Society (ACAS), Member of the American Academy of Actuaries (MAAA), Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter (CPCU), Associate in Reinsurance (ARe), Associate in Regulation and Compliance (ARC), Associate in Personal Insurance (API), Associate in Insurance Services (AIS), Accredited Insurance Examiner (AIE), and Associate in Insurance Accounting and Finance (AIAF).He is the author of numerous actuarial study guides, including, most recently, the 473-page Practice Problems in Advanced Topics in General Insurance, published by ACTEX Learning.

Mr. Stolyarov has written a science-fiction novel, Eden against the Colossus, a philosophical treatise, A Rational Cosmology, a play, Implied Consent, and a free self-help treatise, The Best Self-Help is Free.

In an effort to assist the spread of rational ideas, Mr. Stolyarov published his articles on Associated Content (subsequently the Yahoo! Contributor Network and Yahoo! Voices) from 2007 until Yahoo! closed this venue in 2014. Mr. Stolyarov held the highest Clout Level (10) possible on the Yahoo! Contributor Network and was one of its Page View Millionaires, with over 3,191,000 views. Mr. Stolyarovs selected writings from that era have been preserved on this page.

Mr. Stolyarov can be contacted here.

Bobby Ridgehas a Bachelors Degree in Biomedical Science from California State University of Sacramento (CSUS) and is striving to achieve his PhD in Neuroscience. He only recently found transhumanism and became a Transhumanist. He conducted research for CSUSs Psychology Department and his own personal research on the epistemology and Scientiometrics of the Scientific Method. He also co-owns Togos in Citrus Heights, CA. Mr. Ridge considers transhumanism to describe the future of humanity taking its next steps in evolution, which are both puissant and daunting. With the exponential increase in information technology, Mr. Ridge considers it important for us to become a science-based species to prevent a dystopian-type future from occurring.

Mr. Ridge can be contacted here.

B.J. Murphy is a writer, author, futurist, and activist. He has done work as a Technology Adviser for short films and television and is an Ambassador for both the A.I. company Persona and robotics company BodAi. Hes an Editor and Social Media Manager for Serious Wonder, Affiliate Scholar for the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, and is a co-author of both The Future of Business: Critical Insights Into a Rapidly Changing World From 60 Future Thinkers and 50:50 Scenarios for the Next 50 Years.

Mr. Murphy can be contacted here.

Franco Cortese is the Deputy Director of the Biogerontology Research Foundation and a member of its Board of Trustees. He believes that the most effective and economical approach to the treatment of age-related diseases which represent, from both a quantitative and qualitative standpoint, some of the most significant diseases afflicting humanity today is through the extension of healthspan via biomedical interventions focusing on the prevention, negation, and/or slowing of accumulated age-related phenotypic deviation. In addition to his administrative and research activities, Cortese has also written extensively on the ethical, socioeconomic, political, logistical, and philosophical implications of biomedical gerontology.

He is also active as a research scholar in the field of the philosophy of technology, focusing on the ethical, sociological, philosophical, and political issues surrounding emerging technologies in general and human enhancement technology in particular through his work as an Affiliate Scholar of the Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technologies (IEET), a technoprogressive policy institute focusing on the social implications of emerging technologies. His most recent research in this area has involved articulating a novel variant of technological determinism titled technic self-determination (Cortese, F. A. B. (2014). Technic Self-Determination. In Stephen John Thompson (Ed.), Global Issues and Ethical Considerations in Human Enhancement Technologies (pp. 203-224). Hershey, PA: IGI Global; Cortese, F. A. B. (2016). The Technoethical Ethos of Technic Self-Determination. International Journal of Technoethics (IJT), 7(2), 1-27), which posits a reciprocally causative relationship between technology and society, construing technology to be a crucial and reciprocally causative ontological fundament of human nature.

Among other broader research topics relating to the ethical, philosophical, and sociopolitical implications of emerging technologies in general, his current research involves defending the development and proliferation of human enhancement technologies (HET) as a viable means of increasing the capacity for self-determination, autonomy, and sovereignty at the level of both society and the individual and of reducing unnecessary suffering in the world at large by increasing the capacity for individuals to determine the controlling circumstances of their selves and lives. Contrary to many critics of HET, Cortese argues that the use of HET exemplifies and indeed even intensifies our most human capacity and faculty namely, the desire for increased self-determination, which he refers to as the will toward self-determination. Furthermore, he argues that the use of HET bears fundamental ontological continuity with the human condition in general and the historically ubiquitous will toward self-determination in particular, and that, as such, the development and proliferation of HET need not be a dehumanizing force, but rather could very well serve to increase the very capacity that characterizes us as human more accurately than anything else, provided that it is developed and proliferated democratically and ethically.

Corteses other current positions and affiliations include Associate at Deep Knowledge Life Sciences, Research Scientist at ELPIs Foundation for Indefinite Lifespans, Scientific Advisor for Lifeboat Foundation (Life Extension Advisory Board and Futurists Advisory Board), Honorary Fellow of Brighter Brains Institute, Chief Operating Officer of the Center for Interdisciplinary Philosophic Studies, International Coordinator of Cryonics Switzerland, Ambassador for the Seasteading Institute, Assistant Editor at Ria University Press, Member of the International Longevity Alliance, Chair and Co-Founder of the Canadian Longevity Alliance, and Reviewer for the Global Futures Intelligence System at The Millennium Project.

Mr. Cortese can be contacted here.

Dinorah Delfin is a Multi-Media New York Artist and Futurist with a clear mission: to advocate for the ethical use of emerging technologies to help steer humanity into a thriving metahumanity. She is the owner of ArtDimensional Studios, Inc., in New York and has a degree in Business Management. Ms. Delfins artworks and activism are aimed to raise critical questions about emerging techno-social structures as they become more embedded in our lives, and our evolving definition of humanity, individual sovereignty, and general happiness and sense of purpose. Ms. Delfins artworks can be seen on her Instagram page.

Ms. Delfin has been designing a grass-roots campaign to advocate for the ethical use of emerging technologies including a manifesto and a series of propaganda-like posters that raise questions about emerging technologies and how they affect our everyday life. With the assistance of like-minded artists, she is planning to carry on a guerrilla-type campaign both online and in public spaces such schools. She has been involved in organizing educational events as well as fundraisers for charitable relief efforts.

Ms. Delfin can be contacted here.

Arin Vahanian is a project manager, author, entrepreneur, musician, blogger, startup advisor, and aspiring electrical engineer. Having worked for three Fortune 100 companies and several technology startups, Mr. Vahanian helps organizations build high-performance teams and create and launch products/services that delight the customer.

Being deeply devoted to the promise of Transhumanism and the concept of continuous improvement, Mr. Vahanian is the author of Kaizen for Men, a book that combines self-help with Lean Manufacturing and Toyota Production System principles, helping men boost their health, career, and relationships.

Mr. Vahanian became interested in the Transhumanist movement after coming across various life-changing technologies and breakthroughs in the medical field. His personal vision is to live and love deeply, being dedicated to building and spreading technologies that allow human beings to live more fulfilling, joyful, and enhanced lives. Specifically, he has a special interest in curing mental health disorders such as depression and social anxiety disorder, as well as reversing aging and curing dementia and other neurological disorders.

Mr. Vahanian holds a Bachelors degree in Journalism (Public Relations) and a Master of Business Administration (Management) degree from California State University, Northridge. Additionally, he holds several professional certifications in the information technology (IT) industry, and is an Enrolled Agent.

A seasoned traveler and expatriate, Mr. Vahanian has lived and worked on three continents, and speaks six languages. Mr. Vahanian is an ENTJ personality type according to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.

Mr. Vahanian can be contacted here.

Sean Singh is a dedicated supporter of human rights and environmental justice, an expert in strategy, quality control, and lateral thinking, with a life-long passion for open-source technologies. He is the founder of SolarFi Networks, an Internet Service Provider (ISP) that designs and deploys metro-scale wireless networks that are disaster-resilient. He has owned and operated several commercial data centers, having worked in every role from tech support to network administrator to infrastructure design and implementation beforehand. Mr. Singhs passion also extends to education. He takes an open-source view that education should be free to anyone interested, and to that end he works with the Open Source Temple, one the worlds first Transhumanist churches. Mr. Singh worked closely with Todd Freeman to develop the ranking system for consciousness that appears at the beginning of the Transhumanist Bill of Rights Version 2.0, and which reflects his familiarity with bridging the gap between neuroscience and digital intelligence.

Mr. Singh can be contacted here.

Kenneth Alum has an Advanced Diploma in Business Management, with technical skills in Computer Hardware and Software maintenance (A+). His work experience spans 15 years, 12 years being in lower to senior-level management. Mr. Alum has worked in the industries of Graphic Design, Print Advertising, Insurance, and Finance, and has spent 10 years in the micro-finance industry. He has accrued skills in policy and procedure writing and implementation, credit appraisal, loan marketing, budgeting, financial forecasting, credit control, staff training, graphic design, report writing, business planning, customer service, and branding.

Mr. Alum has taken keen interest in science and technology recently. He now considers himself a Transhumanist, Futurist and a Space Ager an advocate for space and for new worlds exploration, habitation, and colonization. Mr. Alum just began private studies in biotechnology and hopes to do the same with nanotechnology and various space technologies. He will eventually proceed to acquire formal education on these disciplines. Mr. Alum has created the Facebook group Transhumanism Africa and started a business in Kenya named Transhumanism Technologies. The purpose of the business is to import to Africa and trade in new technology products in the future.

Mr. Alum can be contacted here.

Emanuel Iral is a design freelancer who has provided clients with work ranging from typical advertisements, flyers, and logos, to filming and editing videos. Mr. Iral has interned as a studio assistant to a prominent artist in New York, Laetitia Soulier. He has participated in one art show, Young Artist Initiative, in Miami, where he exhibited his series of 70+ pencil drawings of carved bodies. Mr. Irals artwork ranges from traditional paint and pencil work to 3D digital work. Currently he is working on his VFX and animation skills, as he is producing short films for his music.

Mr. Irals work can be found on Behance.net, Instagram, and Patreon. Heencompasses his art under the term Prismatis Latin for prism. A prismrefracts white light into the three primary colors: yellow, magenta, and cyan. Prismatis is all about the aesthetic of human expression, which can be separated into the art, audience, and artist.

Mr. Iral can be contacted here.

Foreign Ambassadors

Keoma Ferreira Antonio is a philosopher, musician, and lover of science fiction and Japanese art production. Graduated in Philosophy from UFRN (Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil), he was a laureate of his class. He currently holds a masters degree in philosophy from the same university, and his research area is Transhumanism.

He researches and writes about the Promethean-Faustian Oscillations of Transhumanism, which come from the demiurgic character of modern sciences (which will be published as an introductory book on transhumanism). He is also a member of the research group on Immortality, an activist of the Transhumanist cause (being an active voice within the movement, which is still small in Brazil) and works with the dissemination of philosophical thought through anime (Japanese animation).

Keoma can be contacted here.

Prof. Angel Marchev, Ph.D. has graduated as automation control engineer at the Technical University of Sofia. Later he worked closely with A. Ivahnenko, one of the originators of the concept of Self-organization.

Prof. Marchev is one of the pioneers of implementing cybernetics and system theory in the fields of business management in Bulgaria. Over the last 40 years he has published more than two hundred papers on various topics in the field. He considers as his life-time achievement the implementation of Multi-stage selection procedures for wide range of business challenges such as system identification, forecasting, modeling economic and business systems among others.

Angel Marchev, Sr. is one of the pioneers of implementing computer business games and active methods in education for adults in Bulgaria. Over the last 40 years he has educated more than thirty thousand students and managers using over hundred and twenty CMG and other active methods in his courses. He teaches courses such as Simulation and gaming in management, Business games, Computer simulation and forecasting, Financial modeling in management and Fundamentals of Management I: Cybernetics and systems theory at the University for National and World Economy and Burgas Free University among several others business schools and collages in Bulgaria and at University of Hasselt, University of Slough, and London Guildhall University among others abroad.

By using games he has trained a spectrum of Bulgarian business leaders starting with his assignment at the Center for training management resources throughout the 1970s. In the last 20 years he has started his own consultancy business providing training for various private and public organizations.

Prof. Marchev has been among the first members of ISAGA since it was founded and was member of the steering committee of ISAGA almost until 1990. He was also a member of EESAGA. Now he is establishing BASAGA in Bulgaria.

Professor Marchev can be contacted here.

Aria Chengis a Wholistic Transhumanist Artist, Designer, Community Builder, Advocate, and Entrepreneur. As an unprotected visible intersectional minority with invisible disabilities, Aria has spent 6 years engaged in building inclusive queer and feminist communities and spaces, and an additional 10 years serving her local community in many capacities.

Since her departure from the queer-feminist activist sphere in 2013, Aria remains a passionate Transhumanist, with a distinct progressive vision for Canadas future which includes: a focus on Innovation and Research; extending Universal Care to encompass Basic Income, Advanced Education, and extended Health & Dental coverage for longevity; an actionable plan for Native Reparations; Voting Reform; and making use of Blockchain technology and Artificial Intelligence for true democratic participation as well as the distribution of both private and public services; among others.

Aria is currently working on finishing her Associate Degree of Arts in Social Sciences, as well as her Diploma of Fine Arts. She also serves as Lead Designer for the non-profit humanitarian AI organization, Robots Without Borders, and is Founder of The Transhumanist Party of Canada.

In her personal life, Aria is giant fan of Star Trek, loves her two cats, and identifies her gender to be Transhumanist.

Aiken Nen Iavarrone graduated in Electronics in high school and participates in the maker movement in Chile. He is a student of automation and industrial control and is interested in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. He is also an entrepreneur who has formed a company called Carmona Robotics. He created an invention, motivated by the work of several thinkers a smartglass with a brain-computer interface that integrates imaging studies, logistics, daily life, and social experiences. Mr. Iavarrones dream is to study biomedical engineering and, specifically, neuronal engineering, and to collaborate with others in improving the effectiveness of biological sensors in prostheses and computational devices. Mr. Iavarrone believes in a world of neurodiversity and existential freedom, where the identity of each person is defended. In addition, he takes an interest in economics and energy and is a member of the Facebook group Transhumanismo, whose focus is on spreading transhumanist ideas in countries throughout the Spanish-speaking world.

Abdul-Rahman Essam Saleh holds a Bachelors degree in Biotechnology and is aiming to establish the biotechnology industry as a major industrial sector in Egypt, where potentials are at a peak and chances seem limitless. For that dream to come true, Abdul is taking steps and planning on doing his Masters degree in Biotechnology Business Management.

Abdul started the Arabian Longevity Alliance initiative to spread awareness of the longevity research field and its results among researchers and science-loving laymen. Also, to spark the interests of people who arent that much into science, Abdul used his stance to start intriguing peoples thoughts about how the Transhumanistic era might look like and how longevity is going to affect the shapes of our lives.

Abdul has held multiple talks, lectures, and YouTube videos on various topics, including longevity, to help get the word out in the Arab world, which is why he pays great regard to translating research papers into Arabic and posting them with the hope that they reach Arabic-speaking audiences interested in the field or in science in general.

Abdul hopes that his efforts result in a possible core of the first small community of Transhumanists in Egypt.

Abdul-Rahman can be contacted via his Facebook pageand his YouTube channel.

Chris Monteiro has been involved in the transhumanist movement for a number of years. He is a co-founder and officer with the Transhumanist Party UK, an organization seeking to tackle a range of contemporary political challenges facing the transhumanist movement in British, European, and international contexts.

Since 2015 he has led the H+Pedia project from Humanity+, a transhumanist edited wiki helping to better map, understand and promote transhumanist ideas within the entire movement.

He works as a systems administrator and studies contemporary cybercrime trends and their intersections with computer security, privacy, and our rapidly developing internet-connected society.

Personal site: https://pirate.london/Twitter: https://twitter.com/Deku_shrub

Chris can be contacted here.

Pam Keefe is the Asia Pacific Vice President for HNI International.

Based in Hong Kong, Pam is responsible for Sales and Distribution of HNIs 8 brands of office furniture, including Allsteel, Gunlocke, Paoli, Lamex, and HNI India. Originally from the USA, she has been working and living in Asia since 2008. Prior to joining HNI in 2015, Pam was based in Singapore and was the Vice-President of Asia Pacific for Teknion Office Furniture for two years and spent 12 years with Haworth Office Furniture, leading Sales Strategy and Global Accounts for Asia Pacific, Middle East, Latin America, and Africa.

In addition to the office furniture business, Pam has a passion for biotechnology, health, fitness, and life extension.

Pam is spearheading an effort to raise awareness and educate people in Asia on the possibilities of life extension and the critical medical research that is needed to cure aging and death. The organizations in which she is involved give her access to people, events, knowledge, and activities that the U.S. Transhumanist Party can leverage. Pam is organizing RAADfest Bangkok, which takes place in February 2018 and will be the first event of its kind in Asia.

Pam can be contacted here.

Palak Madan is a Research Analyst at Blackbox AI. Her work involves evaluating AI marketplace, finding best practices for various operational needs, business development, UI designing, gathering resources for in-house research lab, maintaining internal wiki, etc. Previously, she has participated in diverse challenges and collaborative projects with various tech-startups in India, U.S., and Europe.

Besides AI forecasting, her research work revolves around Future of Machine Intelligence, long-term ethical problems of robust and beneficial Artificial Intelligence, simulation theory, ethical reasoning, rationality, mathematics, and design thinking. She likes to focus on big picture questions facing humanity and maintains a web presence at futuretunnel.com, where she shares her views, thoughts and vision for far future.

Palak can be contacted here.

Dr.Denisa Rensen B.Sc., B.A., N.D. FAARM A4Mis an avid academic/researcher, holding Honors Degrees in Philosophy, in Biology, in Psychology and a Medical Degree in Naturopathic Medicine. She holds a Fellowship in Anti-Aging & Regenerative Medicine from the American Academy of Anti-Aging & Regenerative Medicine A4M.

Denisa is passionate about exponential medicine, conscious transhumanism, and the future of unlimited lifespans. She is a speaker and MC of the RAADFest a yearly conference on ending aging and expanding human lifespans in the most healthy and conscious way possible.

She is a writer, a poet, a photographer,cinematographer, and conscious media producer always bridging art and science in all she does.

Denisa can be contacted here.

Ojochogwu Abdul is a resident of Nigeria and deeply involved in the countrys transhumanist community under the personal philosophies of deep naturalism, transhumanism, and cosmism. Hes the founder of the Transhumanist Enlightenment Caf (TEC) and is the co-founder of the Transhumanist Forum of Nigeria (H+Forum-NG).

Ojochogwu currently holds a B.A. in Philosophy & Religious Studies and an M.A. in Philosophy, and is a Ph.D. student in Philosophy at the University of Lagos, Nigeria. Hes a researcher, philosophy tutor, private consultant, speaker, social worker, and NGO program and planning officer.

Ojochogwu can be contacted here.

See original here:

Leadership U.S. Transhumanist Party Official Website

http://2045.com http://gf2045.comIn February of 2012 the first Global Future 2045 Congress was held in Moscow. There, over 50 world leading scientists from multiple disciplines met to develop a strategy for the future development of humankind. One of the main goals of the Congress was to construct a global network of scientists to further research on the development of cybernetic technology, with the ultimate goal of transferring a human's individual consciousness to an artificial carrier.

2012-2013. The global economic and social crises are exacerbated. The debates on the global paradigm of future development intensifies.

New transhumanist movements and parties emerge. Russia 2045 transforms into World 2045.

Simultaneously, the 2045.com international social network for open innovation is expanding. Here anyone interested may propose a project, take part in working on it, or fund it, or both. In the network, there are scientists, scholars, researchers, financiers and managers.

2013-2014. New centers working on cybernetic technologies for the development of radical life extension rise. The 'race for immortality' starts.

2015-2020. The Avatar is created -- A robotic human copy controlled by thought via 'brain-computer' interface. It becomes as popular as a car.

2020. In Russia and in the world appear -- in testing mode -- several breakthrough projects:Android robots replace people in manufacturing tasks; android robot servants for every home; thought-controlled Avatars to provide telepresence in any place of the world and abolish the need business trips; flying cars; thought driven mobile communications built into the body or sprayed onto the skin.

2020-2025. An autonomous system providing life support for the brain and allowing it interaction with the environment is created. The brain is transplanted into an Avatar B. With Avatar B man receives new, expanded life.

2025. The new generation of Avatars provides complete transmission of sensations from all five sensory robot organs to the operator.

2030-2035. ReBrain -- The colossal project of brain reverse engineering is implemented. World science comes very close to understanding the principles of consciousness.

2035. The first successful attempt to transfer one's personality to an alternative carrier. The epoch of cybernetic immortality begins.

2040-2050. Bodies made of nanorobots that can take any shape arise alongside hologram bodies.

2045-2050. Drastic changes in social structure, and in scientific and technological development. All the for space expansion are established.For the man of the future, war and violence are unacceptable. The main priority of his development is spiritual self-improvement.

A new era dawns: The era of neohumanity.

Excerpt from:

2045: A New Era for Humanity - YouTube

The Lifeboat Foundation has a special report detailing their view of the top ten transhumanist technologies that have some probability of 25 to 30-year availability. Transhumanism is a movement devoted to using technologies to transcend biology and enhance human capabilities.

I am going to list out each of the ten technologies described in the report, provide my own assessment of high, medium, or low probability or mass-market availability by a given time horizon, and link to prior articles written on The Futurist about the subject.

10. Cryonics : 2025 - Low, 2050 - Moderate

I can see the value in someone who is severely maimed or crippled opting to freeze themselves until better technologies become available for full restoration. But outside of that, the problem with cryonics is that very few young people will opt to risk missing their present lives to go into freezing, and elderly people can only benefit after revival when or if age-reversal technologies become available. Since going into cryonic freezing requires someone else to decide when to revive you, and any cryonic 'will' may not anticipate numerous future variables that could complicate execution of your instructions, this is a bit too risky, even if it were possible.

9. Virtual Reality : 2012 - Moderate, 2020 - High

The Technological Progression of Video Games

The Next Big Thing in Entertainment, Part I, II, and III

The Mainstreaming of Virtual Reality

8. Gene Therapy : 2015 - Moderate, 2025 - High

The good news here is that gene sequencing techniques continue to become faster due to the computers used in the process themselves benefiting from Moore's Law. In the late 1980s, it was thought that the human genome would take decades to sequence. It ended up taking only years by the late 1990s, and today, would take only months. Soon, it will be cost-effective for every middle-class person to get their own personal genome sequenced, and get customized medicines made just for them.

Are you Prepared to Live to 100?

7. Space Colonization : 2025 - Low, 2050 - Moderate

While this is a staple premise of most science fiction, I do not think that space colonization may ever take the form that is popularly imagined. Technology #2 on this list, mind uploading, and technology #5, self-replicating robots, will probably appear sooner than any capability to build cities on Mars. Thus, a large spaceship and human crew becomes far less efficient than entire human minds loaded into tiny or even microscopic robots that can self-replicate. A human body may never visit another star system, but copies of human minds could very well do so.

Nonetheless, if other transhumanist technologies do not happen, advances in transportation speed may enable space exploration in upcoming centuries.

6. Cybernetics : 2015 - High

Artificial limbs, ears, and organs are already available, and continue to improve. Artificial and enhanced muscle, skin, and eyes are not far.

5. Autonomous Self-Replicating Robots : 2030 - Moderate

This is a technology that is frightening, due to the ease at which humans could be quickly driven to extinction through a malfunction that replicates rouge robots. Assuming a disaster does not occur, this is the most practical means of space exploration and colonization, particular if the robots contain uploads of human minds, as per #2.

4. Molecular Manufacturing : 2020 - Moderate, 2030 - High

This is entirely predictable through the Milli, Micro, Nano, Pico curves.

3. Megascale Engineering (in space) : 2040 - Moderate

From the Great Wall of China in ancient times to Dubai's Palm Islands today, man-made structures are already visible from space. But to achieve transhumanism, the same must be done in space. Eventually, elevators extending hundreds of miles into space, space stations much larger than the current ISS (240 feet), and vast orbital solar reflectors will be built. But, as stated in item #7, I don't think true megascale projects (over 1000 km in width) will happen before other transhumanist technologies render the need for them obsolete.

2. Mind Uploading : 2050 - Moderate

This is what I believe to be the most important technology on this list. Today, when a person's hardware dies, their software in the form of their thoughts, memories, and humor, necessarily must also die. This is impractical in a world where software files in the form of video, music, spreadsheets, documents, etc. can be copied to an indefinite number of hardware objects.

If human thoughts can reside on a substrate other than human brain matter, then the 'files' can be backed up. That is all there is to it.

1. Artificial General Intelligence : 2050 - Moderate

This is too vast of a subject to discuss here. Some evidence of progress appears in unexpected places, such as when, in 1997, IBM's Deep Blue defeated Gary Kasparov in a chess game. Ray Kurzweil believes that an artificial intelligence will pass the Turing Test (a bellwether test of AI) by 2029. We will have to wait and see, but expect the unexpected, when you least expect it.

Original post:

The Futurist: The Top Ten Transhumanist Technologies

Man vs. machine, cryonics, mind uploading...a science fiction book that's Amazon's #1 book under the category Philosophy is The Transhumanist Wager. Istvan says religious people are challenged by transhumanists."-Fox News Channel

An unwieldy novel of ideas about a freelance philosopher named Jethro Knights who sails around the world to promote the need for life-extension research and winds up establishing a floating libertarian city-state called Transhumania--a regulation-free utopia of tech billionaires and rationalists--from which he wages an atheist holy war on a theocratic United States.-The New York Times

"The novel has been described as a modern version ofAtlas Shrugged."-Yahoo News

"The biggest novel on the transhumanist scene is Istvan's. 'The Transhumanist Wager' reads like Dan Brown's undergradudate thesis -- a rollicking plot setting out futurist thought, manifesto style." -The Spectator

"Protagonist Jethro Knights may become one of the grand characters of modern fiction." -Psychology Today

"Transhumanism is snowballing into an international movement. The current wave of debate surrounding the concept began withThe Transhumanist Wager."-Breitbart

"This book is an edgy riveting masterpiece that will long linger with anyone who reads it."-Serious Wonder

"An Ayn Rand-esque manifesto." -The New Yorker

"Best-selling and award-winning novel." -Reason

"The Transhumanist Wager tells the story of Jethro Knights, a philosopher who rails against democratic politics and becomes a revolutionary that seizes control of the world in order to enforce a global authoritarian transhuman regime."-BBC

"Istvan, a prominent transhumanist writer...enlightens me. In The Transhumanist Wager, transhumanists manage to launch the third world war."-The Telegraph

"The Transhumanist Wager envisions a radical future." -CBS News

"It's a dystopian story that imagines a Christian nation outlawing transhumanism prompting all the billionaires to retreat to an offshore sea-stead where they can work on their advances undisturbed."-The Times Magazine

"Many sayThe Transhumanist Wageris the newAtlas Shrugged."-Marin Magazine

"It's a page turner. Istvan knows how to tell a compelling story." -io9 / Gizmodo

"IenjoyedThe Transhumanist Wager...an adventurous suspense-filled semi-sci-fi about sailing, love, and life extension." -The Huffington Post

"About a man's quest to live forever using science, medicine, and technology."Popular Science

Thrilling...an important literary work that everyone should read."-Guardian Liberty Voice

"Bestselling The Transhumanist Wager& famous transhumanist Zoltan Istvan...a new philosophy, a new psychology, a new metaphysics...the concept of people taking a Transhumanist Wager is making a strong impact." -RT Television

"It's set in a dystopian near-future America in which transhumanists are on the verge of huge technological breakthroughs but are under attack from conservative politicians and radical Christian fundamentalist terrorists."-Vox

"A gripping story...it's my new favorite novel."-Brighter Brains

"Istvan demonstrates great adeptness at crafting complex characters."-San Francisco Book Review

"The story is brilliant. It will challenge your thinking." -33voices

"Fascinating. It'smaking waves."-Good Day Sacramento, CBS TV

"Istvan's novel has the potential to become a cult book. I hope it will be widely read and discussed." -Kurzweil AI

"A philosophical manifesto...the world becomes ruled by scientists." -Vice (Italy)

"Strongly libertarian...a radical version of transhumanism."-Patheos

"The action sequences in the book are top notch."-New York Journal of Books

"The book asks a simple question: how far would you go to fight an anti-science world in order to live indefinitely through transhumanism? Protagonist Jethro Knights would start a world war - and does so in the book"-Wired UK

"The Transhumanist Wagerpromises to become a cult classic among futurists."-SASM Institute

Read this article:

The Transhumanist Wager: Zoltan Istvan: 9780988616110 ...

George P. Dvorsky (born May 11, 1970) is a Canadian bioethicist, transhumanist and futurist. He is a contributing editor at io9[citation needed] and producer of the Sentient Developments blog and podcast. He was Chair of the Board for the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET)[1][2] and is the founder and chair of the IEET's Rights of Non-Human Persons Program,[3] a group that is working to secure human-equivalent rights and protections for highly sapient animals.

Dvorsky is a secular Buddhist,[4][5] progressive environmentalist,[6] ancestral health advocate,[7] and animal rights activist.[8][non-primary source needed] Primarily concerned with the ethical and sociological impacts of emerging technologies, specifically, "human enhancement" technologies; he seeks to promote open discussion for the purposes of education and foresight.[citation needed] He writes and speaks on a wide range of topics, including technoscience, ethics, existential risks, artificial intelligence, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, and futurology, from a democratic transhumanist perspective.[1][2]

Dvorsky presented an argument for non-human animal biological uplift at the IEET Human Enhancement Technologies and Human Rights conference at Stanford University in May 2006;[9][10] and wrote the first published article in defence of the Ashley Treatment in November 2006,[11][non-primary source needed] and subsequently the only bioethicist cited by Ashley X's parents in their defense.[12]

Dvorsky also presented an argument warning of the decline of democratic values and institutions in the face of existential and catastrophic risks at the Global Catastrophic Risks: Building a Resilient Civilization conference in November 2008.[13][non-primary source needed]

Dvorsky, along with Milan M. irkovi and Robert Bradbury, published a critique of SETI in the May 2012 Journal of the British Interplanetary Society (JBIS) arguing that SETI techniques and practices have become outdated. In its place, Dvorsky, irkovi, and Bradbury advocated for what they called Dysonian SETI, namely the search for those signatures and artefacts indicative of highly advanced extraterrestrial life.[14][non-primary source needed]

Dvorsky has written extensively in favor of space exploration and has both promoted and criticized various Megascale engineering concepts.[15][16][17][18][non-primary source needed]

Dvorsky gained some notoriety in 2012 after writing about Dyson spheres, hypothetical structures intended to collect the entire energetic output of a star with solar power collectors. While Dvorsky presented it as a solution to humanity's resource needs including power and living space,[16][19] Forbes blogger Alex Knapp and astronomer Phil Plait, among others, have criticized Dvorsky's article.

Dismantling Mercury, just to start, will take 2 x 1030 joules,[note 1] or an amount of energy 100 billion times the US annual energy consumption ... [Dvorsky] kinda glosses over that point. And how long until his solar collectors gather that much energy back, and were in the black?

At one AU which is the distance of the orbit of the Earth, the Sun emits 1.4 x 103 J/sec per square meter.[note 2] Thats 1.4 x 109 J/sec per square kilometer. At one-third efficiency, thats 4.67 x 108 J/sec for the entire Dyson sphere. That sounds like a lot, right? But heres the thing if you work it out, it will take 4.28 x 1028 seconds [1.35 sextillion years] for the solar collectors to obtain the energy needed to dismantle Mercury. Thats about 120 trillion years.[note 3]

Other publications including Popular Science, Vice, and skeptical blog Weird Things followed up on this exchange.[21][22][23] None of them note the above numerical inaccuracies, although Weird Things does point out Plait's misunderstanding regarding bootstrapping, which Knapp agreed with in an update to his post.[20][23] James Nicoll noted in his blog that Knapp seriously underestimated the area of a sphere. An anonymous commenter claiming to be Knapp indicated in response that a unit conversion error (kilograms instead of grams while trying to backtrack from Dvorsky's figures) had been made.[24]

Originally posted here:

George Dvorsky - Wikipedia

The following post is from the Institute for Social Futurism (ISF). Although its concerns are essentially philosophical, they inform many practical realities for organisations in our network over the coming year and beyond.

If youre looking for a quick punchline, this is perhaps not the article for you, but you could try skipping to section 1: The Jewel and the Lotus.

0. The Desert of the Real

Over the last few years, we have been developing a network of organisations which share a positive attitude toward technological change while being mindful of the serious challenges the world faces today. The idea is for that network to develop connections with like-minded others who wish to usher in a new paradigm for our society, based on a combination of science, technology, positive values and principles. During that time there has been a natural process of weaving together the ideas and views of many people, and that process has been driving the emergence of a worldview which we call Social Futurism.

Aside from the usual logistical issues of a growing movement, I have become aware of a strong need to reach beyond the complicated tangle of inspirations and concerns which have brought us together, and clearly articulate a single core idea underlying this nascent movement. To momentarily put aside our many assumptions and preconceptions, and examine the deepest ideological nexus which ties them all together. Having done that, we will be able to move forward sure in the knowledge that we are all working toward a common goal, no matter any differences in our philosophies, affiliations, or methods. In short, I have recently felt the need to cast a radically skeptical eye over everything we collectively believe and are committed to, throwing out all unnecessary assumptions in the hope of discerning a single common axiom. It seems to me that any such axiom must be extremely simple and incisive, akin to Descartes Cogito Ergo Sum.

The key to this inquiry is to put aside every claim or belief which may not be true, or which can in any conceivable way be countered or argued against. We are of course very much in support of science and greatly value its utility, but no scientific fact can ever be our central axiom, as scientific facts must by definition be potentially disprovable by new evidence. Our common focus must be more akin to a steadfast attitude or conviction than a mere observation that could change at any time. Chinese and Indian philosophy traditionally saw the observed world as composed of myriad relative facts, apparent phenomena and distinctions which could change just as easily as a viewers perspective, and such schools of thought (particularly Taoism and Buddhism) consistently warned against identifying too closely with ephemera. The traditional Eastern view is that all identification with any apparent fact (perspective, observation, expectation, philosophy or ideal) would cast a shadow consisting of everything contrary to that position. Like Descartes, initiates of these religions were urged to let go of every conviction that could be doubted (both the Buddhists and Descartes conclusion was that everything could be doubted except the existence of Mind), and simply live in the world as they found it. We could learn a lot from the minimalism of this stance, encouraging activists to use the myriad facts of science and the world as necessary, but to embrace a common identity rooted only in a single, fundamental, undeniable axiom. That kind of strong shared identity would enable us to rest assured that we are all on the same team, no matter what disagreements we may have over any details, which would be a thing of great practical and strategic value to the movement as a whole.

A recent Western echo of these ancient Eastern ideas is particularly relevant to techno-social concerns in the early 21st Century, and to the future of our movement. In 1999, The Matrix presented such philosophical concerns about the nature of reality, along with issues involving technology and social control, in a very popular action-adventure entertainment format. The movie drew not only upon traditional Eastern thought, but among a great many other things the writings of French Postmodernist philosopher Jean Baudrillard. Baudrillard said that we are surrounded by simulacra or simulations which no longer refer to any underlying reality, such as news stories which reflect consumer demand and media manipulation rather than any deep truth. He further claimed that in this ultra-mediated environment, actual reality (i.e. unmediated, unmanipulated things-as-they-actually-are) is now extremely hard to find. We see things almost entirely through the lens of culture and technology, now. This notion of reality as an increasingly hidden, deserted place was summed up in Baudrillards phrase the desert of the real. The idea that we live in some kind of mediated bubble of false reality while an authentic reality exists outside is the central theme of Gnosticism, found today in the work of people such as Science Fiction writer Philip K Dick (both Gnosticism and Dicks ideas were also prominent in The Matrix).

At this point you may well be asking what all these wild and wonderful ideas have to do with advancing technology, social progress, or indeed the real world. It all boils down to the intrinsic nature of the Transhumanist urge; to go beyond all that we have known in order to become more than human. To transcend the traditional limitations of the human condition. It is no accident that Transhumanists are regularly accused of being neo-Gnostics, because the idea of extending human life and health beyond current limitations is indeed reminiscent of the ancient heresy, albeit expressed in a very new way. This is a touchy issue, as Transhumanists are generally at pains to distinguish their technological hopes from ancient religious dreams, despite their clear common origin in simple human yearnings for a greater or happier existence. We should note that it is not as simple a matter as some people calling Transhumanists Gnostics and Transhumanists themselves uniformly rejecting the idea. Not only are many Transhumanists open to spirituality of various types, even including nuanced (usually secular) interpretations of Gnosticism, but the accusers are often sympathetic to both (neo-)Gnosticism and Transhumanism (and therefore presumably trying to draw attention to what they see as a good thing). Perhaps the best example of this is Erik Davis, in his 1998 book TechGnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information (to show the close interrelatedness of all these ideas, we may note that Davis is a scholar professionally interested in the works of Philip K Dick).

The thing that Transhumanists, Gnostics, and the heroes of The Matrix have in common is a pointed and total disrespect for the limitations of a world which pretends to be the whole of reality, but which is in fact only a subset of all that is truly possible. In other words, we Transhumanists are inherently driven to reject any convention or ideology that tells us to be content within our limits, to know our place. Instead, we seek to venture beyond those limits into the desert of the real, and in doing so take responsibility for directing our own evolution. I must stress that this need not imply a hedonistic, individualistic flight from communitarian responsibilities, when the very act of transcending limits makes it possible for others to follow our example; and for the whole of society to thus evolve and progress beyond its former limits.

In short, we feel that we could be more, that we could help others in the process, and that no-one has the right to impose their arbitrary limitations upon us. We would explore beyond the safe havens of the world as we know it, and out into the desert of the real into the darkness of possibilities. This rejection of the worlds distinctions and limitations is the one and only thing that can unite our diverse movement. That movement already includes many people who do not consider themselves to be Transhumanists, and that will only become more true over time, but the common impulse that unites us is clear: To sweep away the old world that stands between us and a much better future. A person might oppose this impulse for whatever reason, but they cannot argue it to be false in any way. It simply is.

1. The Jewel and the Lotus

We have discerned the idea that lies at the heart of our movements many manifestations (i.e. not just Transhumanism and other forms of Futurism but all truly modern and progressive activism, and any number of related philosophies, arts, and sciences): That our salvation lies beyond the limits of the world as we currently understand it and that by transforming ourselves we can transcend those limits. In short, that we can and should remake the world and our place within it. Paradoxically, this idea is truly ancient, and yet its combination with technology makes a powerful new revolution in human affairs possible.

At this point, we should take a moment to note a parallel between the advice offered for individual living by religions such as Taoism and Buddhism on the one hand, and the necessary way forward for any modern activist movement on the other. Followers of the ancient Eastern ways are encouraged to live in the present moment, rather than dwelling unduly on the past or future. This reduces identification with transient things, and thus reduces the suffering caused by regret over the past or anxiety over the future. Interestingly, any truly revolutionary movement would do well to heed the same advice, since the act of relinquishing the past and future (i.e. memories and expectations) is tantamount to rejecting limitation by those things. In other words, to focus on the present and to reject all unnecessary limitations are two sides of the same coin.

Having identified this central idea, our next question is of course how to simplify and condense its expression, to maintain its clarity for ourselves and communicate it easily to others. Traditionally this is the realm of symbols, or simple signs that stand for (and easily summon) complex sets of ideas. In keeping with the ancient Eastern philosophies mentioned earlier, I have settled upon two key symbols with a somewhat oriental flavour: The Jewel and the Lotus. In this section I will explain these two symbols, and their potential value.

It is common to depict an incisive axiom as a blade or sword, as in the cases of Occams Razor or Alexander cutting the Gordian Knot (indeed the very word incisive implies both clear, rational analysis and the act of cutting). In ancient Indian writings there is mention of a sword known as the Jewel of the Desert, and that strikes me as a particularly apt name for an axiom which refers to the Desert of the Real. This Jewel is our central idea an article of faith which unites our emerging movement and it can be expressed as follows:

Act Now and Be Free

(Nunc Agere et Liberi)

The only reality is action in the moment, and the bonds of the unreal demand to be cut. In other words, the individual and any movement for positive change must always focus on what they can be or do now, and all apparent limitations conjured by tradition, convention, history, hope or expectation with no solid basis in the reality of the present must be cast aside without hesitation. If an obstacle can be overcome, it should be. If a limitation can be transcended, then transcend it. This is a point of view which should come naturally to Transhumanists, Gnostics, all opponents of arbitrary and unwanted limitation, and all those who would sweep away the old to make way for a better future. It is often said that you can best know a thing by looking at what it opposes, and in this case we are utterly opposed to entrenched limitations which only exist out of a sense of history, social convention, or natural order rather than having something clearly positive to contribute to the future of humanity. We must tear down all such false limitations in our bid to remake civilization.

Beyond this central philosophical matter, as mentioned earlier I have become acutely aware of logistical issues that naturally arise with the growth of any movement. I wont go into the details of these issues, except to say that they boil down to a question of resources: How to get the resources we need, and how to use the ones we have well. Perhaps the most pressing resource issue has been the question of time and communications. A lot of people have something to say or ask, but we simply cannot respond to every such contact in a centralised way. Instead, the network must scale up in such a way that local groups can handle initial contact in most cases, and important messages can be passed through the network as appropriate, meaning that no single part of the network is overloaded with messages from everybody. In order to make my own part of the network more manageable and to set an example, I will be restricting my personal engagement to the activity in eight official channels. I can no longer guarantee any response to any communication outside those channels, which are outlined briefly below.

If every part of the network were to operate in a similar manner, maintaining a small number of recognised and well-maintained collaboration/communication channels, then the result would be something like a mosaic of decentralised activity, a fractal heterarchy or holarchy. A symbol for the network (and any given node within it) which I find to be appropriate and appealing is the lotus flower. The lotus is essentially a memorable image which represents a centre connecting multiple channels or aspects. The lotus is also a symbol common to the various Eastern philosophies mentioned earlier, although a rose would be the equally appropriate counterpart traditional in the West.

Others are free to organise themselves as they see fit, of course, but the specific eight channels which I will personally be focussed upon, going forward, are as listed below. In each case I will only be working with a relatively small core team, rather than attempting to manage all functions of these wider organisations directly. Such functions represent my close neighbours within the network, that I collaborate with but am not directly responsible for. If we all operate in this way with clear cooperative links but limited personal workloads then we will be maximally effective as a network.

I am currently in the process of reorganising the core teams and preferred communications channels for these groups, and will link to further information and full contact details for all eight channels from here on Friday January 22nd, 2016. In the meantime you can still contact these groups as before.

This post has covered a number of complex and subtle ideas with an unfortunate but necessary brevity, where any of these could be the departure point for long conversations in and of themselves. My objective will have been met, however, if you remember the symbols of the Jewel and the Lotus. That the Jewel of the Desert is simply a determination to stand squarely in the reality of the moment and cut through the proliferation of illusions, distractions, and false limitations which we are constantly told to embrace and respect (or at least take seriously). And that the Lotus is merely a reminder that while remaining focussed and effective, you always have the option of being connected with others in a movement toward something greater.

Visit link:

Transhumanist Party