Category Archives: Transhuman

2.5

Release Date: July 25, 2017 (DVD and VOD platforms)Director:Andrew FinniganMPAA Rating: NR Runtime: 92 mins

The very concept of transhumanism, the belief that the human body can be pushed past its physical and mental limitations through an incorporation of technology, seems like a narrative concept that is almost impossible to make mundane and stale. The implications, possibilities and risks of the wavering status of humanity transhumanism challenges would supply even the most basic science fiction writer with a wealth of existential questions.

Simple Creature, however, never bothers to ask any of these questions in its Bionic Woman-like fable because, beyond skimming the surface of the possibilities of mechanical augmentation, director Andrew Finnigan shows he hasnt the drive or perhaps the budget to delve any further.

Bearing its catchpenny budget on its shoulders with sets of laughably barren mise-en-scne, the film unfolds uneasily as if confused to what particular issue related to the transhuman debate it wants to address. Millennial college student Em (Carollani Sandberg), whose supposed mastery of modern technology is marked by her dependence on a smartphone, is involved in a near-fatal bus accident that prompts her father to rebuild her because of course we have the technology.

Mind you, we never actually see any of this technology due to budgetary constraints, but the script poorly fills us in with its bizarre, layman techno jargon, making one doubt that Finnigan, who along with directing and writing this dreck is also responsible for the screenplay, hasnt the slightest clue about medical technology. Hes more comfortable with employing buzzwords like nanotechnology as insipid catchalls to the process to ensure no one could be intellectually stimulated by his story.

As Em recovers from her condition, Finnigan demonstrates how uninterested he was in transhumanism to begin with by diverting the films attention to her boyfriend, Seth (DAngelo Midili), and his struggle to keep his family farm operational after his fathers passing. For some unknown reason, Finnigan thought it was prescient to draw parallels between human augmentation and corporate farms infringing on the family-owned business under Simple Creatures blanket thesis: technology does not equal humanity. These scenes before Ems reintegration into the films narrative are only useful to highlight its atrocious sense of pacing.

Half of the film is presented in flowing montage, which dances around things like character building and story through excessive cutting, while the other half is comprised of monotonous dialogue exchanges that played more like the actors building a demo reel, seeing how much personality they could cram into their blank characters.

It is as if the film is permanently stuck its own Kickstarter promotional video, trying to secure enough budget to have makeup effects beyond Em sticking an iPhone cord into her arm to check her vitals. Filming, as he does, from natural light obstructing long shots of utter apathy, Finnigans inconsistent aesthetic practically broadcasts the fresh-out-of-film-school pretensions that one harbors when they earnestly think they can be the next Shane Carruth. As the film goes on, it spirals into a lackluster conspiracy thriller involving the facility in which Em was transformed and the farmers plotting to expose them before limply petering out. Simple Creature is a surprising film in that it somehow made transhumanism boring. Not sure where it wants to place its mistrust of technological advancement that stems from its own ignorance of the topic, Simple Creature spins its wheels futilely without a solid point to make or the means to do so.

Simple Creature review

Written by: Chris Luciantonio

Date Published: 07/25/2017

2.5 / 10 stars

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SIMPLE CREATURE Review - Film Pulse

The Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria, (MACBAN) has said that the porous nature of Nigerian boarders is responsible for the free entry and exit of killer herdsmen.

Addressing a press conference in Kaduna On Saturday, MACBAN assistant national secretary general, Ibrahim Abdullahi said, "In Nigeria, our borders are porous, people come in anytime and go out anytime they want, in fact it is a shameful thing today that we don't even know those that are indigenous Fulani or the transhuman Fulani.

"We don't know and that is why people mixed things up, you begin to suspect the Fulani man that you grew up with when anything happens. He has not traveled far where did he get the AK 47."

Abdullahi added "It is either Nigeria opt out of the ECOWAS protocol or we should apply the conditions. We should ensure that anybody coming into the country, we know when he is coming, where he is going and control what they are coming with.

"Another problem we have that you people don't know is that, these migratory Fulani that come into the country with all forms of weapons, many at times they come in with less than 50 cattle, but when going back they go with thousand cattle rustled from our own Fulani, so our economy is also affected.

"One other issue we need to know again is that, some of these countries that Fulani come from in Africa have crises, like Chad or central African Republic were there is rebellion. Weapons have become like pure water or bread, so people from there see it as normal to hang AK 47.

"So it is left for the government to do the right thing, let us decide who comes in because it is our country, let us decide the terms for the person coming, let us not because of ECOWAS protocol leave everything to fate, that is not going to help us."

Commenting on the alleged killing of four of their members by Kadara and Gwari communities in Kajuru local government areas of the state, Abdullahi said, "A kidnap incident took place in the area allegedly by Fulani herdsmen, but instead of trying to get to the root of the matter the communities descended on the nearest Fulani community."

He insisted that there is need for people to understand the different types of Fulani saying, " Fulani are categorized into three including the settled Fulani, the semi settled Fulanis and the trans human Fulani, those that are constantly on the move and they can also be categorized into two, some of them are Nigerians, some are foreigners from our neighboring countries like Cameroun, Chad and even Niger.

"Those Fulanis are constantly on the move and there is a law that provides for that movement, the ECOWAS protocol on nomadic transhuman movement, but the unfortunate thing is that all the signatories to those protocols, there are conditions governing people entering into your country or going out of your country.

He called on the government to ensure stringent checks at Nigerian boarders with a view to ending the spate of crises in the state and he country at large.

Read more:
Southern Kaduna crises: Porous boarders responsible for free e - Daily Trust

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Transhuman Design have released a newplayable demofor their chainsawtastic take on 2D platforming, Butcher.

For more small-scale goodness, here's our list of thebest indie games.

Describing itself as a blood-soaked love letter to the cult classics of the genre, this 2D shooter puts you in the mechanical boots of a cyborg programmed to eradicate the last remains of humanity [and] your sole purpose is to well... annihilate anything that moves.

The demo features a pack of three levels from the beginning of the game.

This isnt for the fainthearted, either. Even if you reckon youve got the cojones to stomach the gore, the games so feckin' hard, the developers had to retrospectively release an easy mode called W.I.M.P. DLC for some players (like me, lets face it) to get through it.

If you like what you see, you can also secure 50 percent off the price of the full game at just 3.49 / $4.99 / 4.99. Theres also a half-price bundle if youd like to pick up the soundtrack, too. The discount ends July 17, 2017.

Thanks, RockPaperShotgun.

Read more here:
Get bloody with Butcher's free Steam demo | PCGamesN - PCGamesN

This past week, Bruce Buffs first novel, The Soul of the Matter (Simon & Schuster/Howard Books), which debuted last year, was released in paperback.

In The Soul of the Matter, former cyber-intelligence analyst Dan Lawson seeks to unravel the mysteries his geneticist friend claims he discovered encoded in DNA: secrets that could destroy humankind. After a catastrophic experiment, Dan races against time and deadly pursuit to uncover whether the human soul can survive sciences conquest of nature.

Along the way, charactersare forced to confront the reality of their existence.In his book, Buff examines intriguing questions about science and philosophy.

Does DNA coding demonstrate that we are here by intent?

And is the brain itself enough to produce perceptions, feelings, thoughts and awareness?Perhaps not maybe rather, every moment of our lives is our souls in action.

Find excerpts from the book here, here, and here. And in case you wondered, the rumors are true: Discovery Institute plays a role in the story. Well, were not the main character, but you cant have everything.From David Klinghoffers reviewhere at Evolution News:

As of today, ID is also something else that I wouldnt have predicted: the main theme and dramatic backdrop of a pretty effective and tense thriller by debut novelist Bruce Buff. Following the adventures of ex-CIA officer turned computer hacker Dan Lawson and eerily compelling pediatric oncologist Trish Alighieri, Mr. Buffs The Soul of the Matterexpertly invokes a range of ideas including irreducible complexity, the Cambrian explosion, the enigma of protein evolution, and the malign illusion of a transhuman future.

Imagine Dan Brown meets Stephen Meyer meets Wesley J. Smith and youll have an idea of whats in store for readers. A turning point in the story involves a visit to Seattles Pioneer Square and, yes, Discovery Institute. If Mr. Browns knockout The Da Vinci Code were to be rewritten from a design perspective with the combined insights of Doug Axe, Michael Behe, and Jonathan Wells, you would have something like Mr. Buffs impressive book.

[I]ts a novel that makes your foot jiggle nervously and your palms sweat, even as it deftly deals with a range of ideas connected with ID, and makes some points I hadnt thought of before.

Publishers Weekly declares, A thrilling plot filled with deception and international intriguethis book will leave readers to ponder big questions of existence. B&N Reads describes the book as, A thriller that will have you thinking and questioning everything long after you read the last page.

It is the first in a fast-paced three-book series by Mr. Buff. Get it now!

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The Soul of the Matter Now in Paperback; Read Bruce Buff's Thriller on Intelligent Design! - Discovery Institute

IF the words of Agriculture and Rural Development Minister Audu Ogbeh are anything to go by, farmers may pay the Federal Government to provide them with security against kidnappers and herdsmen.

According to the minister, the government was considering various measures to protect farmers, saying that kidnapping would not stop but that government was determined to protect investors. Ogbeh said: I had a meeting with the Minister of Interior, we were looking at security situation in agriculture. Sometime last year, some gunmen went to Olu Falaes farm, a Nigerian in status, in age and ranking, and took him away and marched him around, forced him to trek ten kilometres, even carried him on their backs.

Many more farmers are coming in, including foreign investors, and they stand the risk of being subjected to this kind of humiliation.

So, we are talking with the Ministry of Interior that we have to put measures in place. These things are happening in other countries too, where the civil defence corps may have to train a special department to protect huge investors and investment in their farms for a fee, because kidnapping will not stop.

From the security point of view, we have to take measures to make sure that people who invest are protected.

In other countries of the world, you may have noticed that people live in their farms, you hardly see a farmer who lives in the city, he lives in the farm with his family, you cannot do that here. They will come and take you, your wife and children in the name of kidnapping, we have to stop it and we have to use the legitimate instrument of state to do it because the farmer has no right to buy a gun to protect him.

Agro Ranger to the rescue

About 3,000 personnel of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) are being drafted by the Presidency to protect farms and agro-allied investments nationwide against attacks by herdsmen and gunmen. The personnel to be named Agro Rangers, are to be specially trained to protect the farms and mediate in conflicts between farmers and those attacking them.

The Interior minister, Gen. Abduraman Dambazzau, who dropped the hint in Abuja, said the planned deployment would complement the police, who are being overstretched in the maintenance of law and order.

The minister said: We know that the police are being over-stretched in terms of maintaining law and order while the military is also battling insurgency.

So, this falls within the purview of the NSCDC. The Agro Rangers will be trained in the protection of agricultural assets and mediation in issues such as land disputes.

The minister said that although Nigeria is a signatory to the ECOWAS Trans-Human Protocol on Free Movement which allows herdsmen from the sub-region into the country, all the necessary precautions such as registration and possession of valid travel documents would henceforth be enforced.

He admitted the threat of herdsmen as one of the security challenges that has not only assumed a regional, but continental dimension.

The issue of herdsmen is seen as localised. It has both regional and continental dimensions. As long as we remain under the ECOWAS protocol on free movement, the problem will remain, he said.

The minister reminded that the 36 states have a big role to play in checking the activities of herdsmen, stressing that some of the routes that were hitherto carved out for the movement of cattlemen had been turned into farms.

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Government moves to save farmers - The Nation Newspaper

Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker, as a potsherd with the potsherds of the earth! Shall the clay say to him that fashioned it: What makest thou? Or: Thy work, it hath no hands? Isaiah 45:9 (The Israel Bible)

Photo: Shutterstock

Transhumanism, an intellectual and cultural movement supporting the use of science and technology to improve human mental and physical characteristics and capacities, a concept once limited to the realm of science-fiction, is now becoming more of a reality than ever before. The once outlier philosophy is quickly becoming mainstream, an accepted part of the social conscience that is the new religion for the anti-religious, including its own Messianic vision.

There are many aspects to the transhumanism philosophy, often abbreviated as H+ or h+, including physical longevity through medical breakthroughs and/or merging mankind with machines. Many transhumanists advocate transferring the sum total of a persons knowledge and experiences into a computer and recreating the individual as a form of artificial intelligence (AI) in order to extend an individuals life.

In its most extreme form, transhumanism advocates limiting human population. This extreme philosophy is criticized for being eugenicist master-race ideology and infringing on basic reproductive rights.

Rabbi Avraham Arieh Trugman, director of Ohr Chadash Torah Institute, noted that as in any social reform, the driving intention behind the movement is the key element, the factor that decides whether it will be a positive or negative influence on human history.

There is an aspect of this movement that is a culture of Me, Rabbi Trugman told Breaking Israel News. Individual freedom has become a form of self-idol worship. For example, having children for many people today does not fit into this emphasis on the individual as it necessarily limits ones personal freedom.

With technology as a central element of transhumanism, Rabbi Trugman noted that Torah is compatible with science and technology within certain limits.

Science allows us a certain control, ruling over the natural world, Rabbi Trugman said. But the verse that says we can rule over the world comes along with the commandment to be fruitful and multiply.

And God blessed them; and God said unto them: Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that creepeth upon the earth. Genesis 1:28

Many environmentalists blame religion for ruining the environment, Rabbi Trugman explained. But the Bible commands us to rule over the destructive aspects of nature, not to destroy the very earth that supports and nurtures us.

The synergy of science and Torah is a positive thing, but it requires limits, continued Rabbi Trugman. Technology cannot trump everything. There is an aspect of hubris, taking the place of God, when people set out to create a new being, which is forbidden by Torah law. Or ruling over creation and life through euthanasia or selective eugenics, choosing who reproduces.

Many of the new techno-billionaires are attracted to transhumanism: Peter Thiel, the founder of Paypal, adheres to a form of the philosophy called immortalism and invests heavily in projects to extend life indefinitely. Rabbi Trugman explained that this aspect of transhumanism is an exaggeration of love of self, a necessary and positive attribute.

The rabbi warned, however, that this trait can be exaggerated to the point where it becomes harmful to the individual and to the culture.

Zoltan Istvan, known for his endorsement of transhumanism as his political party and own philosophy, puts forth the idea that all humans desire to reach a state of perfect personal power, to be omnipotent in the universe. In this, the movement is a form of alternate Messianic movement. And therein lies a much larger danger.

I am sure that some of them have good intentions, to fix humanity and solve the economic and social problems of the planet, Rabbi Trugman said. But as we have seen throughout history, science, guided just by human nature, can run amok. A higher morality is required as a guide to ensure that technology doesnt end up being hijacked by those who would use science for less than benevolent purposes.

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Synergy Between Torah and Science: How Far is TOO Far? - Breaking Israel News

An intelligence so capable it can perceive every cause and effect. The promise of eternal life. The dawn of a new age in whichsuffering will be eliminated, every need will be met and the individual will find fulfillment by subordinating himself to something far greater than himself.

These are the promises of most great faiths. The capacityto understand and predict everything thatcould possibly occur is a characteristic most would ascribe toGod.

But today, thisrhetoric surrounds an ostensibly scientific and secular movement. Transhumanism, the attempt to overcome the bodys limitations through technology, and the hunt for artificial intelligence are promoted with evangelistic language.

Around the world, heavily funded by billionaire philanthropists, researchers are probing whether aging can be curbed or even prevented, just like any other disease.

Indeed, scientist Aubrey de Grey, chief science officer of the SENS Research Foundation, argues the biggest obstacle to immortality is simply a lack of funding to fuel research.

Even dissident and Wikileaks head Julian Assange confidently predicted de facto immortality would soon exist because people would upload their consciousness to an artificial intelligence and live forever as part of a simulation.

Its like a religion for atheists, Assange said.

Assange is not alone in identifying the fundamentally religious impulse behind the movement. In a recent piece at Aeon a digital magazine on science, philosophy, society and the arts Beth Singler of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion pointed out how despite itsscorn for religion, the AI community often sounds like a group of believers in a coming god.

[B]elievers in a transhuman future in which AI will allow us to transcend the human condition once and for all draw constantly on prophetic and end-of-days narratives to understand what theyre striving for, she writes.

The community has also generated thought experiments in which the singularity, the creation of artificial intelligence thatwill spark runaway growth, is framed as something akin to the formation of a god. For example, Rokos Basilisk posits an AI which, because it would conceive of itself being able to provide the greatest good for the greatest number, would actually punish humans, even after death, who do not labor to bring it into existence.

Joseph Farah, founder of WND and author of The Restitution of All Things, argues secularists and scientists who seek to escape the need for God ultimately and inevitably find themselves groping back towards the divine.

Theres an old saying, If you dont believe in something, youll believe in anything,' he said. Theres an absolute, fundamental need for human beings to believe in something.

If its not the God, it will be a god. Transhumanists offer an alternative god. You can be like God, the old lie the serpent told Eve in the Garden. You can still have eternal life apart from serving God and obeying His commandments. Its as simple as that. Transhumanists are peddling that kind of lie, again, so naturally they would have their own doctrines, gospel story, creation story, etc.

Ultimately, Farah maintains transhumanism and the quest for immortality, despite its supposedly secular orientation, leads to anti-Christian spiritual and even demonic connotations.

Absolutely, I think thats implied in the way this plays out, he said. Its about living forever. We all know these bodies wear out over time. But you can conquer death. Thats a spiritual idea and it comes from Gods consistent message to us. Its hardwired into our fallen genetic material. And, I believe it is at least inspired by the father of lies.

Its the book that gives you tomorrows news today! Get your autographed copy of The Restitution of All Things: Israel, Christians and the End of the Age.

Mark Biltz, the discoverer of the Blood Moons phenomenon and the author of Gods Day Timer, pointed out the term transhuman ultimately came out of religious literature.

He pointed to an article in the London Guardian profiling how a former Christian fell into transhumanism.The very word first appeared not in a work of science or technology but in Henry Francis Careys 1814 translation of Dantes Paradiso, the final book of the Divine Comedy, Biltz noted.

Dante, in this passage, is dramatizing the resurrection, the moment when, according to Christian prophecies, the dead will rise from their graves and the living will be granted immortal flesh, he said.

The vast majority of Christians throughout the ages have believed that these prophecies would happen supernaturally God would bring them about, when the time came. But since the medieval period, there has also persisted a tradition of Christians who believed that humanity could enact the resurrection through science and technology.

Whats amazing to me is how transhumanists are not just made up of atheists exclusively but Christian involvement has been growing exponentially, he said.

It is hard to believe how this is coming into mainstream Christianity! Indeed, there is even a Christian Transhumanist Association, headed by a preachers kid who was saturated in the Bible and Christian thought but has identified as a transhumanist since the mid-90s. He states in an article in Vice that we may see the next wave of Christians embrace transhumanist technologies as part of a sacred duty to participate with God in the redemption of the world.'

Biltz says he is troubled by such theological innovations.

When I read this I see how the deception of Christians in these last days will be so persuasive, he said. Christians are like the proverbial frogs in the boiling water. Believers need to get on Gods calendar so they realize we are at the time in history were we really need to be looking up, for our redemption draws nigh. Man has always wanted to become god or at least create a god in their own image. This just demonstrates how close we are to the coming of the Messiah.

The Bible story is more miraculous and astounding than you could have imagined. See the incredible proof of the unchanging nature of God and the exciting clues to what awaits at the end of days in Gods Day Timer by Mark Biltz, available as a book or documentary now in the WND Superstore.

Joel Richardson, the New York Times bestselling author of The Islamic Antichrist and Mystery Babylon, believes what is occurring is part of an old pattern in human behavior.

Mankind is essentially religious, whether they will admit it or not, he explained. If someone claims to deny the one, true God of the Bible, and every other god, they will inevitably find another created object to worship, most often themselves.

Richard said the Silicon Valley techno-gods of our time are among the most arrogant and most overt of the self-worshippers.

Perhaps understandably so. Never before in human history has technology and particularly the kinds of technology that is just on the horizon, so deeply challenge not only the essence of what it means to be human, but also our very perception of what it means to be God, he said.

Because of technology, mankind is entering a very dangerous spiritual phase of its existence. The tower of Babel is once again being erected. Those who are at the vanguard of these technologies, though denying true religion, understand the fundamentally religious nature of their work. This is why you will find so much of their work enshrouded in such religious language.

Richardson argues all of this was foretold in the Bible.

As always, it is mankinds arrogance that is his undoing, he said. Ultimately, these are those who the apostle Paul spoke of long ago when he said, that though they self-profess to be wise, they become fools, darkened in their understanding. After all, we all know how the story of the Tower of Babel ends. There is only one true God. He is the one who once warned, Though you say you are gods, you will die like mere men.'

One of the greatest mysteries in Scripture solved at last! Discover the terrifying truth behind the shadowy identity of one of the greatest horrors of the end times. New York Times bestselling author Joel Richardson reveals the secret of Mystery Babylon, available now in the WND Superstore.

Jan Markell of Olive Tree Ministries suggests transhumanism is comparable to the theory of evolution in how it assertsknowledge will evolve to a higher level likely without God.

Man just has to play God or at least be godlike, she said. This advancement comes through cloning and genetic manipulation. Transhumanists look to the future and believe the human condition will see improvement in physical ability, lifespan, mental acuity and health. In addition, the world conditions can also be improved. Such technological advancements, some have said, would even redefine what it means to be human.

It says in the Bible that knowledge will increase. It doesnt suggest this knowledge will be used to good or evil, but I believe, like everything else today, man is trying to be like God. Man will abuse this increase in knowledge and understanding. Thus, transhumanism is almost a religion in itself.

An incredible story about finding Gods light in a time of darkness. Dont miss this testimony about faith in the midst of the Holocaust. Trapped In Hitlers Hell, now available as a book or documentary now in the WND Superstore.

Pastor Carl Gallups, who examines current headlines in the light of end times prophecy in his book When The Lion Roars, argues the reason transhumanism so closely resembles a religion is because it was predicted in the Bible itself.

From the Garden of Eden to the book of Revelation we watch the story unfold, and the prediction that humankind would eventually, near the return of Jesus Christ, accept the very same lies that started in the Garden, the pastor explained.

Those lies can be summarized as: Man can be God-like, man can live forever without obeying Gods morality code, and therefore man can create God, life and morality in his own image, rather than the other way around. This is exactly what the transhumanists imagine themselves doing. Thus they are in a constant dilemma of trying to explain exactly what it is they are up to without falling into biblical language and imagery. If this scenario wasnt so clearly predicted thousands of years ago, complete with the somber results that are soon to come, it would almost be comical.

Gallups warned transhumanists are pursuing something the Bible warned about in the last days.

Even the transhumanist prophets predict an ultimate and soon-coming intelligence that will surpass any human capability perhaps even leading to unthinkable brutality, the pastor said. They even admit that what they are up to is, ultimately, rebellion against human existence as it has been given. Again, exactly what the Bible predicted. Demonically, that intelligence, rebellious spirit and brutality will manifest itself in the personage of the Antichrist. Transhumanists are not only saying basically the same thing as the Bible but are actually working feverishly to usher in the same biblical predictions they mock.

Gallups said ultimately Christians have a choice: whether they will place their faith in the promises of technology or the prophecies of Scripture thatseem to be predicting exactly whats happening today.

Which came first, the Word of God and the lies of the Garden of Eden or the modern transhumanists pursuit that matches the Bibles description of the last days? The answer is so obvious that apparently even some of the transhumanists see it the Word of God and its prophecies came first. Therefore, Im sticking with the original source, Gods holy Word.

Extraordinary events predicted centuries in advance are unfolding now. Here is your guide to the incredible prophecies being fulfilled before our very eyes. Dont miss the bestselling sensation from one of Americas most prolific and beloved pastors. When the Lion Roars: Understanding the Implications of Ancient Prophecies for Our Time by Carl Gallups, available now in the WND Superstore.

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Transhumanism just another 'religion' in which man seeks to become God - WND.com

Having a new social machinery to hand is no guarantor of success

Amy Lombard/The New York Times/Redux/Eyevine

By Pat Kane

FACEBOOKS Mark Zuckerberg is king of all he surveys in social media. His next horizon is near-mythical: techno-telepathy. Direct mind-to-mind contact is the ultimate communications technology, the mogul says.

Youll think a text or update and send it, affirmed his experimental tech director, Regina Dugan. The old Arthur C. Clarke line that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic seems evergreen in 2017.

Look around your streets or better, a mall, lobby or campus and youll see a generation of humans already deeply entangled in, and entranced by, their communication devices. As the next incessant blink, buzz or chirp pulls you towards the touchscreen yet again, havent you ever felt the urge accompanied by a twinge of your carpal tunnel to just respond, or receive, in a purely mental way?

Zuckerbergs aspiration to go from iPhone to psy-phone seems more like a shift in degree than kind. Yet what Ray Kurzweil once called the age of spiritual machines sometimes has to deal with the sweaty, fleshy, emotional reality of human beings as they are, particularly younger ones budding through those (so far) unavoidable heaves and surges we know as adolescence and early adulthood.

Going by these two fascinating ethnographies, even the digitally naturalised Generation Z (the kids of Gen X) are hardly ready for the direct and pure mingling of minds. Not while theres selfie-taking, sexting, cyberbullying or Yik Yakking to be done, day after day.

Yik Yak a controversial Twitter-style app which shut down in April this year provides Donna Freitass The Happiness Effect with its malevolent subtitle. Through hundreds of interviews with undergrads and graduates in 13 US colleges, Freitas lays out the regime of nervy identity construction through social media that occupies much of their emotional lives.

Nervy identity construction via social media occupies much of students emotional lives

Whether its due to their awareness that their timeline is a potential CV, or that their likes are an indicator of social status on campus, they are under pressure to display their best and most positive selves at all times. Now you dont have to wait for your 10-year high school reunion to show off how great your life is, says junior student Brandy. Its like that every day.

The anonymised Yik Yak app released a torrent of mutual abuse through some of Freitass campuses. Out from under the compulsion to display public happiness, the Repressed returned with a vengeance. Yik Yak was like a bad soap opera, said one. Another abandoned the service because I was overwhelmed by the racism and homophobia that exists on my campus.

So many of the tales here are about trying to establish some kind of autonomy over, or even just etiquette around, the endless connective demands of social media and smartphones. Ethics and mores are being established on the fly. Among Freitass students, the general attitude towards visually led dating apps where you display your wares to engage in hook-ups was an extended eewwww. For these febrile, nervy souls, steamy liaisons still need sociable encounters first.

Consistent with this reserve, the new ritual for courtly romance would seem to be the declaration that ones new boy/girlfriend is now Facebook official. When a couple agree to change their relationship status on the platform, they are (in one male students words) standing on top of a mountain and shouting it out to the world.

So far, so sweet, so familiar. The ecstasies of online communication are tempered by recognisable real-world (and real-body) anxieties and modesties.

Freitas is obviously a good pastor and counsellor to these fluttery kids, even as she mines them for research. But her matronising tone does remind you that Facebooks founding circumstance was as a campus social network, profiting from playing around with the status anxieties of Harvard University students.

The idea that the stifling managerialism behind Zuckerbergs network is seeking to enter your intimate mental life, at some stage in the neurotech future, feels like something that would invite neo-Luddism, if not outright rebellion.

One might have a romantic notion the agenda-setting SF novels of Cory Doctorow come to mind that the kids from the wrong side of the tracks would be the ones who demanded something different, less managed, more edgy, from their communication platforms. (Freitass students are clearly attending prestigious universities, where pressures to succeed keeps things normative.)

Jacqueline Ryan Vickerys book Worried About the Wrong Things has a cast of quirky, eccentric and talented young digital users, circulating in and around a working-class school near the Mexican border, with the pseudonym Freeway High. But the tale it tells is how, amid circumstances of socio-economic distress, education fails to be the haven that can generate possibilities and progress. And one predictor of school failure is whether it uses digital technology from a harm-driven rather than an opportunity-driven perspective.

The book has an intriguing tension. The authors teacherly interests are evident she promotes a connected learning model that imagines it can bring all the learning moments of a pupil, wherever and whenever they happen, into one educational framework.

Petty and futile constraints on classroom tech use sets a tone of defeatism and alienation

Yet the stories that unfold when she talks to the Freeway High students are pretty difficult to assimilate into any inclusive teaching system. In complete contrast to the compulsive communicators of Freitass book, two sensitive young Latino high-school film-makers (Sergio and Javier) often chose not to post their material on YouTube because they are insecure about its quality, and worried it might harm their career prospects, precarious and tentative as they are.

Freeway High has a classic teacher-liberator of the Dead Poets Society type a Mr Lopez who runs evening Cinematic Art Projects and Digital Media Clubs for the pupils. But, as Vickery charts in great and persuasive detail, the schools prevailing harm-driven view of social media muffles and excludes the digital creativity that already thrums through these kids lives. Petty and futile constraints on classroom tech use, and on the kind of digital material that children can bring in from their own enthusiasms, sets a tone of defeatism and alienation among some of the Freeway High kids.

The author has an obvious favourite pupil, a disruptive, deprived but poetic girl called Selena, with whom she spends considerable time. But she hears later that Selena has dropped out of school in the midst of her college preparations, and now has no connection with her. The book is strewn with tales of exclusion and struggle, in which parental backgrounds are chaotic and the demands of care, commuting and finding a place to live bear down too heavily on digitally ambitious youth.

Across both studies, and no matter the social positioning of each set of users, these young people evidently know they have a new kind of tangible social machinery in their hands (and minds): a machinery made of devices, networks and digital information, with which they can make a mark, pooling their knowledge and consciousness.

As responsible pedagogues, Vickery and Freitas are institutionalised (and institutionalising). And with Mark Zuckerberg as with any Silicon Valley visionary mogul you have to follow the profit-driven interest, not just gawp at the transhuman ambition.

Somewhere between the caring educators and the corporate disruptor, Generation Z is forging its own new society out of a digital revolution still in its early days. The streets will have their uses. And young, yearning bodies wont be ignored, either. The Happiness Effect: How social media is driving a generation to appear perfect at any cost Donna Freitas Oxford University Press

Worried About the Wrong Things: Youth, risk, and opportunity in the digital world Jacqueline Ryan Vickery MIT Press

This article appeared in print under the headline Best behaviour?

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How to stay pro-tech when social media can eat young lives - New Scientist

Editors note: Scott Douglas Jacobsen interviews his personal and professional friend Rick Rosner, who claims to have the worlds second highest IQ. Errol Morris interviewed him for the TV series First Person. This is an excerpt of that interview, originally some 100,000 words. Additional excerpted segments will appear here on The Good Men Project in the coming weeks.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Many, arguably most, women have greater difficulties than their male counterparts in equivalent circumstances.Their welfare means our welfare men and women (no need to enter the thorny, confused wasteland of arguments for social construction of gender rather than sex; one need not make a discipline out of truisms.).

Net global wellbeing for women improves slowly, but appears to increase in pace over the years millennia, centuries, and decades.Far better in some countries; decent in some countries; and far worse, even regressing, in others.Subjugation with denial of voting, driving, choice in marriage, choice in children, honour killings, andsevere practices of infibulation, clitoridectomy, or excision among the varied, creative means of femalegenital mutilation based in socio-cultural or religiouspractices; objectification with popular media violence and sexuality, internet memes and content, fashion culture to some extent, even matters of personal preference such as forced dress or coerced attire, or stereotyping of attitudinal and behavioral stances.All I ask of our brethren is that they will take their feet from off our necks and permit us to stand upright on the ground which God intended us to occupy.Sarah Moore Grimke said.

Everyone owes women.International obligations and goals dictate straightforward statements such as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of the United Nations (UN) in addition to simple provision of first life.MDG 3, 4, and 5relate in direct accordance with this proclamation in an international context mind you.MDG 3 states everyones obligations, based on agreed upon goals, for promotion of gender equality and theempowerment of women. MDG 4 states everyones obligations for reduction ofinfant mortality rate. MDG 5 states everyones obligations towards improvement ofmaternalhealth.All MDGs proclaim completion by 2015.We do not appear to have sufficed in obligations up to the projected deadline of 2015 with respect to all of the MDGs in sum.

In addition to these provisions, we have the conditions set forth in theThe International Bill of Rights for WomenbyThe Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women(CEDAW) of the United Nations Development Funds (UNDF) consideration and mandate of the right of women to be free from discrimination and sets the core principles to protect this right. Wheredo you project the future of women in the next 5, 10, 25, 100 years, and further? In general and particular terms such as the trends and the concomitant subtrends, what about the MDGs and numerous other proclaimed goals to assist women especially in developing areas of the world?

Rick Rosner: Predicting gender relations beyond a century from now is somewhat easier than predicting the short-term. In the transhuman future, bodily form, including sex, will be changeable. People will take different forms. And when anyone can change sexes with relative ease, there will be less gender bias.

Lets talk about the transhuman future (100 to 300 years from now) in general, at least as its presented in science fiction that doesnt suck. Three main things are going on:

Theres pervasive networked computing. Everything has a computer in it, the computers all talk to each other, computing costs nothing, data flying everywhere. Structures are constantly being modified by swarms of AI builders. A lot of stuff happens very fast.

Your mind-space isnt permanently anchored to your body. Consciousness will be mathematically characterized, so itll be transferrable, mergeable, generally mess-withable.

People choose their level of involvement in this swirling AI chaos. Most people wont live at the frenzied pinnacle of tech its too much. There are communities at all different levels of tech.

Also, horrible stuff old and new happens from time to time bio-terror, nanotech trouble, economic imperialism, religious strife, etc.

For more about this kind of thing, read Charles Stross, Cory Doctorow, David Marusek, or Neal Stephenson.

So, two hundred years from now, gender wont be much of a limiting factor, except in weird throwback communities. In the meantime, idiots will continue to be idiots, but to a lesser extent the further we go into the future. No one whos not a retard is standing up for the idea of men being the natural dominators of everything. If it seems like were not making progress towards gender equality, it may be because theres a huge political/economic/media faction that draws money and power from the more unsavoury old-fashioned values, with its stance that anyone whos concerned about racism or sexism is nave and pursuing a hidden agenda to undermine American greatness.

Dumb beliefs that arent propped up by doctrine eventually fade away, and believing that men or any elite group is inherently superior is dumb, particularly now and into the future as any purportedly superior inherent abilities become less significant in relation to our augmented selves. Across the world, the best lazy, non-specifically targeted way to reduce gender bias is to open up the flow of information, serious and trivial (however you do that).

In the very short run, maybe the U.S. elects a female President. Doubt this will do that much to advance the cause of women, because Hillary Clinton has already been in the public eye for so long shes more a specific person than a representative of an entire gender. Is thinking that dumb? I dunno. I do know that her gender and who she is specifically will be cynically used against her. I hope that if elected, shes less conciliatory and more willing to call out BS than our current President.

In the U.S., theres currently some attention being paid to rape. Will the media attention to rape make rapey guys less rapey? I dunno. Will increaseattention to rape in India reduce instances there? I dunno. A couple general trends may slowly reduce the overall occurrence of sexual coercion and violence. One trend is the increased flow of information and the reduction of privacy cameras everywhere, everybody willing to talk about everything on social media, victims being more willing to report incidents, better understanding of what does and does not constitute consent. The other trend is the decreasing importance of sex. My baseline is the 70s, when I was hoping to lose my virginity. Sex was a huge deal because everything else sucked food, TV, no video games, no internet and people looked good skinny from jogging and cocaine and food not yet being engineered to be super-irresistible. Today, everybodys fat, and theres a lot of other fun stuff to do besides sex.

I think that some forms of sexual misbehaviour serial adultery, some workplace harassment will be seen as increasingly old-school as more and more people will take care of their desire for sexual variety via the vast ocean of internet porn. Of course, sexual misbehaviour isnt only about sex its also about exercising creepy power or a perverse need to be caught and punished so, unfortunately, that wont entirely go away. During the past century, sexual behaviour has changed drastically the types of sex that people regularly engage in, sex outside of marriage, tolerance for different sexual orientations, freely available pornography and sexual information, the decline in prostitution you could say, cheesily, that sex is out of the closet. And sex thats not secretive or taboo loses some of its power.

But I could be wrong. According to a 2007 study conducted at two U.S. public universities, one fifth of female college students studied suffered some degree of sexual assault.

A version of this post was originally published on In-SightJournal.com and is republished here with permission.

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

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An Interview with Rick Rosner on Women and the Future (Part 1) - The Good Men Project (blog)

Butcher is essentially a fast based 2D side scrolling bullet hell shooter from Transhuman Design and published by Crunching Koalas. Originally released on the PC last October, Butcher is a very hard game; indeed the games own tagline is The Easiest Mode is Hard. Beyond that is Harder, Hardest and then Impossible. So is it really as difficult as it seems?

You are a cyborg charged with exterminating the last of humanity. This most reductivist plot equates to shooting everything that moves, and everything that moves is shooting at you. The pixelated visuals deliberately evoke the likes of Duke Nukem and DOOM as does the just keep moving and shoot gameplay itself. Controls are a bit tricky to begin with and important to master, with the right stick and right trigger aiming your reticule and firing, whilst the jump button is on the left trigger. Movement is on the left stick with down allowing you to drop through most floors. Clever level design adds a lot of verticality meaning you are always leaping about on the move from the constant threat that the many enemies bring. As the difficulty levels ramp up, they take away a third of your health and there are no longer any medkits or armour drops, as if it wasnt already tough enough.

Each level comprises of 4 progressively longer and more difficult grim and grimy stages. Quite often you will get locked into a room and wont be able to progress until you have cleared out all of the grunts and dive bombing jet pack wearing enemies. Youll pick up old faithful weapons like assault rifles, shotguns, rail guns and of course, chainsaws to tear through and obliterate the waves of enemies. You will paint the screen crimson with their bloodied entrails as they scream in agony. A loud throbbing industrial metal soundtrack again reminds us of those early 3D shooters, and it does capture the spirit of DOOM. This game is hardcore and it is tremendous fun.

You only get one life to complete a level, the health bar drops quickly on damage and often one false move means youll have to start over again. You can certainly clear the early levels in just a few minutes, but after a while, as the levels in the stages get longer and more complex, the red mist and controller rage begins to seep in, and I find at that point its best to walk away for a bit. This is definitely a game where you will need to Git Gud. I found I was not particularly Gud and I will admit I laughed when the repeat a single level 10 times achievement popped. Before any others had. I should add that if youre prepared to sacrifice your self respect, a casual mode has been included. This whacks your health up to 400% and doubles the values of pick ups. Apparently

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Butcher review - ThisisXbox (press release) (blog)