Category Archives: Transhumanist

Now arguably more than ever, its hard to predict what will and wont connect with cinemagoers over the next 12 months, a tumultuous time of uncertainty extending until an unknowable date. While the rough release schedule is more than certain to change (a number of January releases have already moved as a result of Omicron), what it does do is show us what the industry is banking on right now, outside of the bread-and-butter business of superheroes.

Heres a look at what youll be seeing the most of in 2022:

It seems odd that a genre as reliably rewarding as the whodunnit was ever not in fashion but after star-packed murder mysteries dominated the multiplex throughout the 70s and 80s, the years since saw a retreat to the small screen. It took Kenneth Branaghs lavish, if creatively redundant, remake of Murder on the Orient Express to remind studios of audience interest, making a shock $351m worldwide back in 2017. This year sees the belated follow-up, a redo of Death on the Nile with a slightly less impressively starry cast Penlope Cruz, Johnny Depp, Judi Dench and Michelle Pfeiffer replaced with Gal Gadot, Armie Hammer, Russell Brand and Annette Bening landing in February. Later this year will also see a Netflix sequel to Rian Johnsons 2019 hit Knives Out, officially untitled as of now but tentatively called Knives Out 2 because probably, bringing back Daniel Craig and sending him to Greece to find a killer from a cast including Kathryn Hahn, Edward Norton, Janelle Mone and Kate Hudson. The streamer paid over $450m for the rights to the franchise. Saoirse Ronan and Sam Rockwell will also hunt for a murderer in the West End in See How They Run, with a cast of suspects including Ruth Wilson, David Oyelowo and Adrien Brody. A high school reunion ends in murder in the comedy Reunion which stars Jillian Bell and Lil Rel Howery (a set-up thats almost identical to Apples new series The Afterparty with Tiffany Haddish and Ilana Glazer) while Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston are currently filming Murder Mystery 2 for Netflix so that could also be a late addition.

Another once-prolific genre that then fell out of favour, the slasher has seen a surprise resurgence in the past few years thanks to the box office success of Happy Death Day and the return of Halloween. Cheaply produced and based on an easily replicated formula, its also found its obvious place within the world of streaming with Netflixs Fear Street trilogy and Theres Someone Inside Your House and Amazons I Know What You Did Last Summer remake. This month sees the inevitable return of Ghostface in Scream, a much-anticipated franchise-restarter bringing back the original Campbell-Cox-Arquette trio for more meta mayhem (if it makes as much as analysts predict it could lead to even more slashers in 2023). Next month, Leatherface follows suit in Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a tortured production sold to Netflix during the pandemic, another attempt to relaunch the grimy gore-heavy series, with Dont Breathes Fede Alvarez involved as writer-producer and Eighth Grades Elsie Fisher starring. Michael Myers will also be making his final stab at killing Laurie Strode, AKA Jamie Lee Curtis, later in the year with Halloween Ends but the mammoth box office for his return might extend the originally envisioned trilogy. Theres also the intriguing prospect of an A24 slasher from Cat Persons Kristen Roupenian called Bodies, Bodies, Bodies about a game that goes awry starring Maria Bakalova, Amandla Stenberg and Pete Davidson.

While science-fiction that tackles something a little chewier than whether Godzilla or Kong can punch the hardest is never exactly not a thing, the next year provides a steadier stream than usual of options aiming more for mind over matter. After a premiere at Cannes last summer, Columbus director Kogonadas After Yang will hit cinemas in March, a quiet drama with Colin Farrell and Jodie Turner-Smith about a family trying to save their live-in robot from extinction. David Cronenberg returns later this year with Crimes of the Future, a horror-tinged sci-fi tale set in a distant future where people explore the limitless potential of transhumanism, said people including Kristen Stewart and Viggo Mortensen. Cronenbergs son Brandon will also follow his well-received Sundance hit Possessor with Infinity Pool, a thriller starring Alexander Skarsgrd and Mia Goth as a rich couple who discover something unusual beyond the gates of their all-inclusive resort. Yorgos Lanthimos is also reuniting with The Favourite screenwriter Tony McNamara and star Emma Stone for Poor Things, a Victorian era Frankenstein-esque tale of a woman brought back to life by a scientist who replaces her brain with that of her unborn child. One of the most intriguing big bets comes from the Mad Max director George Miller and his epic romance Three Thousand Years of Longing about a lonely scholar whose encounter with a wish-granting djinn leads to unexpected consequences. And while plot details are yet to be revealed, Jordan Peeles mysterious new film Nope, starring Daniel Kaluuya, has debuted a poster that hints at a sci-fi mind-trip.

A look ahead at any year in the past five decades would show an unhealthy smattering of 2s, 3s and colons but in 2022, theres a more specific form of sequel thats set to dominate. Long-awaited, fan-petitioned follow-ups will be cosying up against the more expected superhero fare, studios betting on nostalgia to drive audiences out to the big screen or to stream. The aforementioned Scream is the first big test, to see if a 90s-born franchise can still pack em in, weeks before Paramount also bets on Jackass Forever, the first entry from the team since 2010. The oft-delayed Top Gun: Maverick will also test if audiences still feel the need for both speed and Tom Cruise outside of the Mission: Impossible franchise (his only fruitful endeavour these days). Reese Witherspoons belated return as Elle Woods in Legally Blonde 3 is allegedly set for a summer release (although recent reports suggest that might not happen) with help from Mindy Kaling scripting. Halloween will see the return of sister witches Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy in Hocus Pocus 2, after much fan speculation, haunting a new generation on Disney+ while the platform will also see Amy Adams returning as a fish-out-of-water princess in Disenchanted. And finally, Kevin Smith will complete his cult comedy trilogy with Clerks III.

It might be a surprise to anyone who doesnt spend hours scouring the very bottom rows of the streaming underworld but Bruce Willis is working harder than you, I or anyone we know. His admirably consistent brand of cheaply made action thrillers is ever-expanding (he was in nine films in 2021) and in 2022, he will star in another 10 VHS-era films tailored toward the most undemanding of viewers. In the next 12 months, he will be seen in Gasoline Alley with Luke Wilson, Fortress 2 with Shannen Doherty, A Day to Die with Frank Grillo, The Wrong Place with Ashley Greene, Vendetta with Mike Tyson, Corrective Measures with Michael Rooker, Die Like Lovers with Dominic Purcell, White Elephant with John Malkovich, Paradise City with John Travolta and Wire Room with Kevin Dillon.

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From whodunnits to cerebral sci-fi: what movie trends will 2022 bring? - The Guardian

The Omicron variant has unleashed a tidal wave of Covid that is sweeping through countries at breakneck speed. In the UK, infections soared to unprecedented highs in recent weeks, but may finally have reached a peak. So what is in store on the other side of the wave?

Mass vaccination, boosters, and the spectacular infection rates seen in the Omicron wave are building high levels of population immunity that will drive infection rates down. The wave will peak at different times from place to place, with adherence to Plan B and shifts in peoples behaviour before and after Christmas all playing into the timing and speed at which infections fall. While the Office for National Statistics said infections were still rising in England last week, the wave may already have peaked in London.

Not in the foreseeable future. The more likely scenario is that Omicron continues to circulate, with cases rising and falling in line with peoples mixing patterns and changes to measures that prevent transmission. When plan B is lifted and more people return to work, cases may well rise. But in the summer, as people spend more time outdoors, infections may fall again, then rise next winter. It will all come down to human behaviour. People may feel safer and socialise more as cases come down, sending infections up again. The virus wont be wiped out because waning immunity means there will be a constant supply of people who are newly susceptible to the infection.

Before the Omicron wave hit, about 5% of the UK population had no immunity to Covid, either through vaccination or past infection. Most of the severe disease caused by Omicron has occurred in this group of people. On the other side of the Omicron wave, there will be hardly anyone who hasnt got some immunity from infection or vaccination and this should help to keep hospital admissions down.

But Omicron is still spreading fast, with nearly four million people infected in England alone last week. While infection rates appear to have stalled in the under-50s, they are rising in older, more vulnerable age groups. It still isnt clear how severe Omicron can be in older people who had their boosters early and may now be seeing that immunity wane.

If cases keep falling, then population immunity and the arrival of new antiviral drugs that aim to slash hospitalisation rates, will help the UK emerge from the crisis. We can definitely start planning for the future in which we are treating Covid like other diseases, but we arent there yet, said Prof Rowland Kao, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Edinburgh.

With Omicron spreading fast and causing less severe disease, some researchers believe it is time to rethink how Test and Trace is done. I think we are already at the point where PCR testing is a waste of resources, and contact tracing is probably a waste of resources too, said Tim Colbourn, professor of global health systems and epidemiology at UCL. One option is to rely more on lateral flow tests and for people to message their close contacts whenever they test positive.

Other measures, such as pool testing samples from groups of people, and wastewater surveillance for the virus could flag new outbreaks, Prof Kao said, while some physical distancing and mask wearing in crowded places would continue to keep cases down. We mustnt forget that vulnerable groups will still likely remain more vulnerable, Kao said.

More Covid variants are inevitable and, like Omicron, they will have to evade immunity to some extent to spread widely. The key to reducing the risk of new variants is driving down case rates globally, but to date, vaccine hoarding and the widespread use of boosters in wealthier countries has left vast swathes of the world under-vaccinated. New variants may emerge from mutations in Omicron or other variants that are still in circulation.

Not necessarily. The Alpha variant was more virulent than the original Covid virus that emerged from China, and the Delta variant was more virulent still. Omicron is somewhat milder, but there is no guarantee that future variants will be. The good news is that so far, even though several variants have developed resistance to antibodies, meaning they can spread among people who have immunity, so-called T cell defences have proved far more robust. The T cell defences are crucial for preventing hospitalisations and may continue to hold up well against future variants.

Thats the hope. This year, doctors will have access to at least two new antiviral drugs, Pfizers paxlovid and Mercks molnupiravir. Both are aimed at those most likely to become severely ill with Covid. If taken soon enough after infection, paxlovid and molnupiravir can reduce hospitalisations by 89% and 30% respectively. At the beginning of the pandemic, Covid was by far the leading cause of death, said Prof Colbourn. This year we should be able to reduce the burden of Covid by 95% of what it was then, and it could fall out of the top 10 public health problems by May or June. The next test will be the next variant.

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What lies on the other side of the UKs Omicron wave? | Omicron variant - newsconcerns

Dismayed about her fathers advancing dementia, Shin investigates how the latest advances in robotics and artificial intelligence might be able to preserve an individuals consciousness even beyond the grave.

She pays a call on Swami G, a pastor in the church of Terasem, a Transhumanist sect that believes in using technology to expand the limits of human life. His motto is Make Eternity Great Again and he believes the soul has the potential to be immortal if a persons data are collected and stored in a mind file. Facebook has your mind file, Amazon has your mind file, Google, the N[ational] S[ecurity] A[gency], he says. Everyone has your mind file except for you.

But how to transfer this mind file into some receptacle that will contain it forever? Scientists have developed 3-D avatars that can take on a persons bodily form, preserve their knowledge, memories, and all their individual characteristics, and enable them to communicate with the living. Deepak Chopra, the spiritual guru, whose books have sold millions of copies, now has a virtual, digital 3-D clone that has been boning up on his oeuvre, his memories, and the ephemera of his life. It so resembles the original Deepak Chopra that it elicits gasps from Michael Strahan and Kelly Ripa when it speaks on their talk show Live! with Kelly and Michael. I am training to serve as your infinite well-being guide, the avatar says.

You have been warned.

Shin volunteers to have a similar avatar made of herself. Eww, she says when she sees the work in progress. Maybe this is what Freud was talking about in his essay on the uncanny.

Meanwhile, in Japan, scientists have been devising humanoid robots that look like the androids in Steven Spielbergs A.I: Artificial Intelligence (2001) . One of the scientists poses next to a replica of himself that he has created, and the resemblance is, well, uncanny. Creepier still are the organoids, spawned in petri dishes, brain tissue grown from stem cells. When hooked up with a spiderlike robot, these brainlets can make it walk haltingly at first, but then with increasingly sinister purpose.

Shin demonstrates an eclectic, inventive style. She applies artful animation to illustrate concepts, juxtaposes images artfully, and includes germane snippets from movies. Like the scene in Blade Runner (1982) in which the android played by Rutger Hauer delivers the famous soliloquy that ends, All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain. Time to die.

A.rtificial I.mmortality can be streamed via Syndicado on Apple TV, Google TV, InDemand, and Vudu, beginning Jan. 11. Go to http://www.artificialimmortality.ca.

Perhaps you dont need to rely on the latest A.I. technology to attain immortality. The scientists in Frauke Sandig and Eric Blacks Aware: Glimpses of Consciousness (2021) dont try to reconstruct a mind artificially to uncover its secrets. They examine the evidence that exists, physical and spiritual, in hopes of learning how consciousness works and how it can be extended.

With his team of 300 researchers, Christof Koch, one of the worlds foremost neuroscientists and head of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, in Seattle, examines minute slices of brain tissue under an electron microscope. But he doubts he will unravel the mystery of consciousness by studying the hardware. What is it about this piece of gray goo that gives rise to the feeling of love? he asks. He recalls once taking magic mushrooms and comprehending the beating heart of existence. Later he could not explain what he experienced. It is ineffable, he says. But was the perception real or just a pleasurable figment conjured up by the gray goo? Is there a difference?

Molecular biologist and Tibetan Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard believes that looking outward at phenomena, as is the practice of most Western science, wont answer such questions. The key to the mystery lies within, the pure awareness that is the essence of reality. Psychedelic drugs are unnecessary meditation and the stripping away of the self and ego can achieve this. But is this eternal life or the end of individual existence?

Monica Gagliano, a biologist and professor at the University of Sydney, has applied scrupulous scientific methods to prove the seemingly unscientific fact that plants are conscious entities that hear, see, communicate, learn, remember, and feel pain. They communicate in an interconnected network of consciousness. Perhaps people are part of that network, and all sentient beings. But wouldnt this fact mean that even a vegan diet causes pain? What could you eat for lunch?

Like Koch, Gagliano thinks that psychedelics can be a tool in her research. With the Mayan healer Josefa Kirvin Kulix, she visits a remote Mexican village where the culture revolves around the hallucinogenic peyote cactus. Gagliano participates in a peyote ceremony in which the villagers chant before a fire. The hypnotic cadence seems to lull her into a state of serenity. But when the villagers drag in a bull and cut its throat she covers her eyes in anguish.

Aware: Glimpses of Consciousness can be streamed on demand beginning on Jan. 7. Go to aware-film.com.

Peter Keough can be reached at petervkeough@gmail.com.

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Looking for intimations of immortality - The Boston Globe

In its simplest form, cyberpunk is a science fiction subgenre that brings together advanced, futuristic technology, with a decline in societal decay. Think of a society featuring advanced artificial intelligence, cybernetics, massive skyscrapers, but with many people living in slums or being controlled and lacking social freedom. But cyberpunk isnt only a sci-fi subgenre, but also a cultural movement that has some influence on things like entertainment, design, gaming, architecture, fashion, and technology. In fact, you could argue were already living in a cyberpunk world.

Cyberpunk often features a flashy visual theme and an underlying dystopian theme of this genre. It depicts a world where technological development is at its peak, artificial intelligence co-exists with humans, people have access to robotic brains and body implants but at the same time, the social order is heavily disturbed, corrupt multinational corporations (or machines) own and controls everything, crime has become an integral part of society, and most of the population has a poor standard of living.

The high tech, low life concept of a cyberpunk world has been popularized by comics, films, animes, and books of the same genre. Writers like Philip K. Dick, William Gibson, Katsuhiro Otomo, Bruce Sterling, Rudy Rucker, and many others in the 70s and 80s introduced different characteristics. Thin neon city lights, electronic music, dark streets, cyborgs, holograms, rugged and vibrant clothing style, drug syndicates, cramped apartments, illegal tech markets, and a broke society) those are the tell-tale of a cyberpunk world that later became symbols of the genre.Cyberpunk protagonists are typically rebels, hackers, reluctant heroes clinging to individuality in a world where invasive control is the norm. Unsurprisingly, many see cyberpunk as more than just an artistic current, but rather as a social critique.

Remarkably, many famous novels, anime, and movies in the cyberpunk style from the 80s and 90s that popularized the genre are set in the current time. Ridley Scotts iconic sci-fi flick Blade Runner shows events from 2019, Software, a critically acclaimed cyberpunk novel from Rudy Rucker is based in the year 2020, P.D. James highly popular dystopian fiction, Children of Men is set in 2021 (its movie adaptation is based in 2027), whereas Bruce Sterlings thrilling sci-fi book Islands in the Net tells a dark futuristic story from the year 2023.

But cyberpunk is still going strong now, weve just pushed the date by a few years.

Science fiction is reality ahead of schedule, Syd Mead, concept designer of tron and blade runner once famously said. So is cyberpunk a realistic expectation of whats to come?

Researchers have suggested in the past that technology can fuel economic inequality. Big tech companies, in particular, are fueling inequality, and although technology as a whole is alleviating poverty, there are fears that it could fuel rampang social inequality. In addition, while making us richer, technology can also be used to control and impose dystopian measures as were already starting to see in China, for instance.

In fact, what makes cyberpunk different from other sci-fi genres is its ability to manifest our fears associated with hi-technology and the perils it could bring, perils such as over-capitalism, drug addiction, gadget dependency, media oversaturation, crime, and data privacy. So while cyberpunk is a literary and artistic current, were definitely starting to see some of its signature trademarks in the real world.

Aesthetically, cyberpunk is distinctive in its neon urban lights. Perhaps unsurprisingly, cyberpunk scenery is becoming more and more common, as some of its underlying aspects are also creeping into our world. If we look around carefully, its not hard to find various cyberpunk elements around us. Here are just a few examples.

Moreover, prosthetic body parts, augmented reality-based applications (like the game Pokemon GO), cyberpunk-themed clothing (such as cybergoth, futuristic gothic, etc), as well as the advent of brain chips (such as Neuralink), machine learning, smart weapons, humanoids (like Sophia and Ameca) and Internet of Things (IoT)are some of the developments that are taking place in the real world but also share a striking resemblance to various elements shown in the cyberpunk themes of Terminator, Akira, Blade Runner, Alita Battle Angel, and Ghost in the Shell.

Although to many people, cyberpunk is merely an aesthetic style, weve already mentioned that theres some hardcore social critique to it. The main reason for this is that cyberpunk involves heavy philosophical concepts.

Transhumanism is believed to be the core philosophy behind the development of the cyberpunk genre. Transhumanism is a social, philosophical, and intellectual movement that favors the invention and use of advanced innovations that can enhance human ability. Basically, transhumanists want us to evolve past our human nature using technology. Any technology capable of improving intelligence, physical strength, health, cognitive ability, memory, and lifespan of humans is part of transhumanist progress.

Transhumanist thinkers predict emerging technologies and examine their possible positive and negative impacts on human society. Writers in the 70s and 80s are also believed to have analyzed the influence of the internet, terrorism, drugs, computers, cybersecurity, and sexual revolution while working on various cyberpunk themes. This can also be understood from the fact that the nature of the protagonist in various such works is of a transhuman, for example, Ghost in the Shells Motoko Kusanagi was also a transhuman.

However, due to its dystopian nature, most of the fictional works in the cyberpunk genre reveal a negative side of a transhumanist approach. Novels and films like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Alita: Battle Angel, Cowboy Bebop, Terminator, etc shows how advanced technologies can promote corruption, greed, destruction and ultimately lead to a chaotic world. According to Robert M. Geraci, who is a professor of religious studies at Manhattan College, cyberpunk as a genre attempts to caution against transhumanism by exposing the problematic elements of the social economy that supports it.

Nobody wants to live in a dystopian world (especially after the pandemic) but in the coming years, it would be really interesting to see if some popular cyberpunk technologies such as cyborgs, laser weapons, advanced VR devices, and flying cars become a reality.

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What is cyberpunk and are we already living in it? - ZME Science

The U.S. Transhumanist Party is focused onpolicyrather thanpoliticsas conventionally defined. We value initiatives and reforms that will improve the human condition for as many people as possible, with as much beneficial impact as possible and without regard for scoring political points or defeating the other side. We seek to achieve the next, greatest era of our civilization, which will require constructive solutions to the problems of our current era. All of these problems can be solved if we look away from the political trench warfare of today and up toward a far brighter future.

Ideal 1.The Transhumanist Party supports significant life extension achieved through the progress of science and technology.

Ideal 2.The Transhumanist Party supports a cultural, societal, and political atmosphere informed and animated by reason, science, and secular values.

Ideal 3.The Transhumanist Party supports efforts to use science, technology, and rational discourse to reduce and eliminate various existential risks to the human species.

Find the U.S. Transhumanist Party Platform as Article VI of our Constitution or in this standalone presentation. Below is just a selection of some of our key values and goals, as determined by votes of our members, but we have many other ideas as well, and we also frame the ideas below with a great deal of thought and detail.

Individual privacy and liberty over how to apply technology to ones personal life. [Article VI, Section I]

Tolerance and inclusivity of all individuals of all races, genders, classes, religions, creeds, national origins, and other characteristics.[Article VI, Section II]

Support of most technologies but opposition to certain detrimental technologies (e.g., weapons of mass destruction, privacy-infringing technologies, engineering of new pathogens).[Article VI, Section III]

Opposition to nuclear weapons, support of complete nuclear disarmament, even if unilateral.[Article VI, Section IV]

Support of research on eradicating disease.[Article VI, Section V]

Morphological freedom.[Article VI, Section VI]

Support of all values and efforts toward cultivation of science, technology, reason.[Article VI, Section VII]

Support of all emerging technologies that improve the human condition, including:

Autonomous vehicles

Electric vehicles

Economical solar power

Safe nuclear power

Hydroelectricity

Geothermal power

Applications for the sharing of durable goods

Artificial intelligence

Biotechnology

Nanotechnology

Robotics

Rapid transit

3D printing

Vertical farming

Electronic devices to detect and respond to trauma

Beneficial genetic modification of plants, animals, and human beings[Article VI, Section IX]

Ending the drug war.[Article VI, Section XIV]

Reforming the prison system to reduce the incarcerated population.[Article VI, Section XV]

Universal Basic Income (UBI) not conditional on life circumstances, occupations, other income, or wealth.[Article VI, Section XVI]

Reasonable measures to fund space travel.[Article VI, Section XVII]

Using science and technology to eliminate disabilities.[Article VI, Section XVIII]

Ending the two-party duopoly.[Article VI, Section XIX]

Life extension / anti-aging.[Article VI, Sections V, VIII, IX]

Removal of barriers to medical research and deployment of treatments.[Article VI, Sections LXXIX, LXXX, LXXXI, LXXXII]

Reducing the national debt.[Article VI, Section XXXV]

Alternative sources of energy and their technological implementations. [Article VI, Section XXXVIII]

Increasing the budget of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).[Article VI, SectionLXXVII]

Support for political, economic, and cultural experimentation e.g., seasteads and micronations.[Article VI, SectionXXII]

Childrens rights proportional to their rational faculties. [Article VI, Sections XXIII, LXII]

Animal welfare (but not animal liberation). [Article VI, Section XXIV]

Opposition to intolerant, rights-violating, anti-technological, and compulsion-imposing doctrines, be they religious or secular.[Article VI, Sections XXV, XL, LXIII]

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Values of the U.S. Transhumanist Party U.S ...

Date:December 30, 2021 Host:Jim Schneider Guest: Alex Newman MP3|Order

2021 has been an impactful year! Weve seen things happen this year that many never envisioned for our nation. There were the mandates, inflation, the supply chain crisis, border chaos, the attack on oil, the brainwashing in the classrooms, climate alarmism, tyranny, critical race theory, the global agenda, the great reset, and the list goes on. But its not only these things in and of themselves, its also the speed by which they were occurring, and virtually all of them simultaneously.

Joining Jim for a review of some of these issues was Alex Newman. Alex is an award-winning international freelance journalist, author, researcher, educator and consultant. Hes senior editor for The New American and contributes to other publications as well. He is author of Crimes of the Educators and Deep State: The Invisible Government Behind the Scenes. Hes also founder of Liberty Sentinel.

The analysis that Alex presented concerning 2021, and what we need to keep an eye on for the future, included the following:

Alex had more to address, and callers were given their chance to respond, on this final live Crosstalk of 2021.

More Information

thenewamerican.com

libertysentinel.org

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Significant Issues of 2021 VCY America - VCY America

I had hoped to be able to share the talk I gave to an audience primarily in Iran about artificial intelligence and theistic ethical reasoning. It will hopefully be made available online at some point. Apparently some 1,500 people watched the livestream. Here is a runthrough I recorded when timing myself. In the actual presentation I had to cut some material here. This also lacks the Farsi translation/summary of what I was saying.

I listened to the audiobook of Meghan OGieblyns phenomenal nonfiction book God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning. I doubt you will find a comparable volume that is as well-versed in both theology and computer science. Among other things, OGieblyn reveals the Christian roots of transhumanism first in Dante and then more recently and directly in Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. I also listened to the science fiction novelMachinehood by S. B. Divya and highly recommend it. As youd expect in a novel I recommend, it deals intelligently and in a serious way with technology, ethics, and religion.

There is a bit of breaking news about an algorithm that uses targeted ads to connect people not with companies selling products but with religious communities. Read about Gloo in the article on the IO9 website.

Also related to this topic: Eric Schwitzgebel writes, What we should want, probably, is not that superintelligent AI align with our mixed-up, messy, and sometimes crappy values but instead that superintelligent AI have ethically good values. An ethically good superintelligent AI presumably wouldnt destroy the environment for short-term gain, or nuke a city out of spite, or destroy humanity to maximize the number of paperclips. If theres a conflict between whats ethically best, or best all things considered, and what a typical human (or humanity or the AIs designer) would want, have the AI choose whats ethically best.

The BBC has an article about Alexa telling a girl who asked for a challenge to put a penny on a partially plugged in electrical plug (IO9 also covered this). Discover magazine had an article about human and AI ethical judgments converging. 3QuarksDaily had an article about whether AI needs to have free will to be held morally or legally accountable. Two articles from IO9 about the use of software in policing, why it perpetuated rather than eliminated longstanding bias (as it had been predicted to), and how this was determined.They also covered the objections of the United States to banning autonomous weapons. David Brins blog has touched on the topic of AI, as it often does.See also the Center for Theological Inquirys article Theology in the Age of AI: Machine Intelligence & Pastoral Care about their Spiritual Loop Project.See too:

Current Associate Editor Felicia Wu Song publishes Restless Devices: Recovering Personhood, Presence and Place in the Digital Age

Meet Ameca, the remarkable (and not at all creepy) human-like robot

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AI and Ethics | James McGrath - Patheos

While lockdowns were supposed to be temporary initially just a couple of weeks to flatten the curve nearly two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, theres no end in sight. Thanksgiving was once again canceled in many parts of the U.S., and many government leaders again urged residents to cancel their Christmas celebrations too. The latest Omicron mutation has given bureaucrats additional reasons to unleash their power and raise panic.

What many still dont realize is that the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic has little to do with the spread of an actual virus, and everything to do with the planned global takeover and implementation of a technocratic agenda known as The Great Reset.

Universal mask mandates, social distancing, business shutdowns, online working and learning, and quarantining of asymptomatic individuals are all forms of soft indoctrination to get us used to an entirely new, and unfathomably inhumane, way of life devoid of our usual rights and freedoms.

Klaus Schwab is the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum. Schwab announced the World Economic Forums Great Reset Agenda in June 2020,1 which includes stripping people of their privately owned assets.

In addition to being a poster boy for technocracy, Schwab also has a strong transhumanist bend, and wrote the book on the Fourth Industrial Revolution, a hallmark of which is the merger of man and machine, biology and digital technology.2

According to Winter Oak a British nonprofit social justice organization Schwab and his globalist accomplices are using the COVID-19 pandemic to bypass democratic accountability, to override opposition, to accelerate their agenda and to impose it on the rest of humankind against our will.

While the Great Reset plan is being sold as a way to make life fair and equitable for all, the required sacrifices do not apply to the technocrats running the system.

On the contrary, as noted by Patrick Wood in an interview with James Delingpole, the wealth distribution and circular economies promoted by the technocratic elite will never benefit the people, because what theyre really referring to is the redistribution of wealth from the people, to themselves.

Evidence of this can be seen in the decision to allow big box stores to remain open during the pandemic while forcing small businesses to close, no matter how small the infection risk.

Theres really no rhyme or reason for such a decision, other than to shift wealth away from small, private business owners to multinational corporations. More than half of all small business owners fear their businesses wont survive.3

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the collective wealth of 651 billionaires in the U.S. rose by more than $1 trillion (36%).4 To put their current wealth in perspective, not only did the number of billionaires in America swell to 745 during the pandemic, but their assets grew by $2.1 trillion.5

According to the online newsletter Inequality, The $5 trillion in wealth now held by 745 billionaires is two-thirds more than the $3 trillion in wealth held by the bottom 50 percent of U.S. households estimated by the Federal Reserve Board.

As noted by Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness, Never before has America seen such an accumulation of wealth in so few hands.6

Thats technocratic wealth redistribution for you. Ultimately, The Great Reset will result in two tiers or people: the technocratic elite, who have all the power and rule over all assets, and the rest of humanity, who have no power, no assets and no voice.

That the COVID-19 pandemic is a form of class war is also evident in the way rules are enforced. While citizens are threatened with fines and arrest if they dont do as theyre told, those who lay down the rules repeatedly break them without repercussions.

If you need more evidence that were in the middle of a technocratic takeover, look no further than the mass vaccination agenda and the promotion of fake, lab-grown meat. Bill Gates, another frontline technocrat, has repeatedly stated that we have no choice but to vaccinate everyone against COVID-19.

Naturally, hes heavily invested in said vaccine and stands to gain handsomely from a global mass vaccination campaign. Technocrats are nothing if not self-serving, all while pretending to be do-gooders much like COVID Claus in our little video.

Eventually, your personal identification, medical records, finances and who knows what else will all be tied together and embedded somewhere on or in your body. Every possible aspect of your biology and life activities will be trackable 24/7. You will also be digitally tied into the internet of things, which eventually will include smart cities.

All the different parts of this giant population control grid fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The global vaccination agenda ties into the biometric identity agenda, which ties into the cashless society agenda, which ties into the social credit system agenda, which ties into the social engineering agenda and so on.

When you follow this experiment to its ultimate conclusion, you find all of humanity enslaved within a digitized prison with no way out. Those who rebel will simply have their digital-everything restricted or shut down.

The rise of fake, lab-grown meat is a puzzle piece of The Great Reset agenda too. According to the World Economic Forum, lab-grown, cultured meat is a more sustainable alternative to conventional livestock, and in the future, well all be eating a lot less meat. As noted on its website:7

As the world looks to reset its economy, along with food systems, in a cleaner way post-pandemic, one more sustainable solution coming to fruition is cultured meat Cultured meat takes much less time to grow, uses fewer of the planets resources, and no animals are slaughtered.

But dont think for a second that this has anything to do with environmental protection. No, its about controlling the food supply and preventing food independence.

Already, multinational corporations have taken over a majority of the global food supply with their patented genetically engineered seeds. Patented cultured meats and seafood will allow private companies to control the food supply in its entirety, and by controlling the food supply, they will control countries and entire populations.

Public health will undoubtedly suffer from this dietary switch, as canola and safflower oil8 are primary sources of fat in these fake meat concoctions. Vegetable oils are loaded with linoleic acid (LA), an omega-6 fat that, in excess, acts as a metabolic poison, causing severe mitochondrial dysfunction, insulin resistance, decreased NAD+ levels, obesity and a radical decrease in your ability to generate cellular energy.

Our LA consumption 150 years ago was between 2 and 3 grams per day. Today it is 10 to 20 times higher. If fake meat becomes a staple, the average LA intake is bound to increase even further.

The Great Reset is well underway, but its not yet too late to stop it. Enough people have to see it and understand it, though. And then they must act. If we want to prevent The Great Reset from destroying life as we know it, we must view civil disobedience as a duty. We must resist it from every angle.

We must reclaim our sovereignty, our right to live free, to open our businesses and move about freely. We must communicate with our elected leaders and demand they not infringe on our constitutional rights. We have to engage in political processes and help educate our local sheriffs of their role as defenders of the constitution. We may also need to support legal challenges.

A small step in the right direction that you can take right now would be to celebrate Christmas like you normally would this week, and not allow the Klaus Schwabs and Bill Gateses of the world rob you of valuable time with family and friends.

There are no guarantees in this life, and for many, this will be their last Christmas. So, spend it well. Cherish life by actually living it and spending it with those you love. Refusing to give up our humanity is how we resist The Great Reset.

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Another Year Without A Family Christmas? - newsconcerns

Lets address the most contentious issue first. This movie isnt great, but its not The Last Jedi bad. Matrix fans arent going to be storming the gates in protest, because their beloved characters were assassinated for the message. Its true that Neo is nerfed so that Trinity can take his place. This is annoying because, as Ive said before, nobody wants to see a Dragon Ball Z spectacle featuring Neos powers just so the poor sap could die in obscurity because nothing he did mattered anyway. They didnt do this, and that is to the writers credit.

If there was anybody who deserved a Deus ex Machina sent by the Social Justice Warriors from on high, it was Trinity. Her decision to go with Neo to the machine city, even though it meant certain death, easily made her the most courageous character in the trilogy. Nobody gave her Matrix Wi-Fi. So, even though, the twist at the end of the film made zero sense, from a narrative standpoint, she earned her miracle. Were not talking about Rey, Mary-Sue, Skywalker, some random character with no connection to the things that were before whos magically able to fix the old ships, shoot better, fight better, jump better, drive a boat better even though she grew up on a desert planet, basically do everything better for no reason other than she is the narrative equivalent of a jingling set of keys. Trinity is not Rey. She earned her place in the original trilogy because she suffered with the other characters, and I would argue she even earned her position as the new One alongside Neo because she suffered as Neo suffered.

I bring this up because there have been multiple people who have compared this movie to The Last Jedi, and while this movie is by no means good, equivocating it to Rian Johnsons cinematic abomination is a little harsh.

The real issue with this movie is that it clearly did not want to be made. Over an hour is devoted to Neos new life within the Matrix. There is a scene toward the beginning where the new Agent Smith who is now a cooperate bigwig is telling Neo that they are making the Matrix Trilogy, which is now a video game, into a new franchise, and the company is going to do this with or without his cooperation. I imagine is this exactly how the pitch meeting went when the studio approached Lana Wachowski. The implications are about as subtle as Neo being called the One and dying only to rise from the dead. Say what you will about the Wachowskis, subtlety is not their strong suit. After this scene, we get a montage showing all these corporate suits arguing over what the Matrix is and over time redefining the game altogether. Theres only one word to describe this sequence, meta.

This reset is noticeable, and it contributes to the contrived nature of the film. Wachowski wants to affirm her characters struggles in a world which is being rebooted by force. The way she resolves this dilemma is interesting. When Neo expresses regret because his fight did not end the Matrix, one of characters shows him her pet sentient robots which are literally called sentients. So, the One did not end the Matrix, instead the One created a unity between man and machine. This isnt transhumanism in the sense that man has merged with machine, but rather, the machines have become, for all intent and purposes, human. They can completely wake up and leave the Matrix if they wish, and now, the free humans are tasked with liberating the machines as well as other humans.

This is interesting, and I suppose it should have been obvious, considering the machines seemed to be practically human anyway by the end of the previous trilogy. But it was a surprising twist anyway, and a clever way of getting around undermining Neos previous accomplishments.

As before, none of these details are explained. How the robots are doing any of this remains a constant nagging question throughout the film, but this time, one could arguably be a little more sympathetic about the plot hole because Wachowski is struggling to reestablish a finished franchise without negating the accomplishments of the previous characters.

I have much more to say about the movie, and we will cover those topics as well as go into more details regarding how the machines work, the programs work, and how the main antagonist operates in the next review.

Here are my thoughts on the original Matrix Trilogy:

Bringing you up to date with the Matrix series: Will The Matrix Resurrections (dropped December 22) break the mold? The culturally influential trilogy (control by evil aliens) enjoys a fascinating beginning but a thud! ending. Can we really escape a world of illusions simply by following our most basic influences? If wisdom cant help, why should instinct be the answer? (Gary Varner)

The Matrix Reloaded (2003) just did not load properly. Although the second part of the Matrix trilogy offers interesting ideas and exciting action, the confusing plot obscures the concepts it should explore. Free will is hard to explore when, among AIs, Agent Smith can think freely, the Architect cant grasp the idea, and the Oracle understands but doesnt have it. (Gary Varner)

The Matrix Revolutions (2003) spins out of control. In Part I of this review of the third film in The Matrix trilogy anticipating The Matrix: Resurrections (December 22) we bring you up to date on the story. The plot continues to baffle: How did Neo end up in digital purgatory? How can machines fall in love and produce a child? Answers are awaited.

and

The Matrix Revolutions churns into a cosmic drama. It turns out to be a conflict between chaos and probability with no apparent moral compass. As fans await The Matrix Resurrection, we begin to sense an outline in The Matrix: Revolutions of the ultimate conflict of human vs. machine.

The Matrix Trilogy: Some Final Thoughts I enjoyed the films and am looking forward to the Matrix Resurrections but there are some things I need to say as a reviewer. The problem with the Matrix trilogy that it tries to say too much, and so the messages conflict when theyre not downright confusing.

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The Matrix Resurrections: The Studio Is Making Us Do This! - Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence

Marjan Moghaddam, Glitch Goddess Intervention at Frieze NY, 2019. Courtesy of the artist.

By SOPHIE BARON, December 2021

2021 was the year that saw Digital Art, NFTs, Virtual and Metaverse exhibitions finally take a seat at the table in the contemporary art market. With record sales of Digital Art at Sothebys, the corporate rebranding of Facebook into Meta, and NFTs promising the kind of excitement that Internet 1.0 once ushered in, the pandemic helped accelerate yet another fundamental cultural shift in our time. It is thus appropriate for a career-length lookback at one of digital arts pioneers and continuously prolific creators; an artist whose body of work spans almost 4 decades, who has consistently been on the avant-garde of technological progress and development: Marjan Moghaddam.

Born in Iran, Moghaddam arrived In New York City during 1979 as a political refugee fleeing from the brutal theocratic regime of the Ayatollah Khomeini, a regime that forced Iran, which had been a quickly-modernising society, back into virtually the Middle Ages, and imposed one of the harshest systems of gender apartheid in the world. It was the disturbing experience of living through her countrys revolution, Moghaddam has repeatedly stated, that inspired her commitment to social and technical progress, and thus, her interest in computers and the creative potentials they offer. This commitment to progress is also what motivated her to keep up with each and every new breakthrough in the field of computer science, and to constantly advance her art-making by utilising these new tools, which she also teaches as a tenured Full Professor of Digital Art and XR at the Brooklyn campus of Long Island University.

Marjan Moghaddam with Shot in Iran and David & Gloiath (2021) at Mainline Art Center.

Marjan was the only female digital artist featured between NFT giants Beeple and XCopy in the BBC Click documentary Art Goes Digital, earlier this year. Having entered the NFT space with strong sales into top collections in 2020, she also exhibited widely in important metaverse shows in Cryptovoxels and Decentraland throughout the year, culminating with a solo show at MOCDA (Museum of Contemporary Digital Art) during the Summer, which closed earlier this fall. Entitled Digital Embodiments and Interventions: The Sculptural World of Marjan Moghaddam, the retrospective was hosted by MOCDA in Decentraland, a blockchain-based virtual reality space, and was curated by the London-based new media art expert Filippo Lorenzin. A walk through of the exhibition with Marjan and the curator from MOCDA and Decentraland University can be seen on You Tube.

Stretching across three vast, themed rooms in MOCDAs architecturally designed virtual museum in Decentraland, the first thing I noticed about the exhibit was Lorenzins focus on one key theme that has been prevalent in almost all of Moghaddams work from the very beginning, her adamant feminism, expressed not only in exaltations of the feminine form, but also in how modern technology gives women, and all people for that matter, the ability to modify and change their forms to whatever suits their individual desires. The concept of body fluidity, which is at the heart of everything from gender performance notions of feminism to transgender studies, transhumanism, and posthumanism, is an important example of why Moghaddams work is so relevant in todays social climate, and it shows how ahead of her time she was when she first began conceptualising fluidity in the 1980s. She has literally defined this contemporary state as identity through her unmatched style of figuration and animation in 3D CG and digital art.

Marjan & Fillipo Speaking in Room 1 with PMS and her 1996 Avatar and Fractals.

The first room comprises ten pieces: one sculpture, and nine video installations, all of which are interactive. The sculpture, called Spharen Wanderer, has a matching video installation; both, from 2015, are meditations on Being in the 21st century, inspired by the Spharen (Spheres) trilogy of books by German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, a major influence on the artist. Other installations included David and Goliath (2012), one of Moghaddams most well-known recent works, a universal reflection upon oppression and resistance in Capitalism and art; Shot in Iran (2012), my personal favourite by this artist, a digital print in which Moghaddam bares her soul as she recounts the true experiences of violence she faced during the 1978-79 Iranian Revolution; and Shooting Venus (2014), an expertly crafted, multi-layered, complex series of images evoking the oppression of women in the east and west, with the video displaying derogatory phrases about women in English, Persian and Arabic.

Scab, an early landmark, and influential animation employing Motion Capture of improvised Performance and the artists signature abstracted #digitalbodies takes centre stage in this room. Seen by millions around the world as part of Siggraphs theatrical program of Computer Animation back in 2009, the animated painting explores PTSD. Also, of note is one of Moghaddams earlier works, PMS (1989), a mish-mash of arcade-game style colours, experimental noises, and imagery that, in dealing with the burden imposed upon the feminine body by society, plays with the deconstruction and the reconstructing of it in bizarre and shocking forms that nevertheless do give the viewer a sense of awe and sympathy for both the artists message and how she has chosen to express it. This piece was the only computer art project shown at the helms Degenerate Art show in the East Village of that era.

Moghaddams widely exhibited Posthumanist series from the 1990s, Adorations, which paired 3dCG bald humanoids textured with fractals, and posed in Madonna and child compositions with technological extensions of the body, is represented with Adoration of Gas Tank (2000). Another seminal 1990s piece is her 3d CG Avatar with Projected Fractals (1995) from her Chaoscape series, which was exhibited in various forms from early immersive virtual reality installations to Internet art and 3d animations as GIF sponsored by Prodigy Inc. in 1996 on DOTCOM Gallery and International Forum for the Digital Arts, the first NYC-based commercial art gallery located entirely on the Internet (this project can be seen on the DOTCOM site on the Web Archive).

Marjan Moghaddam, Glitch Goddess, Art Basel, 2018 Arthack. Courtesy of the artist.

The second room is Merged Identities featuring an installation of Marjans Feminist viral hit The #GlitchGoddess, glitches existing conventions of depicting women with a singular form by morphing from heavy, slender, pregnant, buff, to stylized and abstract. Marjan pioneered her #arthacks as a conceptual Net Art project in 2016, by hacking her #digitalbodies and critical discourse transgressively into found and shot exhibition footage online. In doing this, Moghaddam is performing a digital version of the feminist interventions of the 1960s, such as the women burning their braziers at the Miss America pageant in 1968. This is most explicit, to me, in Glitched Goddess at Milan Fashion Week with J Lo (2019), where their very presence is a rebuke to the negative standards of feminine beauty that the fashion industry promotes. In Glitched Goddesses at Frieze NY (2019), we see the same dichotomy again, this time directed at how women have been represented throughout the history of art with voiceovers from Barbara Krueger and Sister Wendy. In Dinosaurs of Art at Art Basel Miami (2019), we get a slightly different critique. Here, the goddesses themselves are epitomes of creativity, opposed against the consumer capitalist nothingness that is often major art fairs, made most notable in Miami that year by the submission of a banana as a work of art. The audio of Greta Thunberg speaking about climate change superimposed onto the video heightens the critique of how the art world, when it is only a means of capitalist exchange, helps in the destruction of the planet. In the centre of the room, however, we have another Glitched Goddess, from 2018, in red, white and black, as an animated sculpture, derived from her #GlitchGoddess of Art Basel Miami with Picasso and Wood (2018) that went viral over social media and received millions of views, set to a voiceover of women artists complaining about inequality in the art world. In this image, the viewer seems to be invited to be at peace with and proud of ones own body, to ignore the standards of the art and fashion worlds critiqued in the videos.

Marjan Moghaddam, GG Blesses J Lo 1. Courtesy of the artist.

The last room is Interventions, containing five of Moghaddams famous #arthacks as well as two of what she calls her chronometric sculptures; constructed forms that are both computer animation and sculpture (The Glitched Goddesses, who first appeared as #arthacks are also chronometric sculptures.) For the art fair hacks, the artist creates the works over a span of two to three days, and as a result the topics and themes are often raw and instantly relevant. Her Non-Binary Nude Glitch #arthack at the landmark Survey of the Nude at Gagosian Gallery (2016) is both an intervention and an art historic correction for an exhibition that omitted a digital and a non-binary nude. The Frieze London 2019 #arthack features the Glitch Goddesses resisting a body covering in the form of a shroud, in a nod to the #anticomulsaryhijab movement of Iranian feminists, against a backdrop of Barbara Kruegers My Body is a Battleground, successfully uniting western and eastern feminism as a unified resistance, set to the sounds of art historian Emily Jones explaining picture making from the 1980s. Several of Marjans Other NFTs with her #digitalbodies and signature figurative styles as NFTs derived from her #arthacks are also exhibited in this room such asLordess with Red and Teale Voxelized GAN Painting.

Marjan Moghaddam, Frieze London, 2019 Arthack. Courtesy of the artist.

The overall theme of the #arthacks is socio-political, a commentary and critique of our late-capitalist contemporary art scene. In works like Glitched Odalisque at the Whitney Museum (2017) or Glitched Odalisque at Frieze London (2019), the viewer is contrasted with the new vs the old, the organically creative contraposed to the commercial product. By making art hacks, digital artists do not need to create a Salon des Refuses to display their work, instead they can invade the biggest and priciest spaces of the art business. Elevating Internet meme culture to the level of important cultural critical discourse, the #arthacks have become a popular, widely respected new genre widely covered by the international press. The most widely known of Moghaddams #arthacks is Baiser at Mary Boone with Gan Collage Paintings which went viral in 2018 and continues to garner viral metrics even now, the version shown here is a 2021 NFT adaptation which sold into one of the biggest collections of NFT art collections on Superrare. Marjan considers Baiser as one of her best works in the unrivalled style of 3d CG figuration and animation that she has singlehandedly pioneered.

Marjan Moghaddams work is the work of an incredibly skilled technician and craftsperson working with a heightened sense of aesthetics and the mind of an existentialist philosopher. As such, understanding her work is often not easy, and requires multiple and prolonged viewings. Yet, as evidenced by all the comments that she receives on her work on social media, there is a sophisticated and global new audience for digital art that has not only found their way to her work on the Net but is additionally actively engaged with its profound discourse. The time spent on gazing at her creations, however, is time well spent, time that perhaps will leave the viewers mind a little more aware of the world and people around them. Perhaps one of the first major retrospectives of a prolific digital artists work in the metaverse, this exhibition successfully delivers a museum-grade landmark survey of important works from the last 4 decades by an important artist in this field; proving that digital art has now fully matured, and that the metaverse and its flagship museum is a valid and viable new experience for viewing art. Filippo Lorenzins impeccable curation and MOCDAs architecturally designed virtual exhibition space, add to what is indeed one of the most significant early digital art museum retrospectives of the Metaverse.

Room 3 Non Binary Nude Glitch Sculpture.

In addition to the MOCDA retrospective, the works of Marjan Moghaddam are appearing at other museum exhibitions, including Proof of Art: The History of Digital Art & NFTs at the Photo and Media Art Museum in Linz, Austria, alongside works by luminaries such as Ai Wei Wei and Nam June Paik. This exhibition now offers a companion book on Digital Art and NFTs. This December, Marjan is exhibiting in Transformations, a group exhibition of NFT Art at Unit Londons Mayfair gallery. Her works are sold on Superrare, Institut from Unit London, Boson Protocol/Zora, and Rarible. This December she is creating a White Hot Magazine Commissioned NFT cover for sale on Foundation, and #GlitchGoddess will appear at the Vancouver 2022 Winter Festival as a commissioned AR installation, large format outdoor prints, and a 30 tall soft sculpture.WM

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