Month: December 2010

For a moment it is difficult to identify the image on the cover of Envisioning Real Utopias. A pause, then realisation: it’s a mountaintop, emerging from thick cloud, below a pale sky. But everything is upside down. Like the idea of real utopias, the image is a paradox, impossible and possible at the same time….

Make it to the year 2045 and you can live forever, the controversial futurist claims. So how’s his personal quest for immortality going? New Scientist FOR Ray Kurzweil, it’s all about patterns. The IT guru and futurist became famous across the US while still in high school by developing a computer program that extracted the…

AlterNet : How America Turned into a Nation of Speedfreaks By Mick Farren, Feral House Posted on December 26, 2010, Printed on December 28, 2010 The following is an excerpt from Mick Farren’s new book, Speed-Speed-Speedfreak: A Fast History of Amphetamine (Feral House, 2010) In the fullness of history, all the different varieties of speed…

Ray predicted stuff, and is doing so at an exponentially more cautious rate. Ray is the spiritual heart of ‘technological expectationism‘; i.e. Ray exemplifies the most optimistic and far reaching expectations about the future. Even the future where we all may live to experience it. That degree of being permitted to anticipate radical change is…

Waves to George A few weeks ago at the Center for Inquiry’s Transforming Humanity Conference, bioethicist Patrick Hopkins warned about the potential for cosmetic enhancements to take precedence over more meaningful morphological and cognitive modifications. Referring to this kind of human form as the “barbie body,” Hopkins dismissed cosmetic enhancements as being merely surface level…

Fifty years to the day from the discovery of the structure of DNA, one of its co-discoverers has caused a storm by suggesting that stupidity is a genetic disease that should be cured. On 28 February 1953 biologists James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the structure of DNA – the chemical code for all life….

Source In this chapter from his new e-book, journalist Carl Zimmer tries to reconcile the visions of techno-immortalists with the exigencies imposed by real-world biology By Carl Zimmer, Wednesday, December 22, 2010 Editor’s Note: Carl Zimmer, author of this month’s article, “100 Trillion Connections,” has just brought out a much-acclaimed e-book, Brain Cuttings: 15 Journeys…

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You seem have no idea what I just wrote and you replied to a ghost article you thought I wrote. You may not have understood my article. Look at an earlier, highly sarcastic, post of mine.. In this post I argue that the world “can’t afford old people anymore”. You might agree that in fact…

By Stephen Dufrechou, News Junkie Post Posted on December 19, 2010, Printed on December 21, 2010 http://www.alternet.org/story/149262/ A recent cognitive study, as reported by the Boston Globe, concluded that: Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at…

Extropia DaSilva: Welcome, mortals, to Thinkers! Anna Tretiak: hi Rhiannon Extropia DaSilva: Today, the topic is the oddly titled…WE LOVE DEATH? Extropia DaSilva: Welcome, mortals, to Thinkers! Anna Tretiak: hi Rhiannon Extropia DaSilva: Today, the topic is the oddly titled…WE LOVE DEATH? Gwyneth Llewelyn: snickers Lem Skall: since when do you consider all of us…

“Voting doesn’t change anything — the politicians always win.” ‘Twas not always so, but I’m hearing variations on that theme a lot these days, and not just in the UK. Why do we feel so politically powerless? Why is the world so obviously going to hell in a handbasket? Why can’t anyone fix it? Here’s…

Does the future seem exciting to you? With new technologies, new hopes for human potential, and potentially even new kinds of humans? Or does the future seem challenging? With widening gaps between rich and poor? Species loss and climate change? Authoritarian governments who might prevent the use of enhancement and other technologies? If you’re like…

Written By: Rachel Haywire & Jason Schoenecker Date Published: December 9, 2010 We are a new species. We are not superior. We are a different step in the evolution of thought. Our Human ancestors relied on collectivism and a conscious submission to conformity as was necessary for survival. Culturally and pragmatically they were each other….

I changed the title, but this article is a quote from the guy who wrote Saturn’s Children and Accelerando. It seems to me that one of our besetting problems these days is that there’s a shortage of utopias on offer. Utopia — a fictional country with a perfect socio-political and legal system — is, of…

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Hypothetically speaking – If I’d have an evolved genetic behavior that 1 – used to be a functional adaptation in the Pleistocene world, 2 – is now an atavism 3 – I share this adaptation with many people 4 – These people are routinely discriminated because of having this adaptation Then I think those who…

by PAUL GILSTER on DECEMBER 8, 2010 Various accounts of what happened to Japan’s Akatsuki Venus orbiter continue to come in, but it seems clear that the craft failed to achieve orbit. Sky & Telescope has been keeping a close eye on things and reports that errant thruster firings evidently caused an unexpected rotation that…

I know James, I am predictable The demise of the United States as the global superpower could come far more quickly than anyone imagines. December 5, 2010 – A soft landing for America 40 years from now? Don’t bet on it. The demise of the United States as the global superpower could come far more…

*smiles* A few years ago I saw ‘Things To Come’, HG Wells’ 1930s science fiction epic. The story made a bold prediction: That by 2036 humankind’s scientific knowledge and technological capability would be so advanced, we would attempt to orbit the Moon. From our post-Apollo perspective, this vision comes across as laughably conservative. But even…

The United States, which is currently engaged in a complete war against some weird guy with a website, is going to host “World Press Freedom Day,” the Department of State announced today. They’re all especially excited about protecting the flow of digital news, which is why Washington is “concerned about the determination of some governments…

Last week, I heard a girl on the radio, who was talking about how she would have no problem doing a threesome with another girl, if her boyfriend desired it. The girl’s carefree attitude, revealing to hundreds of thousands of strangers that she was open to a bisexual experience reminded me of a certain 2005…

Why We Are All Transgender “Blessed are you when men shall revile you and persecute you and say all manner of evil against you for my name’s sake, for great is your reward in heaven.” Every human being has an essential erotic nature that we commonly identify as “transgender”. This is a completely natural state…

PREMISE Twensty years. The next twenty years may see several of a list of disruptive technologies emerge. In the next series of Red versus Blue events we’ll be doing these things and asking these questions – what are these “disruptive technologies?” what means ‘disruptive’ ? Should society prepare ? what kind of ways exist to…