With all its morbid decadence, the richly-layered Gothic imagination and cosmic horror of Bloodborne tends to overshadow some of its more (post)modern influences. Bloodborne isnt a traditionalist, after all, but a punk: or to be more precise, a cyberpunk. It may not havesinister corporations or hackers, yet this sci-fi renegade still conjures the rebellious ghost in the machine.

Most obviously, theres the overpowering presence of that looming megalopolis Yharnam as dependent on monumental, almost brutalist architecture as any good futuristic urban sprawl. The social dynamics within Yharnam echo the politics of cyberpunk, the hegemonic power of the Healing Church pitted against the social outcasts roaming the grimy streets. Dangerous social experiments and unchecked technological advancements have led to a Victorian dystopia. There are even cyberspaces, simulated, subordinate worlds in the form of the Dreams, which can be accessed and even hacked by those who are privy to secret knowledge.

Yharnham:

Ridley Scott'sBlade Runner:

And just like cyberpunk, the world of Bloodborne is held captive by the promise of transhumanism the idea that humankind will, one day, be able to transcend our fleshlylimitations and become something more. Whether it is Deus Ex or Bloodborne, the tool for this quasi-religious endeavour is cutting edge research and technology. In Deus Ex, that means body modification through nanotech or even merging consciousnesses with an omnipresent AI. In Bloodborne, its the Healing Church and Byrgenwerth researching into the old ones and their blood that drives this change: aiming to transform humans, in theory, into celestial beings that have entirely discarded their humanity. Not unlike in Blade Runner, the eye becomes an omnipresent symbol of self-directed evolution and the dangerous knowledge necessary to pursue it.

However, Bloodborneisa punk that refuses to slavishly follow in the tracks of those that came before. The differences are the most fascinating thing here. The futuristic vision of transhumanism, whether it is presented as a utopian promise or a dystopian threat, is seen as an evolutionary culmination or perhaps even singularity that severs the umbilical cord that connects us to our evolutionary history. The human is a product of natural processes, distant cousin of the apes. The posthuman the product of transhumanism is something different (strangely, it is our human arrogance that leads to this fallacy of teleological evolution.)

Blade Runner

Eye of a Blood-Drunk Hunter

Bloodbornes idea of transhumanism is recognisable, but different. Its still a morally complex idea, both pursued by individuals and institutions while also causing societal upheaval, but its vector is in the opposite direction. The path to transcendence doesnt lead the inhabitants of Yharnam away from humankinds evolutionary history, but confronts it head-on in a retrogressive journey. The first enemies our hunter encounters are beastmen, many of them recognisably human but some, like the werewolves or Vicar Amelia, almost devoid of human characteristics. Theyre hairy and canine, clearly mammalian despite their deformities. So far, this is in keeping with stories like Robert Louis Stevensons The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde or H.P. Lovecrafts tales of human degeneracy, such as Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family, in which a British nobleman burns himself alive after discovering that one of his ancestors was an ape goddess from the Congo. These stories play with our post-Darwinian revulsion at being the offspring of mere animals.

But as you progress through Bloodborne, the hunter descends deeper down the evolutionary ladder. Soon, enemies resemble snakes, insects, arachnids. Later, they become more alien still, strange variations of squids, snails, slugs (that is, molluscs) or even fungi. They have names like Celestial Emissary, or Celestial Child and are closely related to the Great Ones, some of whom, like Ebrietas or Kos, share similarities with the games mollusc-like creatures. Bloodborne displays a special fascination with mushrooms and molluscs, as well as the creatures of the ocean (especially in The Old Hunters DLC). These creatures are associated with the primordial, the early origins of life on earth, and their strange forms, both beautiful and disturbing, gives them a semblance of otherworldliness. And since they dont seem to belong to this world, perhaps they originally visited earth from unknown regions of the cosmos?

Kos

Ebrietas, Daughter of the Cosmos

Celestial Child

Nudibranch, Nembrotha Kubaryana. Photo by Nick Hobgood

Nudibranch, Nembrotha Cristata. Photo by Chriswan Sungkono.

Nudibranch, Tritoniopsis Elegans. Photo by Sean Murray.

From this anthropocentric perspective, becoming like these creatures means getting closer to the miraculous origins of life, when the earth and the cosmos had yet to be disentangled. The transhumanism of Bloodborne thus turns the usual teleological view of human evolution on its head; the forces of evolution, whether natural or self-directed, will not bring humans closer to the gods, but have instead distanced them from the celestial spring of life. To fulfil their atavistic yearning to return to the lap of the cosmos, the inhabitants of Yharnam must regress to earlier evolutionary stages. The horror and tragedy of turning into wolf-like beasts, therefore, isnt just due to a revulsion to our animal ancestors or the destruction they cause, but the knowledge that those beastmen didnt regress far enough. If only they hadnt gotten lost in this evolutionary valley, they could have emerged on the other side as transcendental beings, as kin not of the earth, but the cosmos. At least, thats one way of looking at the complex picture Bloodborne paints.

The transcended hunter as slug-like Great One in Bloodbornes true ending

The beautiful thing about this is that it doesnt just fly in the face of transhumanism as it is usually understood, but the most problematic aspects of Lovecrafts work, too. The ugly concept of degeneracy, with all its overt racism, was an integral part of Lovecrafts fictional worlds. The ancient and unambiguously evil powers of the Great Old Ones is tied to primitives and mongrels, marginalised humans seen as genetically impure and degraded. They are easily manipulated by the old gods and worship them in the hidden and remote corners of the earth.

In Bloodborne, the blame of Yharnams ruin is dramatically shifted. The hidden corners of worship arent foreign jungles or secluded villages, but the sacred spaces of a church that is the backbone and centre of a sprawling megalopolis; the mysteries of the Great Ones are still secret knowledge, but secrets of a powerful, manipulative elite (as you would expect in the conspiracy-filled worlds of cyberpunk stories). But while this elites endeavours clearly lead to a horrific dystopia, the moral issues of this regressive transhumanism stay ambiguous throughout. The degenerate beastmen are hapless, unfortunate victims rather than villains. The experiment of transcendence through reverse evolution seems doomed to fail, but it is not at all clear whether that goal is inherently misguided. After all, the Great Ones seem amoral rather than evil (not unlike the people of Yharnam), and the hunter is no stranger to the allure these celestial beings exert through their disturbing kind of beauty. Perhaps their apparent darkness stems purely from the human minds failing to comprehend their true nature? Either way, Lovecrafts ideas of degeneracy doesnt entirely fit into Bloodbornes world.

Being kin to both the Lovecraftian as well as cyberpunk, Bloodborne, too, is a kind of mongrel. But this impurity is precisely what enables it to distinguish itself and comment meaningfully on its ancestral genres. It reshapes its influences by letting disparate ideas collide and creates something fresh from the wreckage. Its not unique in its subversion of transhumanist idealism or Lovecraftian racist tropes, but the way it combines these separate issues in a seamless if ambiguous whole is entirely original.

Bloodborne is both a cyberpunk dystopia in which the end point of self-directed evolution is not a disembodied mind, but a slug or a squid, as well as a tale of cosmic horror where that dubious degeneracy stems not from shady outsiders or social outcasts, but squarely from within organised mainstream religion and science. It shares with cyberpunk an awareness and distaste for the unequal power dynamics in a world governed by the amoral ambitions of hegemonies, but, like Lovecraft, looks backwards to our distant origins rather than to the future. And soBloodborne transcends its influences, and challenges us on new planes of existence.

Excerpt from:

Bloodborne, Transhumanism and Cosmic Cyberpunk - Kotaku UK (blog)

Last week in TAC, Zoltan Istvan wrote about The Growing World of Libertarian Transhumanism linking the transhumanist movement with all of its featureslike cyborgs, human robots and designer babiesto the ideas of liberty. To say Mr. Istvan is mistaken in his assessment is an understatement. Transhumanism should be rejected by libertarians as an abomination of human evolution.

We begin with Mr. Istvans definition of transhumanism:

transhumanism is the international movement of using science and technology to radically change the human being and experience. Its primary goal is to deliver and embrace a utopian techno-optimistic worlda world that consists of biohackers, cyborgists, roboticists, life extension advocates, cryonicists, Singularitarians, and other science-devoted people.

The ultimate task, however, is nothing less than overcoming biological human death and to solve all humanitys problems. Throughout much of Mr. Istvans work on this issue, he seems to think these ideas are perfectly compatible with libertarianismself-evident evenso he doesnt care to elaborate for his befuddled readers.

While most advocates of liberty could be considered, as Matt Ridley coined it, rational optimistsmeaning that generally we are optimistic, but not dogmatic, about progressit is easy to get into a state in which everything that is produced by the market is good per se and every new technology is hailed as the next step on the path of progress. In this sense, these libertarians become what Rod Dreher has called Technological Men. For them, choice matters more than what is chosen. [The Technological Man] is not concerned with what he should desire; rather, he is preoccupied with how he can acquire or accomplish what he desires.

Transhumanists including Mr. Istvan are a case in point. In his TAC article he not only endorses such things as the defeat of death, but even robotic hearts, virtual reality sex, and telepathy via mind-reading headsets. Need more of his grand ideas? How about brain implants ectogenesis, artificial intelligence, exoskeleton suits, designer babies, gene editing tech? At no point he wonders if we should even strive for these technologies.

When he does acknowledge potential problems he has quick (and crazy) solutions at hand: For example, what would happen if people never die, while new ones are coming into the world in abundance? His solution to the fear of overpopulation: eugenics. It is here where we see how libertarian Mr. Istvan truly is. When his political philosophythe supposedly libertarian onecomes into conflict with his idea of transhumanism, he suddenly drops the former and argues in favor of state-controlled breeding (or, as he says, controlled breeding by non-profit organizations such as the WHO, which is, by the way, state financed). I cautiously endorse the idea of licensing parents, a process that would be little different than getting a drivers licence. Parents who pass a series of basic tests qualify and get the green light to get pregnant and raise children.

The most frustrating thing is how similar he sounds to communists and socialists in his arguments. In most articles you read by transhumanists, you can see the dream of human perfection. Mr. Istvan says so himself: Transhumanists want more guarantees than just death, consumerism, and offspring. Much More. They want to be better, smarter, strongerperhaps even perfect and immortal if science can make them that way.

Surely it is the goal of transhumanists that, in their world, the average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. You can just edit the genes of the embryo in the way that they are as intelligent as Aristotle, as poetic as Goethe, and as musically talented as Mozart. There are two problems, though: First, the world would become extremely boring, consisting only of perfect human beings who are masters at everything (which perhaps would make human cooperation superfluous). Second, that quote was famously uttered by the socialist Leon Trotsky.

As Ludwig von Mises wrote sarcastically, the socialist paradise will be the kingdom of perfection, populated by completely happy supermen. This has always been the mantra of socialists, starting with utopian thinkers like Charles Fourier, but also being embraced by the scientific ones like Marx, who derived his notion of history in which communism is the final stage of humanity from Hegel. Hegel himself believed in the man-godnot in the way that God became man through Jesus, but that man could become God one day. Intentionally or not, transhumanists sound dangerously similar to that. What they would actually create would be the New Soviet Man through bio-engineering and total environmental control as the highest social goal. In other words, you get inhuman ideological tyranny taken to a whole new level.

It should be noted that sometimes transhumanists recognize this themselvesbut if they do, their solutions only make things worse (much worse). Take Adam Zaretsky as example, who says that these new human beings shouldnt be perfect: Its important to make versions of transgenic human anatomy that are not based on idealism. But his solution is frightening: The idea is that you take a gene, say for pig noses, or ostrich anuses, or aardvark tongue, and you paste that into a human sperm, a human egg, a human zygote. A baby starts to form. And: We could let it flow into our anatomy, and these peoplewho yes, are humansshould be appreciated for who and what they are, after they are forced to be born in a really radically strange way. Its no surprise that Rod Dreher calls Mr. Zaretsky a sick monster, because he truly seems to be one when it comes to his transhumanist vision. He wants to create handicapped human beings on purpose.

If this were what libertarians think should happen, it would be sad (thankfully its mostly not). As Jeff Deist notes, it is important to remember that liberty is natural and organic and comports with human action. It doesnt require a new man. Transhumanists may say that the introduction of their idea is inevitable (in Istvans words, Whether people like it or not, transhumanism has arrived) but that is not true. And in this sense, it is time for libertarians to argue against the notion of extreme transhumanism. Yes, the market has brought it about and yes, the state shouldnt prohibit it (though giving your baby a pig nose could certainly be a violation of rights), but still, one shouldnt be relativist or even nihilist about such frightening developments. It would be a shame if the libertarian maxim of Everyone should be able to do whatever one wants to (as long as no one is hurt by it) becomes Everyone should do whatever one can do just because it is possible.

Finally, it comes as no surprise that transhumanists are largely, if not all, atheists (or as Mr. Istvan says: Im an atheist, therefore Im a transhumanist. This just proves what the classical liberal historian Lord Acton talked about when he said, Progress, the religion of those who have none. In the end, transhumanism is the final step to get God out of the way. It would be the continuation of what Richard Weaver wrote about in Ideas Have Consequences: Instead of seeing nature, the world and life overall as a means to get to know God, humans in the last centuries have become accustomed to seeing the world as something that is only there for humans to take and use for their own pleasures. Transhumanism would be the final step of this process: the conquest of death.

You dont have to be religious to find this abhorrent. As we have seen, it would be the end to all religion, to human cooperation overall, in all likelihood to liberty itself, and even the good-bye to humanity. It would be the starting point of the ultimate dystopia.

Kai Weiss is an International Relations student and works for the Austrian Economics Center and Hayek Institute, two libertarianthink tanks based in Vienna, Austria.

More here:

Transhumanism Is Not Libertarian, It's an Abomination - The American Conservative

"AMELIA 2.0 // TriCoast Entertainment"

Los Angeles, CA - August 8, 2017 - TriCoast Entertainment is excited to announce the VOD release of Adam Ortons newest sci-fi thriller, AMELIA 2.0 today on August 8, 2017. From executive producers MORE Productions and WeatherVane Productions, AMELIA 2.0 is the first film to tap into the genre of transhumanism.

Transhumanism (n) The belief or theory that the human race can evolve beyond its currently physical and mental limitations, especially by means of science and technology.

AMELIA 2.0 combines romance, sci-fi and futuristic suspense to illustrate societies need and constant desire for advancements within the technological world.

As Carter Summerland weeps next to his decaying wife in a hospital bed, he is approached by Wesley Enterprises, an experimental program specializing in elongating human life.

The grief in his heart collides with his devastated mind, when he allows Wesley Enterprises to take the risk of high advancements in technology, by allowing them to download his wifes consciousness into an android.

When Amelia awakes, she finds herself within an android that looks just like her human self but she doesnt feel human at all. She battles the internal question of what really makes someone human? while the city breaks out in a public debate over using this high-tech technology, and the extreme opposition and danger to such experiments.

AMELIA 2.0 turns science fiction into a controversial discussion by exploring the genre of transhumanism, or the theory that human life can be extended through advancements in technology and science. Many scientists and other professionals argue about the rights and wrongs of extending human life.

Thats the thing about science fiction it doesnt leave viewers with the thought of aliens taking over Mars or portals to different worlds, but instead, makes us question things that are unordinary, yet seemingly possible. 20 years ago, did anyone predict the self-parking cars? In 20 years, will humans be able to extend their lives through technology?

AMELIA 2.0s all-star cast includes Ed Begley Jr. (Ghostbusters, Pineapple Express), Chris Ellis (The Dark Knight Rises, Apollo 13), Debra Wilson (Avatar), Eddie Jemison (Oceans Eleven, War Dogs) and Kate Vernon (Malcolm X, The Last Song, Pretty in Pink).

Watch AMELIA 2.0 now on: AT&T, Comcast, DirecTV, DISH, FandangoNow, FlixFling, Google, InDemand, iTunes, SlingTV, Sony (Playstation), Vubiquity, Vudu, and Amazon. Stay tuned for the DVD release!

Trailer Link: https://vimeo.com/200433561

For more information, go to: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3831344/?ref_=ttfc_fc_tt

AMELIA 2.0 (2017, 89 min.) Directed by Adam Orton. Editor: Izaak Levinson-Share. Cinematographer: Camrin Petramale. Original Music: Michael A Levine. US, English. MORE Productions, WeatherVane Productions. TriCoast Entertainment.

PRODUCTION COMPANY: MORE Productions, Weather Vane Productions

About TriCoast Entertainment:

A new home for story-driven American films, TriCoast Entertainment is a full service media company that creates, produces, manages and distributes unique and unusual entertainment. Bringing together filmmakers, distributors, financiers, and technologists, TriCoast Entertainment embraces change by redefining the production and distribution model for indie filmmakers, providing them with low cost tools, financing, and worldwide theatrical and digital distribution, along with market feedback and storytelling opportunities.

Media Contact Company Name: TriCoast Entertainment Contact Person: Jenna Wilen Email: jenna@tricoast.com Phone: 3107410070 Address:11124 Washington Blvd City: Culver City State: CA Country: United States Website: http://www.tricoastworldwide.com

Link:

TRICOAST ENTERTAINMENT RELEASES FIRST ... - Digital Journal - Digital Journal

A A

Today, well be discussing how a Selena Gomez song might foreshadow humanitys triumph over biological death but first, raise your hand if you remember EDM. It was short for electronic dance music, a style once poised to eat the planet for lunch, and then eat itself for dessert.

Five summers ago, as a new league of superstar DJs were being paid astronomical amounts of money to perform at packed festivals the world over, the musics sustainability didnt appear to be at the forefront of anyones mind. In 2015, Forbes reported that the EDM bubble was about to burst. In 2016, Pitchfork made the case that it had.

But this unofficial collapse hasnt forced the star producers of EDM to unplug their laptops and register for the GRE. In fact, plenty are faring exceptionally well this summer, taking up residence on the Billboard Hot 100 after partnering up with an array of willing pop vocalists Calvin Harris with Pharrell, the Chainsmokers with Coldplay, David Guetta with Justin Bieber.

These kinds of genre-splicing collaborations arent anything new, but with EDM now in decline, theyve quietly reversed their polarity. Instead of making dance tracks that behave like pop songs, these producers now appear to be making pop songs that behave a little more like dance tracks.

In most instances, the result is just a mirror-image of the same old thing, but for a certain class of pop singers, it seems to be changing the way they apply their physicality to a geometric dance rhythm. You can hear it on the radio this summer whenever Gomez goes hopscotching across the grid of Kygos It Aint Me, or when Alessia Cara leans hard against the right-angles of Zedds Stay, or in the way Halsey seems to be gasping for air in the digital vacuum of her solo single, Now or Never. All three songs are delivered with mechanical clarity, with all three vocalists making direct lyrical references to eternity. Are they singing about transhumanism?

Not long after our species learned how to dream, we were probably dreaming of ways to exceed the limitations of our bodies. Its the stuff of religions and comic books. Now, its the work of Silicon Valley, where a growing number of transhumanists believe that mankinds next evolutionary leap will occur once we figure out how to convert consciousness into code, allowing for a digital transmigration of souls.

In his recent book, To Be a Machine, author Mark OConnell describes transhumanism as a liberation movement advocating nothing less than a total emancipation from biology itself. That emancipation means eternal life inside a supercomputer. Heaven is a hard drive.

The idea isnt so shocking if you watch Black Mirror, or if you listen to pop music. For well over a decade now, Auto-Tune software has been narrowing the musical gap between humans and machines, generating signature hooks for everyone from T-Pain to Future.

However, whether we as listeners embrace Auto-Tune as a tool or denounce it as a crutch often depends on whos singing through it. When Kanye West uses computer software to manipulate his voice, hes an artist. When Britney Spears does the same thing, shes a girl who cant sing.

That double standard helps to explain why Ellie Goulding hasnt been recognized as one of the more significant pop vocalists of our time. The British singer always had bright ideas about phrasing, but it wasnt until she loaned her voice to a few juggernaut EDM singles that her singing began to feel totally frictionless. And it had more to do with Gouldings inflection than whatever digital processing she was applying to it. By the time she released her 2015 album, Delirium, Goulding was weaving the curves of her voice through a world of clean-edged rhythms as if drawing a map to the future.

With Now or Never, Halsey has that map folded-up her back pocket. Its a slower, stronger, smarter, more spacious song than Closer, her massive EDM hit with the Chainsmokers, and it gives the 22-year-old the opportunity to do some captivating things with her breath. When shes breathing in, shes all human, taking sharp little hits of oxygen that dramatize the ballads sustained romantic ache. But when shes breathing out, shes at least half-machine, singing about pain with precision. Listen close to how she lingers on the words now, time and forever. The grain in her voice sounds like its pixelating.

Alessia Caras Stay a collaboration with the German EDM producer, Zedd addresses the gap between data and soul in the form of a simple duet, with a refrain thats delivered in two parts. First comes Cara pushing her voice especially hard into the songs rigid architecture. Then comes a gush of synthesized melodies pantomiming what the 21-year-old just sang. Its a game of call-and-response, but the call sounds big-hearted, and the response sounds no-hearted, giving the dialogue a sinister glint. Cara is singing about forestalling a separation, but she might as well be teaching the HAL 9000 how to sing Daisy.

With It Aint Me, Norwegian producer Kygo isnt playing a game so much as conducting a test one in which Selena Gomez must first coo alongside a gently-plucked guitar, and then over the relentless thuds of sub-woofing bass. As the song builds its graceless crescendo, the coffee shop turns into a rave, with the most promising 25-year-old in pop showing us how she can make her voice feel artificial in an intimate setting and expressive in an anonymous one.

See the rest here:

Pop music moves a step closer to eternal life - The Columbian

Today, well be discussing how a Selena Gomez song might foreshadow humanitys triumph over biological death but first, raise your hand if you remember EDM. It was short for electronic dance music, a style once poised to eat the planet for lunch and then eat itself for dessert. Five summers ago, as a new league of superstar DJs were being paid astronomical amounts of money to perform at packed festivals the world over, the musics sustainability didnt appear to be at the forefront of anyones mind. In 2015, Forbes reported that the EDM bubble was about to burst . In 2016, Pitchfork made the case that it had .

But this unofficial collapse hasnt forced the star producers of EDM to unplug their laptops and register for the GRE. In fact, plenty are faring exceptionally well this summer, taking up residence on the Billboard Hot 100 after partnering with an array of willing pop vocalists Calvin Harris with Pharrell Williams, the Chainsmokers with Coldplay, David Guetta with Justin Bieber. These kinds of genre-splicing collaborations arent anything new, but with EDM now in decline, theyve quietly reversed their polarity. Instead of making dance tracks that behave like pop songs, these producers appear to be making pop songs that behave a little more like dance tracks.

In most instances, the result is just a mirror-image of the same old thing, but for a certain class of pop singers, it seems to be changing the way they apply their physicality to a geometric dance rhythm. You can hear it on the radio this summer whenever Gomez goes hopscotching across the grid of Kygos It Aint Me, or when Alessia Cara leans hard against the right-angles of Zedds Stay, or in the way Halsey seems to be gasping for air in the digital vacuum of her solo single Now or Never. All three songs are delivered with mechanical clarity, with all three vocalists making direct lyrical references to eternity. Are they singing about transhumanism?

Not long after our species learned how to dream, we were probably dreaming of ways to exceed the limitations of our bodies. Its the stuff of religions and comic books. Now, its the work of Silicon Valley, where a growing number of transhumanists believe that mankinds next evolutionary leap will occur once we figure out how to convert consciousness into code, allowing for a digital transmigration of souls. In his recent book, To Be a Machine, author Mark OConnell describes transhumanism as a liberation movement advocating nothing less than a total emancipation from biology itself. That emancipation means eternal life inside a supercomputer. Heaven is a hard drive.

The idea isnt so shocking if you watch Black Mirror or if you listen to pop music. For well over a decade now, Auto-Tune software has been narrowing the musical gap between humans and machines, generating signature hooks for everyone from T-Pain to Future. However, whether we as listeners embrace Auto-Tune as a tool or denounce it as a crutch often depends on whos singing through it. When Kanye West uses computer software to manipulate his voice, hes an artist. When Britney Spears does the same thing, shes a girl who cant sing.

That double standard helps to explain why Ellie Goulding hasnt been recognized as one of the more significant pop vocalists of our time. The British singer always had bright ideas about phrasing, but it wasnt until she loaned her voice to a few juggernaut EDM singles that her singing began to feel totally frictionless. And it had more to do with Gouldings inflection than whatever digital processing she was applying to it. By the time she released her 2015 album, Delirium, Goulding was weaving the curves of her voice through a world of clean-edged rhythms as if drawing a map to the future.

[Ellie Goulding is singing from inside the pop machine]

With Now or Never, Halsey has that map folded up in her back pocket. Its a slower, stronger, smarter, more spacious song than Closer, her massive EDM hit with the Chainsmokers, and it gives the 22-year-old the opportunity to do some captivating things with her breath. When shes breathing in, shes all human, taking sharp little hits of oxygen that dramatize the ballads sustained romantic ache. But when shes breathing out, shes at least half-machine, singing about pain with precision. Listen close to how she lingers on the words now, time and forever. The grain in her voice sounds like its pixelating.

Alessia Caras Stay a collaboration with the German EDM producer Zedd addresses the gap between data and soul in the form of a simple duet, with a refrain thats delivered in two parts. First comes Cara pushing her voice especially hard into the songs rigid architecture. Then comes a gush of synthesized melodies pantomiming what the 21-year-old just sang. Its a game of call and response, but the call sounds big-hearted, and the response sounds no-hearted, giving the dialogue a sinister glint. Cara is singing about forestalling a separation, but she might as well be teaching the HAL 9000 how to sing Daisy.

With It Aint Me, Norwegian producer Kygo isnt playing a game so much as conducting a test one in which Gomez must first coo alongside a gently plucked guitar and then over the relentless thuds of sub-woofing bass. As the song builds its graceless crescendo, the coffee shop turns into a rave, with the most promising 25-year-old in pop showing us how she can make her voice feel artificial in an intimate setting and expressive in an anonymous one.

That so-real-it-sounds-fake quality in Gomezs singing is put to far better use over the uncluttered beat of Bad Liar, a hit single about an affection that cant be suppressed. The song radiates such indomitable charm, even its bad lyrics ooze weird charisma. In the first verse, Gomez asserts, just like the Battle of Troy, theres nothing subtle here. Sure. In the second verse, she purrs, If youre the art, Ill be the brush. If she says so. And does she? Are these malformed bits of poetry the result of human error, or were they written by a buggy algorithm? Its hard to know for sure, and the pleasure is in the not-knowing.

Youll want to savor that confusion until Gomez reaches the bridge and blurts out the most metaphysical romantic advance to grace the radio in years: Oh, baby, lets make reality. Amazing, amazing, amazing, amazing. The nature of her proposition depends entirely on whether shes pretending to be a machine, but either way, whos going to sayno?

Read more here:

How the death of EDM brought pop music one step closer to eternal life - Washington Post

DAILY NEWS CONTRIBUTOR

Friday, July 28, 2017, 4:30 PM

Super humans created by design will be a reality in the near future.

Imagine if we could create the perfect President Trump by simply upgrading him a little from a "Of the people, for the people" ethical point of view. Throw in an anti-collusion, Don Jr. malware system and weve already got ourselves a better America.

This is not fake news, so saddle up: It's called Transhumanism. If you're thinking, "Wow, this sounds like a new culture whose goal is to evolve humans physically and intellectually in order to create life extension through genetic engineering with eternal life at the core," then you are correct. Good job!

Tranhumanistic thinking means you believe that you can upgrade yourself with a little help from nanotech, which honestly sounds good to meI already bought the headphones! (I wouldn't frown at a little time management and decision making skills improvements. I freely admit I have a list of complaints for my brain's manufacturer. I'm ready for some upgrades.)

The MetroSpiritual: Does your DNA code prove youre part alien?

The general public believes we are a good 100 years away from this type of technology, but surprisewe are already there. They can already genetically create superior human beings.

One way, but not the only way, is by using CRISPR Cas- 9 kits. It is a fairly inexpensive, already available system for genome editing. The bare-bones for beginners explanation: It targets and modifies gene sequences and can be used for cloning and reproducing preferred traits as well as reprogramming our current DNA to seek out and destroy traits we don't like.

Transhumanism manipulates energy waves, which is what we and everything and anything at its core is made up of, the entire universe included. For example, running weak electrical currents through certain areas of the brain speeds up reaction time. It's called transcranial direct current stimulation, or TDCS, and is already used by the U.S. military to train snipers.

As a Metro-Spiritual, there's a layered but unique perspective that comes to mind. What if higher beings are already using a form of Transhumanism on millions of humans already and have been for some time?

The MetroSpiritual: Make meditation part of your daily journey

Scientists from the Human Genome project say that our DNA was not written on this planet and is a complex mathematical code. What if we have the ability to upgrade, but haven't in a while because we didn't know that we even could?

Without updating the How to be Human software, life would be more confusing and run much slower, don't you think? Perhaps many of us were born with semi- superhuman abilities by virtue of our past but still can't warp our minds around the system upgrades. Stay with me

If advanced entities and let's face it, there are smarter ones then us in this galaxy and universe have already encoded our DNA to allow for upgrades, unarguably this seems like a good anti- corruption software program.

But if available technology for human advancement is just a matter of simple software, is humanity better or worse off? There is likely a built-in level of accountability that is necessary for spiritual growth. I assume expecting anything less always needs to be updated.

The MetroSpiritual: 10 ways to stay spiritually balanced in 2017

Curiously, in the oldest of texts, extraterrestrials have had this Transhumanism thing down since forever ago. Biblical texts even talk about ancient Abraham having his first child when he was 80 years old, because humans supposedly lived for upwards of 200 years way back then. Eternal life might just be sophisticated technology which history, and now science, supports.

Erich von Dniken, who wrote Chariots of the Gods, was one of the first to talk about the ancient alien theory. His research and studies state that thousands of years ago space travelers from other planets visited Earth and taught humans about technology, and influenced their beliefs on religion.

The late Zecharia Sitchin was the first to decode the most ancient texts from the Sumerians. According to his translations, a race of extraterrestrials called the Anunnaki, which means those who are from heaven, came to Earth from a planet beyond Neptune called Nibiru. They have been here long before humans and are the ones responsible for creating the human race. Or so they say

The Greeks, Indians, Mayans, Romans the list goes on all believed in gods who visited Earth and advanced humanity. Their recorded history supports the ancient alien theory. (Are those who learned how to live forever considered gods? Lord help us!)

The MetroSpiritual: How to connect with extraterrestrials

Perhaps the Anunnaki were space travelers. Some believe their home planet was destroyed and their race was dying and so they began to interbreed with humans way, way back then ago. Some believe they created humans. Biblical texts support all this. There are cave drawings dating back more than 5,000 years of alien beings with tall bodies, big heads and big hands interacting with humans. An unnamed source says one looks just like Trump too. Fake news?

Ancient texts talk about the Lyrian Wars and today you can see actual NASA footage of modern day space wars on the internet. Perhaps times don't change that much when it comes to history repeating itself.

Let's skip thousands of years ahead and go to the 1930s to the 1980s. UFO sightings were at an all-time high. The scoop was hundreds of everyday common folk being abducted by aliens. Roswell helped top it off with a cherry.

Scientific evidence from notable cases where taken seriously by the general public and for the first time in ages, the taboo subject began to regain acceptance. Abductees usually described little grey humanoids with skinny bodies and big heads with bug-looking eyes. Sound familiar? They seemed to be most interested in the human reproductive organs.

The MetroSpiritual: Why finding your true soulmate is so hard

Biblical texts do talk about the fallen angels always mating with female humans. Even Enoch, Noah's great grandfather, talked about being abducted by higher beings, but he said that it was spectacular.

But that was then and this is now, and you don't really hear about those scary abduction stories anymore, right? It's more of an Enoch connection these days. So why?

Did they complete interbreeding their DNA with ours? Are they back with upgraded models of their creations, aka, us? Help from ETs is not a new thing, but it seems to be back on a familiar rise these days.

Maybe the little grey aliens we always here about are the result of robotic Transhumanism from eons ago, and humans will make similar versions in the future. We are well on our way, if not already there. Maybe the result of yesterdays abductions are the currently updated versions of human hybrid star-seeds, and maybe you are one of them!

Humanitys advancement might be included in our DNA. It does not mean you will be richer or smarter, it only means you can download universal information, once you figure it out. Maybe that will lead to your desires, but there is always a catch!

Many of the ETs are currently described as looking like us and not like the grey, bug-eyed beings described in the past. So is the future now? Time seems all messed up these days. It might be due to the modern day form of Transhumanism from the past that some of us are currently experiencing.

Downloading our brains into a computer and growing body parts for replacement is happening today in all sorts of forms. Google it! To live forever is in the works, but do we want everyone to live forever? What about the mean people?

Maybe higher intelligences are a step ahead of us, using ET-made natural selection via DNA. You can only upgrade if you get it and are worthy. Personally, I might have some cosmic figuring out to do.

If we could live forever how would most people even react? If you can get around to doing anything tomorrow, luxury nap facilities would certainly become popular establishments: the anti-Starbucks!

Then again, even forever would eventually become a race against time. Who will get there first? I doubt me. I'll be too busy daydreaming about where the finish line is at one of the many napping facilities I hopefully have some stock in.

Maija Polsley began having otherworldly experiences at a young age and began attending metaphysics classes with her mother at age 12. She has since been dedicated to finding the truth and has not stopped exploring. Co-producer of the ghost investigation web series "Paranormal Pursuit" and founder of TheMetroSpiritual.com, Maija is a natural-born, city-dwelling, soul-seeking, independent former teen mom and single woman who is also a dimensionally educated, spiritually empathic writer, actor, poet, standup comic, tarot card reader, Earth lover and quintessential MetroSpiritual.

For more DAILY VIEWS, The News' contributor network, click here. nydailynews.com/tags/daily-views

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The MetroSpiritual: Creating super-humans through Transhumanism is becoming a reality - New York Daily News

BBC News

Luton hate crime probe over St Thomas's church graffiti BBC News The vandal also made references to transhumanism - a movement that believes in using technology to improve intellectual, physical and psychological capacities - and wrote: "Anti-Christ" and "Hell awaits". More news from Bedfordshire. St Thomas's vicar ... and more »

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Luton hate crime probe over St Thomas's church graffiti - BBC News

"The more things change, the more they stay the same" is a common interpretation of a French quote by critic Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr. Yet, as events of the past year and a half have demonstrated, sometimes things change so much that underlying assumptions must be questioned.

Western society has always had its share of extremist, fringe activists, who are generally dismissed tolerantly or not by the mainstream culture.

British journalist and tech blogger Jamie Bartlett points out that successful radicals of the past are now heroes who changed both history and culture. For instance, in the United States: "American revolutionaries, the abolitionists, the civil rights activists, the LGBTQ rights groups."

Radicals Chasing Utopia interestingly, if unevenly, chronicles Bartletts experiences embedding himself in various radical groups.

"In streets, halls, fields, chat rooms and even parliaments, more and more people are trying to change the world. And for the last two years, Ive tried to find them."

Bartletts 2014 book The Dark Net, about underground and sketchy sub-cultures in various corners of the internet, included "transhumanism," and thats where Radicals Chasing Utopia begins.

Transhumanists "believe that technology can make us physically, intellectually, even morally better."

Bartlett accompanied other journalists and fellow travellers on Zoltan Istvans quixotic 2016 presidential campaign, in a bus "redesigned to look like a giant coffin."

Some transhumanists believe even mortality can be overcome by scientific advances and obsessively careful living.

Other chapters cover anti-immigration activists in Europe, psychedelic drug experiences, the Italian Five Star Momentum movement, and a commune in Portugal attempting to establish "a healing biotope, a template of how man could live in harmony with himself, his fellow man and his environment."

Bartletts reports on most groups achieve his stated goal of "assessing them as honestly and objectively" as possible, but retaining "a degree of scepticism."

The chapter Interlude: Prevent examines the U.K. governments difficulties attempting to "deal with the spread of radical ideas that directly seek to undermine or destroy" liberal democracy.

His chapter about taking part in direct action to protest a coal mine in Wales somewhat exposes his own bias, but the rest of the book does not come across as a polemic either for or against the radicals he observes.

That chapter, The Activists Paradox, discusses the tendency of some radicals to turn off the general public, whose participation in the machinery of change is so important to fundamental shifts in cultural or political norms.

Engaging as Bartletts coverage is, reading the book can be frustrating, partly due to the overwhelming documentation. Over 50 pages of endnotes often containing additional exposition or explanation, not just attribution compete with numerous explanatory or illustrative footnotes.

Some passages point the reader to both a footnote and an endnote. Much of that information would be less intrusive if it were included in the text, rather than interrupting it.

Bartletts observations and analyses of particular groups culminate in an especially thoughtful and challenging epilogue, discussing the dilemmas and difficulties inherent in radicals who are trying to change the world.

"Their energy, imagination and passion might save us; but those very attributes might also lead to ruin and desperation. Yet, for all this, radicals remain our best hope."

Whether one agrees or disagrees with this conclusion, Bartletts book is an enjoyable and thought-provoking addition to the conversation.

Bill Rambo teaches at The Laureate Academy in St. Norbert. He adheres to the radical idea that knowledge of Shakespeare could arrest virtually all decay of the English language.

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Fringe movements key to changing the world - Winnipeg Free Press

The Charlie Gard tragedy has renewed public advocacy for legalizing infanticide. Writing in the New York Times earlier this month, Gary Comstock recounted the tragic death of his son, Sam, who was born with a terminal genetic condition. Many years later, Comstock believes that his son should have been killed instead of being taken off of life support:

We should empathize with Comstock in his grief. But emotion must not tempt us to reject the venerable principles of human exceptionalism. Babieseven those with dire prospectsare precious human beings whose lives have intrinsic dignity and inherent moral value beyond that of any nonhuman.

Acceptance of Comstocks premisethat parents should kill babies who are likely to diewould be culturally catastrophic. It would lead to the legalization of murder. At Nuremberg, the German infanticide program was deemed a crime against humanity. Lets not abandon that wisdom.

The death of his son is not the only motive driving Comstocks advocacy. Comstock is a moral philosopher who rejects human exceptionalism and embraces animal rights and transhumanism. From his webpage:

Judging by Comstocks Times column, it seems these practical implications include legalizing infanticide. Indeed, in my decades of work around issues such as euthanasia, utilitarian bioethics, animal rights, transhumanism, and other associated agendas, I have found that the more one rejects human exceptionalism, the more likely one is to declare that immoral and (still) illegal wrongslike infanticideare virtuous.

The evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne is an even more vivid case in point. Coyne authors ablog titled Why Evolution is True, where he extrapolates evolutionary theoryinto highly questionable conclusions of morality, philosophy, and ethics. Using Comstocks pro-infanticide column as his launching pad, Coyne argues that if we can abort a fetus diagnosed with serious health issues, we should also be allowed to kill born babies with those conditions. He then makes the predictable claim that since we euthanize our sick pets, we should also be permitted to kill seriously ill and disabled babies:

Coyne then brings in anti-human exceptionalism:

Contrary to Coyne, human exceptionalism need not rely on religion to demonstrate its validity. But heres the germane point: To reject human exceptionalism is essentially to claim that we are just another animal in the forest, which leads to the logical conclusion that killing should be an allowable remedy to illness and disability. This view has already infected the Netherlands, where babies born with serious disabilities and terminal conditions are allowed by winked-at practicenot lawto be killed by doctors.

Many no longer believe that human life has ultimate, objective value simply because it is human. With human exceptionalism cast aside, our new prime directive is to eliminate suffering, and eliminating the sufferer is now advocated in high places as a moral good rather than a pernicious harm. As a result, dying and disabled babies are in mortal danger of consignment into a killable caste that canliterallybe put down like dogs.

Wesley J. Smith is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institutes Center on Human Exceptionalism and a consultant to the Patients Rights Council. His most recent book isCulture of Death: The Age of Do Harm Medicine.

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Putting Infants Down Like Dogs - First Things

I love the conceit of Poem 88s summer series Correspondences, a series of short exhibitions inspired by the Swedish scientist, theologian and philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg (16681772). But you dont have to understand the mystic thinkers ideas in order to get it. Correspondences references the notion that instances of good mitigate bad in order to restore balance.

Yes, please.

Correspondences began Saturday, June 17, with the reception for Art Vandenbergs Steles, photographs and sculptures made to celebrate and honor the natural world. Using found, simple materials, Vandenberg erected simple, temporary monuments while taking walks along the shore for this body of the work. Most of the show consists of photography in the form of 13- to 15-inch acrylic-mounted digital archival prints, though there are a few sculptures made of found boards, sticks, canvas, rope and other materials, too.

The photographs rely on the artists subtle arrangement of found objects that he encounters on walks. Shorn of its former marker, a rusty road sign post augmented by three carefully balanced stones is the subject of Stele 3 Stone (2017). The stacked rocks recall Andy Goldsworthys manipulations of nature, but Vandenbergs work seems neither derivative nor unnecessary. Its significant that Vandenberg not only uses the physical components of the environment but also human-made objects, too. Simple but effective, Steles pictures a partially darkened plank upright in the sand against a cloudless blue sky. Notwithstanding its beachy appeal, it is eerily monolithic. Kubricks quintessential monolith comes to mind, as do its many associations with technology, humanity and history.

Despite the connections of the show to Swedenborg (and by extension the often technophobic romantics and transcendentalists he inspired), Vandenbergs work takes a slightly different slant. Vandenberg studied both art and information and computer science at the advanced level, earning masters degrees from Georgia State University and Georgia Tech. Perhaps his ideology reflects his dual backgrounds. Vandenberg ascribes to transhumanism, which advocates an anti-essentialist embrace of technology. Simply put, technology is a good thing that can improve human lives. Thus, Vandenbergs choice of camera the one on his phone is perfect. Not only does it embrace new media, it has an egalitarian undertone: to me it suggests that snapping photos of a sunset or even a guilty-pleasure selfie does not really interfere with the authenticity of a moment but rather commemorates it.

Vandenbergs #Tipis are on long-term display in the adjacent Floataway Community Center, offering a further correspondence and deeper insight into his practice. Inspired by the catalog for the Met show The Plains Indians: Artists of the Earth and Sky, the symbology is intricately developed, reminiscent of ancient pictographs. The #Tipis stand for key moments for the artist. #WalkaboutTipi, for example, represents the pivotal year in Vandenbergs life when he transitioned back to art-making after a career in information technology. However, I find the #Tipis less effective than the simpler Steles photographs. Further, despite genuine respect for the artists developed system of personal iconography, I find them potentially problematic due to the appropriation of Native American culture.

The reception for Steles also included a cleansing performance by Karen Tauches and Stephen Fenton. The experimental augmentation of snippets of news broadcasts by Fenton was accompanied by bell sounds by Tauches. Ultimately, these events and exhibitions are more than pleasing sounds and pretty pictures of nature; they are optimistic calls to action.

Again yes, please.

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Review: Poem 88's Correspondences series brings us back to balance - ArtsATL

Little Atoms

Little Atoms at Wilderness Little Atoms Join Neil Denny at the Wilderness Festival as he talks to writer Mark O'Connell about his book To Be A Machine and the Transhumanism movement. Mark O'Connell is a writer based in Dublin. He is Slate's books columnist, a staff writer at The Millions ...

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Little Atoms at Wilderness - Little Atoms

German publisher and developer Daedalic Entertainment has released 15 minutes of new gameplay footage via IGN of its upcoming futuristic thriller,State of Mind,which is poised to release on PC, Mac, Linux, Switch, Xbox One, and PS4 sometime in Q4 2017.

For those that dont know:State of Mindis a futuristic thriller game that delves deep into transhumanism. According to Daedalic, the games main themes are separation, disjuncture and reunification: all set in a world that is torn between a dystopian material reality and a utopian virtual reality.

It is said in the game you will employ multiple playabable characters in two separate game worlds; however, it appears the main character of the game is Richard Nolan, a father and journalist from Berlin who discovers that he has been subject to an accident. As a result, he is still living with incomplete memories.

From there, Richard sets out on a search for salvation, aiming to reunite with his family and his lost memories. On his way though, he realizes his journey is not just about him, but the future of mankind.

Its currently unclear how muchState of Mindwill cost. Below, you can check out the new gameplay footage:

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Futuristic Thriller State of Mind Gets 15 Minutes of New Gameplay Footage - DualShockers

Will we see a woolly mammoth within our lifetimes? If PayPal founder and CEO Peter Thiel has anything to say about it, we will.

According to Ben Mezrichs upcoming book Woolly, the notoriously future-obsessed Thiel has quietly been funding an ongoing project by geneticist George Church and his team of researchers at Harvard University to bring back the woolly mammoth.

Thats right: The same Thiel whose financial support of wrestler Hulk Hogans lawsuit against Gawker Media that effectively bankrupted the company is trying to help resurface the woolly mammoth from extinction.

The Harvard researchers led by Church are using the groundbreaking gene editing technique called CRISPR to insert woolly mammoth genes into the DNA of Asian elephants. According to Mezrich, Thiel gave $100,000 to the project in 2015.

Proponents of this project say that bringing back the prehistoric animal could help turn back climate change. Part of the logic behind this argument is that large herbivores trampling permafrost could help slow the loss of this slow-to-replenish environmental resource. In the last century, permafrost loss has been a self-reinforcing feedback loop the more the climate warms, the more permafrost is lost, and the more permafrost thats lost, the faster the climate warms.

On a more conceptual level, though, bringing back the woolly mammoth would call into question the very notion of extinction. As Inverse previously reported on this project, the same techniques used to bring back the woolly mammoth could be used for other, more contemporary animals.

This isnt the first time Thiel has aimed to disrupt death. The libertarian venture capitalist has put his money behind some pretty weird projects throughout his career. Among these are bioprinted meats, transhumanism via cryopreservation, and perhaps most famously, blood transfusions to prolong life. Thats what makes this revelation perhaps not as much of one: A billionaire whos obsessed with immortality is helping to fund a project intended to turn back geological time.

With such a varied resume of funding bizarre and ambitious scientific efforts, it should come as little surprise that Thiel wants to help bring back the woolly mammoth. Also, lets be real: For a man whose net worth is $2.7 billion, a $100,000 gift to a research laboratory is not a huge sacrifice. And while there are significant technological hurdles to overcome before we see a baby woolly mammoth take its first steps using CRISPR on embryonic stem cells and growing the fetuses in an artificial womb, just to name a couple it looks like Peter Thiel is betting the woolly mammoth will be stumbling alongside us soon.

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Peter Thiel is Funding the Comeback of the Woolly Mammoth - Inverse

At the gym, The Observer understands the utopian optimization of surveillance. Each day, The Observer goes and thinks back to videos consumed on how to move the arm (locked at the elbow) to locate the muscle, and then we do our three sets of 12. Then, like the scientist with his rat, we record the data.

Though in other parts of life, The Observer freaks out a bit about the constant uploading of the self to the cloud, still we think how nice it would be to have a theoretically benevolent electronic overlord biologically monitoring all of our movements. It could track The Observer's exact flailings and calculate their burn, their productivity and their production. It would weigh this against The Observer's eating and give a clean regression of whether or not we are, or not, a fatty. Our little ombudsman. Can knowledge eradicate the sin of sloth? More importantly: Wouldn't it be nice, sometimes, to not have a body?

By uploading, The Observer can put the most basic human annoyances of the body's needs into a system. For example, The Observer keeps a log of our exercise in a phone application that is combined with a food diary. To track the food, The Observer takes photos of the bar codes of items (for example, sandwich: photo of Swiss cheese code, photo of turkey code) to create nutrient and caloric tabulations. Throughout the day, The Observer will check the caloric count, from which is subtracted calories burned by the exercise The Observer logs, to see whether we're in spitting distance of our goals. Or, The Observer will slide over to a section titled "Macros" that via pie chart lets us know if we are consuming the proper percentages. As in, is our diet 20 percent protein? All of this satisfies the part of The Observer that grew up playing video games and enjoys the setting of goals and making of lists.

Not that it's really about production. The hope is to be happy. Which is simple to say, but so inherently biological and personal that you have to figure out how your brain chemistry ticks and tocks until it hits joy. Some people really want to go all robot, go past their humanity to felicity. The Observer shares this dream only sometimes, mainly when finding the body disappointing. Or, after being grumpy all day and then running for 10 minutes and feeling calm sweep over us almost immediately.

A recent essay in the magazine n+1 talks about "transhumanism." The idea is that there will be a singularity where we, as humans, merge with technology to become "posthuman: immortal, limitless, changed beyond recognition."

Generally, The Observer is fearful of such talk, having watched the Edward Snowden documentaries and seen Facebook rants after someone reads "1984." Also, it's mostly touted by strange Silicon Valley-types like Peter Thiel (who, no joke, talks about transfusing blood from the young to live longer). The Observer has no twinkle in our eye about living to 120.

But, the essay reminds us all that these ideas about transhumanism "are a secular outgrowth of Christian eschatology." What happens after we die? Well, what if technology lets us be born again? Born better ... that's something every Bible reader can understand. If The Observer goes to the gym every day, tracks the food every day, and is persistent, can The Observer be born better, too? It's a nice thought to be able to hack happy, but probably just a thought.

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The body electric - Arkansas Times

Cutting-edge technologies and innovations are changing the way we live on our planet.

Our world is changing fast and it can get hard to keep pace with all the industrial scientific emerging technologies and high-tech breakthroughs that are surfacing every day. Here is our pick for cutting-edge technologies and innovations that could change the way we live on our planet:

This is another brainwave from Elon Musk and Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (better known as SpaceX) that hopes to improve and ultimately change the face of transportation. The design is surprisingly elegant in its simplicity. There are specifically designed pods or capsules upheld in a near vacuum that are floating on 0.05 inches of pressurized air which are then send at high speed through a steel tube. Well, it does sound a tad claustrophobic especially that this passenger capsules would travel at an average speed of approximately 600 miles per hour with potential max speeds of up to 760 miles per hour. Energy efficient and wicked fast, this innovation could change the way people get from place to place forever.

Energy efficient and wicked fast, this innovation could change the way people get from place to place forever. (Source)

More of an intellectual movement than an invention, Transhumanism is the belief that humans can still evolve. Its that final evolution linking our minds and bodies with advanced technology, a subject thats been popularized by sci-fi films and books for years and in fact, the term Transhumanism was coined by Julian Huxley, the brother of Brave New World author Aldous Huxley. The idea is to ultimately bring forth a post-human state of being. While the concept is unnerving at its best for many, for those who embrace the idea there has never been a more exciting time to be alive, even if that life may be linked to a hard drive.

Transhumanism is the belief that humans can still evolve. (Source)

This is the name given to the design of a method of advanced space propulsion technology, also known as a radio frequency or RF resonant cavity thruster. This electromagnetic thruster uses pent up electromagnetic radiation to achieve impetus and momentum without discharging propellant. The conservation of momentum implied in Newtons laws of motion says it should be impossible and therefore there are many skeptical scientists whove given it the nickname the impossible drive. However, if they do get it to work it would completely change how we could lift off, making space exploration and defense missions that much simpler.

The EM drive uses pent up electromagnetic radiation to achieve impetus and momentum without discharging propellant. (Source)

Samsung bought the company back in 2014 and the concept is basically in the name. The idea is to produce smart home using an open platform where your appliances and devices all interact with one another. Using the internet of things, the system would work on a hub connected straight into the houses internet router, connecting devices to one another via the cloud. Compatible things could consist of locks, lights, electrical outlets, motion sensors, speakers, moisture sensors, and thermostats. Like most innovations that lurk on the border of sci-fi and reality, this sounds like it could either be amazing or a hackers paradise.

Using the internet of things the system would work on a hub connected straight into the houses internet router. (Source)

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4 life-changing emerging technologies to get excited about - Born2Invest

Ever since we first took bite of the proverbial apple and were ejected from Eden, human beings have been trying to better themselves. Whether through acquiring new knowledge or attempting to revert to a more natural state, the question of how best to further human progress is always at hand. One of the latest concepts is transhumanism.

A philosophy stretching back into the last few decades of the twentieth century, transhumanism proposes that the future of humankind is to not be human at all. Proponents of transhumanism believe that by altering how humans reproduce, genetically and technologically augmenting the body, and potentially dispensing with the body altogether in favor of neurological liberation, we can take charge of our own evolution for the better. While all of that may seem a ways off, one things shines through: in the future, sex as we know it may be a thing of the past.

Human beings are well on the road to altering how we reproduce. From in-vitro to surrogacy to children born with three biological parents, we are no longer a species that requires physical sex to generate offspring. Despite removing the reproductive incentive, however, our culture is incredibly focused on sex.

Our bodies and minds clamor for this release, and our art and entertainment reflect that right back to us. While there are exceptions, sex is not usually the subject of what we consider high culture. Instead, sexual content is considered base, and so is the act itself. We condemn it, restrict it, and are shamed by it. Perhaps if we entirely remove the biological necessity of sex by doing away with the 14-day rule that limits experimenters to embryos younger than 14 days old, we will remove the stigma of sex by completely test-tubing reproduction. Will this free our higher, cognitive selves from the base physicality that binds us to our bodies and to each other?

We have invented the tools to rule our own evolution, and each is designed to liberate us from our natural bodies. Reproductive technologies and artificial wombs, medical advancements in artificial limbs, hearts, lungs, all render our natural state primitive.

Many people think artificiality enhances life. We need not look far into the annals of medical science to see that the breakthroughs in artificial limbs, reproduction, and tissue and organ replacement make life better for many people. There is a difference, however, in correcting a physical detriment and altering the physical form wholesale.

Yet I cant be the only one who gets queasy at the concept of genetic enhancement. The ethical questions abound, in terms of genetic altering for gender, skin color, height, predisposition toward a particular skill set. The argument can be made eradicating genetic illnesses is an honorable mission. But how are these illnesses defined? Is Downs Syndrome something to eradicate? What about autism? Schizophrenia? Bipolar disorder?

We are naturalists about the environment, animals, and oceans, but dismiss ourselves as beings of nature and instead think of ourselves as contaminants. Our time teaches us that everything in nature is precious except for that perennial villain, the Homo sapiens. An ancient relic of a forgotten time, the Homo sapiensthe explorer, the nomad, the homesteader, the brave, the noble, the being made in Gods imageis in danger of extinction at its own hand. We have overthought ourselves so thoroughly that we are convincing ourselves that any reality the mind can conjure, the body should imitate.

Transhumanism presupposes atheism as the only reasonable perspective. It sets us up as gods who take charge of, and direct, our own evolutionary capabilities and assumes that a more technological being is preferable to one that relies on its own body. Yet we are still unable to create life from scratch, unable to manufacture the spark of existence. Without understanding how life is made, we are attempting to remake it.

Whereas mankind previously believed we were made in the image of God, we are now meant to believe that we should make ourselves over in our own, imagined image of what humanity can be. We hold God up as an example of the good we can attain to, despite our limitations.

If we become our own gods, we will be self-hating gods, eternally dissatisfied, tweaking all nature right out of ourselves. What will we remove from our genetic make-up in pursuit of the most efficient human? Fear? Sadness? Empathy? Eroticism? It is easy to imagine the drastic measures we would take to better ourselves, only to wind up entirely disassociated from what makes life worth living.

If the Age of Reason taught us about the mind/body split, the twenty-first century is schooling us on the mind/body divorce. Divorcing the mind from the body is exactly what the transhumanists intend once the concept of neurological liberation becomes practice.

The ability of scientists to upload a consciousness to an artificial neural net is not too far off. Cut off from the body, the mind has a very limited scope. It cannot gain information through sensory input. Human beings are made up of experiences as relayed to the brain through the senses. What is a brain without sensory input, and what is a being that cannot feel, smell, taste, hear, see?

This final state, a mind without a body, eliminates sex entirely. While the mind may be the ultimate erogenous zone, it needs the body to achieve release. The brain is not just a meat computer, it is a physical entity that performs physical functions within itself. Transhumanists ask us to imagine ourselves as minds without bodies, as though that is somehow a higher state of being that our natural ones. But it isnt.

Instead of looking at sex as something beneath us, we should consider it as one of the most beautiful expressions of our humanity. Sex can bring about an emotional and physical connection, and in long-term relationships sex takes on a more profound meaning.

It can be a way to communicate and tend to the needs of a lover in ways that words, commiserations, and even a hug cant get close to. The transhumanists would have us transcend the body, but the tools of transcendence are within us.

The idea of altering the human being into something that is both human and trans, or beyond the existing concept of humanity, assumes that we fundamentally know what it means to be human. It also presupposes that it is reasonable to accelerate cognitive development at the cost of our physical selves. We must consider, and value, what we would leave behind. The body is not a dead weight that our minds lug around. The body does more than hold our consciousness, it drives it.

Sex, and the pleasure drive, is a gift. It is a gift to be able to extend our own boundaries to include another person. Sex gives us the ability to feel ephemeral and grounded all at once and to feel thoroughly connected to another human being. That is not something to give away.

Sex has been the raison detre of humanity since our beginning. No matter what we may think we will get in return, for the continuance of our life or the collective consciousness of our fellow humans, sex is not something to relinquish to technological advancement.

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Transhumanism Is Just Fancy Sex-Shaming And Self-Loathing - The Federalist

What idea, if embraced, would pose the greatest threat to the welfare of humanity? This was the question posed by the editors of Foreign Policy in the September/October issue to eight prominent policy intellectuals, among them Francis Fukuyama, professor of international political economy at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and member of the Presidents Council on Bioethics.

And Fukuyamas answer? Transhumanism, a strange liberation movement whose crusaders aim much higher than civil rights campaigners, feminists, or gay-rights advocates. This movement, he says, wants nothing less than to liberate the human race from its biological constraints.

More precisely, transhumanists advocate increased funding for research to radically extend healthy lifespan and favor the development of medical and technological means to improve memory, concentration, and other human capacities. Transhumanists propose that everybody should have the option to use such means to enhance various dimensions of their cognitive, emotional, and physical well-being. Not only is this a natural extension of the traditional aims of medicine and technology, but it is also a great humanitarian opportunity to genuinely improve the human condition.

According to transhumanists, however, the choice whether to avail oneself of such enhancement options should generally reside with the individual. Transhumanists are concerned that the prestige of the Presidents Council on Bioethics is being used to push a limiting bioconservative agenda that is directly hostile to the goal of allowing people to improve their lives by enhancing their biological capacities.

So why does Fukuyama nominate this transhumanist ideal, of working towards making enhancement options universally available, as the most dangerous idea in the world? His animus against the transhumanist position is so strong that he even wishes for the death of his adversaries: transhumanists, he writes, are just about the last group that Id like to see live forever. Why exactly is it so disturbing for Fukuyama to contemplate the suggestion that people might use technology to become smarter, or to live longer and healthier lives?

Fierce resistance has often accompanied technological or medical breakthroughs that force us to reconsider some aspects of our worldview. Just as anesthesia, antibiotics, and global communication networks transformed our sense of the human condition in fundamental ways, so too we can anticipate that our capacities, hopes, and problems will change if the more speculative technologies that transhumanists discuss come to fruition. But apart from vague feelings of disquiet, which we may all share to varying degrees, what specific argument does Fukuyama advance that would justify foregoing the many benefits of allowing people to improve their basic capacities?

Fukuyamas objection is that the defense of equal legal and political rights is incompatible with embracing human enhancement: Underlying this idea of the equality of rights is the belief that we all possess a human essence that dwarfs manifest differences in skin color, beauty, and even intelligence. This essence, and the view that individuals therefore have inherent value, is at the heart of political liberalism. But modifying that essence is the core of the transhumanist project.

His argument thus depends on three assumptions: (1) there is a unique human essence; (2) only those individuals who have this mysterious essence can have intrinsic value and deserve equal rights; and (3) the enhancements that transhumanists advocate would eliminate this essence. From this, he infers that the transhumanist project would destroy the basis of equal rights.

The concept of such a human essence is, of course, deeply problematic. Evolutionary biologists note that the human gene pool is in constant flux and talk of our genes as giving rise to an extended phenotype that includes not only our bodies but also our artifacts and institutions. Ethologists have over the past couple of decades revealed just how similar we are to our great primate relatives. A thick concept of human essence has arguably become an anachronism. But we can set these difficulties aside and focus on the other two premises of Fukuyamas argument.

The claim that only individuals who possess the human essence could have intrinsic value is mistaken. Only the most callous would deny that the welfare of some non-human animals matters at least to some degree. If a visitor from outer space arrived on our doorstep, and she had consciousness and moral agency just like we humans do, surely we would not deny her moral status or intrinsic value just because she lacked some undefined human essence. Similarly, if some persons were to modify their own biology in a way that alters whatever Fukuyama judges to be their essence, would we really want to deprive them of their moral standing and legal rights? Excluding people from the moral circle merely because they have a different essence from the rest of us is akin to excluding people on basis of their gender or the color of their skin.

Moral progress in the last two millennia has consisted largely in our gradually learning to overcome our tendency to make moral discriminations on such fundamentally irrelevant grounds. We should bear this hard-earned lesson in mind when we approach the prospect of technologically modified people. Liberal democracies speak to human equality not in the literal sense that all humans are equal in their various capacities, but that they are equal under the law. There is no reason why humans with altered or augmented capacities should not likewise be equal under the law, nor is there any ground for assuming that the existence of such people must undermine centuries of legal, political, and moral refinement.

The only defensible way of basing moral status on human essence is by giving essence a very broad definition; say as possessing the capacity for moral agency. But if we use such an interpretation, then Fukuyamas third premise fails. The enhancements that transhumanists advocate longer healthy lifespan, better memory, more control over emotions, etc. would not deprive people of the capacity for moral agency. If anything, these enhancements would safeguard and expand the reach of moral agency.

Fukuyamas argument against transhumanism is therefore flawed. Nevertheless, he is right to draw attention to the social and political implications of the increasing use of technology to transform human capacities. We will indeed need to worry about the possibility of stigmatization and discrimination, either against or on behalf of technologically enhanced individuals. Social justice is also at stake and we need to ensure that enhancement options are made available as widely and as affordably as possible. This is a primary reason why transhumanist movements have emerged. On a grassroots level, transhumanists are already working to promote the ideas of morphological, cognitive, and procreative freedoms with wide access to enhancement options. Despite the occasional rhetorical overreaches by some of its supporters, transhumanism has a positive and inclusive vision for how we can ethically embrace new technological possibilities to lead lives that are better than well.

The only real danger posed by transhumanism, it seems, is that people on both the left and the right may find it much more attractive than the reactionary bioconservatism proffered by Fukuyama and some of the other members of the Presidents Council.

[For a more developed response, see In Defense of Posthuman Dignity, Bioethics, 2005, Vol. 19, No. 3, pp. 202-214.]

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Transhumanism: The World's Most Dangerous Idea?

Amongst the criticisms often directed at transhumanist ideas, one of the most common is the prediction that access to the technologies on which it depends will mostly be limited to a small affluent minority. This veritable apartheid by technology would create a divide into the commonality of the human race, and produce two or more human classes moving at different speeds, which would be the source of inequality and new forms of exploitation.

Originally published in French on Technoprog

The proponents of a democratic transhumanism, or technoprogressivism who claim that access to the largest number of NBIC technologies is possible, are in turn accused at best of wishful thinking [1], naivet [ 2] or, at worst, literal collusion with the interests of the ruling oligarchies. [3] Actually, they would tend to be a straw man, or a sort of Trojan horse, whose objective is to convince restive populations to changes intimately felt as an attempt at collective manipulation.

And, I consider the latter risk real. I would like to strongly draw the attention of those of my friends who recognize in technoprogressivism the necessity of being guided by a principle of reality. One common characteristic of nearly all of the transhumanists I know is an unbridled enthusiasm for technology. This is a source of dynamisme, often of creativity, of fulfillment, and dare I say, sometimes of happiness. But it mustn't be forgotten that, for the forces involved - the masses around the planet; social and cultural groups; to ruling oligarchies, an eventual transhumanist evolution of humanity is a key issue. Each of these actors is going to do everything in their power to affect the outcome.

Changing things so everything stays the same!

In 2006, Jacques Attali published a prospective essay: A brief history of the future. Written within a wide historical context, it leads us through a perspective of an evolution in two phases. To start, he posits a paroxysmal collapse of the current system ( "hyper-empire"), after dissolution of States; then a global democratic renaissance. During this evolution, one of the emerging trends in society would be transhumanism.

Reflecting on the possible sources of hope, he offers a silver lining. Being outside the mainstream today, he could prepare a conceptual alternative for tomorrow. Yet barely a year later, he chaired a commission convened by N. Sarkozy, whose work advocated a strengthening of the current system: 300 ideas to change France? Is it some Attalie mysteries or a Marxist sense of history: is it necessary to reach the absurd endpoint of a given economic system before the conditions are met for the emergence of another system?

History teaches us that a longstanding and effective system of power (slavery, monarchy (especially absolute), the capitalist oligarchy, ...) has virtually no ability to transcend itself. At best (at worst), it seeks to mutate to adapt to new circumstances, to survive for its own sake. "Changing things so everything stays the same," said Giuseppe di Lampedusa, via the hero of The Leopard, an old aristocrat witnessing the collapse of the old regime. And the aristocracy married the triumphant bourgeoisie.

Another generation, another technocrat. I am an admirer of the work done for years by Jean-Paul Baquiast (Intelligent Machines; Philosciences; and many other written works [4]). I owe him a thinking, among other things, from his thesis on anthropotechnic" companies, and according to which, collectively, we are still essentially blind and irresponsible about the decisions we make. In other words, there is no captain at the helm of the ship of humanity, while icebergs abound on the horizon.

Continuing the metaphor: It's not that the ship has no direction. Looking out from the bridge, it seems that there has been, especially in the last three centuries, a definite trajectory, thanks to technological progress and the Enlightenment .... Is that due to a great and ceaseless accumulation or concentration of wealth and power? Or is it due to an ever increasing and more important liberation of human beings, as much in a philosophical sense as a biological one? Whatever the case, no one single driver has chosen consciously. To be sure, I do not believe in conspiracy theories of how those in power want again to shift things in their favor. The situation is actually, in a sense, more agonizing than if the leaders really were manning the helm, because in this vessel of humanity, where different crews of sailors haul the lines to and fro, the risk of shipwreck is considerable.

However, no one wants to smash into the rocks.

This huge risk alone justifies a change in approach to a more planned one, to the greatest degree possible. If it is not possible to restrain how everyone, and each and every cultural or social group, utilizes technological advances, it is perhaps conceivable to instead channel their intent.

But once again, the Reality Principle obliges, lets not forget, faced with the ideas of technoprogressivism - that of a democratic transhumanism, for all, chosen, progressive, measured, respectful of humanity in transition, respectful of the necessary ecological and social balance, etc. stands the logic of the systems of power currently in place.

But it is obvious that this system promotes a transhumanism in his image, from the origins of this movement, to serve his purposes. And the system in question puts all his weight, colossal, to develop transhumanism that suits him.

This is perhaps something which Jacques Attali did not expect to see coming so soon. That transhumanism would immediately be used by the Empire. That it would be so quickly taken out of the fringe to be cast as a new source of power or a new method of control. We see as soon as today how its first achievements are reflected in new mainstream consumption, new weapons, or new means of surveillance. [5]

In fact, every major technological development carries essentially two possibilities: acquisition by the largest number or acquisition by the elite. And at the root of the extremely complex social, ethical, psychological causes, etc., that determine this outcome is the tension between the need for solidarity in a social species, and the desire for selfish gain - a contradiction that runs through all of us. For almost the entire history of humanity, this tension has played out mainly around material advantages: from food, to warmth, to security. These material advantages then became associated with social symbols which themselves have become issues of contention: titles of nobility, celebrity, ...

Today, a growing part of the world population makes choices primarily on the basis of symbols and perceptions, to obtain material, moral, social, psychological prestige .... while actual access to material goods gradually becomes of secondary concern, because basic goods are accessible to many. Because of global technological progress, the last two centuries have been marked by increasingly broad access to basic goods and a subsequent decrease in differences in this regard[6] and, contrary to common perception, by a decrease in the use of violence. [7]

But unfortunately, this relative abundance has not, or hardly, diminished the desire or the need for dominance. [8] The desire to "maintain the upper hand" persists, even while in 2014, countries in the Northern hemisphere, and the majority of Southern hemisphere nations, have at least a smaller proportion of their populations who are still forced to live in deep poverty.

In this way, a necessary and inevitable outburst is coming, one leading to a reconstruction which replicates in general terms the same structural inequalities of the past. That is in any case what is predicted by a good number of those people who venture to look through the crystal ball at our uncertain future [note: ultimately, is alarmism not a comforting refuge?].

Pessimistic question: Is there really anything we can do?

Technoprogressive transhumanist perspectives?

So, what will be left in the fringes to come up with genuine alternatives?

Some old fashioned ways to go, undoubtedly, but thats just the beginning. Free distribution of knowledge on a mass scale, open sharing and non-commercial in general. Peer to peer support, solidarity. Hacking, in the form of an unexpected and subversive diversion of the machine of consumerism. Revolt 2.0 also, which can mobilize a huge number of people around definitive or symbolic actions within days using the speed of digital networks, catching political or media elites off-guard and leaving them dumbfounded. The reappropriation of the means of production? Who knows...

Many people today dream of the complete reshuffling of the cards enabled by the widespread adoption of 3D printing. What economic and social consequences will the dissemination of this technology have? In a classic Marxist analysis, control of the means of production is a key factor in the social order. Will this translate into a genuine democratization, or will the dominant system succeed again in seizing global control, by putting its hand on the key levers: raw materials, and especially algorithm design?

From the perspective of social mobilization, widespread automation is both a source of concern and a source of hope. Designed by the global oligarchy, it can - through the organization of unemployment, economic dependence, combined with the dictatorship of entertainment - lead our societies to a further decline of real freedoms. But via the freeing up of a large amount of time, it can conversely allow the flourishing of creativity, and a diversification of our experiences. Devoted transhumanists would waste no time in taking the opportunity to explore all avenues of techno-biological evolution.

In fact, if history is any guide, we can imagine that these various trends will play out at the same time.

Finally, I will mention one last source of individual and social transformation which is much less discussed - probably because it is still primarily scientific and philosophical speculation - that of moral enhancement. A possible "moral enhancement" by technology will be possible only after considerable progress in our understanding of brain function. We can already foretell some of the ethical issues that the technology will pose regarding freedom of conscience. As with any technology, we can easily imagine that it will involve the same issues of power relations. In a neoliberal and capitalist context for example, I think the pursuit of maximum profit will surely be a motivator to discover the most effective methods of controlling individual behavior. Moral enhancement, taken as an ideal endpoint of advertising logic, could result in veritable mind control. This logic would probably find favor with government policy makers in light of their concern for order and security. A bit of dystopian imagining takes us quickly to conjure scenarios from Orwells 1984.

However, it is possible to use such technology positively, such that it is useful to everyone, liberating, and truly progressive. One could say that it is precisely because of our still primitive moral evolution that we continue to perpetuate predatory behavior that causes so much ill. At our core, we are probably all more or less predisposed toward dominating behaviors, and eventually aggressiveness, hence an intrinsic inability to show real empathy for what goes beyond the narrow circle of our "clan" [8], which is perhaps a result of our Darwinian adaptation to survival in the pre-Neolithic world. A wisely managed dampening of biological factors that play an important role in the development of our most negative attitudes might get us out of this seemingly endless cycle: endless accumulation of power, harsh challenging, perpetual recreation.

One member of Technologos, an organization that is usually very critical of what they consider to be a headlong technological rush, recently pointed out to me that in his view transhumanists have not taken into account the considerable ideological role they have taken on and which they will still have to play.

The challenge seems to me enormous. A priori, the poorest and the weakest may sense that they have little hope of escaping the clash having come away with something. The power of the multinational billionaires of NBIC, allied with that of governments may seem unstoppable. Yet I hardly see another alternative. We must continue this fight if we want the essence of our humanity to be preserved through the transhumanist evolution to come.

Instead of remaining prisoners of an insurmountable reality principle, we must start to build right now another reality.

Marc Roux

For AFT:Technoprog

(Thanks to Didier Coeurnelle and Cyril Gazengel, among others, for their collaboration)

[1] Jean-Didier Vincent, Bienvenue en transhumanie [Welcome to transhumanism], 2011

[2] Jean-Michel Besnier, in the context of a debate on Newsring: Faut-il condamner le transhumanisme ? [Should transhumanism be denounced?]

[3] Notably, this is the position of the association Pice et Main dOeuvre.

[4] Jean-Paul Baquiast, Pour un principe matrialiste fort [Toward a robust materialist principle], Ed. JP.Bayol.

[5] Despite the international scandal provoked by the revelations of E. Snowden, the Obama administration is considering only a minor reform of the NSA

[6] Rapport du PNUD sur le dveloppement humain 2011 [UNDP Human Development Report]

[7] Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature, 2011

[8] The need for dominance was notably theorised by Henri Laborit who said: Tant quon naura pas diffus trs largement travers les hommes de cette plante la faon dont fonctionne leur cerveau, la faon dont ils lutilisent et tant que lon naura pas dit que jusquici que cela a toujours t pour dominer lautre, il y a peu de chance quil y ait quoi que ce soit qui change. [Until we have widely disseminated to the men of this planet the workings of their brains, the manner in which they use them and as long as we havent said that until now it has always been to dominate others, there is little chance that anything will change.]

[8] Ingmar Persson And Julian Savulescu, Unfit for the Future: The Need for Moral Enhancement, 2012

See the article here:

The Reality Principle - Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies

Theological Reflections on Technology and Human Enhancement

Technology has changed our world dramatically over the past century and promises to change it more rapidly in coming years. Emerging computer and biomedical technologies have the potential to revolutionize our bodies and perhaps our understanding of human nature. Transhumanism is the name for the movement that enthusiastically embraces the opportunity to transcend bodily limits with new technology, especially the possibility of extending the human lifespan and increasing mental and physical abilities. Its most optimistic advocates predict a future where death has been defeated through the power to reverse biological processes or offload mental states onto computers. What should be the response of the church to Transhumanism and the technological possibilities for human enhancement that are on the horizon?

In September 2015, the Samford Center for Science and Religion held a conference on Transhumanism and the Church as a way to promote critical reflection and public understanding on an issue that will become increasingly important in future decades. The keynote lectures for the conference can be found in the video player and playlist at the top of this page.

Pittsburgh Theological Seminary Editor of Transhumanism and Transcendence: Christian Hope in an Age of Technological Enhancement

The College of New Jersey Author of Cyborg Selves: A Theological Anthropology of the Posthuman

Arizona State University Author of Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodiesand What It Means to be Human

Samford University Author of Dimensions of Faith: Understanding Faith Through the Lens of Science and Religion (forthcoming)

Oxford University Author of Eschatology and the Technological Future

St. Louis University Co-Author of Chasing After Virtue: Neuroscience, Economics, and the Biopolitics of Morality (forthcoming)

Emory University Author of Biblical Theology: Problems and Prospects

Wheaton College

Author of Prophets of the Posthuman: American Literature, Biotechnology, and the Ethics of Personhood

Read more from the original source:

Transhumanism Conference at Samford University

Book explores the tech subculture waging war on death

In a world where the growth of technology is exponential, the span of time between science fiction and science fact becomes increasingly shorter. Things that seem like the height of speculative fantasy become commonplace in just a generation or two.

That rapid expansion of scientific capability has led to the development of a subculture devoted to accelerating human evolution and ultimately conquering death itself - through technological means. These people, with varied ideas and attitudes regarding what that acceleration means, are loosely grouped under the umbrella term transhumanism.

Journalist Mark OConnell spent some time with assorted members of this movement; the result is his new book To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death (Doubleday, $26.95). Through encounters with people that run the gamut from Silicon Valley billionaires to basement-dwelling hackers OConnell discovers the wide array of motivations that drive this unique (and often strange) group.

Much of the book revolves around the notion of the Singularity. The term - coined by mathematician and physicist John von Neumann in the 1950s and popularized in recent years by the futurist Ray Kurzweil represents the hypothesis that the development of artificial intelligence springing from scientific acceleration will trigger a technological explosion far beyond anything that we can currently comprehend.

Those who believe in the inevitability of the Singularity can go to drastic (and drastically different) lengths to prepare for it. But all share some variation on a particular belief that the human body is a machine, one which technology will someday allow us to move beyond. And almost all of them truly believe that their path can lead them in escaping death itself.

Theres the Alcor cryonics facility in Arizona, for instance. Alcor perhaps best known as the final resting place of baseball legend Ted Williams believes that they are capable of freezing a person in a state between life and death, preserving them until such time as science has determined a way to bring them back. OConnell also speaks to people who have devoted their lifes work to the notion of mapping the human brain to such a detailed extent as to be able to digitally replicate a persons consciousness.

OConnell meets with people devoted to preparing for the worst-case-scenario of artificial intelligence, believing AI to be a potentially existential threat to humanity, and young self-styled biohackers whose rough-and-ready work is based around turning themselves into literal cyborgs.

To each of these encounters, OConnell brings a keen and empathetic journalistic eye that conflicts nicely with his personal distaste for the concepts being presented. Thats not to say that hes judging these people. Hes not. Quite the opposite his interest, engagement and even admiration for their passion comes through.

Essentially, he allows his own feelings about what it means to be human to help balance the singular zeal presented by the people he dubs (not without affection) Singularitarians. That balance turns something that could have been fairly dry into a compelling narrative, one populated with outsized characters who are brilliant, eccentric or most often both.

To Be a Machine is flat-out fascinating. OConnells journey is a laymans adventure through the technological looking glass, an opportunity to meet with a subculture existing on the fringes of the tech scene and a compelling peek at one possible future. Sharply-written and thought-provoking, To Be a Machine is a book that will undoubtedly set your mind to racing and your gears to turning.

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Touring transhumanism 'To Be a Machine' - Maine Edge