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December 26, 2013 Transhumanism will change everything

This is spooky stuff, but its real and its alreadyhappening. Humans are augmenting themselves with computers and technology that will expand their abilities, and its going to get more advanced and morally complex as timepasses. Imagine transplanting your entire consciousness into a computer. Thats a new type of immortality. Imagine having a robotic exoskeleton thats not just part of your body itisyour body. Thats a new type of existenceentirely. An excellent documentary called Bionics, Transhumanism, And The End Of Evolution takes a look at the endless wonder and potential of what happens when blood-and-meat humanity meets steel-and-silicon technology. (San Francisco Gate)

Silicon Valley keeps spawning micro-storytelling genres from six-second Vines to 140-character tweets that are each more popular than the next. But that hardly means those mini-formats can properly capture the controversies, personalities, ramifications and dangers of the tech worlds many characters and their creations. For that, we can turn to another invention that compiles tens of thousands of discreet pieces of data into a kind of Facebook for words: books. (Huffington Post)

AI & Society(Volume 28, No. 4, December 2013) is now available online by subscription only.

Articles include:

Futurists have long speculated that nanotechnology the engineering of materials and devices at the molecular scale will revolutionize virtually every field it touches, medicine being no exception. Heres what to expect when you have fleets of molecule-sized robots coursing through your veins. (Io9)

On the eve of Doctor Whos 50th anniversary, a bioethics researcher at the University of Leicester claims that one of the Doctors most fearsome villains the Cybermen represent public concerns about the greater use of technology in medicine. In their article The Cybermen as Human, Dr Chris Willmott from the Universitys Department of Biochemistry and his former Research Assistant, Bonnie Green, reflect on ways in which the Doctors metal-clad foe can offer insight into human enhancement and the development of the posthuman. (Phys.org)

Heres controversial Cybernetics Professor, Kevin Warwick, on the future of worker productivity. His chilling warning: If we dont wake up, countries like China will soon be producing cyber-enhanced super-employeesworkers who far outclass even the most capable employee here at home. Will tomorrows resume need to include your version number? (Forbes)

Humanity today faces incredible threats and opportunities: climate change, nuclear weapons, biotechnology, nanotechnology, and much, much more. But some people argue that these things are all trumped by one: artificial intelligence (AI). To date, this argument has been confined mainly to science fiction and a small circle of scholars and enthusiasts. Enter documentarian James Barrat, whose new book, Our Final Invention, states the case for (and against) AI in clear, plain language. (Huffington Post)

The Journal of Medical Ethics(Volume 39, No. 11, November 2013) is now available online by subscription only.

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bioethics.com » Transhumanism