Category Archives: Posthuman

A transhumanist has spent the last 14 years implanting over 50 chips, antennae, and magnets into their body to become a cyborg.

Lepht Anonym has carried out these operations with no anesthetic and no guarantee of safety.

"I'd like to say I did it because I follow a grand tradition of self-experimenters in science, or that it was because practical transhumanism is more than a philosophy to me (it's my life), but at least partly, I did it for kicks. I just wanted more senses; still do," Anonym wrote in their blog, Sapiens Anonymous.

"Lepht Anonym is a faceless, genderless British biohacker. It lacks both gods and money, and likes people, science, and practical transhumanism," they also wrote.

Some will label them a cyborg, but to transhumanists, they're "posthuman."

For now, Anonym prefers another term a "grinder," meaning a hybrid of both human and machine.

Transhumanism is a movement that aims to transform the human condition by developing technologies that enhance physical, psychological, and intellectual capabilities a posthuman is someone who is able to achieve this transformation.

The roots of transhumanism can be found in cyberpunk literature.

If you're not familiar with novels from this genre, you may be familiar with its movies or video games, like "Blade Runner" or "Cyberpunk 2077."

On Anonym's blog, they mention "Neuromancer" as the first book they loved, a science fiction novel by William Gibson. It portrays a future in which technology has had an impact, often negative, on the social and/or cultural paradigm.

The movement has its own jargon, which you may have seen already in this article. For example, Lepht considers themself a biohacker, a biohacker being someone who modifies their body using tech in order to make it function differently.

Anonym describes themself as a practical transhumanist. Some transhumanists prefer to stick to the theoretical side of the movement, but Anonym uses chips, antennae, and other devices to actually "hack" their biological systems.

On their blog, Lepht keeps a record of their surgical implants. The first was in 2007 when, with the help of a friend, they inserted a chip into their hand so they could use their palm to pay instead of a credit card.

The operations are extremely painful, and since doctors won't help, they can't use anesthetic. Anonym doesn't mind the pain, however.

All their operations have had two goals to find out what devices can help humans go beyond their physical and mental limits and to improve themself if possible.

Anonym wanted to acquire an extra sense. To achieve this, they went through several operations to insert magnets into their fingers. These are activated by small coils of wire connected to external sensors such as infrared detectors, and allow the biohacker to sense the distance between their hands and objects.

They're not the only biohacker with special powers. As CNN reported, artist Moon Ribas implanted seismic sensors in her feet to record earthquakes as they happen around the world. Ribas is a choreographer and a dancer, and she feels her body is more connected to the Earth thanks to technology.

Practical transhumanism has its critics. Some feel that modifying the body in this way, especially considering the pain involved, is just madness.

Anonym doesn't expect anyone to follow in their footsteps they said that the blog is there simply to leave a record of their successes and failures and that they understand the effects these operations can have on their body.

Not being a doctor has certainly posed some problems.

In 2019, at an event for biohackers in the United States called GrinderFest, Anonym presented an experimental device: a "pirate box" with a chip, USB storage, and WiFi antenna.

"Users just connect to it via their phone or PC and they can download/upload files, anonymously chat," they wrote in their blog.

With the help of colleagues and volunteers, the device was placed in their upper right arm. It hurt more than they expected.

Months later, in January 2020, Anonym declared that the experiment had failed. They knocked the implant against a cab door, and their arm became so swollen they had to go to the emergency room.

Anonym said: the doctors "clearly thought this was an utterly bizarre thing to have done, and immediately admitted me for removal. They insisted it be removed and at this point a hole had opened up over one corner of the device, through which a lot of nasty goo was issuing, so I went with their opinion and let them take it out."

Anonym had nerve damage from the procedure, which resulted in them losing strength in their right hand.

"So, cautionary tale. don't put enormous devices in your arms, folks," advised Anonym.

There have been mixed responses to Lepht's posts, with some people finding inspiration in them.

By 2016, their blog had surpassed 600,000 visitors and had become a key reference for aspiring biohackers and transhumanists.

Anonym has also inspired works of fiction, like the cyberpunk graphic novel "Metal Made Flesh."

They aren't interested in fame, however, and they were clear that their goal is to make life easier for other biohackers in the future.

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A Biohacker Implanted 50 Chips in Their Body to Become ...

Artists: Jeimin Kim, Lugas Syllabus, Kyoungha Lee, Lna Bi, Kim Seola, Hwang Moonjung, Tae Yeun Kim, Robert Zhao Renhui, Pei-ying Lin, Heeah Yang, Younghwan Cheon, Easthug, Changchun Project, (Chang Jun Young & Chun Jiyoon), Eun Woo Cho

Posthuman Ensemble, referring to posthuman individuals coming together in an ensemble, is an exhibition that seeks to investigate how humans can emerge from a human-centered thought to exist in harmony with other nonhuman beings.ACC FOCUS, an annual exhibition that centers on important issues every year, focused on the actions of artists constantly invoking the memory of the environment and the history as struggles at the boundaries that form the equilibrium of the ecosystem for its 2020 exhibition, Equilibrium. This years Posthuman Ensembleexemplifies ACCs participation in the efforts of those who think about the new meaning of posthuman and new identity, in the world left in the wake of a global pandemic, as a counterstrike by nature.

The word posthuman often brings up associations of the interface between humans and machinery. This is because of the more familiar concept of transhumanism, which focuses on the combination of humans with machinery in order to go beyond the ability of human in the vein of cyborgs such as Bionic Woman or Six Million Dollar Man and the like, formed during the 1950s and 1960s with the increasing focus on artificial intelligence (AI) and computing. Researchers of the posthuman have expanded their focus not only to encompass the familiar fields of transhumanism but also to include the nonhuman and humanitys relationship with those categorized as not human.

These efforts present a starting point for examining what the values we, as humanity, can pursue as posthuman in the Anthropocene period, an age where humanitys actions, as the masters of the world, lead the climate change and environmental damages. A piece of stone, a blade of grasseverything that exists around us, or defined by us as meaningless, actually exists in relationship with each and every action taken by the human. Even the artificial ones created by humanity and the humanity itself can be seen as existing in a relationship of mutual exchange with nature in the grand cycle of the ecosystem. The network between the human and the nonhuman has already been established, and all species in the ecosystem are circulating in it. Posthuman Ensembleseeks to recognize the existence of different types of nonhumans and propose a new nonhuman existence of emotionality.

Ultimately, it seeks to raise the questions on how humanity should understand its relationships with the nonhuman and communicate in that relationship. Thus, the exhibition first includes numerous beings that do not hold the attention of most humans, the ones that are deemed insignificant by humans, such as weed, fungi, and discarded items in the city. Second, it includes the unseen and the known, such as cells and viruses. Third, it includes emotions, which are a part of humanity but are not recognized by science as concrete, in the category of the nonhuman. In particular, the exhibition seeks to interpret the process involved in the interpretation of human emotions, transition of the interpretation of data, and actualization and objectification thereof by the machine being equipped with ever-developing AI technology through an idea of translation, and thus the concept behind the communication involved in it.

Ultimately, the exhibition examines how the two parties relate to and communicate with each other and thus achieve a harmonious coexistence based on mutual respect rather than superiority, and in that relationship of coexistence, how humanity can receive healing and solace from the nonhuman. The exhibition is constructed in a way that suggests whether the posthuman, to develop the gathering of the human and the nonhuman toward the configuration of an ensemble, should examine the wounded emotions of the human and the nonhuman not through the lens of charity, but rather through empathy, humility, and respect, in the age of the COVID-19 pandemic. That starts with the recognition of the nonhumans existence and their dignity as equal beings and will ultimately serve as an asset that the human can imbue the AI, hitherto seen with fear for its capacity to surpass and rule over the human.

Curated by Rue Young Ah (Asia Culture Institute, Senior Curator).

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Posthuman Ensemble - Announcements - e-flux

Earlier this week, Arca released KiCK ii, one of three planned albums set to drop this week that follow the first album in the series, 2020s excellent KiCK i. Today, shes shared another installment of the latest trilogy (which is actually a tetralogy), KiCK iiii, via streaming services. Its a little confusing, since the fourth LP arrives before the third, but that is still scheduled to arrive tomorrow. KiCK iiii is the most guest-heavy album of the quartet, featuring appearances from Garbages Shirley Manson, Oliver Coates, No Bra, and Planningtorock, who made an appearance on the first single, Queer.

Arca said about the album in a statement: kick 4 is an entry of sensual charge in the cycle; my own faith made into song, a posthuman celestial sparkle, psychosexual pulsewidth modulation, queering the void, abyss alchemically transmuted into a deconstruction of what is beautiful, it is a healing spell, recognition of the alien inside, a bursting apart of old skin, fresh new sinew rippling outward from a beating core, the first prenatal kick proof that there is a sentience with a will beyond its creators control expressing itself from within the womb.

Stream the entirety of Arcas KiCK iiii below.

ArcasKiCK iwas featured on our list of theTop 50 Albums of 2020.

Excerpt from:

Stream another new Arca album, KiCK iiii - Treble - Treble

Public Theology? What is it?

Meet Noreen Herzfeld. An upright Quaker with Lutheran leanings, Dr. Herzfelds investments in theological reflection enrich both the church and the surrounding culture. Lets ask her what she thinks about public theology. Lets ask her specifically: how should we steer the public theologians skiff in the wake of AIs battle cruiser?

Like so many other Quakers, Noreen has set sail on the cartel of nonviolence. Ports? Her work with Bosnian students after the war. Her engagement in Muslim-Christian dialogue. And her public policy advocacy against lethal autonomous weapons.

But here I want her to speak from the wheelhouse while navigating the eddies where theology and science churn. She is especially ready for this topic because she teaches both computer science as well as spirituality at the university level. How should the public theologian steer human intelligence in the wake of technologies surrounding artificial intelligence? Theological and ethical questions prompted by advancing technologies fit within the larger task of formulating a theology of nature that draws on scientific knowledge and technological progress.

Frequently I suggest that public theology is conceived in the church, reflected on critically in the academy, and meshed with the wider culture for the sake of the wider public. One of the public theologians tasks is to develop a theology of nature that draws upon learnings in science and technology. More. Ethical reflection by the public theologian may add depth and wisdom to formulation of public policy. Dr. Herzfeld provides all of us with a model of intellectual service to the wider public.

Noreen Herzfeld is the Nicholas and Bernice Reuter Professor of Science and Religion at St. Johns University and the College of St. Benedict where she teaches in both the computer science department and the School of Theology. She holds degrees in mathematics and computer science from Penn State and a PhD in Spirituality from the GTU. Herzfeld is the author of numerous books and articles includingIn Our Image: Artificial Intelligence and the Human Spiritas well as Technology and Religion Remaining Human in a Co-Created World. She has a book forthcoming from Fortress Press on AI and Authentic Relationships. See her article, Introduction: Religion and the New Technologies, published online in Religions.

In my interview with my colleague and friend, Noreen Herzfeld, I asked her this pair of questions: How do you define public theology? Do you consider your work an exercise in public theology?

Public theology has three components. First, it is theology that is written in a laypersons terms, understandable by the general educated reader. It avoids jargon or discipline specific terminology and obscure references. (Art: Heart of the World by Madi, Bali)

Second, public theology deals in some way with a topic that is of general interest, either engaging with current events or presenting theological ideas in a way that shows they have applicability to the concerns of the day.

Finally, public theology is published in a forum that is accessible to or marketed to the general reader.

I just had an experience with the latter. OUP (Oxford University Press) rejected my book in progress precisely on the grounds that it was public theology. OUP editors didnt spell this out. But their suggestion that I take it to Viking or Free Press made it plain.

I do not apologize for this. I want the book to be accessible to students, pastors and priests, and anyone curious about AI.

Heres my second pair of questions: In your opinion, should advances in science and technology be taken up by the public theologian? Couldyou provide an exampleor two?

Should they ever! Yes, without question.

First, we live in a technology saturated world. Our youth spend pretty much every waking hour attached to some sort of technology. We need to help them navigate this world and understand its impacts on their relationships and spiritual lives. It is also easy for them to be taken in by the promises of life in the metaverse and the dreams of a transhuman future. Theologians need to address the weaknesses of these utopian alternatives to reality and help young people see that these are alternative faiths that will ultimately not satisfy biological creatures.

Second, we in America live in a culture that has suffered from a perceived disconnect between science and religion. This disconnect disconnect between science and religion has played a part in the tragic denial of climate change and vaccine technology by large segments of the evangelical community.

Here is the third question: When you are teachingeither computer science or theology, what kind of ethical issues do you ask your students to confront?

In my graduate course Ministry in a Technological World we discuss the research of Jean Twenge and Jonathan Haidt showing how the advent of the smartphone has contributed to a real decline in the mental (and physical) health of young people. We discuss the drawbacks and pitfalls of social media use, video gaming, and the Internet (pornography, fake news, etc.) and how to minister to a plugged-in generation.

We then turn to biotechnology and address the hard decisions their parishioners may face regarding the use of medical technologies, particularly at the beginning and end of life. We examine transhumanism as an alternate form of do-it-yourself salvation and consider the theological critique of a posthuman future.

Finally, we ask to what extent the medium is the message and look at what it means to be a people of the book in the age of the computer.

In my course on computer ethics (required of computer science majors) we take a different stance. Rather than dealing with the issues facing the users of modern technology, we deal primarily with the question of design and motivation, since these students, besides being end-users of technology, will also be professionally involved in the development and marketing of technological products.

Thus, we focus on how most ethical issues are baked into the design of the product, either through a failure to foresee what could go wrong, or through less-than-ideal motives (for example, Facebook weighting negative reactions five times more than positive ones because negativity keeps eyeballs on the screen better).

Particular issues we deal with include privacy, security, balancing idealism with late capitalism, addiction, sexism and racism in both Silicon Valley and the products they produce, AI and its ramifications (sexbots, autonomous weapons, bias, robots and rights, etc.).

Public Theology, say Sebastian Kim and Katie Day, is thus theologically informed public discourse about public issues, addressed to the church, synagogue, mosque, temple or other religious body, as well as the larger public or publics, argued in ways that can be evaluated and judged by publicly available warrants and criteria. [Katie Day and Sebastian Kim, Introduction, A Companion to Public Theology, eds., Sebastian Kim and Katie Day (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2017) 1-21, at 4.] Is there room in such a definition for a theology of nature? Might the public theologian feel a sense of responsibility for monitoring the fast moving frontier of Artificial Intelligence and providing the general public with evaluations that shed light on human nature, social justice, moral responsibility, and spiritual health?

Yes, indeed, exclaims the incomparable Noreen Herzfeld.

Ted Peters directs traffic at the intersection of science, religion, and ethics. Peters is a professor at the Graduate Theological Union (GTU), where he co-edits the journal, Theology and Science, on behalf of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences (CTNS), in Berkeley, California, USA. He is author of Playing God? Genetic Determinism and Human Freedom (Routledge, 2nd ed., 2002) and editor of AI and IA: Utopia or Extinction? (ATF 2019). Visit his website: TedsTimelyTake.com.

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The Public Theology of Noreen Herzfeld | Public Theology and Technology - Patheos

By John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead*

Who gets to decide when it comes to bodily autonomy?

Where does one draw the line over whose rights are worthy of protecting? And how do present-day legal debates over bodily autonomy, privacy, vaccine mandates, the death penalty and abortion play into future discussions about singularity, artificial intelligence, cloning, and the privacy rights of the individual in the face of increasingly invasive, intrusive and unavoidable government technologies?

Caught up in the heated debate over the legality of abortion, weve failed to think about whats coming next. Get ready, because it could get scary, ugly and overwhelming really fast.

Thus far, abortion politics have largely revolved around who has the right to decidethe government or the individualwhen it comes to bodily autonomy, the right to privacy in ones body, sexual freedom, and the rights of the unborn.

In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled inRoe v. Wadethat the Fourteenth Amendments Due Process Clause provides for a right to privacy that assures a womans right to abort her pregnancy within the first two trimesters.

Since that landmark ruling, abortion has been so politicized, polarized and propagandized as to render ita major frontline in the culture wars.

InPlanned Parenthood v. Casey(1992), the Supreme Court reaffirmed its earlier ruling inRoewhen it prohibited states from imposing an undue burden or substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion before the fetus attains viability.

Thirty years later, in the case ofDobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization, theSupreme Court is poised to revisit whether the Constitutionnamely, the Fourteenth Amendmenttruly provides for the right to an abortion.

At a time when abortion is globally accessible (approximately73 million abortions are carried out every year), legally expedient form of birth control (it isused to end more than 60% of unplanned pregnancies), and considered a societal norm (according to the Pew Research Center,a majority of Americans continue to believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases), itsdebatablewhether it will ever be truly possible to criminalize abortion altogether.

No matter how the Supreme Court rules inDobbs, it will not resolve the problem of a culture that values life based on a sliding scale. Nor will it help us navigate the moral, ethical and scientific minefields that await us as technology and humanity move ever closer to a point of singularity.

Heres what I know.

Life is an inalienable right.By allowing the government to decide who or what is deserving of rights, it shifts the entire discussion from one in which we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights (that of life, liberty property and the pursuit of happiness) to one in which only those favored by the government get to enjoy such rights. The abortion debatea tug-of-war over when an unborn child is considered a human being with rightslays the groundwork for discussions about who else may or may not be deserving of rights: the disabled, the aged, the infirm, the immoral, the criminal, etc. The death penalty is just one aspect of this debate. As theologian Francis Schaeffer warned early on: The acceptance of death of human life in babies born or unborn opens the door to the arbitrary taking of any human life. From then on, its purely arbitrary.

If all people are created equal, then all lives should be equally worthy of protection.Theres an idea embraced by both the Right and the Left according to their biases that there is a hierarchy to life, with some lives worthier of protection than others. Out of that mindset is born the seeds of eugenics, genocide, slavery and war.

There is no hierarchy of freedoms. All freedoms hang together. Freedom cannot be a piece-meal venture.My good friendNat Hentoff(1925-2017), a longtime champion of civil liberties and a staunch pro-lifer, often cited Cardinal Bernardin, who believed that a consistent ethic of life viewed all threats to life as immoral: [N]uclear war threatens life on a previously unimaginable scale. Abortion takes life daily on a horrendous scale. Public executions are fast becoming weekly events in the most advanced technological society in history, and euthanasia is now openly discussed and even advocated. Each of these assaults on life has its own meaning and morality. They cannot be collapsed into one problem, but they must be confronted as pieces of a larger pattern.

Beware slippery slopes.To suggest that the end justifies the means (for example, that abortion is justified in order to ensure a better quality of life for women and children) is to encourage a slippery slope mindset that could just as reasonably justify ending a life in order for the great good of preventing war, thwarting disease, defeating poverty, preserving national security, etc. Such arguments have been used in the past to justify such dubious propositions as subjecting segments of the population to secret scientific experiments, unleashing nuclear weapons on innocent civilians, and enslaving fellow humans.

Beware double standards.As the furor surrounding COVID-19 vaccine mandates make clear, the debate over bodily autonomy and privacy goes beyond the singular right to abortion. Indeed, as vaccine mandates have been rolled out,long-held positions have been reversed: many of those who historically opposed the government usurping a womans right to bodily autonomy and privacy have no qualms about supporting vaccine mandates that trample upon those very same rights. Similarly, those who historically looked to the government to police what a woman does with her body believe the government should have no authority to dictate whether or not one opts to get vaccinated.

Whats next?Up until now, we have largely focused the privacy debate in the physical realm as it relates to abortion rights, physical searches of our persons and property, and our communications. Yet humanity is being propelled at warp speed into a whole new frontier when it comes to privacy, bodily autonomy, and what it means to be a human being.

We havent even begun to understand how to talk about these new realms, let alone establish safeguards to protect against abuses.

Humanity itself hangs in the balance.

Remaining singularly human and retaining your individuality and dominion over yourselfmind, body and soulin the face of corporate and government technologies that aim to invade, intrude, monitor, manipulate and control us may be one of the greatest challenges before us.

These battles over COVID-19 vaccine mandates are merely the tipping point. The groundwork being laid with these mandates is a prologue to what will become the police states conquest of a new, relatively uncharted, frontier: inner space, specifically, the inner workings (genetic, biological, biometric, mental, emotional) of the human race.

If you were unnerved by the rapid deterioration of privacy under the Surveillance State,prepare to be terrified by the surveillance matrix that will be ushered inwithin the next few decades.

Everythingwe do is increasingly dependent on and, ultimately, controlled by technological devices. For example, in 2007, there were an estimated 10 million sensor devices connecting human utilized electronic devices (cell phones, laptops, etc.) to the Internet. By 2013, it had increased to 3.5 billion. By 2030, there will be anestimated 100 trillionsensor devices connecting us to the internet by way of a neural network that approximates a massive global brain.

The end goal? Population control and the creation of a new human species, so to speak, throughsingularity, a marriage of sorts between machine and human beings in which artificial intelligence and the human brain will merge to form a superhuman mind.

The plan is todevelop a computer network that will exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to or indistinguishable from that of human beingsby 2029. And this goal is to have computers that will be a billion times more powerful than all of the human brains on earth. As former Google executive Mo Gawdat warns, The reality is,were creating God.

Neuralink, a brain-computer chip interface (BCI), paves the way for AI control of the human brain, at which point the disconnect between humans and AI-controlled computers will become blurred and human minds and computers will essentially become one and the same. In the most severe scenario,hacking a Neuralink-like device could turn hosts into programmable drone armies capable of doing anything their master wanted, writes Jason Lau forForbes.

Advances in neuroscienceindicate that future behavior can be predicted based upon activity in certain portions of the brain, potentially creating a nightmare scenario in which government officials select certain segments of the population for more invasive surveillance or quarantine based solely upon their brain chemistry.

Clearly, we are rapidly moving into the posthuman era, one in which humans will become a new type of being. Technological devices, writes journalist Marcelo Gleiser, will be implanted in our heads and bodies, or used peripherally, like Google Glass,extending our senses and cognitive abilities.

Transhumanismthe fusing of machines and peopleis here to stay and will continue to grow.

In fact, as science and technology continue to advance, the ability to control humans will only increase. In 2014, for example, it was revealed that scientists haddiscovered how to deactivate that part of our brains that controls whether we are conscious or not. Add to this the fact that increasingly humans will be implanted with microchips for such benign purposes as tracking children or as medical devices to assist with our health.

Such devices point to an uber-surveillance society that is Big Brother on the inside looking out, warns Dr. Katina Michael. Governments or large corporations would have the ability to track peoples actions and movements, categorize them into different socio-economic, political, racial, or consumer groups and ultimately even control them.

All of this indicates a new path forward for large corporations and government entities that want to achieve absolute social control.

It is slavery in another form.

Yet we must never stop working to protect life, preserve our freedoms and maintain some semblance of our humanity.

Abortion, vaccine mandates, transhumanism, etc.: these are all points along the continuum.

Even so, there will be others. For instance, analysts are speculating whether artificial intelligence,which will eventually dominateall emerging technologies, could come torule the world and enslave humans. How will a world dominated by artificial intelligence redefine what it means to be human and exercise free will?

Scientists say theworlds first living robots can now reproduce. What rights are these living organisms entitled to? For that matter, what about clones? At the point that scientists are able to move beyond cloning organs andbreeding hybrid animalsto breeding full-bodied, living clones in order to harvest body parts, who is to say that clones do not also deserve to have their right to life protected?

These are ethical dilemmas without any clear-cut answers. Yet one thing is certain: as I make clear in my bookBattlefield America: The War on the American Peopleand in its fictional counterpartThe Erik Blair Diaries, putting the power to determine who gets to live or die in the hands of the government is a dangerous place to start.

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The War Over Life, Liberty And Privacy Rights: From Abortion To COVID-19 And Beyond OpEd - Eurasia Review

Infinity Chamber (2016)

A character wakes up in a room with no windows, walls made of metal and no earthlyidea how he got there. He finds a sarcastic robot guard for company. When he attempts to break out of the prison cell, weird things happen -- and by the third scene, you'll probably experience deja vu from the day you watched Ex Machina or Moon.

2016's Infinity Chamber -- currently streaming onAmazon Prime-- essentially follows everyone's favorite "mysterious sci-fi movie" template. There's a foreboding backdrop, clear integration of humanity and technology and an intelligent protagonist who appears to be the voice of reason while grappling with a curious dilemma.

Regardless, its cerebral story immerses you deeply enough to root for the main character through the finish line while he plays a posthuman version of escape-the-room.

And if you make it to the climax, you're in for a treat.

Constructed with an impressively low budget of just $125,000,partially funded by Kickstarter, director Travis Milloy's perplexing film experiments with a complex plot that'll test your ability to predict endings -- and your patience.

While Frank Lerner (Christopher Soren Kelly) tries to leave his forsaken locked-up space, he's panged with lucid dreams of sitting in a quaint coffee shop and speaking to a charming barista named Gabby (Cassandra Clark).

Immediately after, Frank abruptly wakes up once again in his little chamber with only the company of Howard, an assigned machine companion who's reminiscent of 2001: A Space Odyssey's Hal, Interstellar's Tens and Moon's Gerty.

This sequence, which supposedly explains Frank's imprisonment, repeats itself again... and again... and again, giving Infinity Chamber its claustrophobic vibe. All the while, warm and genial robot Howard doesn't have much to say about any of this. Howard's only job is to keep Frank alive.

As the movie progresses, you start to realize what's really going on -- with Frank, Howard and even Gabby.

A self-proclaimed excellent twist-guesser, I was prepared to dismiss Infinity Chamber as a satisfactory retelling of the classic apocalyptic survival story. It's one of a slew of films that involve people puzzling their way out of a box-like room in a dystopian world. Some that fall into that niche genre include 1997's Cube, 2008's Fermat's Room, 2009's Exam and more recently, 2019's Escape Room.

But during the film's last 15 minutes or so, I let out a few involuntary "wait, whats" that were promptly followed by shock-fueled goosebumps. Infinity Chamber sets itself apart by taking overused tropes and adding flavor.

The chamber isn't just a room. Howard isn't merely a snarky AI and the dreams aren't random.

But while Infinity Chamber's ending is satisfying enough to deem the film a solid weeknight grab-a-glass-of-wine-and-chill choice, it's not without shortcomings. Those come from the film's half-baked sub-plots.

The movie introduces a love story, the notion of existing in your own dreams, the question of whether humans can truly bond with artificial intelligence and the ethics of prisons like the one Frank finds himself in.

Instead of delving into those concepts, however, a ton of time is spent rehashing Frank's pain of residing in the metal chamber and building up to the first milestone -- one that's so obvious, I was confused by how it was supposed to be a surprise at all.

Right around the halfway point, Infinity Chamber starts to get slightly boring shortly before picking up again for act three. Perhaps that could've been solved by exploring the film's other juicy sci-fi ideas -- there were so many interesting avenues left untaken.

Even so, from start to finish, Infinity Chamber is a delight. The shoestring budget and limited drawbacks are barely noticeable due to pristine production quality, terrific acting and a smart story chillingly tied together in its final scene -- one that makes the whole hour and 38 minutes 100% worth it.

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The sci-fi thriller on Amazon Prime Video with a big twist at the end - CNET

If humans disappeared tomorrow, about 1 billion dogs would be left on their own. [] Although many people, when asked to picture a dog, will think of a furry companion curled up on the couch by a humans side or walking on the end of a leash, research suggests that roughly 20 per cent of the worlds dogs live as pets, or what we call intensively homed dogs. The other 80 per cent of the worlds dogs are free-ranging, an umbrella term that includes village, street, unconfined, community, and feral dogs. In other words, most dogs on the planet are already living on their own, without direct human support within a homed environment. In our new book, A Dogs World (2021), Marc Bekoff and I [Jessica Pierce] invite readers into an imaginary world in which humans have suddenly disappeared and dogs must survive on their own. We consider two key questions. First, could dogs survive without their human counterparts are they still capable of living on their own, as wild animals, without help from and relationships with humans? Second, and perhaps even more intriguing, what are some of the possible evolutionary trajectories of posthuman dogs, as artificial selection is replaced by natural selection? Would dogs look or behave anything like the animals we now call our best friends? This is a serious thought-experiment in speculative biology and one that can ultimately help us better understand who dogs really are. Thinking about dogs without us can help us understand who dogs are with us, and what they need from us, right now, to flourish and be happy. posted by Johnny Wallflower (70 comments total) 23 users marked this as a favorite

Everything else, like "agriculture" and that whole "industrialization" mess... double-edged swords, at best. Might turn out to be regrettable moves in the end.

Cats? Probably domesticated themselves. Probably wouldn't even admit they're domesticated if asked.

Horses, cows, water buffalo, and other large herbivores? Obviously very practical as prime movers (and prime steaks). Same with most other true domesticated (v. tame) animals; they fit into a pretty obvious need (meat, milk, wool, power/transport, etc.) that justifies the investment into their domestication and maintenance as a distinct reproductive group.

And yes, while some dogs certainly do have jobsthey're rarely ideally suited. Generally they're just flexible enough to get hammered into the gap that needs filling. Very much like humans in that way.

For us to have dogs... someoneprobably quite a few someones, over timemust have found a litter of wild canids, and despite them being a competitor (and probable predator, at least occasionally) species to humans, decided to raise them and began the slow process of domestication. I'm not aware of any other species that will do that. Most other top-of-the-food-chain species are pretty, uh, rough, when it comes to finding the vulnerable young of a competitor. That's the evolutionarily safe move.

But for some reason, humans didn't always slaughter them, in some cases must have taken care of them, and as a result of that impulsethat empathetic sparkwe got dogs.

I believe it is the closest we have ever come to being actual gods, to the fundamental act of creation in one's own image, and on a very real level I suspect that to dogs, we probably are indistinguishable from gods. (I haven't seen the study done yet, but I'd feel pretty confident in predicting that if you could do one of those fMRI studies of a domesticated dog interacting with 'its' bonded human, and that of a religious person having a serious spiritual moment of connectedness, you'd probably see the same brain regions light up.)

In the domestication of dogs I see the very best impulses of our species made real. In their treatment, some of the worst.

It would be sad, but perhaps entirely understandable, if dogs were unable to exist apart from us.posted by Kadin2048 at 10:21 AM on November 4 [6 favorites]

As far as I know, nobody has really tried this in any serious way. Which is a bit disappointing, given the sort of really lazy shit we've bred dogs to do for us.

And as moon shot projects go, I think it has a significantly higher chance of success than, say, Musk's Mars-colonization fantasy. I mean, we know the process is possible, because we exist. Over on the great timeline thread, we can see that there were a series of increasingly-intelligent hominids that predated sapiens sapiens. We know that, somewhere in there, consciousness evolved at least once. It stands to reason it could be made to happen again, under the right selection pressures. There's nothing about it that seems like it should be totally exclusive to primates.

I'd probably want to start with multiple candidate species (maybe include dolphins of some sort? how about a Procyon like the raccoon?), but dogs would certainly be on the short list. There would be some hard questions to answer along the wayhow do we measure intelligence? is the definition of "sentience" dependent entirely on communications ability with us? can a species be sentient but noncommunicative, or nonlinguistic?and I suspect there would be some blind alleys that we'd have to explore along the way. We'd pursue all the plausible ones in parallel though, of course.

But it seems like a tractable problem given enough time and resources. I feel like, given maybe a decade or two and couple gigabucks, you'd probably have something to show for it that would get you a Ted Talk.

If there are any reclusive billionaires out there, have your people drop me a MeMail or leave a burner phone under my pillow or whatever it is you guys do. I'd be happy to project manage this for you. Here's my elevator pitch: "Musk has fantasies of being Vasco da Gama in a spacesuit, and will almost certainly fail. For the same amount of money, I'll take an honest shot at making you an actual god." The dogs get a retirement village, though, that's non-negotiable.posted by Kadin2048 at 10:36 PM on November 4 [1 favorite]

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The Posthuman Dog | MetaFilter

If you share your home with a dog, you may have found yourself rolling your eyes or clicking your tongue at your furry friend in response to some outrageously un-wild behaviour. Your dog might daintily tiptoe around puddles, run away from squirrels, or refuse to go outside in the snow without a coat and booties. Youd never survive without me, you might have gently chided her.

But what if you were to phrase this as a serious question for your dog: Do you really think you would be able to survive on your own without my help? If your dog says: Sure, why wouldnt I? you might press her for some details: how would you stay warm? What would you do when it rains? What would you eat? And most importantly, wouldnt you be lonely without me?

Your dog might tell you that she would simply go next door and live with your neighbour, who would likely provide the basics of food and shelter and even, probably, love. Annoyed by the apparent lack of loyalty, you might press your dog further and ask what she would do if there were no next-door neighbour. If, in fact, there were no humans whatsoever. Then how would she manage?

In our new book, A Dogs World (2021), Marc Bekoff and I invite readers into an imaginary world in which humans have suddenly disappeared and dogs must survive on their own. We consider two key questions. First, could dogs survive without their human counterparts are they still capable of living on their own, as wild animals, without help from and relationships with humans? Second, and perhaps even more intriguing, what are some of the possible evolutionary trajectories of posthuman dogs, as artificial selection is replaced by natural selection? Would dogs look or behave anything like the animals we now call our best friends? This is a serious thought-experiment in speculative biology and one that can ultimately help us better understand who dogs really are. Thinking about dogs without us can help us understand who dogs are with us, and what they need from us, right now, to flourish and be happy.

If humans disappeared tomorrow, about 1 billion dogs would be left on their own. The first clue to whether dogs would survive is here, in the basic demographics of current dog populations. These billion dogs occupy all corners of the globe, exploit diverse ecological niches, and live in a wide range of relationships with humans. Although many people, when asked to picture a dog, will think of a furry companion curled up on the couch by a humans side or walking on the end of a leash, research suggests that roughly 20 per cent of the worlds dogs live as pets, or what we call intensively homed dogs. The other 80 per cent of the worlds dogs are free-ranging, an umbrella term that includes village, street, unconfined, community, and feral dogs. In other words, most dogs on the planet are already living on their own, without direct human support within a homed environment.

Although the worlds 800 million free-ranging dogs have far more independence of movement and behaviour than the 200 million intensively homed dogs, and have developed a range of survival skills, almost all dogs on the planet rely on human presence for one key resource: food subsidies, either in the form of direct feeding and handouts or in the form of garbage and waste. The loss of human food resources would present the most significant survival challenge to dogs during the immediate aftermath of human disappearance and in the transition years into a fully posthuman future.

After some rough years, dogs would adapt to life on their own

If humans disappeared along with their garbage, waste and stores full of bagged dog kibble dogs would quickly have to find other sources of food. Because dogs are behaviourally flexible and because they are dietary generalists they could likely survive on a wide range of edibles, from plants, berries and insects to small mammals and birds, and perhaps even some larger prey. Their meal plans would depend on where they live, their size and their body shape.

The first few years after human disappearance would be challenging because of the abrupt loss of human support, and there would likely be significant canine die-offs. Dogs who had been living as pets might have a particularly hard time surviving because they lack the experience of being on their own, and might not have developed the skills they need for finding food and dealing with varied and unexpected encounters with dogs and other animals. After some rough years, dogs would adapt to life on their own. Dogs retain many of the traits and behaviours of their wild relatives such as wolves, coyotes and jackals; they have not forgotten how to forage, hunt, find mates, raise young, get along in groups, and defend themselves. These skills would be put back to work.

The answer to our first question would dogs survive the abrupt loss of human beings is almost certainly yes, assuming dogs are left with a planet that hasnt become completely uninhabitable because of the climate crisis. A more intriguing question is who dogs might become, once decoupled from humans.

The origin of modern dogs is still hotly contested among biologists, palaeontologists and anthropologists. But the general contours are in place. Dogs and humans have lived in close association for at least 15,000 years, and perhaps as many as 40,000 years or longer. The only canid species to have undergone domestication, dogs were also the first animals to be domesticated, and were likely the only animal to have been domesticated by hunter-gatherers, with other animals being domesticated after the development of agriculture. Dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) are descended from wolves (Canis lupus). And although dogs are genetically extremely close to wolves, sharing all but 0.2 per cent of mitochondrial DNA, they are most certainly quite different in both appearance and behaviour. One species can happily share your living room couch; the other will likely refuse such an invitation and be distinctly uncomfortable in your presence, and you in theirs.

This domestication process has strongly shaped the evolutionary trajectory of dogs up to this point. (It has also shaped the evolutionary trajectory of humans.) The phenotypic profile of dogs their morphology, physiology, behaviour has been deliberately shaped by humans through purposeful breeding. Alongside deliberate selection by humans for particular traits such as friendliness and attraction to novelty, there has also been indirect selection of other unintended traits, or what geneticists call hitchhikers. Direct selection for hypersociality, for example, introduced other traits, such as changes in pigmentation (spotted fur or white patches), floppy ears and curly tails, none of which are seen in the wild relatives of dogs. In other words, the idea that humans have created dogs is an illusion. We have splashed around in the dog gene pool, but the broader ripples from our splashes extend well beyond our conscious control or even our understanding. Indeed, the ethologist Per Jensen and his colleagues describe dog domestication as the largest (albeit unconscious) biological and genetic experiment in history.

In a posthuman future, this dramatic experiment would continue, but the parameters would change. Dogs would begin to drift in the currents of natural selection, and where these currents would take them is one of the great unknowns.

Still, we can make some educated guesses. As dogs become whoever they are going to become, they wont go back to being wolves. The disappearance of humans would not result in a kind of reverse-engineering, where the domestication process rewinds and dogs de-evolve back to where they were before the first wolves tentatively reached out to human beings and vice versa. When dogs lose contact with humans, they will first go through a process of feralisation as they adapt to life on their own. Feralisation refers to changes in individual dogs, rather than to changes at the population or species level. Domestication, on the other hand, refers to changes that affect all individuals in a population. Individual dogs do not de-domesticate when they are out of touch with humans they feralise. Once all dogs have been free of human-directed selection for long enough that natural selection is acting on all the individuals in the group, they will become secondarily wild. (Secondarily here indicates that the population was once domesticated.) How many generations of human-free reproduction are necessary for the re-wilding of dogs to occur? Since we wont be around, well never know the answer to this facet of the biological experiment.

Dogs will need to find mates, engage in courtship, and bear and raise their young.

What we can confidently predict is that posthuman dogs are going to become something entirely, or at least largely, new. The ecological niches that posthuman dogs inhabit will be vastly different from the niches that their progenitors filled. The most consequential difference is that they will no longer have human food resources. Within that vacuum, many factors could influence posthuman dogs feeding strategies, including anatomical and physical constraints on what or who dogs can eat, the type of prey available in each location, the distribution of food resources within dogs home ranges or territories, seasonal variation in food resources, and competition with other animals. For example, small dogs would be able to hunt and feed on insects or berries, while such a diet wouldnt provide adequate caloric intake for a large dog. Different feeding strategies might evolve over time depending on ecological niche, local food availability, and competition with other animals. Dogs diets would, in turn, influence how they evolve over time. Eventually, different populations of dogs might even become distinct species, using different feeding strategies to fill a range of ecological niches.

Reproductive strategies will also need to evolve quickly. Dogs will need to find mates, engage in courtship, and bear and raise their young. The mating and reproductive strategies of posthuman dogs would likely not need to shift as dramatically as their feeding ecology. Nevertheless, there could be some interesting changes as natural selection favours strategies leading to greater breeding success in the absence of humans. These might include more prolonged and ritualised flirting, a reversion to one heat cycle per year rather than two, and greater involvement of mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles and other alloparents in the rearing and protection of youngsters.

Many different forms of social organisation could emerge and work in a world without humans, including the formation of bonded pairs, small groups and larger packs. Alternatively, some dogs may live mainly solitary lives, coming together with other dogs only when necessary. Whatever kind of social life they have, dogs will need to sharpen their social skills, including communicating intentions and resolving conflicts, and will need to learn from one another. Skills developed during puppies early socialisation period and adolescence will be particularly important. The inner lives of posthuman dogs will also change as they evolve the cognitive skills and emotional intelligence required to interact with other animals and make them successful members of wild communities.

What might a posthuman dog look like? Its hard to say, because morphological features will evolve in response to ecological pressures, feeding ecologies, and distinct features of the ecological niche that a given population of dogs might fill. Dogs are already the most morphologically diverse mammalian species on the planet. Think of the huge size difference between, for example, the teacup Maltipoo and the Irish wolfhound. One possibility is that dogs will eventually all become of medium size say 35 lbs (15 kg), give or take. An equally viable possibility is that dogs of the future will speciate over time into smaller and larger types. The shape and size of physical characteristics such as ears, tails and noses will similarly evolve in response to unique demands of ecological niche, feeding ecology, mating strategies and social structure. To take just one example, the shape and size of ears will represent a set of tradeoffs reflective of the competing demands of climate, geography and feeding ecology, among other things. Bigger ears may pick up sounds better than smaller ears, and would aid dogs in locating prey, but they might also be problematic in very cold temperatures because there is more surface area for heat loss. In cold climates, smaller ears and slightly less acute hearing might be worth the tradeoff for protection against the cold.

Natural selection will quickly weed out physical traits that are maladaptive, such as extremely foreshortened snouts, excessive skin folds, and extremely long or short limbs. Floppy ears and curly tails would also likely disappear because they inhibit dog-to-dog communication and serve no functional purpose; so, too, would spotted and bi- and tricoloured coats.

Dogs have been selectively bred by humans for certain behavioural traits, including a general propensity for friendliness and malleability, and breed-specific functional skills such as pointing, fetching, herding and guarding. Selection for these traits has been driven by an interest in the physical characteristics of dogs, by the usefulness of these traits in relation to human pursuits, and, over the past century or two, by human aesthetic whims and fancies. Taken outside the context of human-canine relations, some of these physical and behavioural traits may serve dogs well. Others not so much.

It is hard to know how some of the behavioural traits that have resulted from domestication, such as hypersociability and attention to human gestural cues, might be repurposed by posthuman dogs, and whether these traits will be useful or maladaptive. Who knows, for example, whether the facial muscles that allow dogs to make puppy dog eyes to solicit food or attention from people musculature that is absent in wolves and other canids will have any use in a posthuman world.

Would dogs actually be better off without us? This could be a difficult question to entertain if you live with dogs, love dogs and stand in awe of the enduring friendships humans and dogs can form. But it is worth trying to imagine, for a few moments, not only what your individual dog might lose and what she might gain, but also what all the dogs who currently share the planet with us might lose or gain if they had the world to themselves. And what about the posthuman dogs of the future who never knew life with humans? Maybe dogs as a species would have a better go of things if the 20,000-year-long domestication experiment were called off once and for all. Dogs would face challenges living on their own, but a posthuman world is also full of what you might call dog possibilities.

As part of our thought-experiment, therefore, we made a tally of all the possible gains and losses dogs might experience if humans were to disappear tomorrow. Here is a condensed list:

What dogs have to gain from human disappearance:

What dogs have to lose from human disappearance:

One of the big surprises for us was that the gains column was significantly longer and more robust than the losses column. And this got us to thinking: if dogs really have more to gain than lose, are there some ways in which we might alter, in the real world, the parameters of human-canine interactions that address some of the problems highlighted in the gains column? Indeed, the gains column can help bring into focus some of the ways humans make life hard for dogs, particularly pet dogs who live within our homes. Our pet dogs generally do not get to pick their friends or their family and do not get to decide when or how to interact with others; they dont have the opportunity to choose a mate and raise a family, unless we label them breeding stock, in which case they have no choice; they dont get to move about freely, work to find their own food and shelter, or respond to varied stimuli from the environment. Moreover, humans breed and buy dogs with maladaptive traits that not only make posthuman survival unlikely but diminish their lives right now. The most obvious example here is the breeding of dogs with extremely foreshortened skulls, such as French bulldogs, who suffer from breathing difficulties and high rates of respiratory disease.

Imagining a future for dogs without their human counterparts is an interesting exercise in biology, but the real value of the thought-experiment is that it can help us think more clearly about who dogs are in the present and this, in turn, can clarify the moral contours of human-canine relationships.

The most important effect of thinking about posthuman dogs, and how they might flourish in the absence of us, is to decentre the human. We tend to think of dogs through the lens of what they mean to us (they are good companions, beneficial for our health, a salve for our loneliness, useful for work, sport and entertainment). But often the lives we ask them to live in our presence are a pale reflection of what they might be.

So, how can we help dogs live experientially rich and interesting lives now, within our midst? Those who live with homed dogs ought to consider allowing their dogs to engage in a wide range of species-typical behaviours. Humans can be more thoughtful in their approach to living with dogs if we use the best canine science to understand who they are. People who live with a companion dog often benefit from reading one of the many excellent and accessible books on the science of dog emotion and cognition, often based on research conducted within canine cognition labs. They learn about how their dog experiences the world how, for example, dogs see the world primarily through their noses. Knowing this, we can do our best to provide opportunities for our dog to use her incredible olfactory capacities, for example by letting her linger over smells when out for a walk or letting her have plenty of time off-leash to follow her own olfactory agenda.

Perhaps even more useful for the average dog guardian would be an exploration of the growing body of research by scientists who study feral and free-ranging dogs. Indeed, one of our central aims in A Dogs World was to bring this research to a general audience. Here, in studies of free-ranging dogs, we can begin to see dogs not as domesticated playthings but rather as animals. Moreover, we see them as animals situated within ecological communities, where the centre of their world is not necessarily us. Learning about the lives of dogs on their own, we begin to grasp the entire range of canine possibilities and can understand how limited the four walls of a human home really are.

Obsessively helicopter-parented dogs have their ability to engage in normal behaviours seriously compromised

As one small example of this, consider how dogs use space. Biologists use the concept of home range, which was defined in a 1943 paper by William Henry Burt as that area traversed by the individual in its normal activities of food gathering, mating, and caring for young. Research on the home range of free-ranging dogs shows wide variation, with some dogs having a home range as small as half an acre while others have a home range as large as 7,000 acres. In contrast to free-ranging dogs, intensively homed dogs are highly constrained in the ways they are allowed to use space: they dont generally have anything that approximates a home range, are rarely allowed to roam at all, and are considered very lucky if they have a half-acre backyard.

Another example is the role of male dogs in parenting young. Among intensively homed dogs, males are rarely observed playing a role in parenting. But is this because male dogs dont naturally parent their young? Or is it because the ways humans breed dogs typically dont allow male dogs the opportunity to be fathers? Although research on fathering by free-ranging dogs is mixed and male dogs dont always appear to be involved, several observational studies found male dogs playing a role in feeding, protecting and teaching youngsters. If parental care is part of the suite of natural behaviours for male dogs, should we reconsider the ways we orchestrate the breeding and raising of pups to allow male dogs the chance to be fathers?

The research on free-ranging and feral dogs, as well as other species of canid, sheds light on the remarkably interesting, full, exciting lives of dogs on their own. Dogs have a wide range of natural habitats and live alongside humans in diverse ways. But some habitats are decidedly more captive and constricting and do not allow dogs to be dogs in any meaningful way, such as laboratories, dog-meat farms and puppy mills. Some habitats are less obviously captive, but nonetheless may greatly limit a dogs ability to live an interesting life. Little dogs who are bought as fashion accessories, and who have their nails painted and are taught to go inside on fake turf, are not really allowed to behave like dogs. Dogs who are obsessively helicopter-parented by their human guardian also have their ability to engage in normal dog behaviours seriously compromised.

It isnt all that pleasant to think of a world in which were no longer here, but there are many reasons to believe that, when were gone, dogs will survive and life will go on. And it is healthy for us to begin decentring the human now. When we decentre, then real, fruitful non-anthropocentric thinking can begin. In imagining who dogs might become without us we may gain fresh insight into who they are now and how our relationships with them can best benefit us both.

We may ask our dogs, jokingly: What would you do without me? They may indulge us with a wag and bark, all the while imagining the possibilities.

This original essay draws on the book A Dogs World: Imagining the Lives of Dogs in a World without Humans (2021) by Jessica Pierce and Marc Bekoff, published by Princeton University Press.

Excerpt from:

Who could dogs become without humans in their lives ...

Its fitting that Mark Zuckerbergs company is no longer defined by the concept of social networks, but by an alternate reality altogether. Facebook recently announced it is changing its name to Metashort for metaverse. As it rebrands, it continues its movement toward posthuman ambition that has been evident for many years. For nearly a decade, Facebook has been shifting the company away from an ethos of connecting real people and toward a kind of permanent digital habitation, the contraction of life so as to fit inside algorithms.

What is the metaverse? Its an immersive network technology that promises to take users beyond the limits of physical environments. If traditional social networking connects people to one another through shared texts, images, and videos, the metaverse creates shared space through computer-generated presence. Ian Harber and Patrick Miller observe:

Harber and Miller list several examples of existing metaverse technology, such as Pokemon Go, the game in which players use augmented reality to catch digital Pokemon in real-world places.

But Zuckerbergs vision goes far beyond gaming. In his video explaining Meta and its projects, he declares that the feeling of presence [is] the defining quality of the metaverse. Youre going to really feel like youre there with other people. Youll see their facial expressions, youll see their body language . . . all the subtle ways we communicate that todays technology cant quite deliver.

This is indeed the Achilles heel of all digital technology: the inability to satisfyingly reproduce the feeling of physical community. The pandemic has reminded us that not even the swiftest text message or highest resolution Zoom call can compensate for physical isolation. But Zuckerberg and his colleagues see this not as an inherent limitation of technology but as a flaw in our humanity. If the humane minutia of personal relationships cannot be adequately simulated, the answer, according to Meta, is to make our relationships less humane.

Advocates of metaverse technology insist that there is no dilemma here. Why cant people continue to work in their offices, host dinner parties, and plan playdates, all the while using the metaverse to bridge geographic divides? But this reasoning is misguided. First, as Neil Postman observed, technologies are not epistemologically neutral. Rather, technologies create the ways in which people perceive reality. The metaverse is a teacher, and her lessons will shape her students. What are those lessons? That the human self is indistinguishable from desires or mental will, that our bodies are irrelevant at best, and that the ideal mode of life is one in which your attention can be anywhere, at any point, for any reason. The metaverse preaches the death of place.

Second, Facebooks own history strongly suggests that the goal is not balance, but an end-to-end digital existence. Few active on Facebook today will remember that the site originally required new users to be part of a preexisting college network. As the site expanded, this rule was stretched to include hometown networks; if your university wasnt listed but your city was, you could select that network and join Facebook. The network requirement was eventually dropped altogether, a move that suggested a major transition in how Facebook thought of itself. Now the goal was not to offer a technological way to connect with people already nearby, it was to redefine nearby to mean Facebook itself. Facebook became the only neighborhood that matters.

Facebooks infrastructure betrays a desire to keep its apps at the center of users lives, whether through an overwhelming number of notifications, algorithms that read and manipulate user moods, or the revelation that its leadership doesnt care about how its products affect the mental health of minors. There is no reason whatsoever to think that Zuckerberg and his team, armed with technology even more immersive and addicting, will shape users that are less hooked than they are now.

So what will happen? Much will depend on how cost-efficient the metaverse can become, but we can say confidently that Facebook's emerging vision of the good life is one in which people become polygons and places become projections. The metaverse offers a digital liturgy that will entice us to leave behind the inconveniences and limitations of bodily humanity. The yearning for hearth and homecentral to not just art and literature but to the Christian lifewill be reduced to a buffered connection. Inside the metaverse, we will become less human.

But turning our backs on God has not freed us of him. As Francis Schaeffer observed in Escape from Reason:

Our construction of an eternity unto ourselves simply betrays our incurably religious humanity. By trying to become more than creatures we have patented devices that make us more like machines. Nonetheless, not even the trillions that flow through Silicon Valley can vacuum up the divine breath of life inside us. There is a givenness to the world and to ourselves that we can ignore but not erase.

Samuel D. James serves as associate acquisitions editor at Crossway Books and publishes a regular newsletter calledInsights.

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Into the Metaverse | Samuel D. James - First Things

Its unlikely theres ever been a dog owner who looked at their beloved pooch an animal whose life consists of chasing sticks, barking at windows, and lounging on couches and thought, Theyd have no problem surviving without me.

But what would happen to dogs if one day humans just ceased to exist? Cats, with their natural hunting skills, would probably do OK. But dogs, so utterly dependent on people for everything from food to how (and when) they defecate, dont seem especially well-prepared for the challenges of self-sufficiency.

Or are they? Thats the question posed by bioethicist Jessica Pierce and evolutionary biologist Marc Bekoff in their new book, A Dogs World: Imagining the Lives of Dogs in a World without Humans (Princeton University Press), out Tuesday.

Posthuman dogs are going to be on their own in more important ways than just not having kibble and vet care, they write. They will have to navigate complex ecosystems with which they may be relatively unfamiliar and will have to form relationships with other dogs and other animals with whom they might coexist, cooperate, and compete.

Its a hypothetical scenario that isnt just fodder for fantasy. Imagining a future for dogs without us shines a light on who dogs are on their own terms, distinct from their cultural role as obedient (or not so obedient) pets, Pierce and Bekoff write.

Dogs were first domesticated sometime between 40,000 and 15,000 years ago, according to archaeological data, and there are roughly 1 billion of them on the planet today, making them one of the most populous species on Earth. Although just 471 million of those dogs are pets, humans spent a record $103.6 billion on their care in 2020, according to the American Pet Products Association.

Dogs can be found on every continent, a staggering growth that wouldnt be possible without us. People often bring dogs with them to parts of the world where dogs otherwise would not live, write Pierce and Bekoff.

Sheepdogs end up in Mexico City and greyhounds find homes in Alaska. Though Bernese mountain dogs arent well adapted to desert living, people in Phoenix, Ariz., still choose them as pets, because they believe they have a mellow disposition or because they like the tricolor coats, the authors write.

Humans have, in effect, set up dogs to fail, or at least be totally dependent on their owners. Temperature-controlled environments mean a dogs coat, designed for specific environmental conditions, is meaningless (other than aesthetically).

The authors place much of the blame for dogs lack of survival skills on people, and not just because of their cushy living conditions. Breeding has inflicted a lot of damage on canines viability as a species.

Breeds that have trouble giving birth naturally and without human intervention like bulldogs, who have unusually narrow birth canals and puppies with disproportionately large heads would probably go extinct. There is no posthuman climate or habitat in which bulldogs will survive, the authors write. And much of the aesthetic malware that humans have introduced to dog populations via breeding dropped hips, excessively long fur, stubby legs could prove detrimental if not fatal.

A pug cant achieve as much variation in expression with his tightly curled tail or flattened, wrinkly face as a shepherd dog might, write the authors, which would make it difficult to communicate effectively with wolves and coyotes. Their fate, sadly, would be as canine appetizers.

In general, the dogs most likely to survive will be (or will become) mutts, resembling todays feral dogs, with a medium build, pointy ears, long snouts and reddish/brownish, medium-length fur. Nothing that would win Best in Show at Westminster, but a dog that would easily out-survive purebreds.

But everything weve passed on to dogs hasnt just made them weaker. Dogs are naturally perceptive and whip-smart, write Pierce and Bekoff. And living with us has only enhanced that.

Dogs dont just learn commands like come, sit, stay or spin for a treat. They also learn that if they try something and dont get rewarded, they should change their behavior and try something else, the authors write.

After centuries of living among humans, dogs have become keen observers of human behavior. Theyve learned through trial and error how best to shape their own responses to get what they need from us or to avoid unpleasant experiences.

This ability to learn and adapt to novel changes, and do so quickly, would be tremendously advantageous in a world thats radically different from what dogs had with humans.

But, overall, weve likely done dogs more harm than good from discouraging behavior that would be beneficial in nature, such as barking, digging, sniffing and running fast, to breeding them for physical appearance over physical well-being.

Dogs might just be better off without us, the authors write. Without humans, dogs would be freed from the constraints of being square pegs forced into round holes, of being dogs expected to live and act like furry people.

More here:

Why dogs might actually be better off without humans - New York Post