Category Archives: Transhuman News

Futurism definition: what is Futurism?

Futurism was an Italian art movement of the early 20th century, which aimed to capture the dynamism and energy of the modern world in art. Futurists were well versed in the latest developments in science and philosophy and particularly fascinated with aviation and cinematography. Futurist artists denounced the past, as they felt the weight of past cultures was extremely oppressive particularly in Italy and instead proposed an art celebrating modernity and its industry and technology.

Key period:1908 1944Key regions:ItalyKey words:movement, dynamism, modernity, industry, technology, speedKey artists:Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carr, Giacomo Balla, Gino Severini, Luigi Russolo, Benedetta Cappa, Antonio SantElia

In 1908, the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti swerved to miss a cyclist and crashed his car in a ditch. The experience of the old bicycle versus the modern car inspired him to write his manifesto of Futurism, a movement that would conquer nostalgia and tradition. By 1910, the young artists Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carr and Luigi Russolo had joined Marinettis movement. They suggested Futurism could reach beyond just literature and poetry, and the three artists wrote the Manifesto of Futurist Painters. They sent this to their colleagues Gino Severini and Giacomo Balla, who signed the manifesto. Together, these artists formed the core group of Futurist artists.

The Futurists sought to sweep away what they believed were outdated, traditional notions about art. Instead, they wanted to replace these with an energetic celebration of the machine age. The key focus was to represent a dynamic vision of the future. As such, they often portrayed urban landscapes and new technologies including trains, cars and aeroplanes. They glorified speed, violence and the working classes, believing they would advance change.

In order to achieve movement and dynamism in their art, the Futurists developed techniques in order to express speed and motion. These techniques included blurring and repetition. They also made use of lines of force a method which they had adopted from the Cubists. The Futurists worked across a wide range of art forms including painting, architecture, sculpture, literature, theatre and music.

Major players associated with Futurism in visual arts were Umberto Boccioni, Giacomo Balla, Carlo Carr, and Gino Severini.

Arguably the most iconic Futurist artwork ever made, Umberto BoccionisUnique Forms of Continuity in Spaceis a Cubo-Futurist figure striding in forward motion. The figures powerful legs seem to be marching ahead, carved by forces such as wind and speed. This modern-man machine can be read as an allegory for Italys quest to define itself as a modern nation.

Dynamism of a Dog on a Leashis Ballas best-known work, and shows a dachshund on a leash and the feet of the lady walking it in rapid motion. Balla achieved this motion by blurring and multiplication of their legs and feet.

The Funeral of the Anarchist Galliis one of Carrs most famous works. Angelo Galli was an anarchist and labour organiser in Milan who was killed by the police during a strike in 1904. Since they feared that Gallis funeral would turn into a political demonstration, the state sent police to obstruct anarchists from entering the cemetery. When they resisted, police responded with force and a fight broke out. Carr witnessed the event and captured the intensity and chaos of the scene, as well as the rapid movement, in this painting.

Gino Severinis dancer is depicted in the centre of the painting and is composed of dynamic intersecting lines and swirling fabric. Concentric circles lead outwards to the edges of the painting, and each circular layer contains fragmentary images of musicians, instruments and audience members. This is meant to capture the essence and dynamism of the performance.

Italian architect Antonio SantElia embraced the twin ideals of mechanisation and motion, proposing a vision of a modern city in the form of a gigantic machine; he named it Citt Nuova (New City), a name quite contextually appropriate. This utopian futurist city, designed between 1912 and 1914, was a vast, multi-level, interconnected urban conurbation where massive skyscrapers were integrated by elevators, bridges, and elevated walkways in a constantly evolving artificial landscape. Paradoxically, SantElia, like many other Futurists, saw warfare as the means to destroy the old world and build the much sought after future. However, it was the entropy of war itself that would shatter their illusions, destroying not only the socio-economic conditions necessary to facilitate such grandiose plans but also its main protagonists SantElia was himself killed in a battle at the age of twenty-eight with almost no completed works of architecture left behind.

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Art Movement: Futurism - Celebration of Movement

Image by Getty Images/Futurism

A bold proposal: that by 2050, a 70-year-old will look and feel like theyre 50.

Thats the gamble that 35-year-old James Peyer is taking with this Cambrian Biopharma longevity startup, theTimes of London reports.

Of our 100,000-year-plus history as a species, its been for only about 75 years that these diseases of ageing have been the primary predators of humankind, he told the newspaper. We are rapidly zeroing in on our biggest predators diseases of [aging] and figuring out how to beat them back.

A stem cell researcher who founded his startup with the psychedelic-loving German billionaire Christian Angermayer, Peyer believes that aging is a disease that humans can fight with pharmaceuticals. He plans to prove it first by identifying disorders and diseases that mimic aging, such as those that cause loss of muscle mass, and then partner with researchers studying medicines for said diseases.

Next, after starting companies to sell the drugs associated with the diseases identified, Peyer wants to expand research on those medications for off-label anti-aging purposes, ultimately gaining government approval for those indications.

While it may seem galaxy-brained on its face, the venture capital world is taking note. Last month, Cambrian Biopharma successfully raised $100 million from a visionary group of investors, as Peyer said in a press release.

As theTimes noted, some Silicon Valley types have already begun taking metformin, a generic diabetes drug used to control blood sugar levels.

While a few preliminary studies have shown metformin to have anti-aging properties, its not been widely researched because aging is not considered a disease by any governmental bodies. But an anonymous visionary has already put up half the $70 million to fund a proper human trial of metformin as a longevity drug.

All told, its yet another startup-world attempt at the ancient human preoccupation of trying to cheat death. If they can pull it off, itd shift the entire course of human history, for better or worse but whether that goal is possible is anyones guess.

Read more: US tech investors believe theyre close to a cure for old age [The Times of London]

More on the wealthys fear of death: Stealing the Blood of the Young May Make You More Youthful

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Tech Bro Thinks He's Close to Cheating Death - Futurism

They're warning that "it will overtake the US within the next decade."The Great Rivalry

The race for tech dominance between China and the US is heating up but its starting to look like Beijing is taking the lead.

A new report, spotted by The South China Morning Post and published last week by the Harvard Kennedy School, found that Chinais rapidly gaining steam in the realms of artificial intelligence, quantum computing, 5G, semiconductors, biotechnology, and green energy.

In some races, [China] has already become No 1,reads the report. In others, on current trajectories, it will overtake the US within the next decade.

The report said that China has already overtaken America when it comes to quantum computing.

Unlike prior technological revolutions that took place when China was still a poor country, Chinas meteoric rise has provided it with the funds and manpower to potentially lead this field, the report said.

It offered a similar assessment in the field of AI, where it assessed China as a full-spectrum peer competitor to the US. The country is also well on track to dominate 5G technology as well, with China boasting 150 million 5G users to the USs six million.

While the report avoided alarmism and offered a clear assessment of the current state of the geopolitical tech race, it still offers some sobering insights that could prove worrying for US officials.

For one, new innovations in technology from China could further cement the Asian nation as the worlds largest economic superpower. Such an act could draw businesses away from the US and toward China instead.

It could also lead to big weapons advancements that could threaten the USs military might. The report quotes former Google CEO Eric Schmidts op-ed in The New York Times last year in which he warned that the United States now faces an economic and military competitor in China that is aggressively trying to close our lead in emerging technologies.

Theres no doubt that China is set to become the biggest, baddest superpower in the world in the coming years. While it would behoove the US to remain nimble and on the cutting edge of tech development, the report shows that it may well only be a matter of time before Beijing completely dominates the tech world.

READ MORE: US-China tech war: China to overtake America in core 21st century technologies within next decade, Harvard report predicts [The South China Morning Post]

More on the Tech Wars: NASA Says It Needs Nuclear Rockets to Put People on Mars Before China

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Harvard Warns That Chinese Tech Is Rapidly Overtaking American Capabilities - Futurism

"The amount of energy was orders of magnitude more than the typical core collapse supernova."Cow Spotting

Scientists may have caught a black hole or possibly a neutron star in the act of being born.

In 2018, astronomers spotted a mysterious signal coming from some 200 million light years away. At first, they thought it was a supernova, but it was far brighter and quicker than any previous explosion.

The event, later given the suitable nickname the Cow, has puzzled scientists for years until now. A team of MIT scientists tracked the unusual flash down to its source, finding something intriguing: millions of high-energy X-ray pulses that flashed at regular intervals, blasting strobes at every 4.4 milliseconds.

The astronomers crunched the numbers and found the object giving out the flares was at most 1,000 kilometers wide, with a mass less than 800 times the mass of the Sun not big enough,in other words, to be a fully-grown black hole.

We have likely discovered the birth of a compact object in a supernova, said Dheeraj Pasham, MIT research scientist and lead author of the paper published this week in the journal Nature Astronomy, in a statement.

One other possibility is that the Cow was a supernova leading to the creation of a neutron star, the extremely compact remains of a dying star.

But this one was far stronger of a blast than would be expected.

The amount of energy was orders of magnitude more than the typical core collapse supernova, Pasham said. And the question was, what could produce this additional source of energy?

This happens in normal supernovae, but we havent seen it before because its such a messy process, he added. We think this new evidence opens possibilities for finding baby black holes or baby neutron stars.

Pasham and his team are now investigating if a tiny black hole may have been born during the supernova.

The discovery could rewrite the way we understand the universe, and perhaps lead to the discovery of an entirely new class of compact celestial objects.

READ MORE: Super-bright stellar explosion is likely a dying star giving birth to a black hole or neutron star [MIT]

More on black holes: Scientists Discover Enormous Black Hole Right Near Our Galaxy

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Astronomers May Have Spotted a Black Hole Being Born - Futurism

Arca is the alias of Alejandra Ghersi, the Venezuelan music artist who has climbed the ranks in the past decade as a producer working with some of the most culturally significant figures in music, such as Bjrk, Kanye West and FKA twigs. In recent years she has flourished as a solo artist, with a handful of critically acclaimed releases newly joined by a slew of albums that arrived at the beginning of December.

The new suite of LPs Kick ii, iii, iiii and iiiii are each unique and self-contained, shapeshifting musically and conceptually from commanding to euphoric to sensual, yet they become intertwined by the visual language created by 3D artist Frederik Heyman.

All four cover artworks are drawn from Arcas Prada/Rakata music video. Where the video brings the mechanics of these compositions to life, the static album artworks give us pause to pore over the rich, intricate detail and the multitudes of the visuals a concept at the heart of Ghersis Arca project. The artworks bring together gore and majesty; birth and destruction; nature and technology; ancient symbolism and radical futures. Below, Heyman talks to us about the Kick ii-iiiii universe.

Creative Review: What is your collaborative relationship like with Alejandra? Frederik Heyman: I cherish our creative relationship deeply. Ive rarely encountered such a symbiose of creative worlds that supplement each other instead of limit. We started collaborating on our visual journey in 2018. Weve grown a base of strong trust and mutual understanding, which is fundamental for this sort of process. We both have such detailed and complex storytelling in our practice,that entwined and climaxed in this series. We elevate and challenge each other and merge into a new visual language.

CR: How long have you spent working across these albums?FH: The last Kick series was created in the course of a year. Welaidout a blueprint of the narrative we wanted to tell, accompanied by a first round of sketches in the summer of 2020. It soon became clear we had around seven fundamental stageswe wanted to cover. We wantedArca to transcend the physical world into an extensive digital seance via her performative avatar, navigating through ancient symbolism revisited in a contemporary post-human narrative. This all eventually resulting in a digitalmanifesto. A celebration of both life and death. Embracing what has been, reborn in whats to come.

We needed to cover a lot of productional parts, which wasnt always straightforward during the pandemic. On the other hand, having this much time in the process makes you able torevisit several narrative elements in a later stage. As the story is fully digital, these elements were relatively easy to adjust. No decision is final until you hit the render button.

CR: What was the process for creating these visuals?FH: Everything is computer generated. Meaning nothing you see has a physical presence in real life. All the details, every prop, animation, texture, makeup, styling needs to be created from scratch and well curated. I love doing that. Nothing is left to chance.

The two big visuals challenges were the extensive sets, and of course her avatar. The avatar was created by a company in Berlin, Mimic Productions. They created her from photographs. Usually, they start from a 3D scan, which was not possible at that time, but startingfrom a blank page opens new exciting options. In the end an avatar doesnt have to be an exact body double, but an ultimate projection of ones physical desires.

Her motion and speechwerethen captured remotely, andapplied onto her avatar in each scene. On the digital sets that surrounded her, Ive worked almost non-stop for a year. I love to get lost in these. Im in a hypnotic state then. They are full of mechanics, animations, animals, 3D scans, and even a previous cover art [from] last year. In the spider scene, she skins and processes her previous avatar from the @@@@@ artwork to be reborn into a new upgraded version, while giving birth to her new offspring (mascot Mima).

CR: Can you tell us about the creatures that appear alongside Arca?FH: The main character she interacts with, besides her multiple self, we called in the working process the builders based on working bees, all in function of serving their queen. Literally building and supporting the universe around her. They each serve a specific purpose of equal importance in the larger story in relation to Arca. These were designed by an amazing artist, Andrea Chiampo.

Aside from them, Andrea designed the mascot, Mima, who, in all her out-of-this-world innocence, counters all the gore and is a silent spectator in most of the scenes. They speak telepathically. They are similar to moogles in Final Fantasy.

Kick ii, iii, iiii and iiiii are out now on XL Recordings; xlrecordings.com

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Arca's album visuals merge futurism and ancient symbolism - Creative Review

Former SpaceX engineer Ashley Kosak isnt the only person claiming that the space companys work culture is rotten with misogyny and sexual harassment.

The Verge reports that four other former SpaceX employees have come forward detailing similar complaints, including unwanted sexual advancements by male coworkers and other harassment.

And thats not all. A mere hour after The Verge published the damning piece, The Washington Post broke yet another storyabout several additional women suing Tesla another Elon Musk-run company over sexual harassment at the companys factory in Fremont, California.And thats on top of several other harassment suits that have hit the electric carmaker over the last few weeks.

In other words, its an absolute PR disaster for Musks portfolio and one that paints an ugly picture of the work culture at both SpaceX and Tesla.

Its a day of grim revelations thats also bound to put immense pressure on leadership, including Musk, who is the CEO of both companies, as well as SpaceX COO and president Gwynne Shotwell.

In an email sent to employees before the stories came out over the weekend, as quoted by The Verge, Shotwell reiterated that violations of the companys no A-hole and harassment policies will not be tolerated.

If you are aware of, or experience any acts of harassment or discrimination, report it to your manager or any HR representative, she wrote in the email.

Meanwhile at Tesla, Jessica Brooks, who currently works at the companys factory in Fremont and is one of the women suing the company,said she was forced to stack boxes around her workstation to stop men from making crude and unwanted advances.

I was so tired of the unwanted attention and the males gawking at me, I proceeded to create barriers around me just so I could get some relief, she told the Post, noting that she tried to conceal her backside with a flannel shirt she bought at a thrift store after being catcalled.

That was something I felt necessary just so I can do my job, she added.

Neither SpaceX nor Tesla have yet commented on the many allegations to either the Post or The Verge.

READ MORE: Five former SpaceX employees speak out about harassment [The Verge]

More on the topic: Former SpaceX Engineer Says She Was Sexually Harassed

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A Huge Wave of Sexual Harassment Allegations Just Hit SpaceX and Tesla - Futurism

"Will also be important for Mars."Air Delivery

SpaceX is embarking on a bold new adventure: making rocket fuel out of thin air.

SpaceX is starting a program to take CO2 out of atmosphere & turn it into rocket fuel, CEO Elon Musk tweeted on Monday. Please join if interested.

Such a process using in-situ resources to generate fuel could have great implications during our transition to becoming interplanetary, according to Musk.

Will also be important for Mars, he added in a follow-up tweet.

Its particularly a pertinent topic for SpaceXs operations, given that its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket emits plenty of CO2when it launches.

And itsnotquite as far fetched as it sounds. Using a new technique called direct air capture (DAC), SpaceX could suck in thousands of tons of carbon dioxide to turn it into a source of fuel, Bloomberg reports.

Iceland recently started operations at the worlds largest DAC plant, sucking up to 4,400 tons of CO2 a year.

The news comes after Musk announced a $100 million prize to come up with carbon removal technologies earlier this year. The goal is to pull 1,000 tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere annually and eventually scaling up the operation dramatically.

I think this is one of those things that is going to take a while to figure out what the right solution is, Musk explained back in April. And especially to figure out what the best economics are for CO2 removal.

Right now weve only got one planet, Musk said at the time. Even a 0.1percent chance of disaster why run that risk? Thats crazy!

More on carbon capture: Scientists Fire Up Worlds Biggest Carbon Capture Machine

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Elon Musk Says SpaceX Is Going to Start Sucking CO2 Out of the Air and Turning It Into Rocket Fuel - Futurism

David Houle

When will the frogs come?

This phrase popped into my head a week ago when I heard that the tallest volcano in Indonesia had a massive eruption. This on the heels of the volcano in the Canary Islands and the ongoing eruption and lava flow in Hawaii. A search provided the fact that there have been 70 eruptions from 69 volcanos in 2021, of which 22 are new eruptions this year.

Volcanic eruptions, a plague, floods and fires of biblical proportions, massively destructive storms, cicadas last year and locusts this year.

So, when will frogs rain down from the sky?

A wry reaction to the breathless mainstream media reporting of the latest catastrophe.

Armageddon, the apocalypse, the Book of Revelations have all been mentioned somewhere since the start of the pandemic. Such concepts have existed in human history as beliefs or ideas that get mentioned whenever we entered a time of turbulence or perceived negative events.

COVID-19 has caused all of us to feel threatened, fearful, disoriented, and open to radical changes and/or new habits. Then add on all the intense and heated political polarities and dynamics of Black Lives Matter, January 6 and all that has followed, and now massive resignations, business startups and significant though possibly temporary inflation.

These are historically unprecedented times. As readers of this column know, I believe that the decade of the 2020s is the single most disruptive decade in history. There will be more change in these 10 years than in any 30-40 year period in history. It has become the focus of the books that I write.

We have COVID-19 with us and will for the rest of the decade. Resistance to vaccines in the developed countries and the absence of vaccines in the developing countries guarantee that the virus will be with us somewhere and in some form going forward.

The climate crisis has already been responsible for the floods, fires and storms mentioned above. We must significantly alter humanitys reliance on fossil fuels this decade. We will need to manage exponential scientific and technological growth. We will need to develop ideas and agreements around human/technological enhancement, longevity and genetic alteration.

Story continues

Humanity finds itself at a fork in the road this decade. On all the issues listed above and almost any major issue you could think of, is really at a fork in the road. The road from the past that we continue to barrel down or the road we want to collectively create that becomes the good future for us.

I was one of the initiators of the #forkintheroadproject. Hundreds of people, including some well-known global thinkers and creators, signed the manifesto and committed to bringing urgency to the realities of this fork in the road. We are truly at a fork in the road. And the signs all point to the road we are on as the road to these various forms of oblivion. We can, we will, we must all realize that we can detour off this accelerating journey that we dont want to face or have our children and grandchildren live in.

We must take this feeling of disorientation, cognitive dissonance and feeling upended and realize that it is a humanity-wide challenge to alter our course, and one we can make. If we do we give the generations that follow a clearer road, a better civilization and an opportunity to live fully. If we dont, well, then I will worry about the frogs.

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: DAVID HOULE: Humanity finds itself at a fork in the road this decade

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THE FUTURIST: Humanity finds itself at a fork in the road this decade - Yahoo News

"Amazon wont let us leave."Deadly Practices

As more tragic details emerge from the deadly Amazon warehouse collapse, some employees are claiming that the company has refused to give workers time off during severe weather and even that it failed to warn them as the weekends tornado approached.

A new report from The Intercept found that warehouse managersat the company refused to grant time off to workers so they could stay home during inclement weather. The company also failed to instruct employees to stay home even after tornado warnings emerged.

Text messages that allegedly came from an Amazon worker who was killed in the warehouse collapse even suggested that the company wouldnt let employees leave the facility during the storm.

Posts on the companys internal message boards seen by The Intercept said that many Amazon facilities hadnt run tornado or fire drills in years. Many employees also said they were unsure of what they would do if there was an emergency.

The companys corporate office also failed to alert employees of the tornado last Friday, according to the sites reporting.

Nobody knew what was happening, an anonymous employee told the outlet. More and more people joined in on the tickets to troubleshoot the issues only to find out from the media that the building was hit by a tornado.

Another employee added that the situation was absolutely heartbreaking and that they had almost no warning.

If true, this is all just more evidence that Amazon values productivity at its facilities above all else, from exploitative labor practices and refusal to do the bare minimum to keep its workers safe not that Bezos seems to care that much.

READ MORE: After Deadly Warehouse Collapse, Amazon Workers Say They Receive Virtually No Emergency Training [The Intercept]

More on the deadly tornado: Tornadoes Like Kentuckys May Be Getting Stronger Due to Climate Change, Scientists Say

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Amazon Workers Say Company Failed to Warn Them of Deadly Tornado - Futurism