Category Archives: Transhuman

As ever, Paul Kingsnorth's Substack is one of the most important Substacks in the world, and it's not even close. In his latest essay, Kingsnorth talks about how the public controversy over transgenderism is not really about male and female. It's about human nature itself. The beginning of the essay is a reminder about how insane -- honestly, insane -- the public dialogue is around trans today, and how fast it got there. Five years ago, if you had said that a Berkeley law professor would have testified contentiously before Congress that women aren't the only people who give birth, people would have thought you were bonkers. But it happened this week. Excerpts from Kingsnorth's latest:

Back in America - now ground-zero for the abolition of biology - thousands of girls are undergoing double mastectomies, and teenage boys are being given puberty-blocking drugs designed tochemically castrate rapists.Eleven year old girls aretaughtthat if you feel uncomfortable in your body, it means you are transgender - which may explain why, in some classrooms,a quarter of the childrenidentify as precisely that. The concept oftrans kids- a notion that would have been inconceivably baffling to most people even a few years back, and for many still is - is now beingpushedso hard that it starts to look less like the liberation of an oppressed minority than an agenda to reprogramme society with an entirely new conception of the human body - and thus of nature itself.

Kingsnorth gets into The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, Carl Trueman's invaluable book (now out in an abridged, reader-friendly version) about the roots of the West's falling apart, which, as PK points out, began with Trueman trying to answer the question of how it is the phrase "I am a woman trapped in a man's body" came to be meaningful. Kingsnorth:

Meanwhile Nietzsche and Darwin both helped, wittingly or unwittingly, to undermine the foundational assumptions of Western Christianity, thus unmooring the culture from its spiritual roots. Finally, figures such as Herbert Marcuse and Wilhelm Reich provided the justification for the removal of sexual taboos which exploded in the sixties counterculture and brought us into the pornified present.

It is this latter development, suggests Trueman, that may prove to be most significant. Identity in the contemporary West is now cored around sex and sexuality - a situation which he believes is arguably unprecedented in history. Trueman identifies Wilhelm Reich and his countercultural successors as prime movers in this culture shift. Sexual liberation, to Reich, represented the latest stage of the ongoing liberation of the individual from both nature and culture.

In his 1936 bookThe Sexual Revolution, Reich argued that sexual repression had been imposed and weaponised by governments and churches for centuries as a means of controlling the masses. Liberation of the individual was thus intimately tied up with liberated sexuality:

The existence of strict moral principles has invariably signified that the biological, and specifically the sexual, needs of man were not being satisfied. Every moral regulation is in itself sex-negating, and all compulsory morality is life-negating. The social revolution has no more important task than finally to enable human beings to realise their full potentialities and find gratification in life.

Sexual freedom is human freedom.

It doesn't take much to move from that point to accepting that one's "true self" is not a self that is given, or a self that is shaped by limits, but a self that is fully chosen, against the bounds presented by nature or society. Transgenderism is just the next phase in humankind's revolt against nature, says Kingsnorth. More:

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What does a transhumanist billionaire [Martine Rothblatt -- RD] who wants to make God have to do with a teenage boy who feels uncomfortable in his body? The answer is that Rothblatt isfar from the only personwho believes that the path to a disembodied, posthuman and post-natural future leads directly through the shattered gender binary. Looked at this way, the question of what pronouns to use, or who should be allowed into which bathroom, suddenly starts to look a lot more momentous than the newspapers are telling us. The unifying driver is the desire fortrans-cendence: the latest stage in what another transhumanist,Kevin Kelly, calls our ongoing liberation from matter.

I dont mean to suggest that the activists currently beavering away to queer the gender binary all have this end in mind, let alone that everyyone who considers themselves to be transgender buys into this worldview, or has even heard about it. But this is the direction of travel. People with gender dysphoria, girls with short hair, boys who play with dolls, people whose sexualities differ from the norm: they are not, in fact, the real issue.

The real issue is that a young generation of hyper-urbanised, always-on young people, increasingly divorced from nature and growing up in a psychologised, inward-looking anticulture, is being led towards the conclusion that biology is a problem to be overcome, that their body is a form of oppression and that the solution to their pain may go beyond a new set of pronouns, or even invasive surgery, towards nanotechnology, cyberconsciousness software and perhaps, ultimately, the end of their physical embodiment altogether.

I strongly urge you to read the whole thing -- and to subscribe. Unless we rise against these elite controllers, the day is coming when these writings will be outlawed.

This is all profoundly Luciferian. You know that, right? You should. Does anybody at your church ever talk about this stuff? If not, why not? If your church isn't talking about this stuff, it is not preparing you for the present that's here and the future that's coming.

Excerpt from:
What Is A Human? - The American Conservative

St. Louis County Republicans last week surely feel they dodged a bullet with the exit from the November ballot of Katherine Pinner, who was briefly the partys nominee for St. Louis County executive. Whatever issues shed hoped to focus on in her campaign, the real issue would have been the lawsuit she filed against her former employer alleging that its mask mandate was satanic and that getting vaccinated displeases God.

Pinner thus took her place among a long line of loons in elective politics these days. Not all, but most, hail from the rightward side of the political spectrum. Which invites some legitimate questions about what has happened to the once-sober conservative movement.

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Pinner is the 55-year-old political novice who emerged from out of nowhere this month to win the Republican nomination for the countys top political post. Online, she had voiced beliefs consistent with QAnon, the culty crowd that thinks a dark world of all-encompassing conspiracies hums just beyond plain sight a good-versus-evil epic that casts Donald Trump, improbably, as the former.

Pinners posts pointed out that if you replaced each B in President Bidens Build Back Better legislation with 6, youd end up with the mark of the devil. As voters started catching onto this plan of 6uild 6ack 6etter, the democrats quickly changed their slogan, she wrote. (Shes right. I remember the memo from headquarters.)

She suggested that coronavirus vaccines were laced with nanotechnology designed to bar code nine billion people in order to inventory them.

Its all connected, she warned.

Because, yknow, its always all connected.

After winning the Aug. 2 primary, Pinner apparently got some good advice and did some online house cleaning to remove indications that she is, well, crackers. But it seems she couldnt rein in her demons for long. The $1.2 million lawsuit Pinner filed last week against her former employer, the American Association of Orthodontists, for its pandemic policies, alleges that vaccines prompt transhumanism changes in the body that can lead to being barred from Gods graces. And it claims mask-wearing is associated with dehumanization and satanic ritual abuse.

In the latest head-spinning twist, Pinner late Thursday told the county Republican chair she plans to drop out of the race, without explaining why. Its a welcome if undeserved reprieve for the party, which can now put someone less demonstrably loopy on the ballot.

But the question remains: Why do Republicans, here and around America, keep nominating candidates who, if they approached them on the sidewalk, would prompt them to cross the street?

The poster-child for this phenomenon, of course, is Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia. Evidence of her psychosis is too voluminous to detail here, so lets leave it at her suggestion that Californias wildfires were caused by space-based lasers controlled by a cabal of Jewish overlords.

Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colorado, hasnt achieved quite that level of bonkers, but its not for lack of effort. Among her litany of lunacy was a speech in June declaring, The church is supposed to direct the government Im tired of this separation of church and state junk thats not in the Constitution. (Narrator: Except in the very first words of the very first amendment in the Bill of Rights.)

Republican candidates coming up through this years congressional primaries promise more of this derangement. Even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell who has more motive than anyone to get Republicans seated, no matter the details recently worried aloud that his party might fail to take back the Senate because of what he diplomatically called candidate quality issues.

Dr. Mehmet Oz, Pennsylvanias Republican Senate nominee, has pushed such quack remedies that it prompted an essay in the normally staid Scientific American headlined: Dr. Oz Shouldnt Be a Senator or a Doctor. Arizona Republicans have nominated to the Senate 36-year-old Blake Masters, who has praised the anti-tech manifesto of Ted Unabomber Kaczynski. In Georgia, GOP Senate nominee Herschel Walker the former NFL star who has already been in the politically awkward position of having to issue clarifications to the media regarding how many children he has fathered by how many women bashed Bidens new climate law last week by asking, Dont we have enough trees around here?

Then (as always) theres Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who last week lambasted Dr. Anthony Fauci at a fundraising event. Fauci, the federal governments top infectious-disease expert, is retiring in the face of conservative fury over his allegiance to science instead of Trump. But thats not good enough for DeSantis, who told the crowd that someone needs to grab that little elf and chuck him across the Potomac. Its worth noting that this elevated rhetoric comes from the man who many Republicans view as the more-sane alternative to Trump for the GOPs 2024 presidential nomination.

Despite the controversy surrounding Pinners brief presence on the St. Louis County ballot, she perhaps shouldnt completely discount a future in the GOP. At the rate its going, todays Republican Party will likely have a place for people like her for a long time to come.

Kevin McDermott is a Post-Dispatch columnist and Editorial Board member. On Twitter: @kevinmcdermott Email: kmcdermott@post-dispatch.com

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McDermott: Pinner may have been crackers, but in today's GOP, she was practically normal - St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Okay, this one may not technically be a furry game. If the late Fred Patten were to start this review off, he may have asked something along the lines that if you as a player moves around the world as a cat with a robot companion augmenting their ability to interpret the society around them, is that game actually anthropomorphic? Perhaps its more in line with transhumanism, but in this case more transfelinism, where your feline character is augmented by their technological companion.

And like Adam Jensen of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, the cat you play certainly didnt ask for this.

The opening of the game reminded me of Milo and Otis, an old movie of a dog and a cat that end up getting lost in the woods and need to make their way back home. Basically it was the predecessor of Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey. In this case, the unnamed feline protagonist you play as is just catting around with other cats when you find yourself in trouble and are separated from your companions and fall down into a strange lost society of automatons.

You go on your own heros journey through this strange world that has established itself under what appears to be a giant blast shield facility. In order to return to the surface youll need to help your new robot friends, while avoiding the perils of an invasive species that has taken root in the darkness of this underworld.

While the game has been noted to be on the shorter side, it is very much a complete and contained experience. It has moments of tension and balances it well with a cathartic sense of discovery and exploration. I noted while playing that the designer definitely took inspiration from Valve works, and this includes their understanding of Battle Fatigue.

Things can work their way to a bit of an intensity when dealing with the headcrab like creatures that want to chew on your cat hide, but your moments of fleeing and fighting are spaced out where it doesnt become fatiguing.

The world is fun and immersive and the robot characters are interesting. There are certain embellishments that were fun, such as a fully functioning pool table in the bars that you can bat the ball around with your paws. Desks are littered with items to knock down, though disappointingly it doesnt cause frustrations if the owner of said desk watches you knock things off like the true feline you are.

I would recommend this game if you are a curious sort, you know, like a cat. You like to explore places and enjoy the story of a exotic society. If youre the kind that likes a more visceral or reaction based game of skill, you may not enjoy it so much. Take your time and take in the environment around you and youll get the most out of it. Talk to as many folks as you can and do the tasks they ask of you to get the most out of it. Heck, you can even nap around and take in the world as the camera pans out. Because cats like their naps.

Not much to say, its a short game and its mostly the story which I cant go into without spoiling things. Its a nice and contained experience that should you enjoy its premise enough, youll come back to experience it again like a film or a book. Its sometimes refreshing to experience a game that is a contained experience rather than one that expects to be a service it sells to you for the next decade.

To me, I would rather pay 30 bucks for a complete and enjoyable experience even if it is short, then to get it for free and go through a bunch of immersion breaking microtransactions. If that is too pricey for you for a seven hour experience, then you can feel free to wait for the price point to come down.

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Stray - A simple and focused game in a world of games that go astray - Flayrah

Fans eagerly anticipated solo developer Thomas Happs follow-up game after the original Axiom Verges 2015 release for the PlayStation 4 to much critical acclaim. In 2021, Axiom Verge 2 was exclusively made available on the Epic Games Store for the PC and PS4, and it is now available on the PS5 and Steam. Many of the elements that fans of the first Axiom Verge gameplay loved to see in the follow-up, such as the abundance of collectibles, power-ups, and weapons, are present in the sequel. Still, it also differs drastically from the original in several ways.

Happ discussed Axiom Verge 2s new mechanics and influences in an interview. Due to this, despite sharing a Metroidvania history, the sequel takes a unique approach to exploration, fighting, and puzzles.

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The first Axiom Verge featured a high-concept science fiction story with elements of transhumanism, the fungibility of reality, and a dubious biomechanical alien race. Many of the ideas in Axiom Verge 2 are carried over from its predecessor, but it also finds some new sources of inspiration.

The connecting thread between both games can be found in the writings of Alastair Reynolds, a former astronomer, and physicist who now writes hard sci-fi and space opera. Huge time stretches, nearly omnipresent nanotechnology and space opera themes like those found in the Mass Effect franchise are all present in both Happs and Reynolds novels.

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Although they could be let down, players seeking clarification on Traces story might be. Even though the events of AV2 provide Axiom Verge with new context, it is not a straight sequel to the first games narrative, leaving numerous unsolved questions and room for other tales in the Axiom Verge universe.

The narrative of Axiom Verge 2 includes a tonal shift in terms of storytelling in addition to the new gameplay and influences.

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Axiom Verge 2 The Games Sole Creator, Thomas Happ, Discusses How Science Fiction Impacted Bot... - Happy Gamer

Tycho first heard about crypto back in the Silk Road days, calling the underground marketplace the coolest thing in the world at the time. Now, decidedly legit, hes launching his own Tycho Open Source Community using Polygon NFTs.

Tycho says he bought his first hardware wallet in 2011, but didnt put Bitcoin on it. In an interview with Decrypt, the artistalso known as Scott Hansen, or ISO50 from his blogging days in the aughtsshared the story of how he got into crypto and Web3.

In 2016, he bought Ethereum and vowed to never sell it, just to see what happened with it.

We should get this thing Ethereum, he recalled telling musician Jakub Alexander at the time while on tour. Bitcoin is old school but Ethereum, this things cool.

He then all but forgot about his crypto for years as he kept making music and visual art. Hansen designed all the graphics for his albums and engineered his distinct melodic, ethereal electronic soundmusic which earned him two Grammy nominations.

Our pact was that we should never sell any of it, and see what happens with it, he said of the ETH hes still hodling today.

In 2021, Hansen released some NFTs on Nifty Gateway and OpenSea, which he calls a learning experience. Inspired by the likes of Beeple, Justin Blau (3lau), and artist Reuben Wu, Hansen sees Web3 and crypto as a great fit for his community.

We knew each other from speaking at graphic design conferences back in the day, Hansen said of Beeple, who recently collaborated with Madonna on an NSFW NFT collection.

Tychos communitywhich he says includes VFX artists, musicians, and other graphic designerswas first formed in the blogosphere but has since spread to a token-gated Discord server.

Given its collaborative and professional members, its not unlike the one music producer Illmind is also building through NFTs with his Squad of Knights, which offers holders IRL perks like recording studio space and musical collaboration opportunities.

Hansen sees Web3 as a way for artists to get rid of the middleman of social media.

Web2 social media platforms came around and kind of hijacked this whole thing, Hansen said of how social media changed internet communities. It doesnt really feel like a two-way street anymore.

When he learned about Medallion, a full-service crypto platform, Hansen was intrigued. He said he started working with the company because he found their terms appealing.

What is interesting to me about the Web3 space and leveraging Web3 to this end is, with Patreon, youre just creating a login, Hansen said.

But with his Open Source community, which grants holders access to things like advance album listening parties, and livestreams, the artist owns the data.

Hansen said he always wants the NFTswhich act as access tokensto be free, while additional perks might cost money or crypto in the future.

I think this was the endgame, to create this kind of community space, this Web3 community, Hansen said.

As for whether Hansen will release any music NFTs under his Tycho alias in the future, its something he says hes exploring. Hansen told Decrypt he has a couple releases on the horizon that he might turn into music NFTs, but that he doesnt have concrete plans yet.

When asked why electronic artists like Steve Aoki, 3lau, deadmau5, Dillon Francis, and himself are so open to Web3 compared to artists in other genres, Hansen has a few ideas.

Electronic musicians in general [] have to be somewhat technically adept to even be able to get into it, and I think youre probably pretty interested in technology just as a general concept anyways if youre getting into this kind of music, he said.

As someone with a background in computer science, digital graphic design, and electronic music, Web3 and crypto felt like a natural thing for Hansen to explore.

In his view, Web3 hasnt leveled the playing fieldits still hard for new musicians to find successbut he believes Web3 will eventually become the norm.

Im not looking at it [...] as this like utopian vision that it kind of was being touted as at the beginning, he said. But I definitely think its another tool in the toolkit of artists, so anytime we have any other kind of leverage I think that is going to shift [the] power dynamic in some way.

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Excerpt from:
From Silk Road to NFTs: Why Musician and Artist Tycho Sees Web3 as the Endgame - Decrypt

But today there is a third city affecting the other two. Silicon Valley, this third city, is not governed primarily by reason (it is practically the mark of a great entrepreneur to not be reasonable), nor by the things of the soul (the dominant belief seems to be a form of materialism). It is a place, rather, governed by the creation of value. And a large component of value is utilitywhether something is useful, or is at least perceived as good or beneficial.

I realize that some people in Silicon Valley think of themselves as building rationalist enterprises. Some of them might be. The citys guiding spirit, however, is summed up by investor and podcast host Shane Parris, popular among the Silicon Valley set, when he says: The real test of an idea isnt whether its true, but whether its useful. In other words, utility trumps truth or reason.

Our new centurythe world from 2000 to the present dayis dominated by Silicon Valleys technological influence. This city has produced world-changing products and services (instantaneous search results, next-day delivery of millions of products, constant connectivity to thousands of friends) that create and shape new desires. This new city and the new forces it has unleashed are affecting humanity more than anything Tertullian could have imagined.

And this new city is growing in power. Never before have the questions of Athens and the questions of Jerusalem been mediated to us by such a great variety of things that vie for our attention and our desires. Silicon Valley, this third city, has altered the nature of the problem that Tertullian was wrestling with. The questions of what is true and what is good for the soul are now mostly subordinated to technological progressor, at the very least, the questions of Athens and Jerusalem are now so bound up with this progress that its creating confusion.

It is hard to escape the utilitarian logic of Silicon Valley, and we lie to ourselves when we rationalize our motivations. The most interesting thing about the cryptocurrency craze was the ubiquity of white papersthe framing of every new product in purely rational terms, or the need to present it as a product of Athens. And then there was Dogecoin.

Were not living in a world of pure reason or religious enchantment, but something entirely new.

Reason, religion, and the technology-driven quest to create value at any cost are now interacting in ways we scarcely understand, but which have vast influence over our everyday lives. Our two-decades-long experiment with social media has already shown the extent to which reason, or Athens, is being flooded with so much content that many have referred to it as a post-truth environment. Some social psychologists, like Jonathan Haidt, believe its making us crazy and undermining our democracy. Humanity is at a crossroads. We are trying to reconcile various needsfor rationality, for worship, for productivityand the tension of this pursuit shows up in the things we create. Because the three cities are interacting, we are now living with technology-mediated religion (online church services) and technology-mediated reason (280-character Twitter debates); religiously adopted technology (bitcoin) and religiously observed reason (Covid-19 cathedrals of safety); rational religion (effective altruism) and rational technology (3D-printed assisted-suicide pods).

If Tertullian were alive today, I believe he would ask: What does Athens have to do with Jerusalemand what do either have to do with Silicon Valley? In other words, how do the domains of reason and religion relate to the domain of technological innovation and its financiers in Silicon Valley? If the Enlightenment champion Steven Pinker (a resident of Athens) walked into a bar with a Trappist monk (Jerusalem) and Elon Musk (Silicon Valley) with the goal of solving a problem, would they ever be able to arrive at a consensus?

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The Three-City Problem of Modern Life - WIRED

If you are reading these words, your brain is alive and well, stored within the protective confines of your skull where it will reside for the remainder of your life. I feel the need to point this out because there is a small but vocal population of self-proclaimed transhumanists who believe that within their lifetimes, technological advances will enable them to upload their minds into computer systems, thereby allowing them to escape the limitations of their biology and effectively live forever.

These transhumanists are wrong.

To be fair, not all transhumanists believe in mind uploading as a pathway to immortality, but theres enough chatter about the concept within that community that excitement has spilled out into the general public so much so, that Amazon has a comedic TV series based on the premise called Upload. These may be fun stories, but the notion that a single biological human will ever extend their life by uploading their mind into a computer system is pure fiction.

The concept of mind uploading is rooted in the very reasonable premise that the human brain, like any system that obeys the laws of physics, can be modeled in software if you devote sufficient computing power to the problem. To be clear, were not talking about modeling human brains in the abstract, but modeling very specific brains your brain, my brain, your uncle Herberts brain each one represented in such extreme detail that every single neuron is accurately simulated, including all the complex connections among them.

It is an understatement to say that modeling a unique, individual human brain is a non-trivial task.

There are over 85 billion neurons in your head, each with thousands of links to other neurons. In total, there are about 100 trillion connections, which is unfathomably large a thousand times more than the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy. Its those trillions of connections that make you who you are your personality, your memories, your fears, your skills, your peculiarities. Your mind is encoded in those 100 trillion connections, and so to accurately reproduce your mind in software, a system would need to precisely simulate the vast majority of those connections down to the most subtle interactions.

Obviously, that level of modeling will not be done by hand. People who believe in mind uploading envision an automated scanning process, likely using some kind of supercharged MRI machine, that captures the biology down to resolutions that approach the molecular level. They then envision the use of intelligent software to turn that scan into a simulation of each unique brain cell and its thousands of connections to other cells.

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That is an extremely challenging task, but I cannot deny that it is theoretically feasible. If it ever happens, it is not going to happen in the next 20 years, but much, much further out. And with additional time and resources, it also is not crazy to think that large numbers of simulated minds could co-exist inside of a rich and detailed simulation of physical reality. Still, the notion that this process will offer anyone reading this article a pathway to immortality is utterly absurd.

As I stated above, the idea that a single biological human will ever extend their life by uploading their minds is pure fiction. The two key words in that sentence are their life. While it is theoretically possible with sufficient technological advances to copy and reproduce the precise form and function of a unique human brain within a simulation, the original human would still exist in their biological body, their brain still housed within their skull. What would exist in the computer would be a copy a digital doppelgnger.

In other words, you would not feel like you suddenly transported yourself into a computer. In fact, you would not feel anything at all. The brain copying process could have happened without your knowledge, while you were asleep or sedated, and you would never have the slightest inkling that a reproduction of your mind existed within a simulation. And if you found yourself crossing a busy street with a car racing toward you you would jump out of the way, because you would not be immortal.

But what about that version of you within a simulation?

You could think of it as a digital clone or identical twin, but it would not be you. It would be a copy of you, including all your memories up to the moment your brain was scanned. But from that instant on, it would generate its own memories. It might be interacting with other simulated minds in a simulated world, learning new things and having new experiences. Or maybe it interacts with the physical world through robotic interfaces. At the same time, the biological you would be generating new memories and having new experiences.

In other words, it would only be identical for an instant, and then you and the copy would both diverge in different directions. Your skills would diverge. Your knowledge would diverge. Your personalities would diverge. After a few years, there would be substantial differences. Your copy might become deeply religious while you are agnostic. Your copy might become an environmentalist while you are an oil executive. You and the copy would retain similar personalities, but you would be different people.

Yes, the copy of you would be a person but a different person. Thats a critical point, because that copy of you would need to have its own identity and its own rights that have nothing to do with you. After all, that person would feel just as real inside their digital mind as you feel within your biological mind. Certainly, that person should not be your slave, required to take on tasks that you are too busy to do during your biological life. Such exploitation would be immoral.

After all, the copy would feel just like you feel fully entitled to own its own property and earn its own wages and make its own decisions. In fact, you and the copy would likely have a dispute as to who gets to use your name, as you would both feel like you had used it your entire life. If I made a copy of myself, it would wake up and fully believe it was Louis Barry Rosenberg, a lifelong technologist in the fields of virtual reality and artificial intelligence. If it was able to interact with the real world through digital or robotic means, it would believe it had every right to use the name Louis Barry Rosenberg in the physical world. And it certainly would not feel subservient to the biological version.

In other words, creating a digital copy through mind uploading has nothing to do with allowing you to live forever. Instead, it would just create a competitor who has identical skills and capabilities and memories to the biological version, and who feels equally justified to be the owner of your identity. And yes, the copy would feel equally justified to be married to your spouse and parent to your children.

In other words, mind uploading is not a path to immortality. It is a path for creating another you who immediately will feel like they are equally justified owners of everything you possess and everything you have accomplished. And they would react exactly the way you would react if you woke up one day and were told: Sorry, but all those memories of your life arent really yours but copies, so your spouse is not really your spouse, your kids are not really your kids, and your job is not really your job.

Is this really what anyone would want to subject a copy of yourself to?

Back in 2008, I wrote a graphic novel called Upgrade that explores the absurdity of mind uploading. It takes place in the 2040s in a future world where everyone spends the vast majority of their lives in the Metaverse, logging in the moment they wake up and logging out the moment they go to sleep. (Coincidentally, the fictional reason why society went in this direction was a global pandemic that drove people inside.) What the inhabitants of this future world didnt realize is that as they lived their lives in the Metaverse, they were being characterized by AI systems that observed all of their actions and reactions and interactions, capturing every sentiment and emotional response so it could build a digital model of their mind from a behavioral perspective rather than from molecular scanning.

After 20 years of collecting data in this dystopian metaverse, the fictional AI system had fully modeled every person in this future society with sufficient detail that it didnt need real people anymore. After all, real humans are less efficient, as we need food and housing and healthcare. The digital copies didnt need any of that. And so, guess what the fictional AI system decided to do? It convinced all of us biological people to upgrade ourselves by ending our own lives and allowing the digital copies to replace us. And we were willing to do it under the false notion that we would be immortal.

Thats what mind uploading really means. It means ending humanity and replacing it with a digital representation. I wrote Upgrade 14 years ago because I genuinely believe we humans might be foolish enough to head in that direction, ending our biological existence in favor of a purely digital one.

Why is this bad? If you think Big Tech has too much power now having the ability to track what you do and moderate the information you access imagine what it will be like when human minds are trapped inside the systems they control, unable to exit. That is the future many are pushing for. Its terrifying. Mind uploading is not the path to immortality some believe.

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Transhumanists want to upload their minds to a computer. They really won't like the result - Big Think

A new album will land on the salsa dance floor by the end of this week; one that fuses rhythms from the 1970s with the technological dystopias of the future. Behind it is Ansonia Records, a label that, after its creation in 1949 among Latino immigrants from New York, would produce several merengue, jibara, bomba, guaracha, mambo, and boogaloo albums, before stopping altogether in 1990. This Friday, after more than 30 years, Ansonia Records will return with a salsa album.

Hermano del futuro, vengo buscando iluminacin; brother from the future, I come looking for enlightenment. So says one of the songs from the new album, called Metamorfosis, by the old salsa group Renacimiento. But there is a catch: Renacimiento does not exist. It never did. It is a fake group, and this is a fake cover, explains musician Eblis lvarez, founder of the Colombian group Meridian Brothers, who had already experimented with various genres, from cumbia to vallenato. A group that practices tropical cannibalism, says lvarez. This year, Meridian Brothers decided to launch a group of salseros straight out of fiction: Renacimiento.

Renacimiento [rebirth] is the typical name that musicians would give a salsa group in the 1970s, lvarez tells EL PAS. For example, in the Nueva Trova movement there was talk of a political rebirth, but at the same time they combined this with a spiritual factor: when one listens to groups like La Columna de Fuego [from Bogota] or Los Jaivas [from Chile], there was a common pattern: everyone was waiting for a rebirth of the soul, and of society.

Although on stage Renacimiento is made up of five artists Mara Valencia, Alejandro Forero, Csar Quevedo and Mauricio Ramrez, besides lvarez when the album was recorded it was the founder who played all the instruments, besides doing the voice of the salsero that accompanies the songs. The album has nine tracks, some similar to the older, slower salsa, and others to the faster, contemporary style. Between the piano, the timbales and the percussion, we find verses with the concerns of the 21st century: love that communicates by algorithm, or the threats of atomic bombs that take us to the cemetery. Metamorfosis, the single that has already been released, begins with a man who wakes up turned into a robot and longs for a time when nightclubs really had an atmosphere, not like now, full of cameras, full of drones.

I wanted it to sound like salsa from the 1970s, says lvarez. There is no originality, or the originality of this lies in being able to replicate the music as best as possible, but in terms of the material there is nothing original, as it is made with the collective unconscious of Latin America, of Colombia, of Latinos. This is an extrapolation from the 1970s to today, and it speaks of transhumanism, like the matter of highest concern that everything, absolutely everything, is now packed inside the damn cell phone.

The rebirth includes both the album and the label, as this is the first recording in more than 30 years to be released by Ansonia Records, a company created in 1949 and later forgotten, despite having been one of the first labels founded by a Latin migrant in the United States. Puerto Rican Rafael Prez, its founder, brought Dominican, Puerto Rican and Cuban musicians from Latin Harlem or the South Bronx, who had not found a home among American record companies, to several studios. He produced his records before the time of the powerful Fania, which made New York salsa famous.

To Liza Richardson, an American radio host who was also a music supervisor on series like Narcos or the movie Y tu mam tambin, Ansonia Records is a gem. In the early 1990s, she found an Ansonia album in the stations archives and, fascinated by the labels production, became close to the heirs of Prez. In 2020, she bought the record label with the intention of reactivating it. She, with the help of a small team, has begun to digitize more than 5,000 Ansonia-produced songs; an eighth of them can already be found on streaming platforms like Spotify.

Souraya Al-Alaoui, manager of Ansonia Records, explains that most of the artists chosen by the label were focused on the Latin American diaspora. That was their base; they valued the traditional sounds from islands like Cuba or Puerto Rico, and were not looking to become westernized.

Johnny Pacheco, founder of La Fania, started with Ansonia Records, and Ansonia was an inspiration for what would later become La Fania, says Al-Alaoui. Ansonia was also a pioneer as a label owned by a Latino, an independent label with a founding message: this is from us and for us. Thats why it was an inspiration for what came after.

Over the years, La Fania grew and the seed of Ansonia Records faded away. The label never managed to promote its musicians in concerts like La Fania did, and after the arrival of the digital world, they did not set up a website or try to upload their music to any streaming platforms. Thus, it became a label that was only known by a small group of music lovers, like Liza Richardson and Eblis lvarez.

Now, we are hoping to release a new record every year, and we are thrilled to start with this one by Meridian Brothers, says Richardson. This is an album that looks to the past but tries to move towards the future, and that is exactly what we are trying to do: look to the past to, at some point, be able to grow again, to thrive.

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A fake salsa band ignites the rebirth of an old New York record label - EL PAS USA

WISeKey Strengthens its Technology Portfolio Across Cybersecurity, IoT, NFT and the Metaverse by Constantly Learning and Adapting to Provide Customers with a Highly Trusted, Secure, and Intelligent Platform for Their Digital Transformation

WISeKey International Holding Ltd. , a leading global cybersecurity, IoT, and AI company, announced its latest Cybersecurity IoT developments reinforcing the position of WISeKey as a major player on these strategic technologies.

The pace of change being experienced since the start of COVID-19 pandemic in almost every industry is unprecedented; this has led to the acceleration of digital transformations. Private, public entities and governments across the globe seeking to seize on the huge opportunities ahead, are also facing huge challenges presented by the merge of the IoT, AI, Cybersecurity, Trust, Identity Management and the Metaverse, thus they need a new platform model that transforms their operations, protects their data and customers while at the same time reduces complexity, accelerates service deployment, and increases security.

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To satisfy clients needs WISeKey has embarked on a major digital transformation adding new verticals and activities that can be summarized as follows:

1.WISe.ART platform: WISe.ARTs unique competitive edge comes from its platform which is secured by WISeKeys various security technologies enabling the authentication of digital identity based NFTs, physical objects as well as digital assets, in a safe end-to-end process. The WISe.ART platform offers users full control of their WISeID NFT, while other NFTs must request access to identity information and WISeID NFTs users then can decide by themselves what level of information they wish to share. New artists joining the WISe.ART NFT Marketplace that increasingly see a future for the tokens that upends the economics of content creation and influence on the internet. Almost 100 artists have already joined the WISe.ART NFT Marketplace with approximately 500 products, adding a commercial NFT sales potential aggregate of $20 million worth of NFTs.

2.WISeSat solutions: WISeSat is the first cost-effective and secure IoT connectivity solution anywhere on Earth using picosatellites and low-power sensors. It aims to answer the needs of any large IoT deployment in agrotech, energy, logistics and more. WISeSat collects and sends data from terrestrial sensors, increasing knowledge of the status of assets and offering essential information to improve processes and optimize production. These interactions between sensors, gateways, ground stations and satellites require Trust. WISeSat, by using VaultIC, a complete cryptographic toolbox that makes straightforward the integration of digital security in any satellite device, offers this Trust. It ensures all Certificate-based Authentication (PKI), Authorization, Encryption, and Integrity requirements. The goal is to offer this service in a SaaS model allowing both remote and redundant IoT communications for companies seeking to securely connect their assets via satellite communication, covering large and unserved geographic areas such as maritime, deserts, mountains, etc., at affordable prices. WISeKey in cooperation with FOSSA Systems has launched in June 2022 , 7 new WISeSat FOSSA secured satellites creating one of the largest European IoT constellations in history. FOSSA has increased to 13 the WISeSat-ready constellation in orbit, becoming the Spanish satellite operator with the largest constellation.

3.Patents:The filing of patent application for a System and Method for Providing Persistent Authenticatable NFT with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), under the number US 17/514,296 ensures the provenance, authenticity, persistence, and long-term value of NFTs that are minted on Blockchains using this method. During the minting process, this method allows to ensure that the NFT is not corrupted, incomplete, or ambiguous. In general, there is a high confidence in the ability of a Blockchain to preserve and store the public key and digital signature information of the NFT along with any subsequent transaction data over long and very long periods of time. However, a Blockchain cannot preserve information that the NFT does not itself include. Such as disclosed in the patent application, it is the information in a persistent off-chain storage that establishes the value and that needs to be authenticated and secured.

4.NanoSealRT: The development of a new semiconductor theNanoSealRT, an NFC Forum Type 5 semiconductor chip that works with both Android and IOS 12 (and above) devices (the essential patent granted in March 2021 by the E.U. and the Chinese Patent Offices), further reinforced WISeKeys position as a major Smart Label system provider in traceability, anti-counterfeiting and consumer engagement applications.

5.Post-quantum NFC/ID card solutions: WISeKey and Synergy Quantum are currently developing post-quantum NFC/ID card solutions for second factor identification and post-quantum encryption chips and software platform for PQE tunnelling solutions.

Of note, in October 2021, Synergy Quantum SA signed a joint venture agreement with the I-Hub Quantum Technology Foundation, under the National Mission for Interdisciplinary Cyber Physical Systems, Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India to provide its knowhow and skills for the productization and commercialization of co-developed technologies in the field of quantum sciences.

On December 15, 2021, Indias Union Cabinet approved the Semicon India Program (Program for Development of Semiconductors and Display Manufacturing Ecosystem in India), with an outlay of INR 760 billion (>US$10 billion) for the development of a sustainable semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem in India. According to the India Electronics and Semiconductor Association, semiconductor consumption in India was worth US$21 billion in 2019, growing at the rate of 15.1 percent.

6.Universal Communications Identifier (UCID):WISeKey has also made strong progress on using WISeID as a Universal Communications Identifier (UCID), a unique identifier for an IoT device on a network; the blockchain, a distributed ledger shared with the nodes of a computer network guarantees security and Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), cryptographic assets on a blockchain cannot be replicated. The combined practical application of these technologies implementing UCID on the device, using NFTs, and putting them on the blockchain ensures that the device itself is authenticated on a network that cannot be corrupted.

7.NCCoE project: WISeKeys strategy to further expand its U.S. operations will also benefit from the recent announcement it has been selected as a collaborator by NIST for the NCCoE Trusted IoT Device Network-Layer Onboarding and Lifecycle Management Consortium project. For this project, WISeKey is working with NIST to define recommended practices for performing trusted network-layer onboarding, which will aid in the implementation and use of trusted onboarding solutions for IoT devices at scale. The WISeKey contributions to the project will be Trust Services for credentials and secure semiconductors to keep the credentials secure. Specifically, WISeKey will offer INeS Certificate Management Service (CMS) for issuing credentials and VaultIC secure semiconductors to provide tamperproof key storage and cryptographic acceleration.

8.The Code to The Metaverse:This year The Code to The Metaverse, was officially introduced at Davos in May in a broader partnership with NBC, who will be producing a 12-part multi-media series to include broadcast, event and social media programming. Grounded in a human-centric foundation,The transHuman Codeprovides an ethical platform for developers, enablers and users of new technologies to prioritize keeping people at the center of gravity in the relationship between woman/man and machine. With its roots in the development of secure identity management, WISeKey has stood at the forefront of providing greater security for data authentication since 1999. In the future,The transHuman Codeplatform, secured by WISeKey, could seamlessly ensure that technological innovations protect humans in the all environments. Our co-existence with artificial intelligence will challenge all conventions of ethical norms as we have known them, as we continue to digitize our work environment, our social interaction, and our physical activities. Recent developments have forced governments around the world to take steps to quickly understand how Metaverse, this new frontier of innovation, is challenging the traditional conception of Sovereignty. With data being stored virtually on the Metaverse anywhere in the world and government employees and citizens using information technology systems that are hosted and operated from anywhere (even outside of their jurisdiction), the expected sovereign rights over that date on the Metaverse needs to be reconsidered. Many information technology companies are telling governments that that their versions of the Metaverse will be enough to ensure sovereignty over their data and citizens. Others are stating that new legislation is needed to protect citizens. All in all, the solutions they propose are partial and unsatisfactory.

9.Cybersecurity Tech Accord membership: WISeKey is a member of the Cybersecurity Tech Accord is a public commitment among more than 150 global technology companies to protect, empower and improve security, stability and resilience of cyberspace. Since its inception, Cybersecurity Tech Accord signatories have supported initiatives on improving email and routing security, implemented Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC) in their own operations, participated in global requests for comments on the UNs new High Level Panel on Digital Cooperation, and endorsed the Paris Call for Trust and Security in Cyberspace. Additionally, the coalition has coordinated with like-minded organizations such as the Global Cyber Alliance, Internet Society, and Global Forum on Cyber Expertise.

10.Clinton Global Initiate: WISeKey will be joining the Clinton Global Initiate in September 2022 to address Digital Identification issues as part of the United Nations SDG. WISeKey, in cooperation with the International Organization for Secure Transactions Foundation (OISTE.org), will be providing a Digital Identification Infrastructure-NETeID-designed to support a network of 20,000 Identification Authorities worldwide with the objective to issue a billion digital identities. Each of these 20,000 Identification Authorities operating from 189 countries will be authorized to issue Digital Identities locally.

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WISeKey Strengthens its Technology Portfolio Across Cybersecurity, IoT, NFT and the Metaverse - MarTech Series

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Performance artist Stelarc is world-renowned for using his body as a canvas for his art, which explores themes of the post and trans-human, from voluntary surgeries (yes, he still has his third ear, now a permanent part of his body, on his forearm), his flesh-hook suspensions and robotic attachments. But his latest work is a stand-alone installation that not only operates without the artist present, but is effectively controlled by anyone.

For the Science Gallery Melbournes new exhibition Swarm, Stelarc worked with Dr Paul Loh from the Melbourne School of Design and David Leggett from LLDS Architecture to create an enormous kinetic sculpture which senses and responds to the presence of humans. The project is also a collaboration with PhD students at the School of Computer Science and Information Systems, Pelican Studios and pneumatic and electric automation company Festo.

Swarm, which features 16 large-scale installations from around the world, explores ideas of collective behaviour, highlighting the way social behaviour underlies everything from molecular movements, the lives of insects, the algorithms in our hyper-connected digital world and how AI and new technologies replicate swarming behaviour.

Artist Stelarc with his work Anthropomorphic Machine at Science Gallery Melbourne.Credit:Chris Hopkins

Stelarcs eight-metre high Anthropomorphic Machine, which will sit in the Gallerys corner window on Swanston St, uses a system of cameras to detect visitors and reacts in real time to their gestures and movements. And while its a machine, it does so using the principles of human body structure.

Its a robot in the sense that its a machine thats interactive and responsive, says Stelarc, but its not your usual humanoid or insect-like robot.

He describes it as an alternative anatomical architecture. The work is anthropomorphic in the sense that its not figurative, but in the sense that it has skeletal tensegrity structure it has other muscles, steel tendons, a circulatory system of air, pneumatic lungs and a computational system.

A series of cameras are linked to the machine to detect the space beneath and around the structure, and whether a person is in proximity. Depending on whether the person is static or moving around, the machine will respond differently via a system of pneumatic rubber muscles that work with compressed air, which move all or some of 498 stainless-steel struts held together by cables.

Stelarc with his third ear which was implanted in his forearm in 2012.Credit:Helen Nezdropa

The whole structure is flexible and deformable, says Stelarc. As a muscle contracts in length, it pulls part of the structure it then deforms the tensegrity.

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The machines cameras track the dynamic behaviour of the crowd, the speed of interaction between people, and their distribution, using what Science Gallery Melbourne Director and Swarm curator Dr Ryan Jeffries calls a swarm algorithm.

I see also the structure itself becoming like a murmuration, says Jeffries, but also responding to groups of people, and thats at the heart of Swarm in terms of social, collective behaviour.

When still, the machine is beautiful, its rubber and steel parts appearing to float mid-air, but it becomes something eerie when its moving, as air hisses and the struts clank gently.

Stelarcs artwork is a machine that operates with a human-like bodily structure.Credit:Chris Hopkins

As the struts change their positioning orientation, it can be described as a kind of swarming, says Stelarc, where one strut affects another and the movement spreads across the structure. Its also about the notion of machine aliveness what constitutes a machine, what sort of vocabulary of movements generate a sense of aliveness.

Anthropomorphic Machine can also be controlled remotely; people can log on to a website and interact with the machine at any time which might be alarming for passersby.

If you go to a website, the camera switches on and your movements in front of the camera can make it respond remotely. Anyone, anywhere at any time can access the robot and animate it, explains Stelarc. Halfway through the night, when nobody is here, it is lit up, and[it] will start responding.

Stelarc, now 76, has long been interested in the idea of bodies being physically separated but electronically connected. Before most of us even knew what the internet was, he staged an interactive performance in the mid-90s called Fractal Flesh.

My body was in Luxembourg, and people in the Pompidou Centre in Paris, the media lab in Helsinki, and a conference in Amsterdam could access my body and remotely activate it via muscle stimulation, he says. There was no exoskeleton involved just 50 volts in different body sites which made my body move, done with a touchstone interface.

He performed a similar piece, ReWired/ReMixed, in Perth, where he lives, in 2016 at the Perth Institute for Contemporary Art, using an exoskeleton arm controlled remotely by strangers. Wearing a mask and headphones, he also decoupled his vision and hearing.

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For five days, six hours a day, I could only hear with ears that were in New York, I could only see with eyes in London and anyone, anywhere at any time could access my right arm and remotely animate it.

Wasnt that weird? Yes, he says. But most things I do are weird. A touch of understatement from the man who, with his partner and frequent collaborator Nina Sellars, created the work Blender, which used combined sterilised bodily material surgically extracted from the pair inside a sealed, air-powered machine.

That work was, he says the inverse of his 1993 work The Stomach Sculpture, in which he swallowed a small crab-like robotic sculpture which opened and closed, had a flashing light, and made a beeping sound, and was filmed through an endoscopic camera fed into his oesophagus.

With Blender, instead of a machine choreographing inside a soft human body, here a machine becomes the host for a liquid body composed of biomaterial from two artists bodies. There were proximity senses around the machine so when people approached, it triggered the blender blades to blend the material.

Anthropomorphic Machine, in comparison, seems almost conservative, despite its human-machine hybridity. Its a continuation, Stelarc says, of his works around machine bodiments and hybridities.

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Because of its skeletal structure, the pneumatic rubber muscles, the circulatory system of compressed air, the pneumatic lung, the vision and computational system, he says, if you werent referring to a machine, those descriptions might easily refer to a body.

Late-night CBD pedestrians have been warned.

Swarm is at Science Gallery Melbourne, August 13 - December 3. On August 20, Anthropomorphic Machine will perform with dancer Carol Brown and the Bolt Ensemble. melbourne.sciencegallery.com

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Artist Stelarcs creature comes to life at Science Gallery - The Age