Category Archives: Transhumanist

Picture this: You are in the bathroom, doing your usual thing after breakfast, when you notice blood in the water sitting in your white, porcelain toilet.

Scared, you schedule an appointment with a gastroenterologist, who recommends a colonoscopy and a biopsy. It could be cancer, it could be a harmless colitis. But there you are, confronted, perhaps for the first time of your life, with your own mortality.

You get to the doctor's office and are told to wait. Reading some glossy magazine to kill time (pun intended), you notice a peculiar half-page add: "Want to live forever? Explore our cryogenics facilities at Alcor Life Extension Foundation." What a coincidence, you think. Checking the website on your smartphone, you find out that this place actually exists, outside Scottsdale, Arizona.

The idea is, in principle, simple. As you die, your body is caught fresh and rushed to a coffin-like cylinder filled with liquid nitrogen, where it will be frozen, either in full or just the head, until such time when either the cure for your ailment is available, or the technology for a full brain upload is ready. In both cases, the goal is to give you the possibility to live forever, even if this thing that lives forever is not really you. Or is it? What defines you, anyway?

Such is the premise of Marc O'Connell's outstanding book on transhumanism, To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death. O'Connell decides to dive into the transhumanist culture in the best possible way: by traveling the world in search of the key figures in the movement to see what makes them believe so completely that science can, in fact, beat death. The result is a fast-paced travel-log-cum-existential inquiry into the science and the religious significance of this age-old human desire to live forever: To become, in effect, a god.

"A man is a god in ruins," wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. This quote, which O'Connell places at the book's opening page, captures the essence of the quest. If man is a failed god, there may be a way to fix this. Since "The Fall," we "lost" our god-like immortality, and have been looking for ways to regain it. Can science do this? Is mortality merely a scientific question? Suppose that it is and that we can fix it, as we can a headache. Would you pay the price by transferring your "essence" to a non-human entity that will hold it, be it silicone or some kind of artificial robot? Can you be you when you don't have your body? Are you really just transferrable information?

As O'Connell meets an extraordinary group of people, from serious scientists and philosophers to wackos, he keeps asking himself this question, knowing fully well his answer: Absolutely not! What makes us human is precisely our fallibility, our connection to our bodies, the existential threat of death. Remove that and we are a huge question mark, something we can't even contemplate. No thanks, says O'Connell, in a deliciously satiric style, at once lyrical, informative, and captivating.

Every page breathes with his humanity, thankfully. For the prospects can be either beatific or terrifying, depending where you come from: Is transhumanism the essence of the Resurrection, bodiless souls basking under the eternal light of the Singularity? Or is it the nightmarish dystopia of a machine-dominated future, our humanity lost, our struggles forgotten, our creations left behind as irrelevant?

Whatever your choice, transhumanism is here to stay. Don't believe me? Look at your smart phone: the world at your fingertips, its apps an extension of yourself, your digital persona, your connectivity to the global community. Imagine the angst of not having one for one or two days, a sense of loss, of loneliness.

Even if the science behind the grand promise of transhumanism remains decidedly elusive, we are already blending with machines. To a large extent, they already define us. How far this will go, and what will happen to us, is left for the future and for those who make it happen.

Marcelo Gleiser is a theoretical physicist and writer and a professor of natural philosophy, physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College. He is the director of the Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Engagement at Dartmouth, co-founder of 13.7 and an active promoter of science to the general public. His latest book is The Simple Beauty of the Unexpected: A Natural Philosopher's Quest for Trout and the Meaning of Everything. You can keep up with Marcelo on Facebook and Twitter: @mgleiser

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Would You Become An Immortal Machine? - NPR

The Body Hacking Convention in Austin, Texas took place a few months ago. It brought togethera collection of people who share in the idea of using technology to augment our biological capabilities and enhance the human experience. Austin was a fitting place to hold such an event as the citys mottosuggests

One of the strongest voices for this movement is Amal Graafstra, CEO and founder of Dangerous Thingsas well asa firm believer that biohacking is the next step in human evolution. As he pointed out many times, this is a process that has already begun. Whether it be through pacemakers or breast implants, we already fix any part of us that we need to or enhance anything we deem to be sub-par. We also walk around with computers basically attached to us everywhere we go that are connected to the internet and all of humanity at all times. It is natural that we will continue to push this trend forward by further augmenting our bodies and merging ourselves with the tools we create. And he doesnt just talk the talk, hehastransponders implanted into his hands that allow him to open doors, start vehicles and log into his computer with the wave of his hand. His company sells such implantable devices and he has pioneered many of the techniques used in the biohacking industry.

A number of other devices (and the people they are lodged in) were also showcased at this event. Many were focused on allowing humans to intuit new senses, believing we are limited in the ways we can experience and interact with the world to just the five or so senses we are born with. There wasNorth Sense, a device that allows people to feel where north is like a homing pigeon, there were implantable magnets that allow people to pick up objects like Magneto, some even strong enough to let people sense magnetic fields around them, echolocation goggles that help blind people detect objects in front of them, vests that enable the person wearing it to feel the world around them, a company calledCyberise selling everything implantable from chips to thermometers and an eyeborg who had a camera embedded into one of his eye sockets.

However, they were not the irrational sci-fi fanatics that many who first hear about them assume. They are a collection of very forward-looking scientifically minded people who believe in augmenting their biology for the betterment of themselves and the species. It seems this is where we are trending, gradually technology is spreading to every part of our lives and it is only a matter of time before we start making it permanent parts of our identity. The people attending this conference see themselves as simply catching the wave before most people have even seen the tide rising.

They are also keenly aware of how contentious the movement they are starting is, an assortment of ethical issues surrounding it were at the heart of nearly every talk and discussion at the conference. Among the questions addressed were a persons right to augment their body however they see fit, whether programming code should be considered free speech, if it is incumbent upon us to push technology and augmentation forward to make the species more fit for survival, as well as the fear that many have that the growing gap in equality will continue to grow and that biohacks may lead to the species itself splitting into the enhanced and the naturals based solely on who can afford to pay for all these upgrades.

It is a fascinatingly complex issue further obfuscated by the reality that there is a blurry line between fixing something and enhancing. If a child is born with a genetic defect that we can treat it seems obvious that we should, but what if gene editing techniques can endow that child with an improved immune system so that they virtually never get sick? At what point do we say it is okay to replace a severed arm with a prosthetic that can restore some function but not okay to give people an arm that works much better than their biological one so others dont start hacking off their arms to become Robocops? A myriad of such questions pop up when we think about all that we may soon be able to do.

There are no easy answers but the main take away from this conference is that society needs to start talking about these things because whether we like it or not it is becoming a part of our reality and we need to be ready for some very weird things on the horizon.

Much of what was discussed at the conference falls under the label of a growing movement known as transhumanism. It is a movement that aims to facilitate the next step in our evolution as we go from human to something beyond human. Recently a number of transhumanist parties have formed around the world primarily centered around three core tenants: that science and reason should be the basis for decision making not ideology, that governments main responsibility is to eliminate existential threats to life on earth, and the promotion of science and technology for the betterment of all. Transhumanism also embodies the same ethos that pervaded the body hacking conference, the belief that technology will inevitably swallow the world and that it is actually changing us for the better, proponents of both believewe shouldaccept that change and embrace the possibilities that come with it.

Not all share the movements optimism. Many associate much of the progress being made in the world, as well as the rise of ever more factional politics, with a dystopian vision of the future where we either end up destroying ourselves or becoming slaves to the organizations and technologies we are creating. This seems frighteningly plausible especially when you consider that one of the strongest backers of many of the technologies espoused by transhumanists is the military community, DARPA in particular, who envision the creation of universal soldiers equipped with a range of bionic sensors encased in indestructible exo-suits effectively making them superhuman. The development of such a soldier seems to already be at the forefront of the next global arms race.

But transhumanists argue that just the opposite is possible, they believe that by augmenting our biology and merging with technology we can liberate ourselves from many of the inconveniences of life, allowing us to more fully express who we are. Almost every tool that we have created, from the spear to the computer, has given us a better quality of life, and allowed us to live healthier, longer and more enlightened lives. This new age of technology will further facilitate that arc, freeing us from the drudgery of work, ridding us of disease, further connecting us to each otherand allowing us to truly explore the limits of reality.

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Transhumanism Is the Next Step in Human Evolution - Futurism

In a large warehouse next to the Scottsdale Airport in Arizona, 149 patients occupy large cylinders filled with liquid nitrogen. None are alive; some are just decapitated heads. Yet to adherents of the practice called transhumanism, they arent dead either, but suspended between life and death. When the technology becomes available, the thinking goes, they will, in some shape or form, come back to life.

BOOK REVIEW To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death, by Mark OConnell (Doubleday, 256 pages).

For $200,000, you can have your own body suspended there or if you opt to have only your brain preserved, the cost is $80,000. The facility in Scottsdale, the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, is one of three cryopreservation sites in the United States. (A fourth is in Russia.)

What if technology could set us free from our own mortal bodies? If there were a way to expand our mental and physical beings beyond the limitations we were born with? If we could harness science to morph our flesh and bones into a machinelike state?

In the transhumanist school of thought, these are not far out propositions. They are our future.

To adherents of the practice called transhumanism, they arent dead either, but suspended between life and death.

The history, plight, and future of transhumanism are examined in Mark OConnells first book, To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death. OConnell, a Slate book columnist and staff writer for the literary website The Millions, defines transhumanism as a total emancipation from biology itself. In this thoughtful and readable book, he aims to understand the motivations of those who are guided by the belief that technology will enable humans to transcend the human condition.

In an attempt to explore what it means to think of ourselves as machines, OConnell takes readers on an all-encompassing tour, meeting artificial intelligence researchers, philosophers, brain-uploading scientists, roboticists with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and grinders (people who implant cybernetic devices into their own skin). He closes with his travels on the immortality bus with Zoltan Istvan, a transhumanist author and entrepreneur who ran for president in 2016 on the Transhumanist Party ticket. (He didnt make a dent in the election, but he claimed that winning was not the point he wanted to bring awareness to the concept of conquering death with technology, as he reported to Inverse). OConnell touches on concepts like the singularity the moment when artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence along with mind uploading, life extension, and space colonization. He writes in an agreeable, conversational tone, offering his opinions, doubts, and fears along the way.

OConnell makes it clear that he does not fit into the subcultures he observes: In no sense was I among my people. In no sense was this my world. As a self-proclaimed interloper, he connects directly with readers who may know next to nothing about AI, but worry about its implications. Often he closes these sections with reflections about his own uneasy relationship with machines: The effects of technology on my own life were something about which I was profoundly ambivalent; for all I had gained in convenience and connectedness, I was increasingly aware of the extent to which my movements in the world were mediated and circumscribed by corporations whose only real interest was in reducing the lives of human beings to data, as a means to further reducing us to profit.

The flip side of creating machinelike humans is creating humanlike machines, and OConnell is equally fascinated by the astounding but fraught recent strides in artificial intelligence. He visits the Machine Intelligence Research Institute in Berkeley, California, to understand why AI safety has become a pressing issue. While the existential dangers of AI may seem a far-off concern, they are a preoccupation for many Silicon Valley elites, with billions in research funding from tech icons like Elon Musk and giants like Facebook and Microsoft. OConnell observes the DARPA robotics challenge to see just how far robots have evolved, what they are capable of, and what their creators envision for the future.

If transhumanism is the core subject of this book, OConnells explorations of artificial superintelligence and high-tech robotics come off as somewhat confusing detours. Transhumanism, it should be stressed, is one subset of AI not the other way around. Nick Bostrom, one of the most vocal proponents of investing in research to develop safe AI, would likely distance himself from transhumanism, as would many computer scientists and traditional AI researchers. Even within transhumanist thought, there are divides. OConnell does not fully investigate them.

Who are you when your body is part or all machine? If you could choose immortality, would you?

OConnell tries to understand the extreme branches of transhumanism that would turn brains and bodies into virtual machines. But not all transhumanists go so far. Theres a spectrum, and some of the most pressing ethical and scientific dilemmas may lie within it. What does it mean to be half human, half machine, for instance? If we could live longer by using technology to replace parts of our aging, dying bodies, would we? What about fixing certain parts of the brain with artificial replacements? Where is the line? What about the concept of Google Glass, the failed tool intended to literally attach to our line of vision, giving us intelligence in real time? These questions are current and relevant, and it would have been interesting to see OConnell engage them in more depth.

OConnell plays into the presumed fears of readers. While he is sympathetic to the pursuit of a post-human condition, he displays his own doubts. He occupies a safe space, an us versus them world in which they are misguided or outside the bounds of normal society. It is easier to look askance at Istvans extremely problematic idea of implanting microchips in Syrian refugees, to track their whereabouts and whether they are contributing to society, than to explore whether you might choose to have a nonfunctioning piece of your body artificially replaced. It would have been riskier for OConnell to dig into his own thoughts in this murky space. To resist the temptation to highlight the strangeness of his characters. To wrestle not with why they arrived at their conclusions, but with whether there are merits to these ideas. Or to let the characters speak solely for themselves. Many of these people are highly intelligent, capable, and influential; they deserve due respect for philosophies that lie outside what many consider normal.

To Be a Machine raises deep religious and philosophical questions. What does it mean to be human? Who are you when your body is part or all machine? If you could choose immortality, would you?

As OConnell himself admits, he wound up substantially more confused after writing this book. Many readers will likely experience the same mystification. But perhaps thats the point.

Hope Reese is a staff writer for TechRepublic, a division of CBS Interactive. She covers the intersection of technology and society, focusing on AI, robotics, and driverless cars.

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You're Dead? No Problem - Undark Magazine

The writer of the non-fiction book about the world of trans humanists who wants to go beyond the limits of the human body using technology entitled To Be a Machine Michael OConnell went to the creepiest place he has ever been to is the Alcor Life Extension Foundation. The place where nitrogen filled tanks with dead bodies is preserved, in case that using a future technology they can be revived. But first, let me tell you what transhumanists are. Transhumanists ought to exist since the 80s however they have come to be more noticeable in the past years as technology progresses and made our imagination seem more realistic. They are people who want to use technology to go beyond the limits of a human body. They want to be stronger and faster in other words they want to be a cyborg.

They want to be literally machines.It is a contrasting movement with what they really want and what they believe. Nowadays, each one of us is showing different faades but the thing happening is the literal marriage of technology and man. It is a very common feeling to be upset with what our bodies cannot do by having limitations of being a human, by not being able to strong as Captain America, by not being as fast the The Flash, by not being be able to go to the outer space These are all obsessions with human limitations but will you rather embed integrated microchip technology beneath your skin to be able to do this stuffs? It sure comes out to be a privilege than a problem. What do you think are the goals of a transhumanist? For him, it is as simple as they do not want to die. They want to be so powerful physically and intellectually and that they want to use technology for them to get what they want because they believe that it is achievable by using technology. Everything seemed to satisfy basic demands of rationalism, and yet the end result was always completely insane. Michael quoted.

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They want to be significantly different that they can do whatever they want to do and not just die. But actually, they already died with their soul. Michael OConnel does not consider himself as a Transhumanist. He was not persuaded by their philosophy at all. When said that when talking to a transhumanist, they all want to be basically gods the idea of being so powerful and ubiquitous to just knowing everything is quite vague. They said that they got Stockholm syndrome of the human body (a condition of the body that causes captives to cultivate a mental coalition with their abductors as a survival strategy during confinement) he was not appealed to this either. He does not like the idea of it being like a super human. We do not know what the future technology would bring us but hopefully will not do any harm to any normal human being because there a lot of individuals who would certainly not appeal themselves a transhumanist but has an indication about the potentials of the human future.

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Michael O'Connor : Does He See Himself being a Transhumanist? - Mobile Magazine

Canids[1] Temporal range: 39.750Ma Late Eocene-Holocene Major extant canid genera left-to-right, top-to-bottom: Canis, Cuon, Lycaon, Cerdocyon, Chrysocyon, Speothos, Vulpes, Nyctereutes, Otocyon and Urocyon Scientific classification Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Mammalia Order: Carnivora Suborder: Caniformia Family: Canidae G. Fischer de Waldheim, 1817[2] Genera and species

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The biological family Canidae [3] is a lineage of carnivorans that includes domestic dogs, wolves, foxes, jackals, dingoes, and many other extant and extinct dog-like mammals. A member of this family is called a canid (, ).[4]

The cat-like feliforms and dog-like caniforms emerged within the Carnivoramorpha 43 million years before present.[5] The caniforms included the fox-like Leptocyon genus whose various species existed from 34 million years before present before branching 11.9 million YBP into Vulpini (foxes) and Canini (canines).[6]:1745

Canids are found on all continents except Antarctica, having arrived independently or accompanied human beings over extended periods of time. Canids vary in size from the 2-m-long (6ft 7 in) gray wolf to the 24-cm-long (9.4in) fennec fox. The body forms of canids are similar, typically having long muzzles, upright ears, teeth adapted for cracking bones and slicing flesh, long legs, and bushy tails. They are mostly social animals, living together in family units or small groups and behaving cooperatively. Typically, only the dominant pair in a group breeds, and a litter of young is reared annually in an underground den. Canids communicate by scent signals and by vocalizations. They are very intelligent. One canid, the domestic dog, long ago entered into a partnership with humans and today remains one of the most widely kept domestic animals.

In the history of the carnivores, the family Canidae is represented by the two extinct subfamilies designated as Hesperocyoninae and Borophaginae, and the extant subfamily Caninae.[7] This subfamily includes all living canids and their most recent fossil relatives.[6] All living canids as a group form a dental monophyletic relationship with the extinct borophagines with both groups having a bicuspid (two points) on the lower carnassial talonid, which gives this tooth an additional ability in mastication. This together with the development of a distinct entoconid cusp and the broadening of the talonid of the first lower molar, and the corresponding enlargement of the talon of the upper first molar and reduction of its parastyle distinguish these late Cenozoic canids and are the essential differences that identify their clade.[6]:p6

Within the Canidae, the results of allozyme and chromosome analyses have previously suggested several phylogenetic divisions:

DNA analysis shows that the first three form monophyletic clades. The wolf-like canids and the South American canids together form the tribe Canini.[9] Molecular data imply a North American origin of living Canidae some ten million years ago and an African origin of wolf-like canines (Canis, Cuon, and Lycaon), with the jackals being the most basal of this group. The South American clade is rooted by the maned wolf and bush dog, and the fox-like canids by the fennec fox and Blanford's fox. The grey fox and island fox are basal to the other clades, however this topological difference is not strongly supported.[10]

The cladogram below is based on the phylogeny of Lindblad-Toh et al (2005),[10] modified to incorporate recent findings on wolf-like Canis species by Koepfli et al (2015).[11]

The Canidae today includes a diverse group of some 34 species ranging in size from the maned wolf with its long limbs to the short-legged bush dog. Modern canids inhabit forests, tundra, savannahs and deserts throughout tropical and temperate parts of the world. The evolutionary relationships between the species have been studied in the past using morphological approaches but more recently, molecular studies have enabled the investigation of phylogenetic relationships. In some species, genetic divergence has been suppressed by the high level of gene flow between different populations and where the species have hybridized, large hybrid zones exist.[12]

Carnivorans evolved from miacoids about 55 million years ago (Mya) during the late Paleocene.[13] Some five million years later, the carnivorans split into two main divisions: caniforms (dog-like) and feliforms (cat-like). By 40 Mya, the first member of the dog family proper had arisen. Called Prohesperocyon wilsoni, its fossilized remains have been found in what is now the southwestern part of Texas. The chief features which identify it as a canid include the loss of the upper third molar (part of a trend toward a more shearing bite), and the structure of the middle ear which has an enlarged bulla (the hollow bony structure protecting the delicate parts of the ear). Prohesperocyon probably had slightly longer limbs than its predecessors, and also had parallel and closely touching toes which differ markedly from the splayed arrangements of the digits in bears.[14]

The canid family soon subdivided into three subfamilies, each of which diverged during the Eocene: Hesperocyoninae (about 39.74-15 Mya), Borophaginae (about 34-2 Mya), and Caninae (about 34-0 Mya). Caninae is the only surviving subfamily and all present-day canids including wolves, foxes, coyotes, jackals, and domestic dogs belong to it. Members of each subfamily showed an increase in body mass with time, and some exhibited specialised hypercarnivorous diets that made them prone to extinction.[15]:Fig. 1

Evolution of the Canids

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By the Oligocene, all three subfamilies of canids (Hesperocyoninae, Borophaginae, and Caninae) had appeared in the fossil records of North America. The earliest and most primitive branch of the Canidae was the Hesperocyoninae lineage, which included the coyote-sized Mesocyon of the Oligocene (38-24 Mya). These early canids probably evolved for the fast pursuit of prey in a grassland habitat; they resembled modern civets in appearance. Hesperocyonines eventually became extinct in the middle Miocene. One of the early members of the Hesperocyonines, the genus Hesperocyon, gave rise to Archaeocyon and Leptocyon. These branches led to the borophagine and canine radiations.[16]

Around 910 Mya during the Late Miocene, Canis, Urocyon, and Vulpes genera expanded from southwestern North America, where the canine radiation began. The success of these canines was related to the development of lower carnassials that were capable of both mastication and shearing.[16] Around 8 Mya, the Beringian land bridge allowed members of the genus Eucyon a means to enter Asia and they continued on to colonise Europe.[17]

During the Pliocene, around 45 Mya, Canis lepophagus appeared in North America. This was small and sometimes coyote-like. Others were wolf-like in characteristics. Canis latrans (the coyote) is theorized to have descended from Canis lepophagus.[18]

The formation of the Isthmus of Panama, about 3 Mya, joined South America to North America, allowing canids to invade South America, where they diversified. However the most recent common ancestor of the South American canids lived in North America some 4 Mya and the likelihood is that there were more than one incursion across the new land bridge. One of the resulting lineages consisted of the gray fox (Urocyon cinereoargentus) and the now extinct dire wolf (Canis dirus). The other lineage consisted of the so-called South American endemic species, the maned wolf (Chrysocyon brachyurus), the short-eared dog (Atelocynus microtis), the bush dog (Speothos venaticus), the crab-eating fox (Cerdocyon thous) and the South American foxes (Lycalopex spp.). The monophyly of this group has been established by molecular means.[17]

During the Pleistocene, the North American wolf line appeared, with Canis edwardii, clearly identifiable as a wolf, and Canis rufus appeared, possibly a direct descendent of Canis edwardii. Around 0.8 Mya, Canis ambrusteri emerged in North America. A large wolf, it was found all over North and Central America, and was eventually supplanted by its descendant, the dire wolf, which then spread into South America during the late Pleistocene.[19]

By 0.3 Mya, a number of subspecies of the gray wolf (Canis lupus) had developed and had spread throughout Europe and northern Asia.[20] The gray wolf colonized North America during the late Rancholabrean era across the Bering land bridge, there being at least three separate invasions, with each one consisting of one or more different Eurasian gray wolf clades.[21] MtDNA studies have shown that there are at least four extant C. lupus lineages.[22] The dire wolf shared its habitat with the gray wolf but became extinct in a large-scale extinction event that occurred around 11,500 years ago. It may have been more of a scavenger than a hunter; its molars appear to be adapted for crushing bones and it may have died out as a result of the extinction of the large herbivorous animals on whose carcases it relied.[19]

In 2015, a study of mitochondrial genome sequences and whole genome nuclear sequences of African and Eurasian canids indicated that extant wolf-like canids have colonised Africa from Eurasia at least 5 times throughout the Pliocene and Pleistocene, which is consistent with fossil evidence suggesting that much of African canid fauna diversity resulted from the immigration of Eurasian ancestors, likely coincident with Plio-Pleistocene climatic oscillations between arid and humid conditions. When comparing the African and Eurasian golden jackals, the study concluded that the African specimens represented a distinct monophyletic lineage that should be recognized as a separate species, Canis anthus (African golden wolf). According to a phylogeny derived from nuclear sequences, the Eurasian golden jackal (Canis aureus) diverged from the wolf/coyote lineage 1.9 million years ago but the African golden wolf separated 1.3 million years ago. Mitochondrial genome sequences indicated the Ethiopian wolf diverged from the wolf/coyote lineage slightly prior to that.[11]:S1

Wild canids are found on every continent except Antarctica, and inhabit a wide range of different habitats, including deserts, mountains, forests, and grasslands. They vary in size from the fennec fox, which may be as little as 24cm (9.4in) in length and weigh 0.6kg (1.3lb),[23] to the gray wolf, which may be up to 160cm (5.2ft) long, and can weigh up to 79kg (174lb).[24] Only a few species are arboreal the North American gray fox, the closely related Channel Island fox,[25] and the raccoon dog habitually climb trees.[26][27][28]

All canids have a similar basic form, as exemplified by the grey wolf, although the relative length of muzzle, limbs, ears and tail vary considerably between species. With the exceptions of the bush dog, raccoon dog, and some domestic breeds of Canis lupus, canids have relatively long legs and lithe bodies, adapted for chasing prey. The tails are bushy and the length and quality of the pelage varies with the season. The muzzle portion of the skull is much more elongated than that of the cat family. The zygomatic arches are wide, there is a transverse lambdoidal ridge at the rear of the cranium and in some species, a sagittal crest running from front to back. The bony orbits around the eye never form a complete ring and the auditory bullae are smooth and rounded.[29]

All canids are digitigrade, meaning they walk on their toes. The tip of the nose is always naked, as are the cushioned pads on the soles of the feet. These latter consist of a single pad behind the tip of each toe and a more-or-less three-lobed central pad under the roots of the digits. Hairs grow between the pads and in the Arctic fox, the sole of the foot is densely covered with hair at some times of year. With the exception of the four-toed African hunting dog (Lycaon pictus), there are five toes on the forefeet but the pollex (thumb) is reduced and does not reach the ground. On the hind feet, there are four toes, but in some domestic dogs, a fifth vestigial toe, known as a dewclaw, is sometimes present but has no anatomical connection to the rest of the foot. The slightly curved nails are non-retractile and more or less blunt.[29]

The penis in male canids is supported by a bone called the baculum. It also contains a structure at the base called the bulbus glandis which helps to create a copulatory tie during mating, locking the animals together for up to an hour.[30] Young canids are born blind, with their eyes opening a few weeks after birth.[31] All living canids (Caninae) have a ligament analogous to the nuchal ligament of ungulates used to maintain the posture of the head and neck with little active muscle exertion; this ligament allows them to conserve energy while running long distances following scent trails with their nose to the ground.[32] However, based on skeletal details of the neck, at least some Borophaginae (such as Aelurodon) are believed to have lacked this ligament.[32]

Most canids have 42 teeth, with a dental formula of: 3.1.4.23.1.4.3. The bush dog has only one upper molar with two below, the dhole has two above and two below, and the bat-eared fox has three or four upper molars and four lower ones.[29] The molar teeth are strong in most species, allowing the animals to crack open bone to reach the marrow. The deciduous, or baby teeth, formula in canids is 3.1.33.1.3, molars being completely absent.[29]

Almost all canids are social animals and live together in groups. In general, they are territorial or have a home range and sleep in the open, using their dens only for breeding and sometimes in bad weather.[33] In most foxes, and in many of the true dogs, a male and female pair work together to hunt and to raise their young. Gray wolves and some of the other larger canids live in larger groups called packs. African wild dogs have packs which may consist of twenty to forty animals, and packs of fewer than about seven individuals may be incapable of successful reproduction.[34] Hunting in packs has the advantage that larger prey items can be tackled. Some species form packs or live in small family groups depending on the circumstances, including the type of available food. In most species, some individuals live on their own. Within a canid pack, there is a system of dominance so that the strongest, most experienced animals lead the pack. In most cases, the dominant male and female are the only pack members to breed.[35]

Canids communicate with each other by scent signals, by visual clues and gestures, and by vocalizations such as growls, barks, and howls. In most cases, groups have a home territory from which they drive out other conspecifics. The territory is marked by leaving urine scent marks, which warn trespassing individuals.[36] Social behaviour is also mediated by secretions from glands on the upper surface of the tail near its root and from the anal glands.[35]

Canids as a group exhibit several reproductive traits that are uncommon among mammals as a whole. They are typically monogamous, provide paternal care to their offspring, have reproductive cycles with lengthy proestral and dioestral phases and have a copulatory tie during mating. They also retain adult offspring in the social group, suppressing the ability of these to breed while making use of the alloparental care they can provide to help raise the next generation of offspring.[37]

During the proestral period, increased levels of oestradiol make the female attractive to the male. There is a rise in progesterone during the oestral phase and the female is now receptive. Following this, the level of oestradiol fluctuates and there is a lengthy dioestrous phase during which the female is pregnant. Pseudo-pregnancy frequently occurs in canids that have ovulated but failed to conceive. A period of anoestrus follows pregnancy or pseudo-pregnancy, there being only one oestral period during each breeding season. Small and medium-sized canids mostly have a gestation period of fifty to sixty days while larger species average sixty to sixty-five days. The time of year in which the breeding season occurs is related to the length of day, as has been demonstrated in the case of several species that have been translocated across the equator to the other hemisphere and experiences a six-month shift of phase. Domestic dogs and certain small canids in captivity may come into oestrus more frequently, perhaps because the photoperiod stimulus breaks down under conditions of artificial lighting.[37]

The size of a litter varies, with from one to sixteen or more pups being born. The young are born small, blind and helpless and require a long period of parental care. They are kept in a den, most often dug into the ground, for warmth and protection.[29] When the young begin eating solid food, both parents, and often other pack members, bring food back for them from the hunt. This is most often vomited up from the adult's stomach. Where such pack involvement in the feeding of the litter occurs, the breeding success rate is higher than is the case where females split from the group and rear their pups in isolation.[38] Young canids may take a year to mature and learn the skills they need to survive.[39] In some species, such as the African wild dog, male offspring usually remain in the natal pack, while females disperse as a group, and join another small group of the opposite sex to form a new pack.[40]

Because the African wild dog (Lycaon pictus) largely exists in fragmented small populations, its existence is endangered. Inbreeding avoidance via mate selection is characteristic of the species and has important potential consequences for population persistence.[41] Inbreeding is rare within natal packs. Computer-population simulations indicate that all populations continuing to avoid incestuous mating will become extinct within 100 years due to the unavailability of unrelated mates.[41] Thus the impact of reduced numbers of suitable unrelated mates will likely have a severe demographic impact on the future viability of small wild dog populations.

Red wolves primarily live in packs composed of a socially monogamous breeding pair and offspring of different ages. Using long-term data on red wolf individuals of known pedigree, it was found that inbreeding among first-degree relatives was rare.[42] A likely mechanism for avoidance of inbreeding is independent dispersal trajectories from the natal pack. Many of the young wolves spend time alone or in small non-breeding packs composed of unrelated individuals. The union of two unrelated individuals in a new home range is the predominant pattern of breeding pair formation.[42]

Among Ethiopian wolves, most females disperse from their natal pack at about two years of age, and some become "floaters" that may successfully immigrate into existing packs. Breeding pairs are most often unrelated to each other, suggesting that female-biased dispersal reduces inbreeding.[43]

Grey wolves and Arctic foxes also exhibit inbreeding avoidance.[44]

Inbreeding is ordinarily avoided because it leads to a reduction in progeny fitness (inbreeding depression) due largely to the homozygous expression of deleterious recessive alleles.[45] Cross-fertilization between unrelated individuals ordinarily leads to the masking of deleterious recessive alleles in progeny.[46][47]

On the basis of an analysis of data on 42,855 dachshund litters, it was found that as the inbreeding coefficient increased, litter size decreased and the percentage of stillborn puppies increased, thus indicating inbreeding depression.[48]

One canid, the domestic dog, entered into a partnership with humans a long time ago. This partnership is documented as far back as 26,000 years ago, when the footprints of a young boy aged about eight to ten were found in Chauvet Cave in southern France, walking alongside what was identified as a large dog or wolf.[49] The earliest recorded fossil of a dog was found to be around 36,000 years ago in Goyet Cave in Belgium.[50] Even earlier, wolves were found fossilized in the same locations as humans at sites that date back 300,000 years, showing how far back humans and wolves had interactions with one another.[51] The fact that wolves are pack animals with cooperative social structures may have been the reason that the relationship developed. Humans benefited from the canid's loyalty, cooperation, teamwork, alertness and tracking abilities while the wolf may have benefited from the use of weapons to tackle larger prey and the sharing of food. Humans and dogs may have evolved together.[52] The bond between humans and dogs can be seen in the burial of dogs with their owners as early as 11,000 years ago in the Americas and 8,500 years ago in Europe.[51]

Among canids, only the gray wolf has widely been known to prey on humans.[53] Nonetheless, at least two records have coyotes killing humans,[54] and two have golden jackals killing children.[55] Human beings have trapped and hunted some canid species for their fur and, especially the gray wolf, coyote and the red fox, for sport.[56] Canids such as the dhole are now endangered in the wild because of persecution, habitat loss, a depletion of ungulate prey species and transmission of diseases from domestic dogs.[57]

All extant species of family Canidae are in subfamily Caninae.

Except where otherwise stated, the following classification is based on a 1994 paper by Xiaoming Wang, curator of terrestrial mammals at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County on the systematics of the subfamily Hesperocyoninae,[58] a 1999 paper by Wang, together with the zoologists Richard H. Tedford and Beryl E. Taylor on the subfamily Borophaginae,[59] and a 2009 paper by Tedford, Wang and Taylor on the North American fossil Caninae.[60]

(Mya = million years ago) (million years = in existence)

(Mya = million years ago)

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Canidae - Wikipedia

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The Transhumanist's Quest for Godhood: 'Remember, Thou Art Mortal' CNSNews.com History tells us that when victorious generals in ancient Rome returned home, they would hold triumphal processions through the streets. Singers, dancers, and ... and more »

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The Transhumanist's Quest for Godhood: 'Remember, Thou Art Mortal' - CNSNews.com

"Flesh is a dead format," writes Mark O'Connell in To Be a Machine, his new nonfiction book about the contemporary transhumanist movement. It's an alarming statement, but don't kill the messenger: As he's eager to explain early in the book, the author is not a transhumanist himself. Instead, he's used To Be a Machine as a vehicle to dive into this loosely knit movement, which he sums up as "a rebellion against human existence as it has been given." In other words, transhumanists believe that technology specifically, a direct interface between humans and machines is the only way our species can progress from its current, far-than-ideal state. Evolution is now in our hands, they claim, and if that means shedding the evolutionary training wheels of flesh itself, so be it.

O'Connell, who comes from a literary rather than a scientific background, plays up his fish-out-of-water status, which is one of the book's great strengths. To Be a Machine isn't written as an insider-baseball account of transhumanism; instead, it's framed as an investigation. With a winning mix of awestruck fascination and well-chilled skepticism, he tracks down various high-profile transhumanists on their own turf, immerses himself in their worlds, and delivers dispatches wryly humorous, cogently insightful that breathe life into this almost mystical circle of thinkers and doers.

Big names in the tech field such as Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Bill Gates, and Ray Kurzweil are part of the story, but O'Connell digs deeper. His quest takes him to Anders Sandberg, a monklike proponent of cognitive enhancement; Max More, founder of the world's foremost cryonics company, who freezes the heads of deceased clients in the hopes they can one day be revived; and Arati Prabhakar, former director of the Pentagon's DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), whose competitive development of robotics has fostered everything from killer robots to those designed, eerily enough, to hug people.

'To Be a Machine' is a lucid, soulful pilgrimage into the heart of what humanity means to us now and how science may redefine it tomorrow, for better and for worse.

Jason Heller

Not only does O'Connell apply a healthy curiosity to his subjects, he places them in illuminating context. Amid vivid firsthand reportage, he dwells on the history and ramifications of transhumanism: economically, anthropologically, sociologically, theologically and culturally. He deftly probes the existential risk to humans in regard to the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence. He balances the impulse for self-betterment with the potential recklessness of runaway innovation. And he uses the transhumanists' current efforts to transfer the human mind to a digital vessel as a way of rephrasing the age-old philosophical question, "What is consciousness?"

Unexpectedly, faith becomes a large component of his query he cites the writings of Saint Augustine and the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas alongside the physicist John von Neumann and the science fiction visionary Philip K. Dick, and a conversation with a Buddhist transhumanist reveals a profound unity in how ancient religions and modern futurists view suffering.

To Be a Machine packs in a lot, but it never feels overstuffed. O'Connell lays the book out like a travelogue, going from one tech conference to another and never failing to tap into his own mix of awe and incredulity in the face of what he calls the "metaphysical weirdness" and "magical rationalism" of the transhumanist scene. He injects just enough personal background and anecdotes into his story to help humanize it up to and including some beautifully funny and poignant insights into his own everyday struggle with technology, fatherhood, and mortality.

In one of the book's most shocking chapters, he visits a collective of biohackers, or "grinders," in Pittsburgh who surgically implant sensors into their flesh in order to more intimately interface with the machine world. The details are both horrifying and strangely noble, and O'Connell depicts them with sensitivity, sympathy, and a novelist's eye for narrative. Rather than a dry treatise on science, To Be a Machine is a lucid, soulful pilgrimage into the heart of what humanity means to us now and how science may redefine it tomorrow, for better and for worse.

Jason Heller is a senior writer at The A.V. Club, a Hugo Award-winning editor and author of the novel Taft 2012.

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'To Be A Machine' Digs Into The Meaning Of Humanity - NPR

Transhumanism is one of those technologies that boggles most peoples minds. Do not be mistaken in thinking this has anything to do with being transgender, as transhumanists seek to improve their human capacities beyond what is assumed to be possible. They do so by using top-of-the-line technologies, rather than gadgets or other electronics. Most of these technologies go by unnoticed, which is why we have compiled a brief list below.

Some people may have heard of this technology before. Cryonics is a high-fidelity preservation of the human body after death. The primary reason why anyone would enter a cryogenic sleep is to anticipate a potential future revival. This technology has been widely available for some time, albeit it is rather on the expensive side. Through cryonics, it is feasible to stop cells from decaying. Moreover, the process requires no electricity to do so.

Tampering with the human bodys genes sounds rather risky, but significant advancements have been made in recent years. Gene therapy effectively replaces bad genes with good ones, which allows us to manipulate our genetic code. Scientists have discovered a way to remove genes coding for specific metabolic proteins, ensuring the host remains slim and fit at all times.

Anti-aging therapy is heavily influenced by gene therapy as well and it is believed scientists will eventually reach the longevity escape velocity soon. As a result, humans may become subject to indefinite lifespans. Whether or not that is a positive development, remains to be seen, though.

Introducing cyber enhancements to the human body remains a very risky business to this very day. Implants and other electronics can address a lot of problems our bodies are faced with. Cybernetics are designed in such a way they will be invisible to the casual observer, as they reside beneath the hosts skin. Most current bio modifications are all external, as we have covered in a previous article. Cybernetic systems will improve our everyday experience and even boost the economy as humans will be able to do more work in less time.

While a lot of people are concerned over what the future will bring in terms of robotics, self-replicating robots may be the least of our concerns right now. Replacing manual labor with robots doing the task for us seems like a no-brainer, albeit it will cause some job losses. Self-replicating robots, on the other hand, would be quite beneficial. For example, they can turn uninhabitable areas into living spaces, clean up waste generated by us humans, or even pave the way for human colonization of space.

As creepy as this concept may sound at first, mind uploading or nonbiological intelligence can be quite valuable to our society. Implementing cognitive processing on anything that is not human would be a massive breakthrough. The general public is not too keen of this concept, even though our minds are by far our greatest assets. Synthetic brains are not impossible to achieve by any means, although a lot of research is required before this can become a reality.

If you liked this article, follow us on Twitter @themerklenews and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to receive the latest bitcoin, cryptocurrency, and technology news.

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Top 5 Transhumanist Technologies With Major Implications - The Merkle

The strangest place writer Mark OConnell has ever been to is the Alcor Life Extension Foundation where dead bodies are preserved in tanks filled with nitrogen, in case they can be revived with future technology. There was a floor with the stainless steel cylinders and all these bodies contained within them and corpses and severed heads, he tells The Verge. That imagery is something that I will take with me to a grave, whether thats a refrigerated cylinder or an actual grave.

OConnell, 37, visited Alcor while writing To Be a Machine, which comes out February 28th. The nonfiction book delves into the world of transhumanists, or people who want to transcend the limits of the human body using technology. Transhumanists want to be stronger and faster; they want to be cyborgs. And they want to solve the problem of death, whether by freezing their bodies through cryonics or uploading their consciousnesses. Transhumanists have been around since at least the 1980s, but have become more visible in the past decade as technology advances have made these ideas seem more feasible and less like sci-fi.

OConnell had known about transhumanists for years, but they stayed in the back of his mind until his son was born and he became more preoccupied by questions of mortality and death. I was looking for a topic that would allow me to write about these things, he says. Even when I was writing specifically about the movement, I was also writing about just how weird it is to be alive in a body thats decaying and dying.

He ended up visiting the Alcor cryonics lab, talking to researchers who want to save us from artificial intelligence, hanging around with biohackers in Pennsylvania, and following transhumanist presidential candidate Zoltan Istvan on his campaign trail. The Verge spoke to OConnell about the philosophy behind the movement, his experiences in the transhumanist world, and whether his own beliefs and hopes for humanity have changed since writing the book.

How exactly do you define transhumanism? Doctors, for example, are interested in extending human life, but you could hardly say that all doctors are transhumanists.

Right, theres a way of defining transhumanism thats so broad that youre almost just describing a scientist. There are lots of different definitions, but for me its someone who thinks that we should incorporate technology into ourselves, to use technological evolution to push forward the evolution of the human animal. These people want to not be human in a very sort of radical and thoroughgoing way. They want to be literally machines.

I can identify with wanting to not die, but I cant with wanting to live indefinitely.

Its a disparate movement with many different beliefs. For example, not all of them buy into cryonics. Its almost like talking to a Catholic who goes, I dont take communion, dont go to Mass, but Im still basically Catholic. They believe in the general principle but dont sign up for all the things along the way. [Then} you get people saying, I should really sign up for Alcor, should get the paperwork done and provide for my future almost like you talk to people of my generation who are like, I really need to get started on a pension.

Its common to be frustrated by what our bodies cant do. But its another thing to implant electronics under your skin, or plan to preserve your body after you die. What drives people who consider themselves transhumanists?

They all have a similar origin story, all came to it in a similar kind of way. When you talk about their childhoods, most of them were already obsessed with not just death, but the sort of general limitations of being human, of the frustrations of not being able to do certain things, not being able to live infinitely, not being able to explore space, not being able to think at the level they wanted. All obsessed with human limitations. And most of them shared a similar moment where they went online, they discovered that there was this whole community of people who had the same concerns and philosophies, and they became transhumanists, even though they were without knowing the name.

Theyre all largely tech people and science people. Its hugely a white male thing and it tells you a lot about privilege. Its very difficult to be concerned that youre going to die someday if youre dealing with structural racism or sexism or just feeding your family. Transhumanism seems to come from a position of privilege. Big proponents like Elon Musk have sort of conquered all the standard human problems through technology, and they have infinite amounts of money to spend.

What were some of the transhumanist ideas that seemed the strangest to you? Did any of that change after writing the book?

When I started to look into what the basic ideas were around transhumanism, the thing that I found most alienating and weird and completely speculative was the idea of becoming disembodied and uploading your brain. Its called whole brain emulation. Its the endpoint of a lot of transhumanist thought.

But then I met Randal Koene [who runs Carboncopies, a foundation that supports research on whole brain emulation]. I find him incredibly charismatic. I was really struck by the tension between what seems to be the complete insanity of what he was saying to me the madness of the idea that he might be able to eventually convert the human mind into code and talking to this normal, really smart guy who was explaining really clearly his ideas and making them seem, if not imminently achievable, quite sensible. I was quite swayed by him and in a weird way Randals work seems like some of the least crazy stuff.

Were you swayed by the overall philosophy? You mention in the book that you dont consider yourself a transhumanist. Why?

When I was with the Grindhouse biohackers in Pittsburgh, one night we were in the basement trying to envision our futures. One of them talked about wanting to become this disembodied infinitely powerful thing that would go throughout the universe and encompass everything.

When you talk to transhumanists, in one way or another, they all aspire to knowing everything and to being gods basically. And I just sort of thought, this is actually something I cant relate to at all. The idea of being that all-powerful and omnipresent, its almost indistinguishable from not existing and I cant quite justify that.

Theyd say, youve got Stockholm syndrome of the human body. But that kind of idea is very unappealing to me. I cant see why that would be your idea of your ultimate human value. I was always trying to come to grips with these ideas and come to grips with what it meant for these people to be post-human, and just wind up getting more confused about what it meant to be a human at all in the first place. I can identify with wanting to not die, but I cant with wanting to live indefinitely.

Hanging out with all these people and spending time with all these weird ideas about mechanism and human bodies forced me into a position [to identify myself] as not even a human, but as an animal, a mammal. To me, what it means to be human is inextricably bound with the condition of being a mammal, being frail and weak and loving other people for their frailty and weakness.

Speaking of limitations of the human body, what about disability? When youre so focused on transcending the human body and its limitations, does that mean denigrating disability?

Transhumanists see disability in a completely opposite way. The people I talked to said, Look, were all disabled in one way or another. For example, there was a proposal to make Los Angeles cities more wheelchair accessible. And [transhumanist presidential candidate] Zoltan Istvan wrote this bizarre, wrongheaded editorial about how this was a crazy use of public funds, which should be putting it into making all humans superhuman. What he was getting at was that being physically disabled should not be a barrier to being superhuman anyway, so whole-body prostheses should be the thing that were investing money into. A huge number of people in the disability community were horribly offended and he couldnt quite see why.

Do you think transhumanist ideas are going to gain credence and become a lot more mainstream?

I have no crystal ball, so I dont know any more about the future now than when I started looking into this. But I can see that maybe human life will change so radically in the future that all of this will come to pass. And it wont have come to pass because of transhumanists agitating for it but just because technology has this internal momentum that keeps moving, and theres nothing we can do about it.

Writing the book felt like writing about a very particular cultural moment. Its a very specific cultural phenomenon that has gained quite a foothold in Silicon Valley for reasons that seem quite obvious. My sense is that there are a lot of people out there who would never call themselves transhumanists but share a lot of these ideas about the possibilities for the human future. Silicon Valley has generated this amazing amount of money and cultural power and this sense of possibility around technology. We think we can fix anything with technology, so the idea that we would be able to solve death the human condition seems to be the natural outflow of that.

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'They want to be literally machines' : Writer Mark O'Connell on the rise of transhumanists - The Verge

Updated February 23, 2017 13:17:22

Can transhumanists, biohackers and grinders live forever?

The answer is maybe soon at least according to them.

Ok. So what's a transhumanist?

Like some scientists, they believe that ageing is a disease, and they are not afraid of taking human evolution into their own hands by harnessing genetic engineering, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence.

Sydney-based IT innovation manager and self-described transhumanist Peter Xing says Australians aged in their 20s and 30s could now end up living long enough to live forever.

It is called "longevity escape velocity".

"That means staying healthy for as long as you can until such a point that there's the technology to enable you to live indefinitely," Mr Xing explains.

Fellow transhumanist Meow-Ludo Meow-Meow (yes, that's his real name, changed by deed poll) believes he could be one of the first generations of humans to live forever.

"I'm 31. I think with technology improving exponentially I have a very good chance of living forever."

"We know a lot of the causes of ageing and we're actively working on technology to address them.

"If we can increase our life span by more than one year for every year of our lives, then we become functionally immortal."

Have you got a question? Join the live QandA with Peter Xing and Margot O'Neill on Facebook tonight at 8:00pm (AEDT).

In the last couple of years, researchers have extended the life of mice by up to 40 per cent through various means including gene therapies.

Human trials are a long way off because of tight government regulations, but many researchers have started experimenting on themselves.

In 2015, American genetics activist Liz Parrish flew to Colombia to avoid US regulatory constraints.

Once there she says she injected herself with an unproven anti-ageing gene therapy.

Ms Parrish, the CEO of biotechnology company BioViva, is now known as Patient Zero.

She says results show the treatment rejuvenated part of her DNA, called telomeres, that shorten with age, and she claims her telomeres have now grown by 9 per cent, or about 20 years.

Many scientists question her claims.

Grinders or biohackers are people who augment their bodies with technology.

This could be as crude as implanting magnets under your skin a procedure that can be done at some tattoo and body piercing studios or slightly more high-tech like getting microchips placed inside your body.

Mr Meow-Meow has a micro-chip implanted in his left thumb and has downloaded some smartphone functions directly into his body.

"I can open doors, authenticate myself to my credit card, activate my phone, activate drones and I can program the chip in my thumb from my phone anytime," he said.

US grinder Rich Lee has more than seven implants, including magnets in his finger tips which twitch in response to electro-magnetic fields.

"You can feel it because all those nerves in your fingertips have grown around the magnet and it has a texture and you're feeling this otherwise invisible world," he said.

Mr Lee also has magnets in his ears which serve as earphones: "being able to hear through walls is cool."

Yes.

And Mr Meow-Meow warns would-be biohackers against trying to implant themselves with DIY kits.

"Anything that's put under the skin provides an environment in which bacteria can grow," he said.

"This is why it's very important that you go and see a professional."

Hmmm.

Aside from physical modifications, the race is also on to reach a new, super intelligence.

Billionaire Elon Musk wants to develop a neural lace which would layer onto the human brain and connect digitally to AI.

Without it, he says humans will risk becoming like a "house pet", because AI will eventually outstrip human intelligence perhaps this century.

Mr Xing says all this is vital so humans don't lose their jobs to robots and it will also help us adapt to space travel.

"The question is at what point does the incorporation of all this technology make us a different species and what are the ethics behind that?"

Watch Margot O'Neill's report tonight on Lateline at 9.30pm on ABC News 24 or 10.30pm on ABC TV.

Topics: science-and-technology, pseudo-science, biology, robots-and-artificial-intelligence, australia

First posted February 23, 2017 06:02:40

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Transhumanists, biohackers, grinders: Who are they and can they really live forever? - ABC Online