Category Archives: Transhumanism

LONDON, UK / ACCESSWIRE / February 22, 2021 / ShadowBreak Intl is a company that works with major companies to democratise access to geospatial intelligence for military, commercial & individual users around the world. Through his offering, Samuel Cardillo empowers hundreds of users around the world with the ability to acquire and analyse geospatial data and respond to events on the ground in near real-time.

Samuel Cardillo is the Belgian-born entrepreneur and founder of ShadowBreak Intl, a geospatial intelligence company that's the latest step on the entrepreneurial journey he's been on since leaving school as a teenager.

A New Frontier of Geospatial IntelligenceBefore founding ShadowBreak Intl, Samuel's achievements had been recognised by both the public and private sectors. He'd already won awards for his work with various foreign government bodies and spearheaded projects that had been followed by the biggest global tech giants, so he turned his attention to geospatial intelligence.

What drives Samuel is a dedication to shaping the future. It's about having an impact and defining - even at the smallest level - the next steps of innovation. ShadowBreak Intl is built around his understanding that the importance of the data being generated in orbit will increase exponentially. From assisting during disasters to defending national interests, Samuel aims to help humanity reach its full potential through a constantly developing offering.

Samuel's Vision for the Future of TechnologyFinding an industry that keeps you happy is the only way to stay determined and shift from seeing work as just a job to a passion, as Samuel sees it. The potential of geospatial intelligence to improve the future of humanity remains front and centre in his mind, but achieving the ideal requires guidelines, milestones, and the ability to spot prime opportunities, especially when science fiction and reality almost seem to merge.

Humanity is at the doorstep of its next evolution. Decentralized economies, digital goods, transhumanism, space exploration... society is going to be reshaped, and with Samuel at its helm, ShadowBreak Intl will be right there on the front line as it happens, helping organisations large and small make the right decision, right on time.

About The PR Genius:The PR Genius is the strategic PR arm of Sales Division.

CONTACT:Kim Than+44 (750) 549-4647kim@theprgenius.com

SOURCE: ShadowBreak Intl

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Entrepreneur Samuel Cardillo and the Story of Geospatial Intelligence Firm Shadowbreak Intl - Benzinga

Sense - A Cyberpunk Ghost Story publisher Top Hat Studios rejects censorship demands in the face of death threats and harassment.

Since announcing the release of Sense A Cyberpunk Ghost Story on the Nintendo Switch, publisher Top Hat Studios has received a staggering amount of messages demanding the studio to censor its latest title.Top Hat Studios' response to these demands? The game will not be censored. We categorically refuse.

Sense A Cyberpunk Ghost Story is a side-scrolling horror game set in 2083 Neo Hong Kong that released on Steam on August 25, 2020 to mostly positive reviews. Yet, soon after announcing plans to port the game to the Nintendo Switch, the publisher was met with censorship demands from outraged consumers. While Japanese games like the Final Fantasy 8 Remaster often face censorship in some fashion before their Western release, Top Hat Studios has made its anti-censorship stance clear in an official statement on Twitter.

RELATED:Cyberpunk 2077's DLC Plans Are a Double-Edged Sword

In the face of threats ranging from review-bombing to harassing distributors, Top Hat Studios responded by defending the creative freedoms of its developers in order to protect the integrity of its titles. The vocal group attempting to intimidatethe publisher has cited a variety of seemingly unfounded claims surrounding Sense A Cyberpunk Ghost Story include the game being explicitly pornographic, encourages violence, and breaks the law.

Sense A Cyberpunk Ghost Story received an M (17+)/PEGI 18 rating for seemingly minor offenses anyone could find in a PG-13 movie: blood and gore, intense violence, suggestive themes, and language. Top Hat Studios sci-fi survival horror game simply draws inspiration from the transhumanism, dystopic themes that other cyberpunk titles like Cyberpunk 2077 are beloved for.

Censorship has become a hotly debated topic among fans and developers over the past few years. There are those who see censorship as harmful to creativity and experimentation among developers, while others like Atelier Ryza 2: Lost Legends and the Secret Fairy producer Junzo Hosoi see it as a useful tool that allows titles to fit any market.

Prior to backlash, the New York-based Top Hat Studios had received nothing but support for its ghostbusting adventuresince asuccessful Kickstarter campaign in 2018.Sense A Cyberpunk Ghost Storyfollows Mei Lin Mak as she attempts to solve a century-old mystery hidden within the ruins of the Chong Sing Apartments. Players are tasked with exorcising demons, rather than combating them, in an attempt to help them pass on as they investigate a supernatural maelstrom of Chinese folklore. The Kickstarter campaign passed its $10,000 funding goal in just 30 days, receiving $60,027 from over 1,000 backers.

Review bombing has resulted in quite a bit of negative feedback for major IPs. Monster Hunter World was a recent target of review bombs as a result of a racist joke included in the new Monster Hunter movie. Despite developer Capcom having no involvement in the film, the titles Steam user score suffered as a result. Hopefully, the community support surrounding Sense A Cyberpunk Ghost Story is strong enough to withstand any attempt to unfairly attack the title.

Sense A Cyberpunk Ghost Story is currently available on Steam and is set to release for the Nintendo Switch on January 7.

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Top Hat Studios Refuses to Censor Its Game After Receiving Death Threats - GameRant

Are you okay with becoming Transhuman?

Evil wont come out and tell you its evil, it takes discernment to spot a wolf among sheep. Unknown

If it were negative 10 degrees outside, would you go outside? What about negative 20 or negative 30 degrees? My guess is, probably not, youd freeze. If negative temperatures are too much for the outside of your body, wouldnt that mean theyd be too much for inside the body?

These questions come up after seeing a viral video on twitter of the Covid-19 vaccines being wheeled into a hospital in a large cooler. The vaccines are said to be held at temperatures far less than negative 30 degrees. What could possibly be in these vaccines for them to need to be held at such temperatures? Though an even more pertinent question(s) is how are we seeing a vaccine for Covid-19 nine months after the start of the pandemic? It takes years for the FDA to give approval on normal vaccines even then, they contain elements which should not be injected into the human body (i.e. formaldehyde, aluminium, and thimerosal to name a few).

In the video since taken down/censored on Youtube, Dr. Carrie Madej explains a few of the key components/elements contained within this hastily developed vaccine. In the first 30 seconds, Dr. Madej breaks down that Transhumanism is combining humans as we currently are and becoming one with artificial intelligence, comparing it to the movie, The Matrix. Moving along, Dr. Madej goes into some of the components of the vaccine.

After investigating the pros and cons of the vaccine, Dr. Madej was frightened. The vaccines are composed of modified DNA and RNA. Which means receiving this vaccine will change a persons DNA/RNA as well. This vaccine has the potential to alter a persons genome and turn them into, in simple terms, a GMO. This is something very different. This is something brand new. This is something completely experimental on the human race, Dr. Madej goes on to say. How is this not alarming? Black people are all too familiar with being test subjects.

Along with the DNA/RNA modifying vaccine is a component called Hydrogel, which would include an enzyme called Luciferase (Hint Lucifer) and the DNA/RNA changing vaccine. She tells us that hydrogel is an invention by DARPA. It is basically nanotechnology that can disassemble/reassemble into different things. Because it is nanotech, it will have the ability to connect to the internet/cloud, hence the combination of humans and technology, where Transhumanism begins. Next is Luciferase, which is a bioluminescence enzyme which will be under the skin. This means that under a certain type of light, the vaccination will be seeable. Dr. Madej breaks down that this is a way for them (Government, vaccine industry) to make sure people have been vaccinated.

Near the end of the video, Dr. Madej urges everyone to do their own independent research on the vaccine as well as the powerful people connected to the vaccines (i.e Bill & Melinda Gates). With the vaccine currently being distributed, I also encourage everyone to do their own research as well as watch the video of Dr. Madej as she breaks down the vaccine, as there is more information there that didnt make this article (The video can now be found on a video website alternative to Youtube called Bitchute).

Readers should inform themselves of MRC-5 cells and the ties it may have to this new vaccine, since Dr. Madej has said the vaccine contains DNA/RNA changing elements. Readers should also familiarize themselves with the iatrogenic reactions, which can be caused by multiple compounds or drugs interacting with each other.

This is important, life-changing information and should be shared with everyone. Links are provided below to help get you started on research.

Info about hydrogel: https://www.nanowerk.com/spotlight/spotid=51136.php

Dr. Carrie Madej on Covid-19 vaccine: https://www.bitchute.com/video/Ofm3QnUjcIJT/

Iatrogenic reactions: https://www.globalresearch.ca/america-iatrogenic-epidemic-drug-vaccine-induced-disorders/5687394

Covid-19 vaccine being wheeled into hospital: https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1338559632877490177?s=12

Luciferase: https://prepareforchange.net/2020/08/16/luciferase-chain-reaction-to-id2020/

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Covid-19 Vaccine; Not the Typical Vaccine | Globe Times - swglobetimes.com

Is it just me, or is the small package in Cyberpunk 2077 way too big?

Is it just me, oris the small penisin Cyberpunk 2077way too big?

That was a rhetorical question - of courseit's too big. That's is why everyone's talking about it. If you fancy a V with a massive hammer, you're in luck but if you were planning on rolling a V with a tiny bird, you're probably going to be disappointed.

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Cyberpunk wiener customization is limited to two styles cut or uncut and three sizes. The size options are small, default, and large, but I think they'd be better labelled as "decent hog," "nice package," and "magnum dong." The problem with these sizes, astutely noted by the r/smalldickproblems subreddit, is that even "small" is over five inches long.

Yes, the Cyberpunk penis options are making people very self-conscious about their willies. It seems like the small one should really be the default. According to Healthline (and conventional wisdom), the average penis size is 5.16 inches. So why does Cyberpunk 2077 call a five-inch dick small?

Cyberpunk is not a game that concerns itself with realism. Bodymodification is core to the transhumanism philosophy and to the themes and gameplay of Cyberpunk itself. An argument can be made that all of these dangles come pre-enhanced. After all, if you can replace your hands with gorillafists, it's probably not much of a stretch to imagine that everyoneeventually makes a stop to the Ripperdoc just to add a little more girth to their git. The problem with this theory is that it assumes everyone would want a bigger unit, and that just doesn't ring true.

RELATED:Naked T-Posing While Driving Is The New Best Bug In Cyberpunk 2077

If you ask me, the small option should be a certified micro-penis - maybe even bordering on inverted. Small members-onlycommunities liker/smalldickproblems make it pretty clear that a lot of people with modest pee-pees walks around with a huge chip on their shoulder. That kind of perpetual angstis prime real estate for strong RP. It wouldn't necessarily be a shameful thing though. I imagine there are probably folks with tiny d's that wear it proudly la Short Kings. The point is a small hammercould be an important part of your V's identity, but unfortunately the only size choices we have are big, bigger, and biggest.

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The Small Dong In Cyberpunk Is Way Too Big | TheGamer - TheGamer

Naming your game after a well-established genre is a gutsy move, but CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077 is shaping up to be one of the biggest cyberpunk stories in gaming history.

Taking into account everything we know about Cyberpunk 2077, the open-world RPG looks like it's crawling with seedy criminals, shady corporations, cybernetic limbs, and neon streets, as well as tackling all those spectacularly dense themes of transhumanism, AI, and the dismantling of corporate and governmental hierarchiesyou know, the usual.

With CD Projekt Red taking on one of the biggest sci-fi genres, what other 'punk' derivatives are left for the taking? A lot, apparently. Over the past few days, I've fallen down a rabbit hole of cyberpunk derivatives. But before we dive into real-world body hacking, frills from 18th century France, and Buck Rogers, here are some punk genres that games have explored.

Steampunk is one of the big cyberpunk sub-genres and games like BioShock Infinite, Dishonored, and Sunless Sea have taken major inspiration from it's Victorian-era industrial steam-powered world. Wolfenstein and games like Iron Harvest take on the gritty and dirty industrial aesthetics of Dieselpunk. The Fallout series is famous for its retro-futuristic imagining of Atompunk, and then there's 11-bit Studio's own genre, FrostpunkVictorian industrialisation meets frozen ecological crisis.

Whether they are fully-fledged worlds or have more of a focus on aesthetics, here are some more punk genres that deserve a gaming spotlight.

Many derivatives of cyberpunk are retrofuturistic in their worldbuilding, pulling on ideas and aesthetics from the past (looking directly at you, Victorian era). But what makes Solarpunk special is that it is firmly set in the future.

Solarpunk envisions an optimistic future that directly tackles environmental concerns with renewable and sustainable energy sources. Instead of a bleak wasteland, Solarpunk is bright and hopeful. Butjust because climate change and pollution have been solved doesn't mean that everything is a utopia. This is what could make Solarpunk an interesting backdrop for games. Instead of bashing you over the head with how awful everything is, Solarpunk is about worlds that are so close to being perfect but fall just short. I can totally see this making a great backdrop for a sprawling RPG.

For whatever reason, a core feature of many punk genres is what resource is used to power technology, but Clockpunk is less focused on steam, diesel, or electric-run mechanics and more on basic technology. Clockpunk is all about intricate mechanismslike the interlocking gears of a pocket watch, the intricacies of automatons, or the detailed sketches of Da Vinci. There's also just a general focus on beautiful, delicate machinery, and Dimitriy Khristenko's mechanical bugs are an amazing example of something that would fit perfectly into the clockpunk aesthetic.

There's not much in terms of world-building to Clockpunk, but the genre makes a great foundation for worlds that have light fantasy elements, such as magic or alchemy, which can act as the world's main power resources.It's emphasis on visual design also makes it perfect for puzzle games like Magnum Opus.

More of a visual aesthetic than a loosely defined alternate reality, Rococo Punk takes inspiration from the whimsical visual style of the Rococo period. It's used in a similar way to Decopunk (think the glossy interiors of BioShock) in that it's purely just a look rather than a philosophy. Visually, the genre involves theatrical outfits with lots of dramatic frills with building interiors having lots of grand, sweeping curves and gold trimming. There's not a pair of greasy goggles in sight.

It sounds super classy, but I'm not sure what makes it particularly 'punk'. Then again, there were lots of brutal beheadings in 18th century France at the height of Rococo's popularity, and having your head chopped off for wanting to dismantle the French monarchy is pretty punk.

Biopunk is all about the wonderful world of biohacking which involves modifying the human body through biological means. This form of human experimentation involves 'hacking' your own body in hopes of improving your physical or mental state. The genre also includes themes of corporate and governmental control over body modification and genetic engineering.

BioShock totally has the Biopunk corner covered, but then after reading this totally bonkers Vox article about real-world biohackers there's so much more that writers can draw from. There's a wealth of source material for Biopunk in the real world too, like Silicon Valley's $8,000 young blood transfusions where an older person pays for a young person's blood to be pumped into their body as some sort of 'elixir of life' because why not?I don't think I'll ever get over reading that anytime soon.

Taking inspiration from Atompunk, Raypunk is one of the more outlandish punk genres and focuses on far-future science fiction with a distinct retro twist. Its aesthetic is close to mid-20th century pulp science fiction like the original Star Trek series or the Jetsonsanything featuring brightly colored rayguns, flying cars, and clunky talking robots.

It's not all Buck Rogers, though. Raypunk (known also as Raygun Gothic) can be surreal and dark, which sounds far more interesting honestly. Rick Remender's comic book Low is the closest piece of media I know of that captures the genre's "world of tomorrow" aesthetic while still being pretty bleak and serious.

I honestly don't really understand this one, but this Wikipedia page cites The Flintstones as part of the Stonepunk genre so that makes it legit, apparently.

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CD Projekt Red have nabbed Cyberpunk, but here are 5 other punks that deserve games - PC Gamer

Elon Musk, our real-life Tony Stark, plans to announce this week the progress of his company Neuralink, which is dedicated to developing a Body Machine Interface (BMI); specifically, implanting a computer connection into the human brain.

Musk has described how robotic surgery will sew ultra-fine filaments into the cerebral cortex, which will be able tostream full broadband electrophysiology data into a computer, whereupon asingle USB-C cable provides full-bandwidth data streaming from the device.

So reports Claudia Glover, in Computer Business Review, in her article Your Brain, With a USB Port in It: Elon Musks Neuralink Vision Divides Experts.

The ambitions of those working closely on BMI include, for some, the hope that technology could eventually to be used to connect the human race via a bona fide neural network; allowing people to communicate using thoughts and images rather than words, and even give over their motor function to others, with their consent*. The ideas behind this have their roots in a dizzying transhumanism. . . .

Ideally in the next 50 years some BMI advocates hope to equip those who can afford it with tech that will ostensibly enable them to communicate without speaking, access a hive mind for any information they need and sense their houses and the appliances in them as easily as if they were on their bodies: no more Alexa, do this, or Hey Google You just think it and it happens: an Internet of Things in which you are at one with the things.

Glover interviews those who have high hopes for this technology, but also those who throw cold water on those hopes, explaining why it is dangerous (e.g., the brain doesnt heal like the rest of the body, so sticking things into it can have dire consequences), premature (we arent close to understanding how the brain works), or impossible (even if we did understand how the brain works, plugging it into a computer would do nothing).

Glover comes around to this, more fundamental difficulty. She quotes Oliver Armitage, who himself is working on BMI technologies (my bolds):

Armitage summed up the complexity of the human brain with what he called a theoretically intractable problem: Famously, there arent enough atoms in the universe to build a full model of what every cell is doing [in the brain]. Its a theoretically intractable problem, you cant even conceive of a computer large enough because there isnt enough material in the universe to make it.

We sometimes feel overwhelmed at how small we are in the vastness of the universe. But it appears that as vast as the universe is, your brain is vaster still.That is to say, you are vaster still.

Image byGerd AltmannfromPixabay

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Not Enough Atoms in the Universe to Model Your Brain - Patheos

Author Mark OConnell talks about his uncannily topical new book, Notes from an Apocalypse

The ironies are so uncomfortable we can hardly bear to acknowledge them. Mark OConnell and I meet to talk about his second book, Notes From An Apocalypse: A Personal Journey to the End of the World and Back, the day after the Government has issued a directive to shut down all public gatherings of more than 100 people in order to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

Its mid-March, a Friday the 13th in Dublin city centre, but Grafton Street already looks like a Sunday in 1990.

OConnell is that rare breed of Irish writer, a committed essayist and nonfiction adherent who circumnavigated all domestic routes to make a name for himself as a contributor to the New York Times magazine, The Millions and the Guardian. His preoccupations tend toward classic late Gen X: technology, future shock, pop culture riffs, a quirky sense of the domestic.

Born in Kilkenny and now 41, he is by anybodys barometer something of a local literary star, but youd never know it: many people are shocked to find hes a Dublin resident. OConnells first book, To Be A Machine, a journey into the strange new worlds of AI and transhumanist evangelists, further segregated him from the pack in terms of subject matter and scope. As well as scoring a blurb from Margaret Atwood, it won him the Rooney Prize and the Wellcome Prize and was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize.

The author has just concluded a meeting with his editor about how to reframe the press angle on the new book. Notes from an Apocalypse is a book about survivalists and end-times obsessives, a global tour of doomsday hotspots and hideouts, from the Black Hills of South Dakota and the pasturelands of New Zealand to the wind-blown desolation of the Scottish Highlands and the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.

OConnell is, understandably, queasy about making capital out of a scary situation. We live in a time when speculative and dystopian fictions are overtaken by news reports in the lag between draft and publication. Since Brexit and Trump, since Black Mirror and Hypernormalisation, since the inception of non-linear warfare and the corrosion of the notion of objective truth, the future has become not just too dark, but too real to mention. Even as we speak, were still adjusting to the protocol of what will soon be termed social distancing, the eschewing of the handshake for the nod or salute, the polite but measured distance we keep between us as we chat.

But and its a big but despite the new books eschatological obsessions, despite its cast of would-be Martian land-grabbers and bunker monkeys, its a very personal work as well as a very timely one.

I could stand for it to be slightly less topical, to be honest, OConnell admits with a near-grimace. Id take 50 per cent less. Or 100 per cent, actually. Obviously its coming out at an interesting time, but I dont even know that Id want to read a book about apocalyptic anxiety right now. I was talking to my neighbour across the street, cause Id given him a copy of the book, and he was like, I cant read your book, I cant even look at the cover, Ive turned it over on the table. But people are different: some want to read into a situation and some people want to read out of it.

I put it to the author that its actually a book about the anxiety of new fatherhood masquerading as a tract about end-times preppers.

Thats exactly it, he replies. I mean, its not that its masquerading, but the apocalypse cannot be the subject for a book, because its not a thing, its an idea. This book is kind of a way for me to organise my obsessions, a sense of the fragility of everything, and a questioning as to how youre supposed to live with a sense of meaning and purpose at a time when everything seems so uncertain, and the climate that weve brought these children into, were murdering it. Thats a hard thing to face when youve already had kids.

So yeah, I was already thinking about these things, and I wanted to write about these anxieties, but I didnt have an organising principle. Then I started to read about people preparing for the end of the world, preppers and super-rich people buying land in New Zealand. Both my books are about capitalism, and that was a way for me to mediate those themes, through this central idea the Freudian thing of sublimating your terrors or anxieties or desires into a work.

I dont know that I would have gone headlong into it if I wasnt a writer, he continues. My unhealthy obsessions are the same thing as my work. There was a long period, before I knew I was writing a book about this, where I was spending a lot of time watching YouTube videos about preppers, I must have watched Children of Men I dont know how many times, I think it is the most prophetic film, it puts its finger on so many things that were already visible back then, but have become so current.

Not that it was like a therapeutic exercise, just this sense that Im already obsessed with this stuff, and its not healthy, but Im stuck with this particular source of anxiety. People are talking about the apocalypse now a lot, but what does the apocalypse mean? It just means our way of life, in our fairly privileged case, is under threat.

And apokalypsos, translated from the Greek, also means to uncover or reveal. Where theres catastrophic change theres also accelerated growth.

Whats happening at the moment is like a blacklight or something that reveals stuff that is not ordinarily visible, it absolutely shows up the fault lines in our society, but it shows up some of the good things as well. Like, people are talking more, because everyone is going through the same thing. The thing I find really extraordinary about what is happening right now is that everyone in the world is experiencing this thing in different ways, everyones life is falling apart to some greater or lesser degree.

Notes from an Apocalypse is a swift and accessible read, but despite OConnells inherent gift for the comedy of the incongruous, it is often angry. Reading about people such as Peter Thiel or Elon Musk, obscenely rich men sinking bunkers in Auckland, or making plans to colonise Mars, one thinks of privileged slobs who have trashed their own homes and now want to move, leaving the serfs to clean up their mess. The kind of men who would rather face unimaginably hostile alien territory than invest in saving their own polluted planet.

Among other things, Notes From An Apocalypse highlights the infantile aspects of the American frontier mindset, the Last Man survivalist pose. Several times while reading I was reminded of Martin Amiss 1987 essay Thinkability from Einsteins Monsters, the fear he experienced as a new parent in the midst of Cold War nuclear paranoia. Would OConnell characterise the anxiety that fuelled his new book as a sort of male equivalent of post-natal depression?

Hmm. Yes, but I dont know if its explicitly male. One question that is unresolved for me is, how much of this anxiety would I have experienced if I wasnt writing a book about the topic? Theres an emotional trajectory to the book, where at the end theres a sense of, not stoic acceptance, but tentative optimism. And thats true, thats real, I did go through that to some extent.

It was such a hard book to write, and so many of the interludes of, I wont say depression, because its not a clinical thing, but just feeling shit about things that went on for a long time. The writing of it was difficult because the topic was so heavy, but I did come through it, that note of optimism at the end was real, it wasnt something that I had to force.

The key line in the book for me is towards the end: my son is looking at the sunset and he says, Its interesting. Thats the first time I heard him say that. Its not what the book is about, but it is what drove me in a way, because as anxious as I was about the stuff that was happening, its interesting. Its very cold and arguably psychopathic to think in that way, but the fundamental human connection is there. I think if youre a writer you cant stop finding things interesting. The whole psychological dynamic of the book was wanting to be reassured or to have some belief, because when youre parenting really young kids, the big thing is to inculcate the sense in them that the world is beautiful, a good place, and its an interesting place, its not a dark and threatening place. And to hear him say that was really powerful.

As with To Be A Machine, theres a wry humour at the heart of the new book. The tone is somewhere between Louis Theroux or Jon Ronson and Dr Strangelove. This is largely because OConnell is not afraid of looking like an idiot if it means asking the reader-proxy questions.

I dont know how long I spent as a journalist for want of a better term being afraid of coming across as stupid, he says, and I learned eventually that the most valuable thing you can do as a reporter is ask a stupid question. The one thing that youre afraid of asking, because it makes you seem like a f***ing moron, thats the most important question you can ask.

Definitely with To Be A Machine, when I started writing it, I was so fascinated by the topic, I knew I had a good thing, I knew I had this milieu that was fascinating and full of crazy ideas and really eccentric people dealing with things that were of philosophical importance or whatever, but I went through a long period of feeling inadequate to the task, and I did spend time trying to get to grips with the complexity of these ideas, and reading serious books that were in various ways beyond my grasp. And I eventually realised that the stupid ignoramus position not in a comic playing-it-for-laughs way, but a person who knows nothing is actually a better point from which to grasp whats important about a topic, and a better point from which to communicate with people. As a reader I value experts in a broader sense, in the political sense or whatever, but I wouldnt want to read a book about transhumanism by a person who is an expert.

But talking about humour, certainly in my books, I hope theyre funny, but its very unknowable to me what is funny in what I write and what isnt, because for me humour in writing is just like being... accurate. A lot of situations are inherently humorous, so its just about faithfully describing things a lot of the time. I actually think if a writer isnt funny at times, doesnt use humour, or evoke it, I kind of feel like theyre not fully serious. Theres something un-serious about someone whos not funny.

Notes From An Apocalypse is published by Granta

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'Everyone in the worlds life is falling apart to some greater or lesser degree' - The Irish Times

Cryogenic pods. Computer illustration of people in cryogenic pods. Their bodies are being preserved... [+] by storing them at very low temperatures. They will remain frozen until a time when the technology might exist to resurrect the dead, a technique known as cryonics. Alternatively a new body may be cloned from their tissue. Some companies offer to store dead peoples bodies.

Transhumanism (also abbreviated as H+) is a philosophical movement which advocates for technology not only enhancing human life, but to take over human life by merging human and machine. The idea is that in one future day, humans will be vastly more intelligent, healthy, and physically powerful. In fact, much of this movement is based upon the notion that death is not an option with a focus to improve the somatic body and make humans immortal.

Certainly, there are those in the movement who espouse the most extreme virtues of transhumanism such as replacing perfectly healthy body parts with artificial limbs. But medical ethicists raise this and other issues as the reason why transhumanism is so dangerous to humans when what is considered acceptable life-enhancement has virtually no checks and balances over who gets a say when we go too far. For instance, Kevin Warwick of Coventry University, a cybernetics expert, asked the Guardian, What is wrong with replacing imperfect bits of your body with artificial parts that will allow you to perform better or which might allow you to live longer? while another doctor stated that he would have no part in such surgeries. There is, after all, a difference between placing a pacemaker or performing laser eye surgery on the body to prolong human life and lend a greater degree of quality to human life, and that of treating the human body as a tabula rasa upon which to rewrite what is, effectively, the natural course of human life.

A largely intellectual movement whose aim is to transform humanity through the development of a panoply of technologies which ostensibly enhance human intellect, physiology, and the very legal status of what being human means, transhumanism is a social project whose inspiration can be dated back to 19th century continental European philosophy and later through the writings of J. B. S. Haldane, a British scientist and Marxist, who in 1923 delivered a speech at the Heretics Society, an intellectual club at Cambridge University, entitled Daedalus or, Science and the Future which foretold the future of the end of ofcoalfor power generation in Britain while proposing a network of windmills which would be used for the electrolytic decomposition of water into oxygen and hydrogen (they would generate hydrogen). According to many transhumanists, this is one of the founding projects of the movement. To read this one might think this was a precursor to the contemporary ecological movement.

The philosophical tenets, academic theories, and institutional practices of transhumanism are well-known.Max More, a British philosopher and leader of the extropian movement claims that transhumanism is the continuation and acceleration of the evolution of intelligent life beyond its currently human form and human limitations by means of science and technology, guided by life-promoting principles and values. This very definition, however, is a paradox since the ethos of this movement is to promote life through that which is not life, even by removing pieces of life, to create something billed as meta-life. Indeed, it is clear that transhumanism banks on its own contradiction: that life is deficient as is, yet can be bettered by prolonging life even to the detriment of life.

Stefan Lorenz Sorgneris a German philosopher and bioethicist who has written widely on the ethical implications of transhumanism to include writings on cryonics and longevity of human life, all of which which go against most ecological principles given the amount of resources needed to keep a body in suspended animation post-death. At the heart of Sorgners writings, like those of Kyle Munkittrick, invoke an almost nave rejection of death, noting that death is neither natural nor a part of human evolution. In fact, much of the writings on transhumanism take a radical approach to technology: anyone who dare question that cutting off healthy limbs to make make way for a super-Olympian sportsperson would be called a Luddite, anti-technology. But that is a false dichotomy since most critics of transhumanism are not against all technology, but question the ethics of any technology that interferes with the human rights of humans.

Take for instance the recent push by many on the ostensible Left who favor surrogacy as a step on the transhumanist ladder, with many publications on this subject, none so far which address the human rights of women who are not only part of this equation, but whose bodies are being used in the this faux-futurist vision of life without the mention of female bodies. Versos publication of a troubling piece by Sophie Lewis earlier this year, aptly titled Gestators of All Genders Unite speaks to the lack of ethics in a field that seems to be grasping at straws in removing the very mention of the bodies which reproduce and give birth to human life: females. In eliminating the specificity of the female body, Lewis attempts to stitch together a utopian future where genders are having children, even though the reality of reproduction across the Mammalia class demonstrates that sex, not gender, determines where life is gestated and birthed. What Lewis attempts in fictionalizing a world of dreamy hopefulness actually resembles more an episode of The Handmaids Tale where this writer has lost sense of any irony. Of course pregnancy is not about gender. It is uniquely about sex and the class of gestators are females under erasure by this dystopian movement anxious to pursue a vision of a world without women.

While many transhumanist ideals remain purely theoretical in scope, what is clear is that females are the class of humans who are being theorised out of social and political discourse. Indeed, much of the social philosophy surrounding transhumanist projects sets out to eliminate genderin the human species through the application of advanced biotechnology andassisted reproductive technologies, ultimately inspired by Shulamith Firestone'sThe Dialectic of Sex and much of Donna Haraways writing on cyborgs. From parthenogenesisto the creation ofartificial wombs, this movement seeks to remove the specificity of not gender, but sex, through the elision of medical terminology and procedures which portend to advance a technological human-cyborg built on the ideals of a post-sex model.

The problem, however, is that women are quite aware that sex-based inequality has zilch to do with anything other than their somatic sex. And nothing transhumanist theories can propose will wash away the reality of the sexed human body upon which social stereotypes are plied.

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The Ethics Of Transhumanism And The Cult Of Futurist Biotech

Art director Gem Fletcher attended a few meetings in London called the futurists meetup, where people discuss what the future holds for humanity. Fascinated by the subject, she involved photographer David Vintiner, and they started to investigate people who decide on their own evolution.

David Vintiner, from the series Futurists

Transhumanists are a group of individuals harnessing the power of tech to transcend our human biology, photographer David Vintiner and art director Gem Fletcher introduce their project, Futurists. Their 5-year long research covers a broad range of such engineering, from people designing news senses such as an implant that allows its color-blind receiver to hear colors, to those who are on a quest to extending life expectancy.

We should not be afraid of becoming something else, says Moon Ribas, who has developed a sensor which is implanted in her elbow and vibrates whenever there is an earthquake, allowing her to feel global seismic activity in real time. Her portrait by Vintiner is extremely expressive contortioned on the floor, she seems to prolong Earths movements despite the concrete screed that separates them.

David Vintiner, from the series Futurists

What is true for this portrait applies to all of them. Vintiner isnt announcing the end of the world nor making the apology of unlimited bio-science. He simply doesnt judge. We are just trying to explore and explain the movement to other people, he confirms. It took me about a year to get an understanding of what transhumanism is. These people seem really eccentric at first but the more I learned, the less crazy and wacky they seemed. They are just purely thinking about the technology and ignore fuzzy ideas such as what is the soul.

His approach translates into a neutral aesthetics. In most cases, his portraits are shot in mundane locations - a teenagers bedroom, an empty garage, an office, a classroom or a living room featuring basic technology such as a TV or a music player. This is happening now, it's not the future; they're all real people. As much as possible, we photographed them in their homes or in all the places where they do their experiments, he explains. No cold light either.

David Vintiner, from the series Futurists

Some devices might remind of super-heroes, but Vintiner doesnt amplify that aspect. Transhumanists may seem to transcend the barriers of both senses and ethics, but in most cases, they just happen to be thinking in a very pragmatic, scientific way. I dont really feel like I have transcended the barriers of traditional sense, I just feel like I am an asshole who is missing an eye and got an eye camera, one of his subject says.

Yet, a portrait of Nick Bostrom, the Director of the Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford University, raises a question, if not a warning. The co-founder of the World Transhumanist Association, Bostrom also warns about the dangers of artificial intelligence being unregulated. He further reasoned that the creation of a superintelligent being represents a possible means to the extinction of mankind. Even though transhumanism is based on science, it has that religious idea of immortality to it, of playing God with biology, Vintiner concludes. Till where?

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David Vintiner is a British photographer based in London focusing mainly on portraiture. You can support his first book's I Want To Believe kickstarter campaign here.

Laurence Cornet is a writer and curator based in Paris focusing on cultural and environmental issues. She is also the editorial director of Dysturb.

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This article is part of our feature series Photo Kernel, which aims to give space to the best contemporary practitioners in our community. The word Kernel means the core, centre, or essence of an object, but it also refers to image processing.

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The Futurists Redefining What it Means to be Human - PHmuseum

london-based photographers david vintner and gem fletcher document individuals who form part of the transhumanism culture throughout europe, russia and the united states in their latest collaborative photo series, I want to believe an exploration of transhumanism. the five-year-long project explores the core idea behind transhumanism the belief that human beings are destined to transcend their mortal flesh through technology.

neil harbisson hears color neil harbisson was born with achromatism, a rare disease that renders him colourblind. rather than overcome achromatism, harbisson created a new sense to go beyond the human visual spectrumin 2004 he had an antenna implanted into his skull. the antenna allows him to perceive visible and invisible colours as audible vibrations, including infrareds and ultraviolets.

the photo series by vintner and fletcher illustrates three gradual stages of transhumanism from testing ground, patient zero to humanity 2.0. at the lowest tier, testing ground looks into individuals who have created wearable technology to expand their human abilities, improving everything from concentration to mental health.patient zero studies those who have taken permanent action to become half human and half robot. in the final chapter, humanity 2.0, the transhumanist subjects focus on life extension and immortality.

the work of the individuals in this book demonstrates how optimizing our brains and bodies could revolutionize and redefine humanity. as human architects, we are only limited by our imagination, explains vintner and fletcher.

kevin warrick widely considered as one of the first cyborgs.kevin warrick is a pioneering professor in cybernetics and considered by many as the worlds first cyborg. kevin instigated a series of experiments involving the neuro-surgical implantation of a device into the nerves of his left arm in order to link his nervous system directly to a computer. this enabled him to have a symbiotic connection with a robotic hand. he could control the hand using his own brain signals from anywhere in the world, as well as sense what the robot hand was feeling.

humans are now gods. we are now able to create and design humans, but do humans have the foresight to do it in the right way? questions the photographers.

cyborg arm

for many transhumanists, life extension and immortality is the goal. transhumanism started as early as 1923 and has developed over recent years through the rise of sci-fi themed books, movies and the democratization of technology. as studies on experimental genetic engineering, tissue regeneration and stem cell treatments are also becoming more apparent in todays world, transhumanists hope to extend the life of the human body anywhere from twenty to 500 years longer than the average lifespan.

vintner and fletcher are working together on releasing the photo series as a book, which can be funded on crowd-funding platform kickstarter, here.

moon ribas sensing earthquakesmoon ribas is connected to online seismographs allowing her to perceive the seismic activity of the planet through vibrations in her body. the vibration she feels depends on the intensity of the earthquake. if she is standing in newcastle, she can sense earthquakes happening everywhere from japan to greece. she describes the sensation as having two heartbeats, her biological heartbeat and the earthbeat, which has its own rhythm inside her body.

dr natasha vita-more a leading expert on human enhancement and emerging technologies

dr. aubrey de grey biomedical gerontologist and the chief science 0fficer of SENS research foundation

liz parrish founder of bioviva

dr max more president and CEO of the alcor life extension foundation

patient zero - james young after an accident that left him a double amputee, james young turned to bionics to redesign his body. obsessed with the metal gear solid, he worked with gaming giant konami and prosthetic sculptor sophie de oliveira barata to develop an advanced bionic arm inspired by the computer game.

carbon fibre bionic limb

patient zero - rob spence known as the eyeborg, rob spence lost an eye as a child while playing with his grandfather's shotgun. inspired by a love of the bionic man and his interest in documentary filmmaking, spence created an eye with a wireless video camera inside. the camera is not connected to his optic nerve but sends footage to a remote receiver. over the years, he has created several different aesthetics for the eye, from a realistic 'hidden camera' version to a terminator inspired glowing red version.

patient zero - neil harbisson neil harbisson was born with achromatism, a rare disease that renders him colourblind. rather than overcome achromatism, harbisson created a new sense to go beyond the human visual spectrumin 2004 he had an antenna implanted into his skull. the antenna allows him to perceive visible and invisible colours as audible vibrations, including infrareds and ultraviolets.

image out of rob spence's eyes

new ways of seeing - EYEsect the experimental device aims to recreate the experience of seeing the world like a chameleon, with two single steerable eyes. in changing the way we perceive the world around us, eyesect alters our version of reality enabling new ways to sense and experience our environment.

new ways of seeing - north sense created by liviu babitz and scott cohen, north sense is a small matchbox-sized artificial sense organ that delivers a short vibration every time the user faces north, similar to the biological abilities of migratory birds, extending the human perception of orientation.

new ways of seeing - aisen caro chacin / echolocation the echolocation headphones are a pair of goggles that aid human echolocation. it is designed to substitute the users vision augmenting our spatial awareness with sound, similar to the abilities of bats and whales. the device has both the potential to aid the visually impaired and provide sighted individuals with a new sense.

project info:

title:I want to believe an exploration of transhumanism

artistic director: gem fletcher

photographer: david vintiner

kick starter page: I want to believe

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cyborgs, robots, and biohackers: the first-ever survey of transhumanism - Designboom