Futurist
Articles related to Futurism and Transhumanism.
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Limits to Growth
The idea that economic growth cannot continue, and that it must not continue is deeply ingrained in the so-called “Green” political view of the future. The simplistic notion is that the Earth’s resources are finite and either we will exhaust them or fatally pollute the planet while attempting to do so. Superficially this makes sense. For example, if economic growth continues for the next century at around three percent per annum everyone will, on average, be twenty times as wealthy as they are now. In fact, almost everyone in Britain would be able to afford to live in a large fifteen bedroom house in several hectares of land with a…
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TRANSHUMAN – Do you want to live forever?
This is a perfectly good documentary film of only twenty – two minutes, directed by Titus Nachbauer. You can also visit the documentary’s website here. Guest AuthorAll Guest Author Posts are submitted or additional content Wave Chronicle has added to the website. To be a Guest Author please visit our "Post Your Article" page.More Posts - Website
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Fear and Loathing in Transhumanism
There is a sense of paranoia seething in some areas of “traditional” Transhumanism. There is the smell of change in the air and some people do not like it one little bit. So, what is the change and why is it causing problems? To illustrate, let’s go back almost exactly twenty years to the early days of the Net. Back then very few people outside of the technical elite even knew that the “Internet” existed, let alone what it was. That self selected elite had their own culture, their own in-jokes and their own sense of idealism and freedom in what they saw as uncorrupted cyberspace, along with a utopian…
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Our Vampire Future? – Wireheading and Hitech Psychopaths
Wireheading – a term from science fiction that was coined some decades back to describe people who use electrical stimulation of the “pleasure center” of the Human brain to achieve the absolute maximum happiness possible. As a result the Wirehead often dies of neglect since the impulse to eat and drink, or indeed do anything at all, becomes insignificant compared to the ecstasy of the next jolt. The concept itself was in turn based upon studies of rats that had been implanted with electrodes in an experimental setup where by pressing a lever a the animal could self administer a jolt of supreme pleasure. The result being that they continually…
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In Praise of the Borg – “Resistance is futile – you will want to be assimilated!”
All Star Trek fans have seen them, the relentless, powerful and collective mind known as the Borg. They roam about the galaxy press-ganging everyone they can find into becoming ugly mind controlled drones who work for the good of the hive whether they want to or not. While we might hope for better from Star Trek we should not expect it. Trek has almost a pathological antipathy to anything Transhumanist, and explicitly rejects any kind of enhancement of Humans whether it is genetic (Eugenics Wars), medical (anti aging) or technological (Borg). Even brain computer interfacing seems off-limits. So, given that Trek is a Luddite propaganda tool why don’t we take…
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The Transhumanist Declaration 2.0
This was the winner of the competition for a new declaration that was held by Transhumanity. As such it is currently the definition adopted by Zero State. It is shorter than those it was based upon with many of the negative caveats concerning its dangers condensed into a single point. Humanity stands to be profoundly affected by science and technology in the future. We assert the desire ability of transcending human limitations by overcoming aging, enhancing cognition, abolishing involuntary suffering, and expanding beyond Earth. We intend to become more than Human. The single defining factor of Transhumanism that separates it from all previous philosophies is the proposed use of…
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The Human Machine
This is a 15 minute documentary project created as part of a post graduate course in science communications at Imperial College of Science and Technology, London. Any views documented here, or techniques shown, are in no way to be considered as being endorsed by Imperial College nor indeed the creators of the video itself. My involvement with the project came about due to replying to a request in a Reddit subgroup dedicated to exploring Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation of the brain (tDCS) by three postgraduates: Aliyah, Letizia and Patrick (surnames withheld on request). They wanted to make a short documentary as part of their course and to feature such work…
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Time and Punishment
Author : Armand Vespertine An article by Rebecca Roache has gained some notoriety among futurist circles recently. In this article Roache speculates on how anticipated technologies like life extension, mind uploading and Human modification might be used to punish criminals. The main source of controversy has been that the tone of the original article made it seem that Roache was in favour of using advanced technology to torture prisoners in ways that were never before possible. Roache has since insisted that the article is merely speculation and that she does not necessarily support any of the penal methods she discusses. Regardless of Roache’s intent, I believe that the outrage the article…
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The Issue Of Transcendence
I finally made it to see the movie Transcendence, sadly I was in an empty theater. Personally, I was quite pleased with the movie and I am not shocked that it could not catch the attention of the general public. In my opinion, it is an accurate assessment on how evolved scientists would behave, how people who are afraid of technology will behave, and everyone knows damn right well, you could count on the good ole USA to behave exactly as the movie predicts. In many ways, this was a nice option for the Singularity, the concept that we can heal and repair anything is a wonderful thought and a beautiful goal.…
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Why Transhumanism Is Not Private Property
Transhumanism (H+), has made some progress recently. Well, at least progress in creating careers, generating PhD theses, raising money and generally attempting to become mainstream. Indeed, I would not be surprised if as much as 1% of the educated population have heard of it. However, a price has to be paid and it seems to be that of giving up H+ and even in some cases appearing to oppose its traditional goals. The techniques of doing so involve a weird kind of cognitive dissonance. On one hand all the grand visions of artificial intelligence, uploading, raising the dead, re-engineering the cosmos and creating new species of PostHumans are being downplayed…
