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15 Future Technologies That Should Not Scare You
Author : Armand Vespertine On Twitter I follow a popular fact sharing account known as @uberfacts. As has been pointed out elsewhere , a number of the ‘facts’ they tweet are either questionable or completely false. On at least three occasions now they have tweeted a link to a gizmopod gallery entitled 15 future technologies that should scare you. After viewing this gallery I found it to be very conservative and neophobic, with an almost singular focus on the negative effects of future technology with almost no thought given to the positive. Frankly, the author sounds like they’re practicing for being a stereotypical old man, blinded by his nostalgia and rambling on about…
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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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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 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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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…
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Unarmed Combat in Zero G
As far as I know, nobody so far has actually experimentally investigated martial arts in a weightless environment, other than under water. This article concerns constraints and opportunities presented by unarmed combat in zero-G environments without a spacesuit being involved. If one includes a spacesuit then we are in a situation analogous to knights in armor, where the only realistic option is a weapon, probably a reactionless pistol based on the Gyrojet. What is not an option are the “space axes” of the 1940s SF writer E E “doc” Smith! While some insights can be gained by practicing in a swimming pool many crucial features of true freefall are missing,…
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Eugenics and Transhumanism
Eugenics, well it’s all about killing off genetic defectives, gassing people designated as insane or subhuman and giving lethal injections to kids with learning difficulties. Or at least it has become that in popular imagination. The original impetus for eugenics was the observation by certain members of Victorian era Middle Class scientific establishment that the feckless poor (and therefore stupid) were out-breeding clever people and thereby dumbing down Humanity as a whole and the “superior races” in particular. Ways had to be found of discouraging big families amongst the “wrong people” and encouraging the “right people” to breed a bit more. Since the “right people” were generally fairly intelligent, articulate…
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The Great Sierras of Books of Ancient Early Transhuman Earth – Immortal Life
Author: Eric Schulke – Immortal Life There are so many possibilities in life, and there is so much to see. The idiosyncratic things there are out there, the diverse, original, perspectifying types of things out there to be experienced, seem to be infinite. As one example, that I hope doesn’t happen, but I humored the other day, is: I wonder if books could become so obsolete in the future that they end up being shredded or something like that. It seems it could happen because, let’s say, Earth is abandoned after people have colonized the universe for so long, that they have forgotten about it. Then the long standing buildings…
