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Ray Kurzweil On Optimism And Pessimism In Society
At Tech Leadership Conference 2016, futurist, author and inventor Ray Kurzweil discusses the source of his technological optimism: what he calls the law of accelerating returns. Read more: http://news.communitech.ca/news/ray-k… 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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Medical Innovation Running Wild – A Dystopic Future
I’m truly excited for the future of medicine – sometimes it feels like we’re living in a sci-fi novel. But genetic discrimination and the elimination of privacy are just some of the problems we’ll face if we let medical innovation run wild. Join the global discussion: Like: https://www.facebook.com/medicalfuturist Follow: https://twitter.com/Berci Browse: http://www.themedicalfuturist.com 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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The Imperative of Technological Progress: Why Stagnation Will Necessarily Lead to Disaster and How Techno-Optimism Can Overcome It
Author: Gennady Stolyarov II “He who moves not forward, goes backward.” ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe It is both practically desirable and morally imperative for individuals and institutions in the so-called “developed” world to strive for a major acceleration of technological progress within the proximate future. Such technological progress can produce radical abundance and unparalleled improvements in both length and quality of life – whose possibilities Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler outlined in their 2012 book Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think. Moreover, major technological progress is the only way to overcome a devastating step backward in human civilization, which will occur if the protectionist tendencies and pressures…
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James Blish’s “At Death’s End”: An Early View of the Prospects for Indefinite Life Extension – The Rational Argumentator
“At Death’s End”, written by James Blish (1921-1975), was published in the May 1954 issue of Astounding Science Fiction magazine. Surprisingly, this short story is still only accessible in hard copy, within the original Astounding Science Fiction edition. Apart from a brief review by Robert W. Franson, who introduced me to this work, there is today surprisingly little literary analysis devoted to “At Death’s End” – even though it offers a fascinating glimpse into how a science-fiction writer from an earlier era perceived the prospects for indefinite human longevity, from the vantage point of the scientific knowledge available at the time. The world portrayed by Blish is, in some…
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Five Top Reasons Transhumanism Can Eliminate Suffering
Posted to TNet: Thu, October 18, 2012 | By: David Pearce Reality is big. So our optimism must be confined to sentient beings in our forward light-cone. But I tentatively predict that the last experience below “hedonic zero” will be a precisely dateable event several hundred years hence. Here are five grounds for cautious optimism: 1. We Shall Soon Be Able To Choose Our Own Level Of Pain-Sensitivity It’s hard to convey in words the frightfulness of unrelieved physical pain. Millions of people with chronic pain syndromes suffer severe physical pain each day. However, a revolution in reproductive medicine is imminent. We’ll shortly be able to choose the genetically-shaped pain…
