For an interesting range of articles, video clips and other things relating to the speculative concept of the technological singularity see IEEE Spectrum: Special Report: The Singularity.
Related links:
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A couple more robot links to go with a robot girlfriend link from a day or two back.
The first, Robotic Navi-Bear as Annoying as It Is Cute | Autopia from Wired.com, is the fusion of a talking teddy bear with a navigation system for drivers.
The second, Tartalo the robot is knocking on your door, is about a robot being built in Spain the can navigate around the wider community by recognising people’s homes.
Another step in the direction of virtual companions? See Japan makes robot girlfriend for lonely men
Related links: Greenflame · Computer companions: Are they possible?
Interesting series of quotes about what it means to be human from various scientists over at What Does It Mean to Be Human? | Wired Science from Wired.com.
Often our attempts to define this tend to be linked to particular understandings of the essential core that defines human beings, sometimes called the locus humanus. Typically, this is denoted by a set of attributes that human beings alone possess, such as the religious concept of an immortal soul, but is often a collection of psychological attributes such as reason, language, consciousness and self consciousness. And indeed, in the quotes in the link above some of these crop up.
Hat tip to Nouslife: What Does It Mean to Be Human?
Metanexus’ eMagazine/eJournal - Global Spiral - has a special issue this month on transhumanism edited by Hava Tirosh-Samuelson from Arizona State University.
See Global Spiral, June 2008 (Volume 9, Issue 3) - Special Issue on Transhumanism
Articles include:
- Engaging Transhumanism: The Meaning of Being Human :: Hava Tirosh-Samuelson :: Global Spiral
- Of Which Human Are We Post? :: Don Ihde :: Global Spiral
- Wrestling with Transhumanism :: Katherine Hayles :: Global Spiral
- Cybernetics Is An Antihumanism: Advanced Technologies and the Rebellion Against the Human Condition :: Jean-Pierre Dupuy :: Global Spiral
- Brains, Selves and Spirituality in the History of Cybernetics :: Andrew Pickering :: Global Spiral
- Transhumanism and the Posthuman Future: Will Technological Progress Get Us There? :: Ted Peters :: Global Spiral
I will have to make time to read them all in the next couple of weeks - perhaps one or two per day on the train?
Flying visit to Wellington yesterday for an Interchurch Bioethics Council meeting.
Nice to be back in the Heavenly City, if only for 10 hours or so. Stimulating meeting too.
More resources at: Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand // Media: Ecumenical & Interchurch - Interchurch Bioethics Council Resources.
Hat tip to James at Exploring Our Matrix for a link through to an extensive interview How Our Brains are Wired for Belief with Andrew Newberg (hosted by the Pew Forum) on religion and neuroscience (neurotheology). He also notes this link to various related articles by Newberg and others.
See also Greenflame · Search results - Newberg which has some more links in it.
Recent UK legislation relating to embryology included provision of the creation of human-animal hybrid embryos (which combine human and animal genetic material) for therapeutic research purposes. (See UK parliament backs human-animal embryo research | HEALTH | NEWS | tvnz.co.nz)
What do you think?
Do you think it is acceptable to create human-animal embryos for therapeutic purposes?
Related links:
Two different points of view on the UK embryology bill:
- Geraldine Peacock: The human fertilization and embryology bill gives me hope | Comment is free | The Guardian
- Response: I have a disability, yet I still think it’s wrong to destroy embryos, says Alison Davis | Comment is free | The Guardian
Who’s afraid of a synthetic human? | John Harris - Times Online
A recent issue of ESPN The Magazine has an article on athletes with prosthetics and some commentary asking what really is the difference between various sorts of technological enhancement in sport. See ESPN - ESPN The Magazine - Let ‘Em Play and the photo gallery at ESPN - ESPN The Magazine - Photo Gallery.
Hat tip to Gregor Wolbring at ESPN Magazine focus on Athletes and Prosthetics « Nano, Bio, Info, Cogno, Synthetic bio, NBICS.
In one of those “around the houses†moments I rediscovered the Facing the Challenges of Transhumanism: Religion, Science, and Technology blog attached to Arizona State University’s Templeton Research Lectures - Facing the Challenges of Transhumanism: Religion, Science, Technology project. Something to keep track of over the next few months.
Hat tip to a BetterHumans.com : “General repudiation of Transhumanism†posting - which is less than enamoured with the ASU blog.
Related links:
These looks interesting - new prosthetic hands that allows for greater control of fine motor skills. See New Prosthetic Hand Has Grip Function Almost Like A Natural Hand: Each Finger Moves Separately
If you have an interest in science and religion or history you will probably be interested to know that Cambridge University has digitized and published on the internet its collection Darwin material (30,000 odd items and 90,000 images, as well as audio material). From the web site:
This site contains Darwin’s complete publications, thousands of handwritten manuscripts and the largest Darwin bibliography and manuscript catalogue ever published; also hundreds of supplementary works: biographies, obituaries, reviews, reference works and more.Almost all is online only here: such as 1st editions of Voyage of the Beagle, Zoology, Descent of Man, all editions of Origin of Species (1st, 2d, 3d, 4th, 5th & 6th); important manuscripts: Beagle Diary & field notebooks, Journal, transmutation notebooks and Autobiography.
You can access the site at: The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online (darwin-online.org.uk).
More too, over at Complete Darwin Papers Debut on Internet | Wired Science from Wired.com
Picked up the first issue of Transhuman from Image Comics yesterday. It’s a four-part mini-series in a documentary format set in the not to distant future and deals with the initial commercial forays into commercialising technologies to produce ‘off-the-shelf’ human self-modification of a transhumanist nature. I thought the first issue was quite good, and offered some insight into the commercial agendas of biotechnology often glossed over in the transhumanist literature. I’ll be interested in where the series goes.
The comic made it onto the transhumanist-related Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies blog. See IEET - Transhuman, the comic, which includes a link to some sample pages from the issue here.
Various reviews of the issue can be found at:
Love to share is a downloadable resource from the World Council of Churches that aims to give some direction and guidelines for churches when considering intellectual property rights and copyright and looking at alternatives to the current situation. At some point I’d like to have some students theologically investigate these ideas so I’ll be downloading it to see what it says. [Hat tip to Tensegrities]
On a related note I’ve also been reading the WCC booklet - Globalization of Communications - by Chris Arthur. It’s about 10 years old now, but there’s some interesting starting points for further discussion in it.
But wait, there’s more…
WCC and new and emerging technologies: Able-ism: A prerequisite for transhumanism is a discussion paper on new technologies by Gregor Wolbring, who blogs over at Nano, Bio, Info, Cogno, Synthetic bio, NBICS.
And there’s also the WCC report Science, Faith & New Technologies: Transforming Life, Volume 1 : Convergent Technologies, which has some stuff in it relating to transhumanism.
Clearing out old web links I’d saved over the past few months I came across this one.
John La Grou’s reflections, microclesia >> AI Jesus, on interacting the AI Jesus over at www.godsbot.org.
An interesting post about a set of interviews with US scientists about religious and spiritual beliefs and practices. Part of a follow-up to a larger survey and indicate that religious/spiritual inclination might be much higher than is commonly portrayed in a science vs. religion conflict model.
See The Immanent Frame » Blog Archive » Beyond The God Delusion
Related links:
The website Edge: The Third Culture recently asked the question “WHAT HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT?” to a range of commentators. Martin Rees (President, The Royal Society; Professor of Cosmology & Astrophysics; Master, Trinity College, University of Cambridge) responded with interesting short piece - We Should Take the ‘Posthuman’ Era Seriously.
You can also listen to him as part of the panel on the most recent episode of BBC - Radio 4 In Our Time on the concept of the Multiverse.
Sentient Developments points to a special report in IEEE Spectrum on the current state of prosthetic arms. See IEEE Spectrum: Special Report: Prosthetic Arms with video here.
Interesting short article commenting on research presented at the recent American Association for the Advancement of Science conference which identifies religion as far more significant a factor in the US than in Europe. In part, it’s due to the conflation of nanotechnology with other things like biotechnology and the sense the people are ‘playing God’ when seeking to manipulate a nano-scale world.
I went to hear Prof Maggie Boden speak tonight on Computer companions: Are they possible?. The main thrust of the talk was that computer systems (robotic and simulations) are being created to serve three main types of roles:
- Physical interaction - such as robots that are used in caregiving or domestic roles: Robo-Monk and Robot nurse will care for Japan’s lonely old people
- Conversationalists - providing some sort of interactive conversation as part of doing tasks
- Confidants - related to the above, but able to engage in conversation in some way based upon building up a knowledge of a person over time: such as being able to listen to, analyze and draw upon the stories that have been told it the system previously.
Boden argued that these sort of systems are in various stages of development now (particularly for commercial deployment), and that they raise a whole range of questions that go beyond the purely technical ones of whether or not functional ’sociable’ robots/system are possible.
- Could a ‘computer companion’ really do x (where x might be gossip, feel sympathy, express humour)?
- Could a ‘computer companion’ really be made to appear to do x?
- Would a human being believe that a ‘computer companion’ could do x?
- Would we want (3) to happen?
- How might (3) affect human-human relationships?
These are similar questions to some that have come up in my own research so they weren’t a surprise to me, but given the discussion after the talk they were new to some there.
Update: Radio New Zealand’s Sunday Morning programme had an interview with Margaret Boden at the weekend which covered some of this material. You can listen for a while here (MP3).
Related material - a quick selection of papers, essays and books by Boden that I’ve found interesting:
Boden, Margaret A. 1985. Wonder and Understanding. Zygon 20 (4):391-400.
______. 1987. Artificial intelligence and natural man. 2nd ed. New York: Basic Books.
______, ed. 1990. The philosophy of artificial intelligence. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
______. 1995. Artificial intelligence and human dignity. In Nature’s Imagination: The frontiers of scientific vision, edited by J. Cornwell. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
______. 1998. Creativity and Artificial Intelligence. Artificial Intelligence 103 (1-2):347-356.
______. 2005. Ethical Issues of AI and Biotechnology. In Creative Creatures: Values and Ethical Issues in Theology, Science and Technology, edited by U. Görman, W. B. Drees and H. Meisinger. London: T & T Clark.
Margaret Boden is also speaking on What is creativity? : Wednesday 20 February 5.30pm, at the Gus Fisher Gallery as part of her time at the University of Auckland.
See also: Exploring Our Matrix: Robots in the News
The New Zealand Bioethics Conference: Wellbeing and Technology last weekend was nice and stimulating. Some good plenary sessions, entertaining (and somewhat disturbing) public lectures, a wide variety of papers, and interesting people. These included:
- A really interesting talk from Brad Partridge, PhD student from the University of Queensland, who’s looking at public perceptions of life extension technologies, including responses from transhumanist and conservative Christian groups. Related links at: Who wants to live forever? Community attitudes to life extension - UQ News Online - The University of Queensland and Eternal life ‘not so appealing’ | NEWS.com.au
- An interesting but really quite disturbing paper on people who want to reshape their bodies by intentional amputation of limbs (even to the state of paraplegia). Relevant in parts give this current discussion (Greenflame · Therapy or enhancement in sport?)
- A broader range of topics and issues being discussed than I anticipated - including a common theme of social justice running through many of the talks, but kicked off by the first plenary talk by Howard Brody
I can’t remember whether I’ve posted these links before (a quick search of the blog says not), but in a week’s time I’ll just back from Dunedin having attended the New Zealand Bioethics Conference: Wellbeing and Technology so it seemed apt to note them. There’s a session on transhumanism on the last day of the conference so I’ll be interested to see what the perspectives offered there include.
New Scientist magazine had a special focus on ‘death’ back in October (see Special Report on Death - New Scientist) with a bit in it on transhumanist aspirations to overcome death (or at least, short life) - Death special: The plan for eternal life - being-human - 13 October 2007 - New Scientist (including a link to the video YouTube - Quest for immortality featuring various transhumanists and ‘techno-progressives’).
Other related links:
- Living Forever: The Longevity Revolution - from The Nature of Things with David Suzuki : CBC-TV
- Do You Want To Live Forever? - Channel 4 Documentary
- Mark Walker on superlongevity
- Building Gods - Rough cut of documentary available online
- Immortality Institute
Firstly, a short summary piece from PBS Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly on recent developments in biotechnology and whether they change the ethical landscape. See Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly . PERSPECTIVES . Bioethics Update . January 25, 2008 | PBS
And secondly, Rod Benson (who produces the weekly summary RELIGION & ETHICS AUSTRALIA) also has a daily blog going over at Ethics Update: News, opinion and rumour on all manner of ethical, political and religious issues.
Mary over at Tensegrities points to this visually engaging project - Chris Harrison - Visualizing the Bible.
Beyond Paley: Renewing the Vision for Natural Theology is an interdisciplinary event being held at the University Museum, Oxford in June. The line up of speakers looks engaging, but given my chances of actually getting there as very slim (as in non-existent) I’ll wait for the downloads from the web site.
Related links from the Counterbalance site:
Interesting article by Real Live Preacher over at Christian Century on the enquiring mind and faith.
Some people see the boundary between mystery and science as a battleground with barbed wire and trenches on either side. But I think that the place where our searching and empirical minds meet the mysteries of the world is the realm of worship and poetry.
Full article at: The Christian Century: Faith matters - Brother Scientist (January 15, 2008) by Gordon Atkinson.
A new user-driven blog relating to transhumanist ideas, and in particular, the technological singularity. See On Singularity:
Justice De Thezier, one of the most frequent contributors to the transhumanist blog Cyborg Democracy (which tends towards the ‘left’ of the H+ spectrum), wrote a posting a few weeks back about how he’s decided to abandon the transhumanist label (and also membership in the WTA). It makes for interesting reading (and has some parallels with stories told by those who leave religious communities).
Interestingly, his three points that he sees hindering a broader, more inclusive transhumanism (1. An undercritical support for technology in general and fringe science in particular; 2. A distortive ‘us vs. them’ tribe-like mentality and identity; and 3. A vulnerability to unrealistic utopian and dystopian ‘future hype’) also came out quite clearly in my own research into the ideology. (And those three points also look similar to criticisms of faith communities by some who leave - uncritical approach to doctrine; us vs. them; and escapist eschatologies).
You can read the article at CybDem: De Thezier’s New Year’s Resolution: Quit Transhumanism and the follow up article at CybDem: 2 Weeks Later….
On a related note - here’s a link to an article describing a movie being developed about the technological singularity: Coming Soon to a Theater Near You: The Singularity In a world where it’s hard to be an expert on the science and technology (say behind global warming claims or reproductive technologies) these types of movies seem to be as much about positioning their proponents as people you can trust, as conveying useful information about their ideas. Still, I look forward to watching it critically at some point.
The “People Power for the Third Millennium: Technology, Democracy and Human Rights” symposia from The Centre for Bioethics & Public Policy in the UK looks interesting, though being held in London means I’m hoping they’ll be something published out of them for a wider audience.
The first symposium, “Robots & Rights: Will artificial intelligence change the meaning of human rights?”, was a couple of days ago, and other upcoming topics include:
- Transhuman minds? Is cognitive enhancement a human right?
- Privacy and Surveillance: Monitoring humans or monitoring human rights?
- Arts and technology: the role of the arts in democratic policy making
I’ve been wondering whether South African athlete Oscar Pistorius, who runs with carbon-fibre prosthetic legs, would be competing at the Beijing Olympics ever since I saw a news article about him a year to eighteen months ago. It appears now that he won’t be there, even if he makes the qualifying times.
See: Pistorius’s unfair advantage keeps him out of Olympics | Athletics | Guardian Unlimited Sport
Hat tip to Andii over at Nouslife: Pistorius’s unfair advantage -the cyborg prosthete.
It’s an interesting question - how much enhancement should an athlete be allowed? Obviously, things like spectacles and contact lenses are allowed, as are various operations to fix/improve weak spots in a physique (e.g. replacing broken tendons) or corrective eye surgery. But something like taking performance-enhancing drugs or blood-doping isn’t. It seems like it’s going to get harder to differentiate between therapy/enhancement in sport as time goes on.
NPR ran a programme on Pistorius and enhancement in sport back in May last year. You can listen to it at: NPR : Prosthetics in Sports: Disability or Advantage?
iRobot have produced a new household robot (’ConnectR’) that allows you to partake in family life when you can’t be there in person. The small round robot allows you to see, hear and follow your loved ones around, as well as allowing you yo talk to them, all via wireless connectivity at home and an internet connection wherever you are.
More details on the product at iRobot Corporation: About ConnectR.
Hat tip to TidBITS Tech News: CES 2008 Day 3: Robots and Wrap-up.
Oh, and there’s a video of it in action over at Geekanerd - Video Games, Comic Books, Movies, and All Things Geek!: Digital Life: Two Minutes With the iRobot ConnectR.
Incarnational or excarnational living - the choice is yours. But somehow it doesn’t beat tucking the kids into bed in person, nor sharing the evening meal together.
Via Russell Brown’s column in the latest NZ Listener - Wide Area News: Casting the net - a link through to the World Internet Project New Zealand being done by AUT’s Institute of Culture, Discourse & Communication.
The World Internet Project New Zealand (WIP NZ) is an extensive research project which aims to provide important information about the social, cultural, political and economic influence of the internet and related digital technologies.
The findings of the pilot programme and the interim reports can be found here. (Brown’s piece summarizes a some it as well). I’m going to download them and see if anything interesting pops out.
A few interrelated things in the past week or so about genetic testing, discrimination and Alzheimer’s.
Firstly, PBS carried this article (and video) about the ethics of testing for Alzheimer’s - Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly . COVER . Alzheimer’s Testing . December 14, 2007 | PBS.
Which, in turn, relates to this part of Radio NZ’s Nine to Noon programme on Thursday that looked at genetic discrimination in insurance cover - MP3 here.
And then this from Terry Pratchett, who notes that while he’s been diagnosed with very rare form of early onset Alzheimer’s people note that he’s not dead yet. (Are there eulogies on the net already?) - Discworld News © PJSM Prints
As someone interested in both transmedia narratives and the TV show ‘Heroes’ I was really interested to read this article recently.
Confessions of an Aca/Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins: “We Had So Many Stories to Tell”: The Heroes Comics as Transmedia Storytelling and to find the link to the online ‘Heroes’ comics that add to the TV episodes at Heroes TV Show on NBC: NBC Official Site
More links to transmedia storytelling at Greenflame · Transmedia.
Interesting articles that popped up on young-earth ‘creationist’ geology, and the problems it causes, not for secular geologists, but rather for old-earth Christian geologists.
Original NYT article at: Rock of Ages, Ages of Rock by Hanna Rosin (Nov 25, 2007). (Login needed).
Commentary on the article here at Young Earth Creationism Makes Life Difficult for Everyone | Liveblog | Christianity Today.
I long time ago I flatted with a postgrad geneticist-microbiologist who had the crazy idea of trying to make bioluminescent bananas (so they could be picked in the dark 
). Apparently, bananas are the wrong type of plant for the bioluminescent symbiote he wanted to use, though potatoes would have worked.
Now I see this - SKorean Scientists Clone Cats That Glow: Wired News - AP News - and I wonder, what ever happened to my old flatmate?
Various books on the go at the moment. Some good, some not so. Random comments follow.
“Metal Swarm” by Kevin J. Anderson (Book 6(!) in the “The Saga of Seven Suns” series). Should be right up my alley - ancient powerful alien races continue ancient wars while plucky humans (with strange alien sometime allies) strive to survive. It’s Babylon 5 all over again - even down to the human politics and civil war. But it reads really badly - too many characters to follow and a million very short chapters focusing on different characters means it feels like watching a TV where someone’s changing the channel every 10 seconds. No time for empathy to develop with any of the characters, and by now it feels like it’s just going through the motions. On a plus side you can skip whole chapters and not miss much of the plot. Undecided on whether I’ll read the next book.
“The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief” by Francis S. Collins, the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute. Recommended to me by a non-scientist/non-theologian (in the professional sense) so I’ve picked it up from the library. As usual I’ve started reading from the back, in this case the first few pages of the appendix on bioethics which gives some nice summaries of that field. (See also: Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly . PROFILE . DR. FRANCIS COLLINS . July 21, 2006 | PBS)
“Saturnalia: A Marcus Didius Falco Novel” by Lindsey Davis. Falco novels are like a comfortable old pair of slippers for me. When I don’t feel like reading anything too heavy then I get the next one out of the library. I didn’t really like the last one (“See Delphi and Die”), but you know what you’re getting and I’ve always been interested in Ancient Rome. “Saturnalia” improved on the last book, but still missed something of the dramatic tension present in the early novels. (Related information: Second-born (9) has been devouring the children’s equivalent of the Falco novels - Caroline Lawrence’s “Roman Mysteries” - effectively a ‘Famous Five in Ancient Rome’)-
“Practical Theology: On Earth As It Is in Heaven” by Terry A. Veling. Because it was spoken highly of over at Simply Simon: Practicing theology and Simply Simon: Practicing theology II.
“The Blackwell Reader in Pastoral and Practical Theology (Blackwell Readings in Modern Theology)” by John Patton. Because it was near the Veling book on the shelf in the GSC library, and because it covers a wide range of perspectives on the field.
“Engaging the Online Learner: Activities and Resources for Creative Instruction (Online Teaching and Learning Series (OTL))” by Rita-Marie Conrad and J. Ana Donaldson. A book that collects a large number of different online learning examples and is really useful for showing you what other people have down and why, and also for helping design your own activities and assessements.
Scott Prather, over at swords to plowshares: Major bio-medical breakthrough highlights the recent news of researchers developing techniques that look useful for creating stem cells for therapies from a non-embryonic source. (More details at: Researchers Turn Skin Cells Into Stem Cells — Vogel 2007 (1120): 1 — ScienceNOW).
Scott notes that Lutheran bioethicist, Ted Peters, thinks that even if the controversial nature of using embryonic material as a source of stem cells is eliminated by this process the public controversy won’t die down. Indeed, the discussions over what exactly defines personhood, and possibly the ’sacred’ nature of DNA will continue, I think.
This is the simply the case of different views of what being human and what nature is are played out in the public arena. For example,
It seems conceivable that the intensity of current controversies around genetically modified crops and foods arises in part from the fact that, in their regulation in the public domain, conflicting ontologies of the person are making themselves felt in the politics of everyday life.[1]
[1] Celia Deane-Drummond, Robin Grove-White, and Bronislaw Szerszynski, “Genetically Modified Theology: The Religious Dimensions of Public Concerns About Agricultural Biotechnology,” Studies in Christian Ethics 14, no. 2 (2001): 27.
Related links:
- Greenflame · Is our DNA Sacred?
- Greenflame · DNA, Stem Cells and Faith
- Hansen, Bart, and Paul Schotsmans. “Cloning: The Human as Created Co-Creator?” Ethical Perspectives 8, no. 2 (2001): 75-89. (Abstract)
Practical Ethics is a new blog that provides “reaction to the most recent ethical issues in the news, with a special focus on science related events” from a collection of people associated with the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. Given the presence of commentators from the Future of Humanity Institute, which has strong transhumanist leanings I’ll be interesting in knowing what’s considered ‘practical’ ethics.
An impressive piece of engineering. A single carbon-nanotube molecule that serves simultaneously as all the essential components of a radio — antenna, tunable band-pass filter, amplifier and demodulator. Wow!
See World’s First Nanoradio Could Lead to Subcellular Remote-Control Interfaces
A few recent Charles Darwin links.
David Wollert, whom you may remember from Greenflame · Emergent systems & the church and Greenflame · Emergent systems & the church (revisited), has produced a documentary about Charles Darwin’s religious life. You can find it at:
Looks like an interesting approach to Darwin’s life and thought - one ignored by some religious and secular accounts that both, for various reasons, hold Darwin up as the arch-enemy of religion.
Also, the Auckland museum is currently running an exhibit on Charles Darwin which I want to get to soon, I hope.
And finally, James McGrath has been doing a series of posts on Philip Kitcher’s book Living with Darwin: Evolution, Design, and the Future of Faith.
The Templeton Research Lectures Facing the Challenges of Transhumanism: Religion, Science, and Technology hosted by The Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict at Arizona State University have produced a podcast of the audio of the lectures and there’s links to other material on their web site.
The podcast feed is here.
Topics include:
- John Tooby: Can Beauty Build Adapted Minds
- Ashok Gangadean: A Missing Global Blueprint for Integral Life and Culture
- James Hughes: Happiness, Virtue, and Transcendance in a Neurotechological Future
- John Tooby: Reconciling Universal Human Nature and Genetic Uniqueness
- Pascal Boyer: The Blind Spot of Humanism and Transhumanism
- Sander van der Leeuw: Could Transhumans be Humans After All?
- William Grassie: Transhumanism at the Crossroads of Science and Religion
- Leda Cosmides: Are We Already Transhuman?: Evolutionary Psychology and Human Nature
Related link:
In his post Exploring Our Matrix: Robots in the News, James McGrath points to not only the new Star Wars developments but also a couple of articles/books about robots and how we perceive them in terms of possible consciousness and relationality.
Reminds me of this quote from Ray Kurzweil’s article “The Coming Merging of Mind and Machine” (from Scientific American) where he says,
Sometime early in the next century, the intelligence of machines will exceed that of humans. Within several decades, machines will exhibit the full range of human intellect, emotions and skills, ranging from musical and other creative aptitudes to physical movement. They will claim to have feelings and, unlike today’s virtual personalities, will be very convincing when they tell us so.
As McGrath says, the issue will not be whether or not we can definitively assign agreed concepts of consciousness or personhood to synthetic systems, but whether our conscious and unconscious interactions with such systems will have already forced us to decide how we will treat them.
Well, not quite the insect robots of the movie in the title, but definitely in a similar area. A cheap humanoid robot being developed in Bangladesh. See Bangladeshi develops humanoid robot from scrap | Technology | Reuters.
Related to the post a couple of days ago, here’s an article about religious orders using the Internet to attract people into a religious vocation. See Monasteries enter the Internet Age - New Zealand’s source for technology news on Stuff.co.nz
Well, I’m surprised that there are only three noted here, given that the idea crops up regularly in science fiction and “technoprogressive†(e.g. transhumanist) writings. Still Yudkowsky does highlight three significant ways in which technoprogessives see accelerating technological change generating a ‘point of no return’. I’d want the apocalypticist viewpoint developed more - there is definitely a religionist stream to some of the singularity talk (even if that’s denied by some) and far more nuanced negative critiques have been put forward.
Anyway, see The Singularity Institute Blog : Blog Archive : Three Major Singularity Schools
More links about the singularity concept at Greenflame · Peering into the future
PhD graduation yesterday! Kim and I had breakfast with the theology staff and graduands in on campus, before we went to the graduation chapel service at Maclaurin Chapel, and then I took part in the procession from campus to the Auckland Town Hall. The ceremony yesterday morning was for Education, Theology, and Creative Arts and Industries, and as “Graduand #1R