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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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?
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:
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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:
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
I borrowed a copy of “Everyday Theology: How to Read Cultural Texts and Interpret Trends†(edited by Kevin Vanhoozer, Charles Anderson and Michael Sleasman: 2007) from the library the other day because it contained a copy of the essay “Human 2.0: Transhumanism as a Cultural Trend†(PDF) by Matthew Eppinette, as well as an essay on the church and blogging by .
I haven’t yet read most of the articles but from a quick skim it looks like it’d be a good introductory book for the course ‘Gospel in a Post-Christian Society’ that I took as part of my BD way back in 1999. (See e~mergent kiwi: a burger at my theological table for more on the course).
In his introductory essay, Kevin Vanhoozer argues for Christians being able not only to exegete the Bible and reflect theologically upon it, but also to exegete culture and become culture-makers. He states:
The reason why theology must study God and contemporary culture is the same reason why preaching must connect both with the biblical text and the listener’s context: because disciples do not follow the gospel in a vacuum but wend their Christian way through particular times and places, each with its own problem and possibilities. We can follow God’s word only if we know where we are and if we have a sense of where various ways lead. Doing theology is part and parcel of one’s daily walk and is too important to leave solely to the professionals.
Definitely.
A couple of links came to my attention this week. Firstly, the Singularity Institute have started a blog to promote ideas about the technological singularity (Greenflame » Pondering the Singularity (Again)), and at the same time I came across the bioethics podcasts from The Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity. Both have interesting material on them, though they have quite different perspectives.
Here’s a selection of other links that relate to different people and groups looking at the future. It’s an eclectic mix pitched at a variety of levels, so caveat lector.
- NetFuture: Technology and Human Responsibility
- World Transhumanist Association
- Nick Bostrom’s home page - Transhumanist, philosopher and director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford.
- Sentient Developments - by transhumanist George Dvorsky. There’s a podcast too.
- Changesurfer Consulting by James Hughes and the related Cyborg Democracy. Hughes is Executive Director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
- KurzweilAI.net - Techno-optimistic news and views linked in with Ray Kurzweil’s vision of a better future.
- Betterhumans.com - Community site for techno-progressives/optimists.
- The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network
- BioCentre // The Centre for Bioethics & Public Policy (UK)
- Center on Nanotechnology & Society
- Toi te Taiao: New Zealand’s Bioethics Council
- Bioethics Centre, Dunedin School of Medicine, New Zealand
- InterChurch Bioethics Council (NZ)
- Society, Religion and Technology Project (Scotland)
Nowhere near an exhaustive list, but it’s a start.
Recent article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - JS Online: Robo-quandary gives a quick overview of transhumanism. Quick read.
The Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies has a recent piece from the Journal of Geoethical Nanotechnology on the transhumanist concept of uploading - the futurist concept of fleeing/transcending the human body through technological means. See Marshall Brain: How Uploading Works.
Brain argues that there are three main imputuses pushing technology in this direction.
- The desire to live/experience the lives/bodies of others will become overwhelmingly powerful
- Pornography
- Fear of death
What an inspirational combination. (Sarcasim mode on)
Various links related to convergent technologies (nano-, bio-, information technologies and cognitive science):
- Biosingularity - Techno-progressive blog that tracks new developments in bio- and medical technologies. (More on singularitarianism at Greenflame: Pondering the Singularity (Again)).
- The Top 100 Alternative Search Engines - Alternatives to the big four search engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and Ask.com.
- The Discover Interview: Marvin Minsky - Interview with one of the perennial figures in artificial intelligence.
- U.S. university to build ’soft-bodied’ robots - Moving beyond ‘hard’, inorganic models for robotics and instead looking to ’soft’ organic/biological models.
- Wired News: A Wheelchair That Reads Your Mind - Research into a physically non-invasive brain-computer interface to aid with control of mobility devices.
Listened to James Hughes’ recent Changersurfer Radio podcast yesterday where he interviews Lee Silver (author of “Remaking Eden: How Genetic Engineering and Cloning will Transform the American Family“, and more lately “Challenging Nature: The clash of science and spirituality at the new frontiers of life“.) It’s an interesting interview because both Hughes and Silver sketch out what each thinks of religious (and quasi-religious) objections to transhumanism. Overall, their articulation of religious positions is limited, and doesn’t take into account the breadth of religious engagement with convergent technologies, but it serves as a useful insight into how some techno-optimists perceive the religious world.
I have a nagging doubt about their optimism about the human spirit too. The argue that many problems in the world could be solved if technological development was allowed to be unhindered - elimination of hunger, suffering and illness etc. However, we currently have technologies that could make a dent in those issues and it is more a matter of human will and of the human “heart” as to whether they will be. Certainly, the human propensities for self-interest, greed and control of resources never seem to feature in these discussions. Anyway, the full interview is available at: ChangeSurfer Radio: Challenging Nature.
Also, seen on the local library bookshelf (and now on loan here) is Simon Young’s recent book “Designer Evolution: A Transhumanist Manifesto“. Too late to put Young’s book in the bibliography but I’ll have skim through it sometime.
The Economist’s “From the world in 2007″ special forecasting trends for the next year carries this article about transhumanism. See The World In 2007 | Towards immortality.
Vernor Vinge’s presentation of the technological singularity back in 1993 (PDF here) talked about the scenario where human intellect is augmented through better communications networks and human-computer interfaces. Here’s a recent article in the Boston Globe that picks up on the “intelligence augmentation” (IA) within contemporary settings. See Souls of a new machine - The Boston Globe.
The pro-nanotechnology website of the Foresight Nanotech Institute has a brief review of the World Council of Churches report on the convergent/emergent technologies of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive sciences.
You can read their slant on the WCC document over at Nanodot: Nanotechnology News and Discussion » Blog Archive » Nanotechnology: World Council of Churches promotes UN approval required for all new technologies.
You can also download the WCC report from here: Science, Faith & New Technologies: Transforming Life — Volume I: Convergent Technologies. (PDF)
Update
There’s a complementary report Science, Faith & New Technologies: Transforming Life — Volume II: Genetics, Agriculture and Human Life. (PDF)
Related links:
- Greenflame: Transhumanism in the mainstream.
- Roco, Mihail C. and Bainbridge, William Sims, eds. (2002). “Converging technologies for improving human performance: nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cogntive science“. U.S. National Science Foundation. (PDF)
- Cole-Turner, Ronald. More Than Human: Religion, Bioethics, and the Transhuman Prospect. Metanexus/Continuity + Change: Perspectives on Science and Religion, 6 June 2006. Accessed 29 July 2006. Internet. Available from http://www.metanexus.net/conferences/pdf/conference2006/Cole-Turner.pdf. (PDF)
Trying to nut out the 1000-1500 words I want/need to write about the Singularity, its various flavours, and its commentators. I’ve stacks of notes, written chunks about it before in drafts and papers, but can’t quite get the slant to these words that I want and need. That slant is not so much a description of what its proponents think, but rather how the ideas behind it form a type of technological eschatology - with its own heaven or hell, depending on which commentator you read. And then how that interacts with Christian anthropology and eschatology.
Anyway, if you want to read some stimulating (and mostly light) articles about it - including Vernor Vinge’s article/talk that kicked most of this discussion off - then have a look at the Spring 2003 edition of Whole Earth Magazine.
Related links:
The Connection.org : The Ethics of Creating Consciousness - radio programme - featuring Marvin Minsky, Brian Cantwell Smith, Paul Davies.
Ethical Issues In Advanced Artificial Intelligence - by transhumanist philosopher Nick Bostrom.
AAAI Topics: Ethical & Social Implications - links to lots of articles etc. about AI and ethics etc.
Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
Over at The Digital Sanctuary: Internet Evolution Cynthia points to the new Pew/Internet report Imagining the Internet which surveyed the opinions of various stakeholders in the Internet. Related to my previous posting is their assertion that a substantial number of them are concerned about the role of autonomous technology in shaping future societies.
Of course, one of the best known examples of this technological unease is Bill Joy’s article Wired 8.04: Why the future doesn’t need us, which sparked off a range of responses.
Another well-known but optimistic view is that of Ray Kurzweil. See, for example, Reinventing Humanity: The Future of Machine-Human Intelligence. (PDF)
Joel Garreau’s book gives a good introduction to three of the various scenarios posed by the development of nano, biological, information and cognitive technologies (NBIC). He describes these as “Hell”, “Heaven”, and “Prevail”. Your local library should have a copy of the book. See “Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies — and What It Means to Be Human” (Joel Garreau).
Mark over at Reflections… wanted some more details about last Friday’s talk. So here are some links to related things:
- The introduction to my talk is here - Cyborg-Intro.pdf. It’s pretty rough and ready as I read it, rather than have others read it.
- I used the ASB Bank “Streamline” TV commercial as an example of a narrative of apprehension about technology - wonder and anxiety combined. It’s online here: http://www.caanz.co.nz/awards/video/effie_2002_1269.mpg (It’s the last ad in the clip)
- Mondolithic Studios have some pretty amazing art the connects with the themes of the cyborg and boundaries being broken. See www.mondolithic.com.
- Sociable robotics projects at places like MIT. Video clip available on this page about MIT Media Lab’s Leonardo Robot is a good example.
- The Flavr-Savr - a tomato with a flounder gene in it to slow down decay and spoiling.
All these things contribute to the sense the traditional boundaries are being lost. Human life is now found in the borderlands between what used to be clearly separated categories in the world.
Chris Wren of Mondolithic Studios posts an interesting article which contends that transhumanism isn’t a distinct movement or philosophical school. Rather it is simply one manifestation of the myriad of ways that human beings are technological. See Mondolithic Sketchbook: AREN’T WE ALREADY TRANSHUMANISTS?
Certainly this would fit with claims that transhumanism is a useful label from promoting certain ideas about humans and technology, but that it is little more than that. See also: Greenflame: Is transhumanism passé?
A while back Brian Edgar, Director of Public Theology for the Australian Evangelical Alliance, wrote a good summary paper on some of the theological issues arising from transhumanism and the notion of the cyborg. It’s written in reasonably accessible language (one doesn’t need to be a theological or technological expert) and was originally presented at a seminar on ‘Humans and Machines’ at The Centre for Apologetic Scholarship and Education, New College UNSW in November 2004.
I picked up a copy from the ISCAST (Institute for the Study of Christianity in an Age of Science and Technology) web site - ISCAST - God, Persons and Machines: Theological Reflections. It’s also available, along with others public theology papers, from Edgar’s web page.
What you believe eschatologically affects how you live in the world today, and particularly how you treat the world around you. There’s a tendency that if you believe the return of Christ is imminent, or that the world will be ultimately be destroyed (rather than remade) by God at the end of time, for environmental issues to slip down the agenda (or even off it all together).
However, eschatology isn’t limited to Christianity, and here’s a short transhumanist blog entry that exposes a similar “Second Coming” tendency seen in the idea of the singularity.
Margaret Wertheim, in her book “The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante to the Internet”, and in her essay Cybersociology #7: Is Cyberspace a Spiritual Space? expresses concern about this. I’m with her, when she says in the essay,
Behind the desire for cyber-immortality and cyber-gnosis, there is a not insignificant component of cyber-selfishness. Unlike “real religions that make ethical demands on their believers, cyber-religiosity has no moral precepts. Here, as I have said, one gets the payoffs of a religion without getting bogged down in reciprocal responsibilities. It is this desire for the personal pay-off of a religious system without any of the social demands that I find so troubling. In its quest for bodily transcendence, for immortality, and for union with some posited mystical cyberspatial All, the emerging “religion” of cyberspace rehashes many of the most problematic aspects of Gnostic-Manichean-Platonist dualism. What is left out here is the element of community and one’s obligations to the wider social whole.
Figure the individualized, “ticket to heaven”,” the earth is just a transit lounge”, Christianity might fit in here too.
Last month Metanexus held their annual science and religion conference on the theme of “Continuity and Change“. Abstracts and full papers from the conference are available online from the web site. One paper I look forward to reading is
More than Human: Religion, Bioethics, and the Transhuman Prospect by Ronald Cole-Turner.
If I look sideways at that paper, I get an oblique reference when Cole-Turner says, “To date, there has been almost no attempt by religious leaders or scholars to respond to NBIC*, the notable exception being the August 2005 issue of The Journal of Evolution and Technology (see http://www.jetpress.org/contents.htm“. It’s always nice to be a “notable exception”.
* NBIC = nanotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science.
At some point soon I’ll also trip over to Kinder Library to peruse this volume of Zygon that has some thesis-related material in it. See Blackwell Synergy: Zygon, Vol 41, Issue 2 (June 2006). Normally I’d get the online version but there’s a 12 month embargo on digital copy through the university’s licensing agreement.
After managing to find this week’s NZ Listener (it gets delivered 7 days before the week it’s for, and often gets misplaced) I see the lead article is on the accelerating pace of technological change. A quick skim though highlights that it picks up on genetics, robotics and nanotechnology in the typical popular fashion. I’ll go back and read it in depth later today. Still, maybe an accessible article on those technologies. See New Zealand Listener | Issue 3454 | July 22-28 2006.
I was struck by the cover this week too. Very like Herzfeld’s book cover below, and you can find similar images at most online stock photo sites by searching for things like “robot” and “cyborg”.
This happened a while back but the site still has audio, presentations and papers for download. See TransVision 2004 : Faith, Transhumanism and Hope Symposium.
One of the introductory points I make in my research is that the term “transhumanism” is now moving into usage by mainstream media and no longer just being used by the self-identified transhumanist community. The technologies being linked to it have been discussed in the public arena but the term is now in general use. So in a recent Fox News story (FOXNews.com - Nanotech Policy Faces No Small Hurdles ) we get this sort of thing happening,
And like the genetically modified food discussion and genetics as a whole, nanotech developments raise deep philosophical questions over what it means to be human, and the change of the human condition.
“That conversation haunts every discussion about nanotechnology,” Cameron said.
Cameron said one frightening development is so-called “transhumanism,” where people might create things to replace human functions like thinking with nanotechnology.
While a technology could be used for a good purpose, like recovering from a stroke, “the same technology could allow you to have Google in your brain,” Cameron said, which “raises huge questions for public policy.”
Cameron said he also can foresee the use of nanotechnology further widening class divisions. With expensive nanotech solutions for cancer or other health problems, it’s likely that those with the best health care would be able to get the new care and live longer whereas the poor would be left behind.
I guess the term entering into this wider usage does support the comments earlier - Greenflame: Is transhumanism passé?
Related links:
Andy Clark’s EDGE: NATURAL BORN CYBORGS?. A short paper with the same name as his book which includes a chapter at the end on the negative potentials contained within cyborg technologies.
Center on Nanotechnology & Society director of Nigel M. de S. Cameron quoted in the Fox News article above.
Simon Smith at BetterHumans.com wonders if the term transhumanism is now past its best before date because he thinks the ideals it proposes have now moved into the mainstream consciousness. So it’s not a question of whether to enhance human beings using technology but more a question of when to do it. See Betterhumans.com: Is transhumanism becoming anachronistic?.
He cites the following article at New Scientist Premium- The new incredibles: Enhanced humans (need registration) as an example of this. Another one I noted a week or so back is Popular Mechanics - Redefining The Human: The Upgradable You.
Certainly the Extropy Institute agrees with him and see its ideas in the public sphere now allowing it to move on into new directions. See Extropy Institute: NEXT STEPS — Extropy Institute is closing its doors and opening a window for a proactive future.
Probably a good time to submit my thesis before it gets too out of date 
But then again there’s 4000 year old material in there from Ancient Egypt so it’s probably too late all ready.
A few articles out recently that pick up on the potential of nanotechnology for the purposes of human therapy and enhancement.
Popular Mechanics has an article Redefining The Human: The Upgradable You which covers a range of technological developments relating to nanotechnology among other things.
The forever techno-optimistic Ray Kurzweil has an article in the latest Science and Theology News - Trends hint at a golden era of nanotechnology. Kurzweil see technology as part of the process of evolution, and follows the line of thought that human beings are in effect “nature’s technology.”
Then again working through indirection, biological evolution used one of its creations to usher in the next stage of evolution, which was technology. The enabling factors for technology were a higher cognitive function with an opposable appendage, so we could manipulate and change the environment to reflect our models of what could be. The first stages of technology evolution — fire, the wheel, stone tools — only took a few tens of thousands of years.
Kurzweil cites the synthetic red blood cell research noted in the Popular Mechanics article too.
And lastly, there’s an older article at the British Centre for Bioethics and Public Policy that looks at nanotech from within a Judeo-Christian framework. See CBPP - Going all the way? - cybernetics and nanotechnology (Philippa Taylor, April 2004) (and the closely related PDF “From Fiction to Fact: Christian Perspectives on Future Developments in Bioethics: Nanotechnology and Cybernetics” CBPP briefing series: No. 3, Philippa Taylor, Summer 2003).
Couple of things of interest this week.
Firstly, Four Door Films have released the rough cut of their 90 minute documentary file “Building Gods” on Google Video. (See Building Gods Rough Cut - Google Video). Haven’t looked at it beyond the first few minutes but it looks like an interesting survey of perspectives on transhumanism. Includes interviews/engagement with Nick Bostrom (philosopher), Kevin Warwick (cyborg), Hugo De Garis (computer scientist), and Anne Foerst (theologian). I downloaded the iPod version and it came in at just over 300MB (ouch!). In the next few days I hope to work my way through it.
Also, I’ve been writing up stuff on different perceptions of technology (and definitions of technology) and in the course of that came back to the following paper. It’s one of the few I’ve seen which goes beyond identifying the gap between the ‘lay’ public’s attitude to technology (here biotechnology) and that of those who make the decisions about the technology. It includes the description of and engagement with some of the concerns raised by ordinary people that came out of individual and group interviews and discussion groups. See
Deane-Drummond, Celia, 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): 23-41. (There’s a version online here (though with the footnotes removed).
The questions raised and unease expressed by the public
touch on deep issues concerning the nature of human personhood – indeed of human nature itself. 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 every day life. If this is the case, then Christian theological understandings of the person may be of central analytical significance for helping throw light on what has been going on.
ASU picked up a half-million dollar grant from the Metanexus Institute to look at the “the challenges posed to humanity by new advances in the life sciences, technology, and the neurosciences” in a new project “Facing the Challenges of Transhumanism: Religion, Science, and Technology”. The project is based at the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict.
Full press release at - ASU News > Grant boosts science, religion dialogue.
MSNBC run an article that manages to capture a number of transhumanist themes at Human evolution at the crossroads - Future of Evolution. The article is pretty fluffy, picking up on the sensationalist-type things together with a little Flash animation that shows their different possible predictions for humanity. Probably of more interest for the fact that transhumanist ideas seem to have moved into the mainstream media’s attention.
In what might be the first piece of legislation to explicitly mention transhumanism some seek to alter the Missouri constitution to prohibit it. See CybDem: Missouri to vote on constitutional ban on transhumanism which contains links through to the proponents of the changes.
Two different perspectives on human enhancement at:
BetterHumans.com : George : What would Jesus say about human enhancement?
and
The latest issue of Dialag, a Lutheran theological journal, has a collection of articles on technology and the human being in it’s latest issue. And that issue is now their current sample issue - it wasn’t a week or two back when I was getting ready to interloan it - with PDFs of the articles available for a while. See - Blackwell Synergy: Dialog, Vol 44, Issue 4: Table of Contents.
Having returned from holiday with more books (see Greenflame: Back from holiday (with books)) we all went out a few days back to one of the local secondhand bookshops with a box of books to exchange. A successful trip with all 6 of us finding something amongst the volumes. To my delight I picked up a copy of Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days by a favourite author of mine, Alastair Reynolds.
Reynold’s ‘Revelation Space’ explores, among other things, how human society might shape itself with different responses to technology interfacing with the human body. As such it is a good example of transhumanism in fiction. Wikipedia has an article on transhumanist fiction as a genre, including links through to some works that are available for download.
Last night I was listening to the podcast Changesurfer Radio: The Future of Virtual Reality and there was this really clever clip at the end of a transhumanist parody from the production The Filkado.
Anyway, it’s a Gilbert and Sullivan knockoff available for download at I am the very model of a Singularitarian - Charlie Kam’s H+ filk. Just writing up some notes on the “Singularity” so it made me smile. The link to the web page has the lyrics too, which is good because the jargon and buzzwords come thick and fast.
“What is the singularity?” I hear you ask. See Transhumanist FAQ : 2.7 What is the singularity? and Technological singularity - Wikipedia.
The podcast wasn’t bad either with some interesting ideas about virtual reality.
I’m off to pester the interloan people at the uni library. The uni has a subscription to the journal but only electronically and there’s a 12 month embargo on electronic copy. (So much for the digital technology making it easier for people). Anyway here’s the link to the contents page: Blackwell Synergy: Dialog, Vol 44, Issue 4: Table of Contents and here’s the abstract from one of the articles. Can’t wait to get hold of it.
Imaging God: Cyborgs, Brain-Machine Interfaces, and a More Human Future
By Gregory R. PetersonAbstract: Recent developments in the neurosciences have made possible the advent of brain-machine interfaces, potentially altering our understanding of our relationship with technology and even the very meaning of what it is to be human. This article briefly examines some of the recent developments in neuroengineering and considers the ethical implications. Working from Jesus’ miracles as well as from a dynamic understanding of the image of God, I argue that the categories of healing and transformation should be employed in thinking through the implications of brain-machine interfaces specifically and neuroengineering generally. Although the vocabulary of the cyborg may represent the newfound freedom that this technology can bring, the category of the face may serve as a reminder of the boundedness of human nature.
Link to abstract page here.
Looking to get some insight into what transhumanism is? Have a look at JET 14(1) - April 2005 - Bostrom - A History of Transhumanist Thought. Nick Bostrom sketches an overview of transhumanism (from the point of view of a transhumanist) in a fairly easy to read paper. The final section is interesting too with Bostrom sketching what he sees as points of contact between bioconservatives and transhumanists. The bibliography is a good survey of the area too.
Bostrom, Nick. “A History of Transhumanist Thought.” Journal of Evolution and Technology 14, no. 1 (2005): 1-25. (HTML and PDF formats available at link above)
This paper traces the cultural and philosophical roots of transhumanist thought and describes some of the influences and contributions that led to the development of contemporary transhumanism.