Greenflame

Jottings on science, religion, technology, pop culture, photography and faith from the Aotearoa New Zealand

Category: Transhumanism

  • Practical Ethics

    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…

  • Arizona State University – Templeton Research Lectures on Transhumanism

    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:…

  • Three Major Singularity Schools

    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…

  • Cultural exegesis

    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…

  • Peering into the future

    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…

  • Robo-quandary

    Recent article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel – JS Online: Robo-quandary gives a quick overview of transhumanism. Quick read.

  • How Uploading Works

    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…

  • Various convergent technology links

    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…

  • Lee Silver on challenging nature (and religious bio-conservatism)

    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…

  • Economist article on immortality and transhumanism

    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.