Posted in life extension, science, transhumanism | Leave a Comment on Israel’s oldest newspaper Haaretz (in #Hebrew) recently translated and published The New York Times Magazine feature story on my radical science and #transhumanism work in their own Sunday magazine
Israel’s oldest newspaper Haaretz (in #Hebrew) recently translated and published The New York Times Magazine feature story on my radical science and #transhumanism work in their own Sunday magazine. I can’t find the link in Hebrew yet, but here’s the fun 2-page spread of me atop my #ImmortalityBus. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/09/magazine/600-miles-in-a-coffin-shaped-bus-campaigning-against-death-itself.html
I’m giving a speech this morning in San Diego on #transhumanism. If you’re at this medical device conference, please come listen and say hello after the talk:
The 10x Medical Device Conference is an annual, in-person reuinion for the Medical Devices Group, the world’s largest medical device community.
A nice new write-up on my governor run: https://humanityplus.wordpress.com/2017/04/24/this-transhumanist-politician-wants-to-be-governor-of-california/ #transhumanism
It’s a good time to be a transhumanist politician. As faith in the political establishment declines, new technologies, from gene editing to artificial intelligence, are transforming our lives faster than ever. The transhumanist author and politician Zoltan Istvan agrees. He thinks the time is ripe for pro-science and technology governance, and for leaders who will embrace the technologies that could fundamentally transform our conceptions of what it means to be human.
Istvan is a maverick who appears to thrive in an ‘outsider’ role. He self-published a sci-fi novel, The Transhumanist Wager, in 2013, which became a surprise bestseller on Amazon. In 2016, he made an unlikely run for US president as the leader of the Transhumanist Party. Now, he’s making a bid for Governor of California in the 2018 election under a Libertarian Party ticket.
As a libertarian, Istvan believes in promoting “maximum freedom and personal accountability,” a sentiment that gels well with his championing of human enhancement technologies and robot and cyborg rights.
Like all transhumanists, Istvan believes in using science and technology to enhance human capabilities and transcend current biological limits. He wants to be smarter, live longer, and eventually merge with advanced technologies to become a posthuman being—one that is impervious, or at least resilient, to aging, and most mortal risks.
Posted in biotech/medical, business, cyborgs, robotics/AI, transhumanism | Leave a Comment on #ymazing interview with Natasha Vita-More (Professor, University of Advancing Technology) about #AI and the future of humanity
Natasha is faculty and Program Lead of Graduate Studies at the University of Advancing Technology. Her book The Transhumanist Reader — Classical and Contemporary essays on the Science, Technology and Philosophy of the Human Future is the most read book on transhumanism. She designed the first whole body prosthetic and establishing groundbreaking science on long-term memory after vitrification of C. elegans. Her creative works have been featured in WIRED, The New York Times, The Observer, MIT Technology Review, U.S. News and World Report, YMAZING 
smile and in more than a dozen documentaries. She is Chair of Humanity Plus.
Natasha Vita-More World Business Dialogue #facingchange #20thwbdialogue #FutureOfHumanity #wow #ymazing Sam Dawkins
Many people thought I was way too optimistic with my prediction (read the Popular Science article) about artificial wombs in 2004 with my Vice Motherboard story (which went viral). It turns out the tech is coming sooner than many imagined. Enjoy! http://www.popsci.com/artificial-womb-science-fiction #transhumanism
A bag-like device kept lamb fetuses alive longer than anything else has before. What does that mean for human pregnancy? Read on.
Happy #Alien Day. Here’s my trilogy of alien stories for Vice. I’ll start by listing #2 first for those who only have time for one, but they do go in chronological order: 2) https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/why-havent-we-met-aliens-yet-because-theyve-evolved-into-ai & 1) https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/the-internet-will-become-self-aware-when-aliens-wake-it-up & 3) (covered recently by the History Channel): https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/the-language-of-aliens-will-always-be-indecipherable #transhumanism
While traveling in Western Samoa many years ago, I met a young Harvard University graduate student researching ants. He invited me on a hike into the jungles to assist with his search for the tiny insect. He told me his goal was to discover a new species of ant, in hopes it might be named after him one day.
Whenever I look up at the stars at night pondering the cosmos, I think of my ant collector friend, kneeling in the jungle with a magnifying glass, scouring the earth. I think of him, because I believe in aliens—and I’ve often wondered if aliens are doing the same to us.
Believing in aliens—or insanely smart artificial intelligences existing in the universe—has become very fashionable in the last 10 years. And discussing its central dilemma: the Fermi paradox, has become even more so. The Fermi paradox states that the universe is very big—with maybe a trillion galaxies that might contain 500 billion stars and planets each —and out of that insanely large number, it would only take a tiny fraction of them to have habitable planets capable of bringing forth life.
Whatever you think, the numbers point to the insane fact that aliens don’t just exist, but probably billions of species of aliens exist. And the Fermi paradox asks: With so many alien civilizations out there, why haven’t we found them? Or why haven’t they found us?
My new Vice Motherboard article on interviewing four humanoid robots: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/i-talked-to-four-humanoid-robots #transhumanism
“Human relationships can be hard to define.”
Over the last 18 months, I’ve found myself in the strange habit of hanging out and interviewing English-speaking humanoid robots. I was able to chat with four machines, each which possessed some level of artificial intelligence. Even though none of them could fully carry on normal conversations, they all had something to say. And sometimes, what they say and how they say it, is a piercing glimpse into the future of humanity.
Three of the robots I talked to were mass-production models: Pepper, Meccanoid, and iPal. The fourth was Han, which was presented by AI expert Dr. Ben Goertzel, chief scientist at Hanson Robotics. The various price tags of these bots range from $200 on Amazon, to potentially many millions of dollars for something like Han. The production robots are all between three to four feet tall and are mobile. Han is just an upper body, the torso of which rests against whatever he’s placed upon.
Posted in economics, transhumanism | Leave a Comment on Update: My Jacque Fresco interview and video on a Resource Based Economy via NowThis Future shared a few weeks ago now has 142,000 Facebook shares, 16,000 comments, 102,000 likes, and 12.3 million views
Wow! For context, that’s nearly 4x times the amount of daily views that Bill O’Reilly used to get on his #1 cable show on Fox before he was fired. 
smile Give the video a view: https://www.facebook.com/NowThisFuture/videos/1500983249942850/ #transhumanism
An event on #transhumanism at a Christian university in Southern California in June. Looks interesting:
Humanism is “our most sympathetic understanding and treatment of human nature.”
TRANShumanism is “the drive to fundamentally revolutionise what it means to be human by way of technological advancements.”
For those of you who are new to the term, Dr. Joel Oesch, on his blog Fishing for Leviathan, defines it this way, “Transhumanism has nothing to do with your race or gender identity, at least not directly. Rather, the term reflects the human desire to transcend its current condition both individually and socially, most notably to rise above the limitations of our physical selves. Transhumanism is a movement of people committed to using technology to further the human race in profound ways. In most iterations, Transhumanism is viewed as the next great step of human evolution. Homo sapiens has evolved into a wholly new species, Homo technicus.”
