Human Enhancement Topic Guide - Keskustelunaiheita ihmisten tehostamisesta.
Nanotechnology and Megascale Engineering (or Party Animals Loose in Space!) - Keith Hensonin juttu vuodelta 1990.
The Pikasso - 42-kielinen kitara.
Wired: Saved by the Bell
Playing a game with frequent save points is kind of like being the child of a billionaire: You can soar through life without worrying about financial problems because if you fail, there's a "restore" point waiting for you. Games with few save points force you to live like a scrappy, coming-from-nothing immigrant: You embrace scary amounts of risk to get ahead because you've got no safety net.
U-Scull - Ruotsalaisen Milko Ozlun kala-eksoskeletonkonsepti.
"I was very intrigued by the springwalker as a transportation device and I had a vision of something similar for underwater use – something that used mechanics and technology that harbours and amplifies the power of the people inside it."
"The world never needed Beethoven's Fifth Symphony until he created it. Now we could not live without it."
- Louis Kahn
Scientists Find Memory Molecule
enzyme molecule called “protein kinase M zeta” preserves long-term memories through persistent strengthening of synaptic connections between neurons. This is analogous to the mechanism storing information as 0’s and 1’s in a computer’s hard disc.
TechReview: Living Longer - Kaikki TR:n elämänpidennysartikkelit koottuina.
Videojug - How-to videoita.
G'Day World: Philip Rhoades - Podcast Australian kryoniikan edistymisestä. Ihmiset eivät osaa haluta sitä ennen kuin sitä on tarjolla & jos rakennat sen, he tulevat.
Cryonics Association of Australia.
Maailman ensimmäinen robottikauppa avataan Japanissa.
Australiasta tulee maailman kolmas kryoniikkakeskus, perustajana biologi Philip Rhoades. Toivottavasti keskus sisustetaan Mad Max -tyyliin.
He has already spent $650,000 developing plans for underground storage at Cowra, 200km west of Sydney, and hopes to start building on the 60ha site within six months. "My parents are both science types, like me, and with my siblings are interested in this great experiment," Mr Rhoades said.
How Many Transhumanists Does it Take...? - Michael Anissimov kertoo TV06-virtuaalikonferenssikokemuksestaan.
Q: Montako transhumanistia tarvitaan vaihtamaan sähkölamppu?
A: Ei yhtään, meillä on bioluminoiva iho ja infrapunasilmillä näkee pimeässäkin.
Tehtaiden tulevaisuus
Countries that compete on the basis of labor costs and nonexistent regulations may find that the game has changed. In a world in which factories print or grow their products and pollute far less, and need workers who are imaginative enough to redesign products on the fly, cheap wages and lax environmental regulations won’t be attractive. They won’t even be incentives. Countries with more expensive but better-educated workforces, with well-developed consumer and gaming cultures, will be much more attractive. As it has everywhere else, the triumph of mind over matter, of brains over brawn, is coming to the factory floor.
Ray Kurzweil ja Mike Sklar lyhyesti Daily Showssa (torrent). Seksiroboteista tuli mieleeni, että olisi kätevää olla yhdistetty lääkäri-seksirobotti, joka voi tarkastaa lisääntymiselimien kunnon snu-snun ohessa. Huvia ja hyötyä.
Red Ferret Journal testaa HealOzone-hammashoidon.
Transvision-konferenssin satoa Naturessa: The modern make-over
Scientists and philosophers gathered in Helsinki last week for TransVision, a conference about 'enhancing' humans. Kerri Smith talks to Nick Bostrom, director of the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford, UK, about what's on the table.
ja New Scientistissa: Human enhancement beyond evolution
Before we consider forging ahead with these technologies, we need to consider why we haven't already evolved that way, say Nick Bostrom and Anders Sandberg of the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford. This will allow us to identify when it is feasible for us to outdo nature, they say, and when it is not.
Only drugs can stop the sports cheats
The Finnish cross-country skier Eero Mäntyranta won two gold medals in the 1964 Olympics and accumulated an impressive tally of medals during his career. Later it turned out that he has a mutation in a gene called EPOR that means he produces up to 50 per cent more red blood cells than normal.
Nanopaperia, johon kirjoittaessa voi käyttää UV-lamppua pyyhkärinä.
Steal This Film - Dokumentti vapaasta kulttuurista. Kotona kokkailu tappaa ravintolat ja painokone tappaa käsin kopioinnin.
Natasha Vita-More ja Anders Sandberg ExtroBritannian kokoontumisessa. (videoklipit yksi, kaksi, kolme).
A glass of wine and a bullet to bite
Ironically, the triumph of anaesthesia in extending the human life-span meant that pain re-emerged as an urgent issue in the late 20th century. Pain was a "silent epidemic", totally ignored by medical science. It was Cicely Saunders's pioneering research and campaigning in the 1950s for improved treatment of the terminally ill that gradually broke down the medical profession's traditional view that "opioids were addictive, dangerous and even sinful".
Watchmen on päivän featured artikkeli Wikipediassa.
Kun muutoksen tuulet puhaltavat, toiset rakentavat suojia, toiset tuulimyllyjä.
- Kiinalainen sananlasku
PopScistä löytyy The Future of Robots ja Your Second Life is Ready.
10 asiaa, joita ei pitäisi koskaan ostaa uutena.
10 asiaa, joita ei pitäisi koskaan ostaa käytettynä.
HumanCar - Ihmisvoimin toimivia autoja. Posthumaanina olisi varmasti hauska vitsi pyyhältää polkuautolla ohitse bensa-autolla ajavasta ihmisestä ja töötätä torvea.
NanoEngineer-1 nanokone-animaatiogalleria.
The Robots Are Coming! - 7 modernia robottia ja 25 hienoa hetkeä robottien historiassa.
The Megacommunity Manifesto
Solutions require multi-organizational systems that are larger and more oriented to multilateral action than conventional cross-sector approaches are. In such systems, the most successful leaders are not those with the best technical solutions, the most compelling vision, or the most commanding and charismatic style. The “winners” are those who understand how to intervene and influence others in a larger system that they do not control. We call this type of larger system a “megacommunity.”
Aeromads - Pumpattavia pikataloja älymuovista.
Freezone - Pylväspodeja.
Daisuke Enomoto (avaruusturisti, joka aikoi cosplayata Char Aznablea avaruudessa) ei pääsekään avaruuteen, koska ei selvinnyt lääkärintarkastuksesta. Pahus.
SWAN - Kaikupaikannuslaite sokeille tai esimerkiksi savusukeltajille, kun on vaikea nähdä eteensä.
Lifeboat Foundation pistää eksistentiaaliriskiohjelmat järjestykseen ja Kurzweil for President 2045.
Bakteereja tappavia viruksia suihkutetaan liharuokiin.
Will technology revolutionize boinking?
What do futurists really know?
one fellow describes neural implants that would rewire our brains to let us perceive things like a fourth primary color. (“Why would we want to do that?” one audience member wanted to know. The speaker explained: “Because it would be interesting.”)
Alcor News -blogi.
Robottiavusteisia implantinasennusvideoita Google Videossa.
Transvision alkaa huomenna ja olo on levoton, mutta pari linkkiä täytyy vielä merkitä muistiin ennen laukun pakkaamista.
Immortality? You just missed it (sorry)
As our knowledge grows, even small gains will have a big impact. Let's take an eighty-year life span, for example. If 20 years can be added, to make 100 years, that is seemingly a gain of 25 percent. If we factor in a figure of 20 years at the beginning of life for development, and another 20 at the end for decline, that leaves a productive period of 40 years. Assuming that these parameters don't change much, that extra 20 years now looms as a huge 50 percent increase!
The mentality of Homo interneticus
On the Internet, in contrast, there are no spatial relations. Everything appears at exactly the same point, the computer screen, and there is no standard way of determining age. Everything appears in the present tense. One might admit two forms of the present, an ultra–present, namely what has just appeared in your e–mail in–box, and a tenseless present — everything else. If one is archaeologically inclined one can often ferret out the order of things, but when one uses a search engine, one tends to be plunged into a space devoid of chronological ordering. Time is not evident. -- Without a sense of the past leading to the present in some sort of order, there can be no sense of the present leading to the future. There can be no sense of progress. We are not moving forward, we are not in motion at all. We are merely caught in an ever–changing now. In the ultra–present, things happen. Then they remain, sticking around unchanged.
Street Use - Katu keksii omat käyttötarkoituksensa.
Fraktaaleja alas asti - kuva hiiren aivoista ja simuloidusta universumista vierekkäin.
Ruotsin Piraattipuolue julkistaa Relakks-darknetin.
Free State Projectin jäsen pidätetään lappusten jakamisesta.
Calorie Restriction Society käynnistää $230,000 keräyksen tutkimuksen rahoittamiseksi.
Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century -kirja julkaistaan marraskuun 1. päivä eli sopivasti pukinkonttiin.
PopSci: The Fembot Mystique katsastaa populaariviihteen naisandroidit.
Lopuksi musiikkia: Futuristic Sex robotz - F**K The MPAA (RIAA & BSA)
“It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”
- Robert Kennedy
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
- Upton Sinclair
geriatric1927 on 79-vuotias brittiläinen YouTube-videobloggaaja, joka kertoilee sotajuttuja ja muuta kiehtovaa.
Siitä tulikin mieleeni Randolfe Wicker, joka on 68-vuotias videobloggaaja, transhumanisti & ihmisoikeusaktivisti.
20 Questions with Natasha Vita-More
People will end up in the future, even if kicking and screaming all the way. I don't know if it is a psychology or a genetic link, but there are some people who just run on a fuel of high-fear. It is as if they need to get pumped up with ideas that will scare the hell of out them in order to find their place in the universe. Often, what is lacking in their assumptions is the art of critical thinking. It is a fact that some technologies are scary and it is a fact that humanity often does things that are foolish and backfire. Albeit, it is also a fact that we cannot live without technology and that our innate instincts cause us to want to learn more, create more, invent more to improve the current condition.
50'000€ Prize for Compressing Human Knowledge - Marcus Hutter tarjoaa palkinnon parhaalle pakkaajalle.
Death of Y may spawn new human species
Graves says men without a Y chromosome would be largely infertile. But a small number would reproduce and pass the new sex determining gene to their children. Eventually the group with the new gene would separate from the Y gene group, potentially evolving into a new species, she says. "[The two groups] couldn't mate with each other so they'd get gradually different, just like chimpanzees and humans gradually became different 5 million years ago," she says.
Theory suggets greater role for man's best friend
"Dogs acted as humans' alarm systems, trackers and hunting aids, garbage disposal facilities, hot-water bottles and children's guardians and playmates. Humans provided dogs with food and security. This symbiotic relationship was stable over 100,000 years and intensified in the Holocene [Period] into mutual domestication," said Dr Groves. "Humans domesticated dogs and dogs domesticated humans."
A closed mind about an open world
We still do not intuitively grasp the kind of property that cannot be exhausted by overuse (think of a piece of software) and that can become more valuable to us the more it is used by others (think of a communications standard). There the threats are different, but so are the opportunities for productive sharing. Our intuitions, policies and business models misidentify both. Like astronauts brought up in gravity, our reflexes are poorly suited for free fall.
Pimm - Partial immortalization - Attila Csordásin tekeillä oleva kirjablogi.
Ballbot - Robotti tasapainoilee pallon päällä.
Transvision-konferenssi alkaa viikon päästä torstaina Helsingin yliopistolla.
Ilmaiset yleisöluennot ovat klo 17-20 välillä.
17:15 – 18:15 Is Life Extension an Enhancement? Dr. Aubrey de Grey
18:15 – 19:00 Technological Evolution Mr. Jose Cordeiro
19:00 – 19:45 Introduction to Transhumanism Dr. James Hughes
Jos ei pääse fyysisesti paikalle, konferenssiin voi osallistua myös Second Lifen kautta (paikkana Uvvy-saari), Transvision-blogin kautta Livejournalissa, irc-kanavalla (#transvision IRCnet) tai katsomalla live-videostreamia. Tai kaikkea tätä yhtä aikaa.
Asiaan liittymättömät extralinkit
Asilomar oli historiallinen bioteknologiakonferenssi vuonna 1975
Richard Feynman kertoo meitä ympäröivästä aaltojen sekasotkusta.
Vision 2001 ennustaa tulevaa.
Nanotopia: The Future of Microtechnology - BBC:n nanoteknologiadokumentti vuodelta 1995. Dokkarin alusta puuttuu muutama minuutti, mutta koska elämme verkkoajassa, nekin löytyvät nopeasti YouTubesta.
Science is about studying nature and describing what already exists. Engineering is about taking what you know and making new things. So, if scientist says: I can predict the future of science, well, this is nonsense, because you can't predict what you are going to learn, because you don't know it yet. But if an engineer predicts we are going to be able to fly to the moon, there's a reason to listen.
- Eric Drexler
Mecanum wheel eli omniwheel on Bengt Ilonin vuonna 1973 keksimä rullarengas, jolla voi ajaa joka suuntaan. Airtrax myy omniwheel-nostolaitteita. Myös rullatuoli löytyy.
The Mars Underground - dokumentti Marsin asuttamiseen ja terraformaukseen panostavasta aktivismista, pääosassa Robert Zubrin, joka perusti Mars Societyn vuonna 1998. Artikkeli Mars aboveground arvostelee dokumentin. Archimedes-projektissa laukaistaan vuonna 2009 heliumpallo Marsin ilmakehää tutkimaan. FMARS-tutkimusasemilla simuloidaan Marsissa asumista.
Evoluutio käännetty nurinpäin - geenimuunneltu hiiri on kuin hiiret 500 miljoonaa vuotta sitten.
Skyacht Personal Blimp - käytännöllinen kuumailmalaiva.
Ossur Proprio Foot - älykäs jalkaproteesi.
A Gadget-free Futurism
How can an object be biased? By being a human creation. We embed cultural values in our devices through our choices about how we make them and what we want them to do.
Freeze, Flight, Fight, Fright, Faint - Ennen oli vain FFF, nyt on FFFFF. Jos jähmettyminen, pakeneminen tai puolustautuminen ei toimi, täytyy esittää kuollutta tai pyörtyä oikeasti.
Miracle Workers - televisiosarja, jossa tiede saa rammat kävelemään ja sokeat näkemään. Jos tiede olisi uskonto, se olisi ylivoimaisesti paras uskonto jokapäiväisine ihmetekoineen.
Device Watch - Toimimattomia lääketieteellisiä laitteita, joita myydään toimivina.
Fancifully, one could even imagine a re-engineered civilisation whose inhabitants, by their very nature, found everything hilariously funny. Now intuitively, people who find everything funny are incapable of critical discernment. They are promiscuously amused by slapstick farce and terrible puns no less than by sublime literary wit. So if one values one's sophisticated sense of humour, then one might not be tempted by the offer of a pill that would leave one amused indiscriminately - just as one might run fast and run far from the offer of a pill that left one indiscriminately happy. For one wants to act and respond to a changing environment appropriately - in some ill-defined sense of "appropriate".
- Life in the Far North
Work like you don’t need the money. Love like you've never been hurt. And dance like no one is watching.
Death in the Deep Freeze - Kryoniikkadokumentti katsottavissa nyt Google-videona. Lämminhenkistä meininkiä kylmästä aiheesta huolimatta. Väliin kyllä heitetään muutama pakollinen vastakommentti, kuten vanha "hampurilaisesta lehmä" -vertaus, joka leikataan aina mukaan kai siksi, että se kuulostaa niin napakalta telkkarissa. Hampurilaisesta ei tietenkään saa lehmää, koska liha on työnnetty lihamyllyn läpi ja informaatioteoreettinen kuolema on tapahtunut. Kryoniikka ei pyri hajottamaan lihaa vaan säilyttämään sen mahdollisimman tarkasti. Sama kuin katsoisi dokumenttia evoluutiosta ja yhtäkkiä heitetään väliin kreationisti puhumaan kellovertauksista "tasapuolisuuden" vuoksi.
Why editors must dare to be dumb
Humans evolved to procreate, eat, and avoid getting eaten. The fact that we have learned to understand what atoms are all about or what the universe was doing back to a nanosecond after its birth is literally unbelievable. But the universe doesn’t care what we can or cannot believe. It doesn’t speak our language, so there’s no reason it should “make sense.” -- good science journalists know that if they’re not dealing with subject matter that makes them dizzy, they’re probably not doing their jobs.
I've long thought it a pity that non-transhumanists equate trying to conquer death with a childish fear of death and a lack of wisdom. This is like saying Sir Edmund Hillary had a childish fear of mountains.
- Philip Goetz
The Expert Mind - Ekspertti ei etsi ratkaisua suuresta huonojen vaihtoehtojen joukosta vaan löytää ratkaisun pienestä hyvien vaihtoehtojen joukosta. Huonot vaihtoehdot suodatetaan automaattisesti pois. Toisaalta, jos on ekspertti huonoissa vaihtoehdoissa (esim. uskonnossa), suodattaa automaattisesti pois hyvät vaihtoehdot, keskittyen pelkästään pienen huonojen vaihtoehtojen joukkonsa järjestelyyn.
Even the novice engages in effortful study at first, which is why beginners so often improve rapidly in playing golf, say, or in driving a car. But having reached an acceptable performance--for instance, keeping up with one's golf buddies or passing a driver's exam--most people relax. Their performance then becomes automatic and therefore impervious to further improvement.
Rocketbelt Convention 2006 - Rakettireppumalleja.
“Spirit of the Lone Eagle” - Yhden hengen matka Marsiin ilman paluulippua. Löytyy varmasti muutama innokas lähtijä.
The Intelligencer - Superälykkäitä ihmisiä, jotka eivät ole löytäneet parempaa tekemistä.
"If you think about the fact that the average is 100, and mentally retarded is about 70, someone at 160 is as far away from the average as someone at 130 is from mentally retarded. You can't say the scale works like this, but it gives you a sense."
Top Gear - High IQ burnouts (YouTube) - Superälyköt polttavat kumia.
Teemaan sopii myös klassikkoartikkeli The Outsiders.
Inapplicable Intuitions - Chris Phoenix käy läpi muutamia usein esitettyjä vastaväitteitä molekulaarisen nanoteknologian toimivuudelle.
Käsitetaiteilija Jonathon Keats järjestää ensimmäisen ulkoavaruuden olentojen taidenäyttelyn. "This is the ultimate outsider art," notes Keats.
ZScanner 700 - Z Corporationin reaaliaikainen 3D-käsiskanneri, hinta $39,000.
Perhaps men of genius are the only true men. In all the history of the race there have been only a few thousand real men. And the rest of us -- what are we? Teachable animals.
- Aldous Huxley
Ampakiinit parantavat ikääntymisestä johtuvan muistin huononemisen.
Skywalker Jets - Rakettiselkäreppusivu hassun mahtipontisen musiikin säestyksellä.
God is Imaginary - 49 yksinkertaista todistetta mielikuvitusolennon olemattomuudesta. Katso myös video.
Zombiebakteerien avulla parempia rokotteita.
NESS L300 - Elektroninen stimulaattori auttaa jalkaa liikkumaan.
Lifeboat Foundationin lisäksi on The Alliance to Rescue Civilization (ARC) ja Living Universe Foundation (LUF). Suunnitelmia on hyvä olla.
To describe the situation in layman’s terms, the Singularity Institute is up to its waist in win right now.
A thing hasn't been said until its been said a thousand times.
- Ring Lardner