Posted in cyborgs, humor, transhumanism
I just discovered that a second 12-min video on transhumanism was done by YouTube personalities Rhett and Link on Good Morning MORE. This one explores transhumanism in a balanced but humorous way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjYbcxeXn88
Their first transhumanism video on Good Mythical Morning is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1PF99LtBLQ
I’m excited to share this 12-min video on transhumanism and my presidential campaign (at 7 min mark). This video just came out, but the Good Mythical Morning (with over 7 million YouTube subscribers) videos often get over 1 million views and 3,000+ comments. This will likely be one of the most popular videos on transhumanism this year, and it’s really funny!
Nicky Ashwell, 29, from London, can now carry out tasks with both hands for first time with hand developed by prosthetic experts Steeper
“The Biological Technologies Office (BTO), which opened in April 2014, aims to support extremely ambitious — some say fantastical — technologies ranging from powered exoskeletons for soldiers to brain implants that can control mental disorders. DARPA’s plan for tackling such projects is being carried out in the same frenetic style that has defined the agency’s research in other fields.” Read more
Ray Kurzweil, director of engineering at Google, is a noted inventor and futurist who has some big ideas about the future of humans.
Posted in biotech/medical, complex systems, cyborgs, evolution, futurism, human trajectories, posthumanism, singularity, transhumanism, virtual reality
Quoted: “Once you really solve a problem like direct brain-computer interface … when brains and computers can interact directly, to take just one example, that’s it, that’s the end of history, that’s the end of biology as we know it. Nobody has a clue what will happen once you solve this. If life can basically break out of the organic realm into the vastness of the inorganic realm, you cannot even begin to imagine what the consequences will be, because your imagination at present is organic. So if there is a point of Singularity, as it’s often referred to, by definition, we have no way of even starting to imagine what’s happening beyond that.”
Read the article here > http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/silicon-valley-mordor/
By Antonio Regalado — MIT Technology Review
A few paralyzed patients could soon be using a wireless brain-computer interface able to stream their thought commands as quickly as a home Internet connection.
After more than a decade of engineering work, researchers at Brown University and a Utah company, Blackrock Microsystems, have commercialized a wireless device that can be attached to a person’s skull and transmit via radio thought commands collected from a brain implant. Blackrock says it will seek clearance for the system from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, so that the mental remote control can be tested in volunteers, possibly as soon as this year.
The device was developed by a consortium, called BrainGate, which is based at Brown and was among the first to place implants in the brains of paralyzed people and show that electrical signals emitted by neurons inside the cortex could be recorded, then used to steer a wheelchair or direct a robotic arm (see “Implanting Hope”).
By Jason Dorrier — Singulariy Hub
Television, cellphones, radio, WiFi—modern civilization converses in radio waves.
Most of us need some kind of device to translate the signals into something we can consume on a screen or through a speaker. But in the television show, Alphas, one of the characters, Gary Bell, can literally see and read electromagnetic waves.
In the show, Bell’s ability is a fictional superpower—but the larger point? The world is brimming with information invisible to our fairly limited senses. A new project, Phantom Terrains aims to make us all a little bit more like Gary Bell.
