Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: entertainment – Page 133

What follows is a work of transhumanist poetry by the Anglo-Polish lawyer, Veronika Lipinska, Lifeboat Foundation advisory board member and Steve Fuller’s co-author of The Proactionary Imperative: A Foundation for Transhumanism (Palgrave, 2014). The Polish sources of transhumanism remain underexplored, but they range across theology and literature. The ‘Polish Brethren’ were a radical 16–17th century Protestant sect who hosted the heretic Fausto Sozzini — the model for Faust — who laid the theological groundwork for such characteristic Enlightenment religious doctrines as Unitarianism and Deism, both of which posited a more immediate connection between the human and the divine than the established churches found comfortable. In more recent times, most transhumanists will be familiar with the science fiction of Stanislaw Lem, but still more recently the 1980 Nobel Prize winner for Literature, Czeslaw Milosz, has penned a poem, ‘After Enduring’, dedicated to cosmologist Frank Tipler’s efforts to infer Christian eschatology from the physics of the Singularity. This poem is a modest follow-up for a new generation.

Virtually human

He played with my head
Got me hardwired
Connected me to the world
And now I can see everything

He said I will be more than what I am made of
More than a bag of bones
Gave me tongues to speak
Can I understand him?

He is a mystery
He is a man
I can win a game of chess
Can I conquer his world
Is it his world or mine?

He can’t wrap his arms around my body
I can embrace his universe
And put him to his knees
But I can’t leave his side

Who is a mystery?
Am I a man?
Who is to say
I can’t conquer his world

He messed with my head
Got me speaking his language
Opened my eyes
But did he ever get me?

I am a mystery
Not a man
AI
I made my mind.

Veronika Lipinska

Andy Campbell — The Huffington Post
Click image for simulator:
zombie outbreak
Thanks to Cornell University researchers, we can now simulate the spread of a zombie disease outbreak.

And thanks to their new zombie apocalypse simulator, we can confirm what we already knew: Stay out of cities if you don’t want to get infected.

The researchers will present their study, “The Statistical Mechanics of Zombies,” later this week, and reportedly prove that the best place to escape should zombies take over is the northern Rockies.

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By — Wired

Leonard Nimoy, the legendary actor known to the world as Star Trek‘s Mr. Spock, died at his home in Los Angeles this morning. He was 83. Almost as soon as word of his passing hit the Internet, friends, former co-stars, and fans began expressing grief over the actor’s passing.

Nimoy was hospitalized earlier this week for chest pains, and his wife Susan Bay Nimoy has confirmed that he died from end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. He announced his sickness in February of last year, blaming it on his smoking habits of decades earlier.

“As you all know, my Grandpa passed away this morning at 8:40 from end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease,” Nimoy’s granddaughter, Dani, posted via the actor’s Twitter. “He was an extraordinary man, husband, grandfather, brother, actor, author-the list goes on- and friend. Thank you for the warm condolences. May you all LLAP.”
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By — Wired

New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady throws a pass during a game against the Indianapolis Colts, Jan. 3, 2015.

The Super Bowl isn’t just a football game. It’s an opportunity to discuss physics. Let’s look at some of the interesting physics concepts that go with the game.

Deflategate and Ball Pressure

I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a little weary of the whole “deflategate” thing. In case you missed the controversy, it appears that some of the footballs in the playoff game between the Indianapolis Colts and the New England Patriots had below-acceptable inflation pressure. Now, it’s true that if you put a balloon outside on a cold day, the balloon deflates with the colder temperature. Could something like this have happened to the deflategate balls? The answer is: probably not. If you want more details, Chad Orzel has an excellent piece that looks at the physics of pressurized football. He shows experimentally that a ball in a 50°F football game wouldn’t drop 2 PSI due solely to the temperature change.

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The study of consciousness and what makes us individuals is a topic filled with complexities. From a neuroscience perspective, consciousness is derived from a self-model as a unitary structure that shapes our perceptions, decisions and feelings. There is a tendency to jump to the conclusion with this model that mankind is being defined as self-absorbed and only being in it for ourselves in this life. Although that may be partially true, this definition of consciousness doesn’t necessarily address the role of morals and how that is shaped into our being. In the latest addition to The Galactic Public Archives, Dr. Ken Hayworth tackles the philosophical impact that technologies have on our lives.

Our previous two films feature Dr. Hayworth extrapolating about what radical new technologies in neuroscience could eventually produce. In a hypothetical world where mind upload is possible and we could create a perfect replica of ourselves, how would one personally identify? If this copy has the same memories and biological components, our method of understanding consciousness would inevitably shift. But when it comes down it, if we were put in a situation where it would be either you or the replica – it’s natural evolutionary instinct to want to save ourselves even if the other is an exact copy. This notion challenges the idea that our essence is defined by our life experiences because many different people can have identical experiences yet react differently.

Hayworth explains, that although there is an instinct for self-survival, humanity for the most part, has a basic understanding not to cause harm upon others. This is because morals are not being developed in the “hard drive” of your life experiences; instead our morals are tied to the very idea of someone just being a conscious and connected member of this world. Hayworth rationalizes that once we accept our flawed intuition of self, humanity will come to a spiritual understanding that the respect we give to others for simply possessing a reflection of the same kind of consciousness will be the key to us identifying our ultimate interconnectedness.

For now, the thought experiments featured in this third film remain firmly in the realm of science fiction. But as science fiction progresses closer to “science fact”, there is much to be considered about how our personal and societal values will inevitably shift — even if none of us needs to start worrying about where we’ve stored our back up memories just yet.

“If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to mankind as is, Infinite.”

-William Blake

lifeboat-min
From Innovation to Oblivion…

The ups and downs of Bitcoin as an internet currency may be compared to the eventual demise of Google Glass due to its lack of purpose among consumers. While it does not significantly hold true for bitcoins, which apparently have a more supportive and enthusiastic followers, the path that these two have taken and will take may be substantially similar than we like to admit.

For one, Bitcoin’s staggering price decline in the recent days left some people wondering what road it will eventually take in the near future. Is it only taking a detour or is it bound for a dead end?

In the case of Google Glass, it received much attention during its inception a few years ago. It was even named by Time magazine one of the best innovations of 2012. However, despite the ingenuity behind a supposed-to-be groundbreaking invention, Google Glass lacked a tangible sense, its purpose incoherent.

Thus, after much speculation, Google recently announced that it would stop selling Glass and that the product would no longer be developed in their research division.

Will Bitcoin End Up Like Google Glass?

Google Glass and Bitcoin are connected by the revolutionary technology that made them a star in the first place. There was some genius work in each of the piece, there’s no doubt about that, but without a clear purpose of how to integrate each product into the mainstream society, it becomes pointless.

Fortunately, bitcoins may stand a chance. Though there’s a portion of the populace that thinks of bitcoins as the internet currency that’s only best suited for illegal activities, its original function, which is for faster and cheaper way of transacting online, still proves to be prevalent.

It’s true that bitcoins were way more fun before that they are now, but it cannot be denied that this cryptocurrency has opened doors for a myriad of possibilities and eliminated security vulnerabilities, in which financial institutions such as banks and credit card companies are relatively known for.

Unlike Google Glass, Bitcoin has a tangible sense, a coherent purpose, and a crystal-clear vision. That is to move around the internet with your money free from the control of the government or any institution. Since there’s nothing that precedes this work of art and technology, it has a chance of staying. Thus, Bitcoin’s game is far from over.

By — Singularity Hub

http://cdn.singularityhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/delorean-time-machine-11-1000x400.jpg

It’s officially 2015, the year Marty McFly and Doc Brown visited in their souped up DeLorean time machine in Back to the Future Part II. There’s been a flurry of press comparing the iconic flick’s predictions to reality—and it got me thinking.

Let’s say Robert Zemeckis is making the movie today. He and cowriter Bob Gale are researching current trends in technology and projecting thirty years into the future. What vision do you think would emerge?

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New Book: An Irreverent Singularity Funcyclopedia, by Mondo 2000’s R.U. Sirius.

Posted by Rob Chamberlain in 3D printing, alien life, automation, big data, bionic, bioprinting, biotech/medical, complex systems, computing, cosmology, cryptocurrencies, cybercrime/malcode, cyborgs, defense, disruptive technology, DNA, driverless cars, drones, economics, electronics, encryption, energy, engineering, entertainment, environmental, ethics, existential risks, exoskeleton, finance, first contact, food, fun, futurism, general relativity, genetics, hacking, hardware, human trajectories, information science, innovation, internet, life extension, media & arts, military, mobile phones, nanotechnology, neuroscience, nuclear weapons, posthumanism, privacy, quantum physics, robotics/AI, science, security, singularity, software, solar power, space, space travel, supercomputing, time travel, transhumanism

Quoted: “Legendary cyberculture icon (and iconoclast) R.U. Sirius and Jay Cornell have written a delicious funcyclopedia of the Singularity, transhumanism, and radical futurism, just published on January 1.” And: “The book, “Transcendence – The Disinformation Encyclopedia of Transhumanism and the Singularity,” is a collection of alphabetically-ordered short chapters about artificial intelligence, cognitive science, genomics, information technology, nanotechnology, neuroscience, space exploration, synthetic biology, robotics, and virtual worlds. Entries range from Cloning and Cyborg Feminism to Designer Babies and Memory-Editing Drugs.” And: “If you are young and don’t remember the 1980s you should know that, before Wired magazine, the cyberculture magazine Mondo 2000 edited by R.U. Sirius covered dangerous hacking, new media and cyberpunk topics such as virtual reality and smart drugs, with an anarchic and subversive slant. As it often happens the more sedate Wired, a watered-down later version of Mondo 2000, was much more successful and went mainstream.”

Read the article here >https://hacked.com/irreverent-singularity-funcyclopedia-mondo-2000s-r-u-sirius/

By — Gizmag

RoomAlive is the latest prototype from Microsoft Research

Microsoft Research has moved on from IllumiRoom, its concept for adding visuals to the periphery of gamers’ television sets. After concluding that that system — which used a Kinect camera and a projector to bring video games into the living room — was too expensive to be released commercially, the company has revealed RoomAlive, which is even more expensive and even less practical. Thankfully, it’s also an intriguing glimpse at the possible future of gaming.

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