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sz5_JER_fuller_-_croatian_interview-300x199To think about the existential prospects that lie ahead for Humanity 2.0, or Homo futura, imagine yourself in 1900 faced with two investment opportunities for the future of personal human transport: on the one hand, a specially bred – that is, genetically modified – horse; on the other, a mass-produced automobile. Which prospect would you pursue?

The horse has been long a reliable mode of transport, whose strengths and weaknesses are well known. A faster horse may require greater skill to handle and more feed that produces more manure. But your society is already equipped to deal with those consequences. In contrast, the automobile is a new technology, albeit one that has already shown that it can equal and even surpass the horse in terms of speed and durability under a variety of conditions. However, the automobile brings its own distinctive cost-benefit calculus, as its future improvement would very likely involve both greater enclosure of the traveller and greater pollution of the environment. In the long term, the traveller’s relationship to nature would probably need to change quite drastically for the automobile to become dominant.

It is too bad that the state of genetic knowledge was not sufficiently advanced in 1900 to turn this into a real choice. Instead the horse easily appeared a less attractive long-term bet, as it was generally presumed that the upper limits of the creature’s performance had been already reached. In that case, the indefinite continuation of horse-drawn personal transport could only be defended by those who had a principled objection to mechanical transport, a position perhaps grounded in a nostalgic view of humanity’s oneness with nature. But even these people could not deny the proven effectiveness of ships and trains as machines of mass conveyance. In short, the horse was doomed. The market for personal transport underwent what Joseph Schumpeter called ‘creative destruction’. Henry Ford effectively made it worthwhile for consumers to reorganize their value priorities in a way that quickly resulted in the automobile, rather than the horse, setting the standard of personal transport.

The twenty-first century may offer us a choice rather like that of our hypothetical 1900 decision between horse and car. But now the choice would be between two different ways of continuing the human condition – alternative vehicles, as it were, to convey our existence. One involves genetically modifying ourselves and the other involves transcending the bodies of our birth altogether. These two options represent the two rather opposing directions in which contemporary transhumanism is heading.

In most general terms, ‘transhumanism’ says that the indefinite projection of our most distinctly human qualities is worth pursuing as a value in its own right – even if that means radically altering our material nature. This definition of transhumanism captures by implication all of those who might be against such a movement, not least those – typically ‘Greens’ – who believe that humanity’s current global crises stem from our attempts to minimize if not deny our commonality with the rest of nature.

The word ‘transhumanism’ was coined by Julian Huxley, a founder of the dominant research paradigm in biology today, which integrates Darwin’s account of natural history with the experimental principles of modern lab-based genetics. Huxley, following the lead of his grandfather, Thomas Henry Huxley, believed that Darwin fundamentally challenged anyone who wanted to uphold the superiority of Homo sapiens as a species. After all, the workings of natural selection suggest that all forms of life are limited by their largely innate capacities to adapt to a changing environment. In the end, any given species – including humans — should expect extinction, not immortality. From that standpoint, all the promises made by Christianity and Islam of an eternal ‘afterlife’ looked empty. Nevertheless, the Huxleys believed that there was something fundamentally correct about these religious intuitions.

Thomas Henry Huxley opposed those who held that ethics could be straightforwardly inferred from evolutionary history. On the contrary, he argued, we humans are unique in our capacity to push back, and ideally reverse, natural selection. He had in mind modern developments in law and medicine that effectively institutionalise forms of life that take humanity far from its Darwinian default settings. Thus, our conception of justice is more complex than ‘an eye for an eye’ and our interest in health goes beyond simply enabling people to cope with whatever life throws in their way. In this respect, modern society has been built to promote a progressive world-view, in which death becomes the ultimate enemy — not the ultimate resolution — of life.

Julian Huxley, equipped with a better scientific understanding, went one step further to argue that Homo sapiens is the only species equipped to comprehend the entire evolutionary process, in which case we incur a unique moral obligation to administer and direct its future course. This is the context in which ‘transhumanism’ was coined.

But even accepting humanity’s sense of cosmic responsibility still leaves us with many questions about how to proceed. Julian Huxley was himself a eugenicist who helped several biologists working in Nazi Germany, including the great ethologist Konrad Lorenz, to avoid charges of ‘crimes against humanity’ at the Nuremberg Trials. Huxley was also the principal author of UNESCO’s 1950 ‘Statement on Race’, which argued that the idea of fixed racial distinctions lacks a firm foundation in biological science. Taken together, these interventions suggest a deep acceptance of humanity’s adaptability and plasticity, in which the future should not be seen as a simple repetition of the past. Huxley supported eugenics not to reinforce long-standing racial prejudice but, on the contrary, to experiment with humanity’s untapped potential to surpass its current levels of achievement.

Whatever one makes of Huxley’s own enthusiasm for eugenics, which remained up to his death in 1975, it is clear that his existential horizons were rather limited by the standards of today’s transhumanists. For Huxley, humanity’s room for manoeuvre, while considerable, was ultimately confined to our evolutionary heritage in carbon. He envisaged altering and otherwise enhancing our genetic capacities, but not uploading our minds into silicon chips that would allow us to be resurrected as freestanding avatars. In this respect, Huxley is like our hypothetical 1900 entrepreneur investing in the idea of a genetically modified horse as the future of personal transport.

This means that the Henry Fords of our transhuman future are those who see our carbon-based bodies simply platforms for the realization of a set of ‘functionalities’ that may be more powerfully and more efficiently realized in another medium altogether. The original Henry Ford reckoned that while people may find it nice to be one with nature, at the end of the day what really mattered was how to get where you want to go as quickly as possible. Similarly, today’s silicon-based transhumanists regard our genetically endowed bodies as simply means to ends that in the future may be performed more effectively by some other means.

To be sure, relatively few share Ray Kurzweil’s dream that by 2050 human consciousness will be successfully uploaded into a computer that enables us to conceptualise and experience the world as if we were still carbon-based creatures. Nevertheless, as the saying goes, people are already ‘voting with their feet’. The amount of quality time spent on the internet suggests that people are beginning to locate the meaning of their lives more in virtual than actual reality. Of course, that tendency by itself does not guarantee that we shall realize Kurzweil’s dream. But it does provide an incentive for investment into research that might eventually realize it. The power of faith to overcome material obstacles should never be underestimated, especially when the believers are armed with science.

The ease with which Homo sapiens has managed to remake itself and the physical environment over a few thousand years – in many cases, undoing the work of billions of years of evolution – has been a source of great fear, but also of great hope. That hope involves a vision of human history in which after emerging as a distinct branch of the tree of life, our biology serves as a platform for launching a range of technologies that extend our natural capacities and with which we eventually merge to constitute the executive control centre of an ever expanding portion of the universe.

This is a world that Darwin did not envisage because, like so many other 19th century biologists, he could not imagine that the basic elements of life were governed by mathematical principles, let alone a ‘genetic code’. Indeed, Darwin’s contemporary, the man who we now consider the father of modern genetics, Gregor Mendel, was largely ignored in his lifetime precisely because he claimed to have found such principles. However, the molecular revolution in genetics that began in earnest with the discovery of DNA’s function in 1953 has increasingly brought together the expertises of computer scientists and molecular geneticists in quite literal projects of ‘bioengineering’, whereby life is built according to a mathematically specified plan from basic materials.

Regardless of whether humanity continues to believe that its progress is ultimately circumscribed by its biology, transhumanism’s own progress in the general culture may be measured by the extent to which ‘nature’ is seen not as imposing a limit on the human will, but rather as raw material, untapped potential or even capital that we might leverage into new and improved states of being. To be sure, there is no reason to think that such beliefs are self-fulfilling but they do foster a climate in which people are willing to take more risks with themselves, other people and the world at large.

Further Reading

Church, G. and Regis, F. (2012). Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves. New York: Basic Books.

Fuller, S. (2011). Humanity 2.0: What It Means to Be Human Past, Present and Future. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Fuller, S. (2013). Preparing for Life in Humanity 2.0. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Fuller, S. and Lipinska, V. (2014). The Proactionary Imperative: A Foundation for Transhumanism. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

More, M. and Vita-More, N., eds. (2013). The Transhumanist Reader. London: Wiley-Blackwell.

Some people become incredibly confused about the effort to eliminate aging, which they see as a nebulous, ill-defined process. I refer to the concept of radical life extension, when aging as a process has been abolished. I am not referring to simple healthy longevity (the effort to live a healthy life until the current maximum lifespan of 110–120). Here are some common misconceptions:

1. The Fallacy of words

Eliminating aging will make us ‘immortal’ and we will live forever.

No, it won’t. If we eliminate aging as a cause of death, we may be able to live for an indefinite (not infinite) period, until something else kills us. Even in a world without aging, death can happen at any time (at age 10, 65 or 1003) and for any reason (a shot in the head, malaria, drowning). If we manage to eliminate aging as a cause of death, the only certain thing would be that we will not necessarily die when we reach the currently maximum lifespan limit of around 110–120 years. We would certainly NOT live for ever, because something else will kill us sooner or later. Our organs cannot be repaired if we perish in a nuclear explosion for example, or in a fire. Some statisticians have mentioned that, without aging, we may be able to live to 1700–2000 years on average before death happens due to some other catastrophic damage. This is a long time, but it is not ‘forever’.

2. The Fallacy of numbers

Eliminating aging will result in overpopulation.

No, it won’t. This is based on spurious, even naïve, thinking. Aging happens because we need to reproduce. Or, we need to reproduce because we age. If aging is eliminated, the need to reproduce will also be broadly eliminated. It is a cyclical, reciprocal argument.

3. The Fallacy of loneliness

“I don’t want to live dramatically longer because I will have to witness the deaths of all my family and friends”.

No, you won’t. If you live longer because aging has been eliminated, then your family and friends will too. In any case, this counteracts fallacy number 2: if everybody else dies, how come we would have overpopulation? And fallacy number 2 counteracts this one: if we do have overpopulation, then it is likely that your friends and relatives will be alive too.

4. The Fallacy of the pill

Aging will be eliminated by taking a pill (or a combination of pills, injections, something physical).

No, it won’t. It will be eliminated through a change in the direction of human evolution, when billions of humans continue to engage with technology (or via other, abstract global technologically-dependent means). As the general direction of evolution is towards a more complex state which makes us better adapted to our environment, there would come a point when our hyper-technological environment would select individual longevity instead of aging and degeneration, as a more thermodynamically efficient situation.

5. The Fallacy of money

Research into the elimination of aging is not progressing fast due to lack of appropriate funding.

No, funding is not the main bottleneck. The main problem is the widespread adoption of the wrong approach. The idea that aging can be eliminate through pharmacological intervention dates back to the time of the Alchemists. It has no place in a modern, highly technological and intellectually sophisticated society, and certainly not with respect to defying such a fundamental process as aging. It is reductionist instead of integrative.
Aging may be eliminated when the cause for its presence is removed. Aging happens because within a tendency to progress from simple to complex, evolution has selected reproduction (and thus aging) as a mechanism for maximising the use of thermodynamical resources, and so to ensure the survival of the species

6. The Fallacy of the rich elite

Only a few rich people will have access to the treatment.

This is a combination of fallacies number 4 and 5, a fallacy based on fallacies. People who adapt and fit within an upwards moving technological environment will be more likely to survive. Money is irrelevant. What is relevant is intellectual effort and aggressive engagement with our environment (hyperconnectivity is an example). If a large number of humans (in the order of hundreds of millions) actively engage with their increasingly technological environment, there would be no reason to age/reproduce at the current rates, as survival can be assured through the individual rather than the species. Therefore, there could be no secrets about the process, due to the very fact that a significant section of humanity must necessarily participate.

7. The fallacy of frailty

Living dramatically longer will mean a long life with debilitating illnesses.

No, it won’t. The two concepts are mutually exclusive. A life without aging necessarily means a life without age-related degeneration. You cannot have one without the other.

By Greg Scoblete — Real Clear Technology

We worry about robots.

Hardly a day goes by where we’re not reminded about how robots are taking our jobs and hollowing out the middle class. The worry is so acute that economists are busy devising new social contracts to cope with a potentially enormous class of obsolete humans.

Documentarian James Barrat, author of Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era, is worried about robots too. Only he’s not worried about them taking our jobs. He’s worried about them exterminating the human race.

I’ll repeat that: In 267 brisk pages, Barrat lays out just how the artificial intelligence (AI) that companies like Google and governments like our own are racing to perfect could — indeed, likely will — advance to the point where it will literally destroy all human life on Earth. Not put it out of work. Not meld with it in a utopian fusion. Destroy it.

Read more

Procreative sexual activity has been at the heart of the evolutionary process for millions of years. Until recently, the situation was simple: a male and a female had sexual intercourse in order to produce offspring and thus ensure survival. But, in humans, there are certain signs that something profound may be happening, signs which may be pointing to the beginning of Radical Life Extension. I argue that reproduction is a tactic used by natural evolution in order to increase complexity and thus, survival. Reproduction equals aging. But, as we now may have the capability to increase complexity through technology, the reproduction stratagem may be downgraded and thus aging will also decrease.

Here, the term ‘Radical Life Extension’ specifically means the abolition of aging. Without the process of aging, however it is defined, people will not suffer age-related degenerative conditions, and they will not die of old age. Therefore, the terms ‘Radical Life Extension’,’ Indefinite Lifespans’, and ‘cure of age-related diseases’, all convey the same meaning: a life without aging. It is important to emphasize that I consider the process of aging to be directly related to that of reproduction. I argue that the process of reproduction is necessarily implicated in the process of aging (in other words, aging happens because we need to reproduce), as explained in my argument number 3 below.

In this context, I would also like to remark that by ‘reproduction’ I specifically refer to sexual (i.e. genetic) reproduction. Evolution may still continue to use (or begin to use) other forms of reproduction such as memetic reproduction and reproduction of noemes.

The main thrust of my discussion is that we are now beginning to witness the first tentative steps leading away from the significance of procreative sexual intercourse and towards the global emergence of other, sustained, non-procreative sexual preferences.

Let me explore a series of logical arguments which lead to an inescapable conclusion. Note that I do not imply a sentient deity in my discussion. I do not infer any entity that possesses any conscious awareness which transcend the laws of nature.

Argument 1
Nature, through evolution, tends to progress towards higher levels of complexity. To put it another way, within natural laws there are basins of attraction which necessarily tend to cause a transition from simple to complex, and therefore lead to the emergence of new characteristics. The Belgian Cyberneticist Francis Heylighen has listed these characteristics in increasing order of complexity, as follows:
* mobility
* sensation
* learning
* intelligence
* morality
* mimicry
* language
* culture
* technology.

He states that “The idea is that all life, wherever it occurs in the universe, will develop those traits of universal fitness, in roughly the same chronological order. It means that those traits are built into the laws of nature. They are statistically inevitable. It is as if nature ‘wants’ us to go in a certain direction. This is what gives biological evolution its clear directionality”.

The above list is not final, and there is no implication that technology is the end stage of human evolution. The point I am making here is a general one: that evolution tends to higher complexity, whatever this complexity might be, in order to ensure survival within a specified niche.

Argument 2
Based on this list, it is obvious that we are currently on the highest stage of natural evolution, that of technology. There will certainly be higher end-points in the future. In fact, I can think of at least two such stages which we have not yet achieved, but at this point I argue that this has profound implications on the issues of aging and radical life extension. If the general direction of evolution is towards increasing complexity and survival, why do we age and die? The answer is straightforward. Within a tendency to progress from simple to complex, evolution has selected reproduction (and thus aging – see argument 3) as a mechanism for maximising the use of thermodynamical resources, and so to ensure the survival of the species.

Argument 3
Until now, the clear role of reproduction was to maximise the chances of survival and thus progress to a higher stage in the list above. However, in order for reproduction to be successful, the genetic code (germ-line) must be maintained. An inequality of resources available for repair and maintenance between germ line and somatic cells means that, while the integrity of the germ-line is fully guaranteed, that of somatic cells is not. Therefore we (our bodies) must age and die through aging. Survival is thus assured, albeit it is the survival of the germ-line and that of the species, and not the survival of our own individual selves.

Argument 4
The main tendency in nature (i.e. the direction of evolution), through a relentless progress of increasing complexity, is to stay alive. Ultimately, what matters is to survive. The basins of attraction mentioned above exist because they ensure survival. Reproduction is just a means for assuring survival in the face of adverse thermodynamical resources. If there was a way to survive without reproduction, then the process of reproduction would be drastically downgraded. We may be now able to survive, i.e. live (dramatically) longer, through the use of technology and not necessarily through reproduction. There are three types of technology that is relevant here:
* Biomedical Technology
* General mechanical technology (includes AI)
* Digital Communications Technology

I have argued elsewhere that it is this last type of technology that is the most promising in achieving Radical Life Extension. In humans, technology is both the result of natural selection and the cause of the end of natural selection.

Argument 5
If there are any signs that reproduction is being downgraded then it means that the above arguments are likely to be correct, and that the process of long individual survival has begun. One such preliminary sign is the decline in procreative sexual practice and the relatively widespread emergence of other practices or preferences. If nature somehow ‘senses’ that survival is now being assured through technology, then the pressure for finding a mate of the opposite sex and reproduce would be eased, allowing the widespread emergence of other non-reproductive sexual practices such as homosexuality, non-procreative polyamory, hedonist polysexuality or pansexuality. It is likely therefore that we are now entering a period of human evolution which will not entirely depend on reproduction. Reduced reproduction means that more resources are available to be passed on to the soma (body) and thus radical longevity becomes more likely.

Discussion
How can the technological environment in which one finds themselves impact sexuality? There is a train of logical arguments which answer this question:
• If we accept that evolution generally tends to higher complexity and sophistication (including technological sophistication) in order to increase survival, and
• If we accept that a stage of significant technological achievement has now been reached (or is likely to be reached within 20 years), and
• If, as long as the human species survives, it is immaterial whether its survival is achieved through reproduction or through any other means, and
• If one of these other means is technology,

then, it is also logical to assume that genetic reproduction is now less important than before because high complexity/intelligence can be achieved through technology and through the prolonged survival of the individually- enhanced human, and not necessarily through a random process of natural selection (birth/procreation/death). If genetic reproduction is now not as important as before, any tendency to conventional procreative sexuality will diminish. Thus, other sexual preferences and practices will become more common place.

And just to push the discussion further into the realms of speculation, one should wonder if the progressive global reduction of sperm count, the increased incidence of undescended testicles, and the first signs that men are becoming less ‘macho’, have any relationship with my argument. It may be hypothesized that, as the reproductive practice is now being downgraded, the health of male sexual organs has begun to be affected, in preparation for a procreative shutdown, at least in some sections of humanity.

Finally, I have been asked: Can using computers make me gay? This is a captious statement which is both true and false, but it helps illustrate a point. Based on the arguments above, increased engagement with technology at a significant level, and by a significant number of people, will have an impact on natural selection and thus on procreation. It will diminish the hitherto immense pressure to find a mate and have offspring, and so other sexual preferences will emerge globally. The discussion does not refer to single isolated individuals but to humankind as a whole.

For more information on our research in these areas see www.elpisfil.org.

This article was originally published here:
http://hplusmagazine.com/2013/11/26/sexuality-evolution-and-…-of-aging/

In is now quite clear that aging is not a simple phenomenon and it will not be overcome by using simple approaches. We need to increase the complexity and sophistication of our efforts in order to be in a better position to develop strategies against it. For this reason, I set up the ELPIS Foundation for Indefinite Lifespans (www.elpisfil.org) which is a scientific research organisation aiming to study aging from a complex evolutionary perspective.

The foundation’s research methodology is based mainly upon the ELPIS hypothesis (www.elpistheory.info). The initials stand for ‘Extreme Lifespans through Perpetual –equalising Interventions’. I developed this hypothesis in 2010 whilst trying to examine the reason behind the presence of aging. It was clear that aging is not an essential component of our evolutionary development, and if we find ways to study why nature has developed it, we may then be able to eradicate it. Currently, the chances of us dying from aging are heavily against us. By developing suitable interventions, we may be able to equalise the odds against us dying (i.e. remove aging as a cause of death).

Our method is different from most existing approaches aiming to eliminate aging. We are mainly interested in the ‘connection-approach’ and not so much in the ‘component-approach’. We believe that it is important to study how the different components of the organism are interconnected and regulated, rather than just repair the individual components. It is the ‘why aging happens’ rather than the ‘how it happens’ that interests us most. In order to make this clear let me mention an analogy with poliomyelitis.

Polio
*How it happens? There is inflammation and necrosis leading to damage of motor neurons and, ultimately, muscle weakness and paralysis
* Why it happens? Because the poliovirus causes it

Aging
* How it happens? There is cellular and molecular damage through oxidation and glycation, as well as damage to mitochondria, DNA etc.
* Why it happens? Because evolution has selected reproduction (and thus aging) as a mechanism for maximising the use of thermodynamical resources, and so ensure the survival of the species.

In this analogy, the obvious cure for polio is to somehow eradicate the poliovirus itself, and not just keep repairing the already damaged motor neurons. And in the case of aging, the best tactic is to somehow change the reason why aging happens, instead of just keep repairing already existing damage.

Attempts such as SENS and similar, aim to repairing existing damage, were as we aim primarily to eliminate the evolutionary reasons behind aging in the first place. This is not to say that we are not at all interested in damage repair. In fact, one of our main projects deals with the repair problem. But, overall we want to explore the evolution of aging and not its secondary effects.

We see aging as a specific and well-defined process. Our aim is unambiguous: we seek to eliminate this particular process. By eliminating aging we will have a life without age-related disease and degeneration, and a lifespan without a predetermined end. We do not seek immortality. In order to be immortal, one has to totally and permanently eliminate all causes of death (not just reduce their incidence). We seek to eliminate aging as one of the causes of death. People will still die from any other cause. In this case, our lifespan would be ‘indefinite’ because the current absolute limit of around 110–120 years will be lifted. There would not be a pre-defined limit; therefore the lifespan would be indefinite. It will not be infinite. This distinction is crucial because it clarifies any ambiguity and vagueness in the terminology. We do not seek eternal youth. We merely concentrate on the process of aging as one of the many other causes of death, the same as other researchers concentrate on the cure for cancer or the cure for HIV infection.

Within ELPIs Foundation we have scientific advisors from a wide range of disciplines, including biomedicine, transhumanism, social sciences, neurosciences, complex systems, and systems biology. Our affiliate researchers are scientists who conduct research in their own facilities and share information and ideas with each other. We are always looking for visionary, ‘out-of the box’ scientific thinkers, those who ‘zoom out’ of reductionist views, and see aging in a wider perspective without being uncritically blinkered by existing dogma.

We ask questions such as: If aging happens because nature withholds resources from the soma and diverts these to the germ-line, how can we reverse this process and divert resources back to the soma in order to maximise biological repair? What is the role of digital hyperconnectivity of billions of humans (the Global Brain) in facilitating such a transition? Where does aging and the elimination of aging fit within an ever-evolving technological tendency of nature? Some ideas we currently explore are:
* Induced Whole-Body Somatic Cell Turnover, for regenerative repair
* Aging and evolutionary changes as applied to human sexual patterns, reproduction, ecosystems, society and the planet
* The role of energy, entropy and thermodynamics in metasystem transitions with regards to human longevity
*Theoretical aspects of Germ-line penetration

May symposium

In May 2014 we will be organising the second symposium on ‘Pathways to Indefinite Lifespans’ in Larnaca, Cyprus. This is a small, very select, highly focused meeting exploring the most cutting-edge research and ideas with regards to the total abolition of aging. We aim to discuss new insights and hypotheses in the fields of biomedical technology, evolutionary anthropology, complex systems, a hyperconnected society, and digital communications technology. The meeting will be accessible live online and will include both local and remote presentations. Those interested in coming need to contact me at: [email protected]. We are also exploring the possibility of offering PhD positions to exceptional candidates, in order to facilitate research in this area.

This article was originally published here: http://hplusmagazine.com/2013/11/05/defying-aging-the-elpis-…lifespans/

The Lifeboat community doesn’t need me to tell them that a growing number of scientists are dedicating their time and energy into research that could radically alter the human aging trajectory. As a result we could be on the verge of the end of aging. But from an anthropological and evolutionary perspective, humans have always had the desire to end aging. Most human culture groups on the planet did this by inventing some belief structure incorporating eternal consciousness. In my mind this is a logical consequence of A) realizing you are going to die and B) not knowing how to prevent that tragedy. So from that perspective, I wanted to create a video that contextualized the modern scientific belief in radical life extension with the religious/mythological beliefs of our ancestors.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLftXInDxhM

And if you loved the video, please consider subscribing to The Advanced Apes on YouTube! I’ll be releasing a new video bi-weekly!

Leadership at the next level

By Kenneth Mikkelsen, Mannaz

Effective leaders must first learn the skill of leading themselves in order to cultivate their competencies for leading others.

Have you let your eyes wander across the management section in a bookstore or an airport newsstand recently? Chances are that your attention has been drawn to the colourful variety of easily digestible how-to-become-a-better-manager books.

In North America, books with exotic titles, such as “One Minute Manager”, “Moses CEO” and “Make It So: Management Lessons from Star Trek the Next Generation”, bring in an astronomical revenue of USD 2.4 billion every year. Most of the “voodoo” management books emphasize that you must change yourself if you want a richer and fuller life – both socially and financially.

Make no mistake

It would be easy to write off the author of books, such as “Managing Your Self” by Dr. Jagdish Parikh, as being in the same category. But, make no mistake. Dr. Parikh a professor, businessman and an author himself, has a profound knowledge of management gathered from business environments all over the world. He even found the time to co-produce the Oscar-winning movie, “Ghandi”.

“Hundreds of books and models purport to suggest the best way to become a leader. Yet many people, asked to name a leader they would consider a role model, struggle to identify even one or two individuals,” Dr. Parikh points out.

According to him, the gap between what we learn about leadership and what we actually implement exposes a fundamental flaw in most of the leadership models today. These models focus mainly on competencies required for leading an organization, but do not explain how to cultivate those core competencies. Therefore we face, in a sense, a crisis of leadership.

Conflicting values

One of Dr. Jagdish Parikh’s favorite stories is about his first day as an MBA student at Harvard Business School. Born in India, he was brought up with the belief that he had to do his utmost, whatever tasks, objectives or goals he set for himself. But, as far as the results concerned, he learned to accept them with equanimity, for such results depended on a variety of external factors and variables, over which no one could have full control. At Harvard it was a different story. During the welcoming address the dean made it clear that the MBA program was designed to ensure that there would always be more work to be done every day than the time and energy at one’s disposal.

“We were told not to feel satisfied or content with whatever we achieved, because in the moment we did so, our progress would stop along with our drive for achieving more,” says Dr. Parikh.

The message that came across to Dr. Parikh was that stress is beautiful. And if he were to progress in life, he would continue to remain dissatisfied. Going from A to B meant that C should be the next focal point, without spending time being happy about reaching B.

Cultivating consciousness

Having finished his MBA, Jagdish Parikh went back to Bombay and became successful as a businessman practicing the tenets from Harvard. However, he began to suffer negative physiological and psychological symptoms of stress after just a few years.

“I seriously began to wonder if there was another way to be successful while also remaining satisfied and happy at the same time. After deep reflection and a PhD, I discovered that the missing link between success and happiness was a lack of awareness of one’s inner dynamics,” says Dr. Parikh.

Therein lies the philosophy of Dr. Jagdish Parikh. He believes that one of the major challenges that face leaders today is to cultivate their own consciousness in a hectic business environment that doesn’t leave much time for reflection and self-discovery. However, competencies for leading others take time to grow and flourish.

“Unless one knows how to lead one’s self, it would be presumptuous for anyone to be able to lead others effectively. And, if you don’t lead your self, someone else will. The essence of leadership is to effectively manage relationships with people, events, and ideas. You can’t lead something you yourself identify with. The paradox is that detachment not withdrawal, escape, or indifference coupled with involvement not addiction – in other words, detached involvement – enables mastery. Leadership then happens to you,” Dr. Parikh underlines.

Eastern wisdom meets western science

From earlier orientations towards profit and power, up to a more recent focus on people, we are now seeing business leaders that seek alignment with global and ecological concerns. According to Dr. Parikh, this means that there is a growing interest in creating an organizational culture based on support systems, networks and shared values, rather than on power, money and personal ambition – an interest in changing outlooks through deeper insights.

“The role of management is to create within the organization a climate, a culture, and a context in which corporate enrichment and individual fulfillment collaborate and resonate progressively in the development of a creative and integrative global community,” says Dr. Parikh.

According to Dr. Parikh, leaders should have a clear stand on the fundamental issues that are facing us today, i.e. balancing “how to make a living” with “how to live” – sort of building a bridge between Western management and Eastern philosophical traditions.

“As individuals we may pursue money, power and prestige – the symbols of success – in order to be happy. But despite getting more of these we do not feel proportionately happier. After all, we’re described as human beings not human havings or even human doings. Essentially we are going up the ladder but we also have to ensure that the ladder is against the right wall. This is where a combination of Western science and Eastern wisdom would ensure a more holistic approach to leadership – and life,” says Dr. Jagdish Parikh.

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Originally posted via The Advanced Apes

Through my writings I have tried to communicate ideas related to how unique our intelligence is and how it is continuing to evolve. Intelligence is the most bizarre of biological adaptations. It appears to be an adaptation of infinite reach. Whereas organisms can only be so fast and efficient when it comes to running, swimming, flying, or any other evolved skill; it appears as though the same finite limits are not applicable to intelligence.

What does this mean for our lives in the 21st century?

First, we must be prepared to accept that the 21st century will not be anything like the 20th. All too often I encounter people who extrapolate expected change for the 21st century that mirrors the pace of change humanity experienced in the 20th. This will simply not be the case. Just as cosmologists are well aware of the bizarre increased acceleration of the expansion of the universe; so evolutionary theorists are well aware of the increased pace of techno-cultural change. This acceleration shows no signs of slowing down; and few models that incorporate technological evolution predict that it will.

The result of this increased pace of change will likely not just be quantitative. The change will be qualitative as well. This means that communication and transportation capabilities will not just become faster. They will become meaningfully different in a way that would be difficult for contemporary humans to understand. And it is in the strange world of qualitative evolutionary change that I will focus on two major processes currently predicted to occur by most futurists.

Qualitative evolutionary change produces interesting differences in experience. Often times this change is referred to as a “metasystem transition”. A metasystem transition occurs when a group of subsystems coordinate their goals and intents in order to solve more problems than the constituent systems. There have been a few notable metasystem transitions in the history of biological evolution:

  • Transition from non-life to life
  • Transition from single-celled life to multi-celled life
  • Transition from decentralized nervous system to centralized brains
  • Transition from communication to complex language and self-awareness

All these transitions share the characteristics described of subsystems coordinating to form a larger system that solve more problems than they could do individually. All transitions increased the rate of change in the universe (i.e., reduction of entropy production). The qualitative nature of the change is important to understand, and may best be explored through a thought experiment.

Imagine you are a single-celled organism on the early Earth. You exist within a planetary network of single-celled life of considerable variety, all adapted to different primordial chemical niches. This has been the nature of the planet for well over 2 billion years. Then, some single-cells start to accumulate in denser and denser agglomerations. One of the cells comes up to you and says:

I think we are merging together. I think the remainder of our days will be spent in some larger system that we can’t really conceive. We will each become adapted for a different specific purpose to aid the new higher collective.

Surely that cell would be seen as deranged. Yet, as the agglomerations of single-cells became denser, formerly autonomous individual cells start to rely more and more on each other to exploit previously unattainable resources. As the process accelerates this integrated network forms something novel, and more complex than had previously ever existed: the first multicellular organisms.

The difference between living as an autonomous single-cell is not just quantitative (i.e., being able to exploit more resources) but also qualitative (i.e., shift from complete autonomy to being one small part of an integrated whole). Such a shift is difficult to conceive of before it actually becomes a new normative layer of complexity within the universe.

Another example of such a transition that may require less imagination is the transition to complex language and self-awareness. Language is certainly the most important phenomena that separates our species from the rest of the biosphere. It allows us to engage in a new evolution, technocultural evolution, which is essentially a new normative layer of complexity in the universe as well. For this transition, the qualitative leap is also important to understand. If you were an australopithecine, your mode of communication would not necessarily be that much more efficient than that of any modern day great ape. Like all other organisms, your mind would be essentially isolated. Your deepest thoughts, feelings, and emotions could not fully be expressed and understood by other minds within your species. Furthermore, an entire range of thought would be completely unimaginable to you. Anything abstract would not be communicable. You could communicate that you were hungry; but you could not communicate about what you thought of particular foods (for example). Language changed all that; it unleashed a new thought frontier. Not only was it now possible to exchange ideas at a faster rate, but the range of ideas that could be thought of, also increased.

And so after that digression we come to the main point: the metasystem transition of the 21st century. What will it be? There are two dominant, non-mutually exclusive, frameworks for imagining this transition: technological singularity and the global brain.

The technological singularity is essentially a point in time when the actual agent of techno-cultural change; itself changes. At the moment the modern human mind is the agent of change. But artificial intelligence is likely to emerge this century. And building a truly artificial intelligence may be the last machine we (i.e., biological humans) invent.

The second framework is the global brain. The global brain is the idea that a collective planetary intelligence is emerging from the Internet, created by increasingly dense information pathways. This would essentially give the Earth an actual sensing centralized nervous system, and its evolution would mirror, in a sense, the evolution of the brain in organisms, and the development of higher-level consciousness in modern humans.

In a sense, both processes could be seen as the phenomena that will continue to enable trends identified by global brain theorist Francis Heylighen:

The flows of matter, energy, and information that circulate across the globe become ever larger, faster and broader in reach, thanks to increasingly powerful technologies for transport and communication, which open up ever-larger markets and forums for the exchange of goods and services.

Some view the technological singularity and global brain as competing futurist hypotheses. However, I see them as deeply symbiotic phenomena. If the metaphor of a global brain is apt, at the moment the internet forms a type of primitive and passive intelligence. However, as the internet starts to form an ever greater role in human life, and as all human minds gravitate towards communicating and interacting in this medium, the internet should start to become an intelligent mediator of human interaction. Heylighen explains how this should be achieved:

the intelligent web draws on the experience and knowledge of its users collectively, as externalized in the “trace” of preferences that they leave on the paths they have traveled.

This is essentially how the brain organizes itself, by recognizing the shapes, emotions, and movements of individual neurons, and then connecting them to communicate a “global picture”, or an individual consciousness.

The technological singularity naturally fits within this evolution. The biological human brain can only connect so deeply with the Internet. We must externalize our experience with the Internet in (increasingly small) devices like laptops, smart phones, etc. However, artificial intelligence and biological intelligence enhanced with nanotechnology could form quite a deeper connection with the Internet. Such a development could, in theory, create an all-encompassing information processing system. Our minds (largely “artificial”) would form the neurons of the system, but a decentralized order would emerge from these dynamic interactions. This would be quite analogous to the way higher-level complexity has emerged in the past.

So what does this mean for you? Well many futurists debate the likely timing of this transition, but there is currently a median convergence prediction of between 2040–2050. As we approach this era we should suspect many fundamental things about our current institutions to change profoundly. There will also be several new ethical issues that arise, including issues of individual privacy, and government and corporate control. All issues that deserve a separate post.

Fundamentally this also means that your consciousness and your nature will change considerably throughout this century. The thought my sound bizarre and even frightening, but only if you believe that human intelligence and nature are static and unchanging. The reality is that human intelligence and nature are an ever evolving process. The only difference in this transition is that you will actually be conscious of the evolution itself.

Consciousness has never experienced a metasystem transition (since the last metasystem transition was towards higher-level consciousness!). So in a sense, a post-human world can still include your consciousness. It will just be a new and different consciousness. I think it is best to think about it as the emergence of something new and more complex, as opposed to the death or end of something. For the first time, evolution will have woken up.

Aging destroys fitness. How could aging have evolved? Below is my answer to this question. This is mainstream science from peer-reviewed journals [Ref 1, Ref 2, Ref 3] , but it is my science, and as Richard Feynman warned us*, I’m the last one who can be objective about the merits of this theory. — Josh Mitteldorf

Too fit for its own good

In 1874, a swarm of Rocky Mountain Locusts descended on the American midwest. They covered the sky and shadowed the earth underneath for hundreds of miles. A single cloud was larger than the state of California. Once on the ground, they ate everything that was green, leaving behind a dust bowl. The earth was thick with egg masses, ready to renew the plague the following year.

Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote in her childhood memoir (in the third person)

Huge brown grasshoppers were hitting the ground all around her, hitting her head and her face and her arms. They came thudding down like hail. The cloud was hailing grasshoppers. The cloud was grasshoppers. Their bodies hid the sun and made darkness. Their thin, large wings gleamed and glittered. The rasping, whirring of their wings filled the whole air and they hit the ground and the house with the noise of a hailstorm. Laura tried to beat them off. Their claws clung to her skin and her dress. They looked at her with bulging eyes, turning their heads this way and that. Mary ran screaming into the house. Grasshoppers covered the ground, there was not one bare bit to step on. Laura had to step on grasshoppers and they smashed squirming and slimy under her feet.

The locusts returned in several more seasons, but the last reported sighting of a Rocky Mountain locust was in 1902. There are preserved specimens in museums and laboratories today, but no living locusts. Entomologists interested in the locust’s rise and fall travel to the glaciers of Wyoming, mining hundred-year-old ice for carcasses that they might study.

Where did they go? The Rocky Mountain Locust drove itself to extinction by overshooting its sustainable population.

Every animal species is part of a food web, and depends on an ecosystem to survive. If the ecosystem collapse, it takes down every species and every individual with it. Because of their mobility, the locusts were able to devastate many ecosystems, denuding one landscape, then flying hundreds of miles to deposit their children in a fresh location. Animals that can’t fly become victims of their own greed much more quickly than the locust. If the lions killed every gazelle on the Serengeti, how long would it be before the lions were gone, too?

Evolution of Individuals and Groups

How would an evolutionary biologist describe this situation? Were the locusts too fit for their own good? To capture this story, you have to distinguish between individual fitness and collective fitness. Individually, these locusts were super-competitors. Collectively, they were a circular firing squad. The science of individual fitness and collective fitness is called Multi-level Selection Theory, and it has been spearheaded by David S Wilson of Binghamton University, based on theoretical foundations by George Price. MLS is regarded with suspicion by most evolutionary biologists, but embraced by a minority as sound science.

Selfish organisms that consume as much of the available food species as possible may thrive for a time. They may crowd out other individuals of the same species that compete less aggressively. But as soon as their kind grows to be the majority, they are doomed – they wipe out the food source on which their children depend.

Animals are evolved to be “prudent predators”†. Species that have exploited their food sources too aggressively, or that have reproduced too fast have become extinct in a series of local population crashes. These extinctions have been a potent force of natural selection, counterbalancing the better-known selective pressure toward ever faster and more prolific reproduction.

How did Evolutionary Theory go Wrong?

This is an idea that has common-sense appeal to anyone who thinks logically and practically about evolutionary science. In order not to to appreciate this idea, you need years of training in the mathematical science of evolutionary genetics. Evolutionary genetics is an axiomatic framework, built up logically from postulates that sound reasonable, but the conclusions to which they lead are deeply at odds with the biological world we see. This is the “selfish gene” theory that says all cooperation in nature is a sort of illusion, based on a gene’s tendency to encourage behaviors that promote the welfare of other copies of the same gene in closely-related individuals.

The “selfish gene” is an idea that should have been rejected long ago, as absurd on its face. Yes, there is plenty of selfishness and aggression in nature. But nature is also rich with examples of cooperation between unrelated individuals, and even cooperation across species lines, which is called “co-evolution”. Species become intimately adapted to depend on tiny details of the other’s shape or habits or chemistry. Examples of this are everywhere, from the bacteria in your gut to the flowers and the honeybees. In the same way, predators and their prey (I’m using this word to include plant as well as animal food sources) adapt to be able to co-exist for the long haul. It is obvious to every naturalist that there is a temperance in nature’s communities, that when ecosystems are out of balance they don’t last very long.

It makes good scientific sense that extinctions from overpopulation are a powerful evolutionary force, and it is part of Darwin’s legacy as well. Natural selection is more than merely a race among individuals to reproduce the fastest. The very word “fitness” came from an ability to fit well into the life of the local community.

But beginning some forty years after Darwin’s death, mathematical thinking has led the evolutionary theorists astray. They have forgotten the first principle of science, which is that every theory must be validated by comparing predictions from the theory to the world we see around us. Predictions of the selfish gene theory work well in the genetics lab, but as a description of nature, they fail spectacularly.

Understanding Aging based on Multi-level Selection

If we are willing to look past the “selfish gene” and embrace the science of multi-level selection, we can understand aging as a tribute paid by the individual in support of the ecosystem. If it weren’t for aging, the only way that individuals would die would be by starvation, by diseases, and by predation. All three of these tend to be “clumpy” – that is to say that either no one is dying or everyone is dying at once. Until food species are exhausted, there is no starvation; but then there is a famine, and everyone dies at once. If a disease strikes a community in which everyone is at the peak of their immunological fitness, then either everyone can fend it off, or else everyone dies in an epidemic. And without aging, even death by predation would be very clumpy. Many large predators are just fast enough to catch the aging, crippled prey individuals. If this were not so, then either all the prey would be vulnerable to predators, or none of them would be. There could be no lasting balance between predators and prey.

Aging helps to level the death rate in good times and bad. Without aging, horde dynamics would prevail, as deaths would occur primarily in famines and epidemics. Population would swing wildly up and down. With aging comes the possibility of predictable life spans and death rates that don’t alternately soar and plummet. Ecosystems can have some stability and some persistence.

Aging is plastic, providing further support for ecosystem stability

This would be true even if aging operated on a fixed schedule; but natural selection has created an adaptive aging clock, which further enhances the stabilizing effect. When there is a famine and many animals are dying of starvation, the death rate from old age is down, because of the Caloric Restriction effect. In times of famine and other environmental stress, the death rate from aging actually takes a vacation, because animals become hardier and age more slowly.

When we ask “Why does an animal live longer when it is starving?” the answer is, of course, that the ability to last out a famine and re-seed the population when food once again becomes plentiful provides a great selective advantage. This may sound like it is an adaptation for individual survival, consistent with the selfish gene. But we might ask the same question conversely: “Why does an animal have a shorter life span when there is plenty to eat?” When we look at it this way, it is clear that tying aging to food cannot be explained in terms of the selfish gene. In order to be able to live longer under conditions of starvation, animals must be genetically programmed to hold some fitness in reserve when they have plenty to eat, and this offers an advantage only to the community, not to the individual.

Hormesis is an important clue concerning the evolutionary meaning of aging. This word refers to the fact that when an individual is in a challenging environment, its metabolism doesn’t just compensate to mitigate the damage, but it overcompensates. It becomes so much stronger that it lives longer with challenge than without. The best-known example is that people (and animals) live longer when they’re underfed than when they’re overfed. We also know that exercise tends to increase our life expectancy, despite the fact that exercise generates copious free radicals (ROS) that ought to be pro-aging in their effect.

Without aging, it is difficult for nature to put together a stable ecosystem. Populations are either rising exponentially or collapsing to zero. With aging, it becomes possible to balance birth and death rates, and population growth and subsequent crashes are tamed sufficiently that ecosystems may persist. This is the evolutionary meaning of aging: Aging is a group-selected adaptation for the purpose of damping the wild swings in death rate to which natural populations are prone. Aging helps to make possible stable ecosystems.

___________

“ The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.” — R P Feynman (from the Galileo Symposium, 1964)

† Here “predator” can mean herbivore as well as carnivore. This is the common usage in ecology.

cleavage_new

“I zoomed in as she approached the steps of the bridge, taking voyeuristic pleasure in seeing her pixelated cleavage fill the screen.

What was it about those electronic dots that had the power to turn people on? There was nothing real in them, but that never stopped millions of people every day, male and female, from deriving sexual gratification by interacting with those points of light.

It must all be down to our perception of reality”. –Memories with Maya

We are transitional humans; Transhumans:

Transhumanism is about using technology to improve the human condition. Perhaps a nascent stigma attached to the transhumanist movement in some circles comes from the ethical implications and usage of high technology — bio-tech and nano-tech to name a few, on people. Yet, being transhuman does not necessarily have to be associated with bio-hacking the human body, or entail the donning of cyborg-like prosthetics. Although it is hard not to plainly see and recognize the benefits such human augmentation technology has, for persons in need.

Orgasms and Longevity:

Today, how many normal people, even staunch theists, can claim not to use sexual aids and visual stimulation in the form of video or interaction via video, to achieve sexual satisfaction? It’s hard to deny the therapeutic effect an orgasm has in improving the human condition. In brief, some benefits to health and longevity associated with regular sex and orgasms:

  • When we orgasm we release hormones, including oxytocin and vasopressin. Oxytocin equals relaxation, and when released it can help us calm down and feel euphoric.
  • People having more sex add years to their lifespan. Dr. Oz touts a 200 orgasms a year guideline. [1]

Recommended reading: The Science of Orgasm [2]

While orgasms usually occur as a result of physical sexual activity, there is no conclusive study that proves beneficial orgasms are only produced when sexual activity involves two humans. Erotica in the form of literature and later, moving images, have been used to stimulate the mind into inducing an orgasm for a good many centuries in the absence of a human partner. As technology is the key enabler in stimulating the mind, what might the sexual choices (preferences?) of the human race — the Transhuman be, going forward?

Enter the Sexbot…

(Gray Scott speaking on Sexbots at 1:19 minutes into the video)

SexBots and Digital Surrogates [Dirrogates]

Sexbots, or sex robots can come in two forms. Fully digital incarnations with AI, viewed through Augmented Reality visors, or as physical robots — advanced enough to pass off as human surrogates. The porn industry has always been at the fore-front of video and interactive innovation, experimenting with means of immersing the audience into the “action”. Gonzo Porn [3] is one such technique that started off as a passive linear viewing experience, then progressed to multi-angle DVD interactivity and now to Virtual Reality first person point-of-view interactivity.

Augmented Reality and Digital Surrogates of porn stars performing with AI built in, will be the next logical step. How could this be accomplished?

Somewhere on hard-drives in Hollywood studios, there are full body digital models and “performance capture” files of actors and actresses. When these perf-cap files are assigned to any suitable 3D CGI model, an animator can bring to life the Digital Surrogate [Dirrogate] of the original actor. Coupled with realistic skin rendering using Separable Subsurface Scattering (SSSS) rendering techniques [4] for instance, and with AI “behaviour” libraries, these Dirrogates can populate the real world, enter living-rooms and change or uplift the mood of person — for the better.

(The above video is for illustration purposes of 3D model data-sets and perf-capture)

With 3D printing of human body parts now possible and blue prints coming online [5] with full mechanical assembly instructions, the other kind of sexbot is possible. It won’t be long before the 3D laser-scanned blueprint of a porn star sexbot will be available for licensing and home printing, at which point, the average person will willingly transition to transhuman status once the ‘buy now’ button has been clicked.

Programmable matter — Claytronics [6] will take this technology to even more sophisticated levels.

Sexbots and Ethics:

dirrogate_pov_google_glass_gonzo

If we look at Digital Surrogate Sexbot technology, which is a progression of interactive porn, we can see the technology to create such Dirrogate sexbots exists today, and better iterations will come about in the next couple of years. Augmented Reality hardware when married to wearable technology such as ‘fundawear’ [7] and a photo-realistic Dirrogate driven by perf-captured libraries of porn stars under software (AI) control, can bring endless sessions of sexual pleasure to males and females.

Things get complicated as technology evolves, and to borrow a term from Kurzweil, exponentially. Recently the Kinect 2 was announced. This off the shelf hardware ‘game controller’ in the hands of capable hackers has shown what is possible. It can be used as a full body performance capture solution, a 3D laser scanner that can build a replica of a room in realtime and more…

Which means, during a dirrogate sexbot session where a human wears an Augmented Reality visor such as Meta-glass [8], it would be possible to connect via the internet to your partner, wife or husband and have their live perf-capture session captured by a Kinect 2 controller and drive the photo-realistic Dirrogate of your favorite pornstar.

Would this be the makings of Transhumanist adultry? Some other ethical issues to ponder:

  • Thou shalt not covet their neighbors wife — But there is no commandant about pirating her perf-capture file.
  • Will humans, both male or female, prefer sexbots versus human partners for sexual fulfillment? — Will oxytocin release make humans “feel” for their sexbots?
  • As AI algorithms get better…bordering on artificial sentience, will sexbots start asking for “Dirrogate Rights”?

These are only some of the points worth considering… and if these seem like plausible concerns, imagine what happens in the case of humanoid like physical Sex-bots. As Gray Scott mentions in his video above.

As we evolve into Transhumans, we will find ourselves asking that all important question “What is Real?”

“It will all be down to our perception of reality”. – Memories with Maya

Table of References:

[i] Human Augmentation: Be bionic arm - http://bebionic.com/the_hand/patient_stories/nigel_ackland

[1] http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-4648/10-Reasons-to-Up-You…tient.html

[2] The Science of Orgasm- http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/080188490X?tag=lifeboatfound-…atfound-20

[3] Gonzo Pornography - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzo_pornography

[4] Separable subsurface scattering rendering - http://dirrogate.com/realtime-photorealistic-human-skin-rendering/

[5] 3D Printing of Body parts - http://inmoov.blogspot.fr/p/assembly-help.html

[6] Programmable Matter; Claytronics - http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~claytronics/claytronics/

[7] Fundawear: Wearable sex underwear - http://www.fundawearreviews.com/

[8] Meta-view: Digital see through Augmented Reality visor - http://www.meta-view.com/