Category: transhumanism – Page 71
FOR MY ENGLISH WATCHERS!
Future Flux Festival 2018 was a blast!
In this vlog 2 interviews with Arie (Experience expert bionic technique) and Zoltan (Transhumanist and ran ran for the Presidency of the United States 2016) about techniques which will be the a normal thing future!
What is happening?
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A new interview I did is out at the 2b AHEAD Future Congress event I spoke at in Germany (audio and written): https://www.future.consulting/…/full-interview-with-zoltan…/ #transhumanist
2b AHEAD: So we would like to start an interview with Zoltan Istvan, the presidential candidate for the transhumanist party and leading a figure in the transhumanist movement. Also the best-selling author of “The Transhumanist Wager.” Welcome, glad that you could make it. I hope you’ve been enjoying…
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A being that can consciously alter its own DNA via technological intervention (i.e. cybernetic means) is what our Second Womb has been nurturing. We have used civilization to protect ourselves while we crack the code of our biological being. We started in the womb of the cave. Then moved on to the womb of the hut. Then the village, the city, and the state. All thew hile, we have been tinkering with our own DNA and the DNA of other species. To me, this is the real posthuman or transhuman — it is the creature that is actively editing its own biological blueprint through tech. This is what we’ve been doing since we started augmenting our bodies with clothing and animal skins. We’ve been modifying our ability to endure the slings and arrows of the cosmos.
What is human civilization? It is difficult to assert that other animals do not create their own civilizations — termites for instance meet some criteria for being categorized as cyborgs (building temperature-controlled mega structures). Animals communicate, express feelings, and have personalities. Octopi arrange furniture for would-be mates. Others engage in mating rituals. Some mourn the dead. Birds can solve simple math. Critters scheme, enterprise, forge bonds, and even produce art. What do we do that animals do not?
To our credit, we are the only animals that record, share, and develop history upon structures and materials outside of our bodies. We harness energy for massive projects. We farm, but again, so do leaf-cutter ants. But we create genetically novel vegetables and animals. We alter the global climate. Our enterprises are global, and given time and opportunity, our projects will eventually become exostellar. We do all this rather ferociously. Human history is a rather short explosion of civilization-building activities, and yet it might already have irrevocably altered the future of all life on this planet. No other creature has created a circumstance quite like that of human beings and our anthropocene project. For instance, unless we clean up the environment, the next few generations of plant and animal life are going to have be extremely resilient to radiation, Styrofoam, plastics, and other run-offs squeezed out from the human project. That is just a fact of life now on earth.
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I’m excited to share my interview with Jakub Dymek on #transhumanism in the new edition of The Aspen Institute (Eastern Europe) quarterly Aspen Review magazine.
Let’s think about this: what happens when sometime in the future the whole generation of Chinese kids have higher IQs than their American peers, because they’re technologically hardwired for that? Will this be a national security issue? This is a global security issue—says Zoltan Istvan in an interview with Jakub Dymek.
JAKUB DYMEK: You are a transhumanist—member of a movement endorsing technologically augmented advancement of human species and using technology to extend our capabilities. What does transhumanist thinking bring into the world of policy debate in the US and worldwide and how politically influential it is?
ZOLTAN ISTVAN: Transhumanism influences politics today only a little bit. But at the same time, transhumanist movement grows exponentially, like 1000% every year. So I think its implications for the policy debate here in the US and globally will only grow in scale and importance, obviously. Transhumanism can define policy debate of the future, of that I’m sure. President Trump can say today that manufacturing jobs and jobs in general are lost because of immigrants. But he wouldn’t be able to say the same thing up until 2020 campaign, because it’s simply not true, and more people realize the simple fact that jobs aren’t lost to immigration, but automation. It’s tech “stealing the jobs” he is going to have to say then. And you cannot build a wall to stop technology from spreading. This is how transhumanism is already shaping this debate. And it goes beyond jobs.
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The deadlines set for “singularity” are also seen by some as an attempt to scare and coerce governments into implementing the movement’s social and technological “agenda”. However, when the names of major tech corporations of the world like Google, Nokia and Tesla are associated with the transhumanist ideology, it is difficult to dismiss the premise and prospects of this new revolutionary socio-technological movement.
For several centuries, political movements have emanated from nationalist or religious convictions, socio-political and economic theories or even environmental concerns. However, issues of science and technology have rarely driven mainstream socio-political discourse as scientists have hardly ever indulged in propounding societal constructs for the future.
However, a technology-oriented intellectual movement may soon become the focus of political debate as 21st century science stands at the brink of reshaping human identity itself.
By the turn of the millennium, Transhumanism rose as a futurist social movement, led by some of the leading researchers and heads of global tech corporations (mostly based in the super-rich Silicon Valley), but has only recently gained greater media coverage and popularity apart from inspiring the plotlines for many Hollywood films.
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KrioRus charges $36,000 to cryonize a corpse, or half that for just the head. The process is fairly straightforward: First, cryonicists drain the blood of the “patient,” and pump in a solution resembling antifreeze. The body goes into a cooling chamber beneath KrioRus’s 2,000-square-foot hangar in Sergiyev Posad, a suburb north of Moscow, for roughly a week. Then it’s immersed, head first, in a double-walled dewar of liquid nitrogen, where it hangs indefinitely until scientists figure out how to revive it. In this way, KrioRus has cryopreserved 61 people and 31 pets, including a cat, a goldfinch, and a chinchilla. At least 487 others have signed up.
“Maybe in five, 30, or 300 years, there will be a way to wake her again,” Riabinina says.
Riabinina’s story is among several that Italian photographer Giuseppe Nucci documents in -196: The Pioneers of Resurrection. His ethereal, atmospheric images respectfully capture the quest for immortality in Russia, home to a visionary gaggle of cosmists, cryonicists, and transhumanists who believe in a deathless future. They preach resurrection, wear high-tech cyber-suits, and deep-freeze the corpses of loved ones they hope to meet again.
“We are all scared of death,” Nucci says. “The idea that humans will one day defeat it is fascinating.”
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What does it mean to be human in world of increasingly powerful technology? This is a question video games have grappled with, most recently in the “Deus Ex” franchise and the upcoming E3 show-stealing “Cyberpunk 2077.”
Daedalic’s “State of Mind” approaches the topic in a different, more philosophical way. Guns and body mods aren’t the order of the day. Rather, “State of Mind” is a narrative adventure that considers how far the human race will go to trade dystopia for utopia.
Creative lead Martin Ganteföhr is an avid follower of transhumanist theory, and how humanity will evolve over the coming decades as scientists pursue the singularity. Transhumanism explores the intersection of people and technology, with the ultimate goal giving all people access to technology that leads to an egalitarian utopia.
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Investigators at Harvard Medical School have identified the key cellular mechanisms behind vascular aging and its effects on muscle health, and they have successfully reversed the process in animals.
The scientists used a chemical compound that’s an NAD+ booster called NMN which plays a critical role in repairing cellular DNA as well as maintaining cell vitality to test what would happen.
Could reversing the aging of blood vessels hold the key to restoring youthful vitality? If the old adage “you are as old as your arteries” reigns true then the answer is yes, at least in mice.
According to a new study by Harvard Medical School researchers, they have identified the cellular mechanisms that cause the aging of vascular arteries as well as the effects of such aging on the health of muscles. The Medical team was also able to successfully reverse this aging process.
What these findings seem to indicate is that there’s a glitch in the normal crosswalk between both muscles and blood vessels and keeping both tissues healthy. The scientists were also able reverse the demise of blood vessels and muscle atrophy in the aging mice by using the synthetic precursors of two molecules naturally present in the body. This boosted their exercise endurance in the process.
The Medical team is excited because such a breakthrough will now pave the way to identifying new therapies for humans.
Study senior investigator David Sinclair, professor in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and co-director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging at Harvard Medical School stated “we’ve discovered a way to reverse vascular aging by boosting the presence of naturally occurring molecules in the body that augment the physiological response to exercise.”
Because there are some very important differences in biology between humans and mice there’s a possibility that this treatment may not have the same effect in humans. Nonetheless, the research team plans to follow through with human clinical trials because the results of this experiment were important enough to prompt the research team in doing so.
Sinclair, who is also a professor at the University of New South Wales School of Medical Sciences in Sydney, Australia stated, “the approach stimulates blood vessel growth and boosts stamina and endurance in mice and sets the stage for therapies in humans to address the spectrum of diseases that arise from vascular aging.”
One of the side effects of aging is reduced blood flow and the compromise of oxygenation of organs and tissue because our tiniest blood vessels began to wither and die. Cardiac and neurologic conditions, muscle loss, impaired wound healing and overall frailty, and among other things are the results of vascular aging. As these blood vessels die there’s a loss of blood flow to organs and tissues which causes toxins build-up and a loss of oxygen.
For quite some time scientists have known the essential role that endothelial cells, which line blood vessels, play in the health and growth of blood vessels that supply oxygen-rich and nutrient-loaded blood to organs and tissues. Unfortunately, as with all things on the human body, these endothelial cells age having a detrimental effect on the body. New blood vessels fail to form, blood vessels atrophy, and the overall blood flow to most parts of the body diminishes. This has a powerful impact on muscles, which heavily rely on robust blood supply to function because they’re heavily vascularized.
Typically we exercise in hopes of slowing down sarcopenia, but unfortunately even that doesn’t last forever. Gradually our muscles grow weaker and begin to shrivel as part of the aging process.
What precisely curtails the blood flow and precipitates this unavoidable decline? Why does even exercise lose its protective power to sustain muscle vitality? Is this process reversible? There were some of the leading questions Sinclair and team had.
The Experiment/Results:
Sinclair and his team discovered through a series of experiments that the flow of blood is reduced as endothelial cells start to lose a critical protein known as sirtuin1, or SIRT1. SIRT1 delays aging and extends life in yeast and mice as shown in previous studies.
Research done previously by Sinclair and others has shown that NAD+ boosts the activity of SIRT1. SIRT1 loss is a result of the loss of NAD+, which is a key regulator of protein interactions and DNA repair that was identified more than a century ago. As NAD+ declines with age so does the protein SIRT1.
The results showed that the critical interface that enables the conversation between endothelial cells in the walls of blood vessels and muscle cells is provided by NAD+ and SIRT1.
SIRT1 signaling is activated and generates new capillaries, the tiniest blood vessels in the body that supply oxygen and nutrients to tissues and organs in young mice muscles. As the mice aged, however, the study found that muscle tissue was left nutrient-deprived and oxygen-starved as a result in the diminishment of NAD+ and SIRT1.
The researchers hope that their findings may pave the way to therapeutic advances that hold promise for the millions of older people for whom regular physical activity is not an option.
Abhirup Das, the studies first author, who conducted the work as a post-doctoral fellow in Sinclair’s lab, currently a visiting scholar in genetics at Harvard Medical School and a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of South New Wales School of Medical Sciences, said that “we reasoned that declining NAD+ levels reduce SIRT1 activity and thus interfere with aging mice’s ability to grow new blood vessels.”
The researchers then set their sights on the NAD+, which is a critical coenzyme for enzymes that fuel reduction-oxidation reactions, carrying electrons from one reaction to another, and as a cosubstrate for other enzymes such as the sirtuins and poly(adenosine diphosphate-ribose) polymerases.
The scientists used a chemical compound that’s an NAD+ booster called NMN (no not m&m!) which plays a critical role in repairing cellular DNA as well as maintaining cell vitality to test what would happen.
One of the results showed that treatment from NMN caused endothelial cells from humans and mice to have strong growth capacity and reduced cell death.
The team then wondered what would happen to a group of mice that were 20 months old—the rough equivalent of 70 in human years given NMN. After a 2 month time span the results showed that NMN treatment restored the number of blood capillaries and capillary density to those seen in younger mice. Blood flow to the muscles also increased and was significantly higher than blood supply to the muscles seen in same-age mice that didn’t receive NMN.
That wasn’t the most surprising result to the researchers however. What they discovered was that the aging mice showed in comparison to the entreated mice that they regained the capacity to exercise by 56 and 80% more. The untreated mice could only run 240 meters, or 780 feet, on average whereas the mice treated with NMN could run 430 meters, or about 1,400 feet, on average. This treatment could be an answer to humans who have lost the capacity to exercise due to other disabilities or age-related diseases.
The next step for the researchers was to explore methods for boosting the activity of SIRT1. To do this the researchers added a second compound NaHS, sodium hydrosulfide, which is known to be a precursor of SIRT1.
For four weeks a group of mice that were 32-month-old mice—the rough equivalent to 90 in human years—receiving the combo treatment. The results were significant! Not only were the mice able to run longer and faster but they were able to outperform the untreated mice by a longshot. The treated mice ran 1.6 times further than the untreated mice.
Study co-author James Mitchell, associate professor of genetics and complex diseases at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health stated that “these are really old mice so our finding that the combo treatment doubles their running capacity is nothing short of intriguing.”
“This observation underscores the notion that age plays a critical role in the crosstalk between blood vessels and muscles and points to a loss of NAD+ and SIRT1 as the reason behind loss of exercise effectiveness after middle age,” Das said.
One of the ultimate goals for the team is to eventually move forward in developing small-molecule, NMN-based drugs that mimic the effects of exercise—enhanced blood flow and oxygenation of muscles and other tissues. Though they must first replicate their findings first. Such therapies could potentially help with new vessel growth of organs that suffer tissue-damaging loss of blood supply and oxygen, a common scenario in heart attacks and ischemic strokes, the team said.