tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28288876317026994202024-02-20T09:35:07.541-08:00EMERGING TECH TRENDS FOR TRANSHUMANISMThe latest tech trends in transhumanism, cybernetics, BCI's, genetics and biotechnologyUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger216125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2828887631702699420.post-54857637344401487412016-09-16T09:51:00.000-07:002016-09-16T09:51:01.849-07:00Monkeys Are Finally Writing Shakespeare, Thanks To A New Brain-Computer InterfaceYou don’t need an infinite number of monkeys to type out the complete works of William Shakespeare.<br />
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What you need, according to a team of researchers from Stanford University, is one monkey equipped with a brain implant that allows it to interface with a computer.<br />
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In a new experiment described in the journal IEEE, researchers were able to use a brain-computer interface (BCI) to enable thought-controlled typing at a rate of up to 12 words a minute — the highest brain-based typing rate ever achieved. In the experiment conducted on two rhesus macaques, the animals were able to transcribe passages from Hamlet and the New York Times.<br />
<br />
You don’t need an infinite number of monkeys to type out the complete works of William Shakespeare.<br />
<br />
What you need, according to a team of researchers from Stanford University, is one monkey equipped with a brain implant that allows it to interface with a computer.<br />
<br />
In a new experiment described in the journal IEEE, researchers were able to use a brain-computer interface (BCI) to enable thought-controlled typing at a rate of up to 12 words a minute — the highest brain-based typing rate ever achieved. In the experiment conducted on two rhesus macaques, the animals were able to transcribe passages from Hamlet and the New York Times.<br />
<br />
You don’t need an infinite number of monkeys to type out the complete works of William Shakespeare.<br />
<br />
What you need, according to a team of researchers from Stanford University, is one monkey equipped with a brain implant that allows it to interface with a computer.<br />
<br />
In a new experiment described in the journal IEEE, researchers were able to use a brain-computer interface (BCI) to enable thought-controlled typing at a rate of up to 12 words a minute — the highest brain-based typing rate ever achieved. In the experiment conducted on two rhesus macaques, the animals were able to transcribe passages from Hamlet and the New York Times.<br />
<br />
When it comes to humans, this technology can be paired with an auto-completion technology used by smartphones or tablets in order to drastically improve typing speeds. On the flip side, however, the typing speeds of humans using the technology is likely to be slowed down by the fact that they need to actually think about what they want to communicate and how to spell words.<br />
<br />
“What we cannot quantify is the cognitive load of figuring out what words you are trying to say,” Nuyujukian said.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2828887631702699420.post-14170548533738529362016-03-20T20:42:00.003-07:002016-03-20T20:42:27.391-07:00 Lockheed's exoskeleton in action<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,47,0" height="412" id="flashObj" width="486"><param name="movie" value="http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /><param name="flashVars" value="videoId=1425032752001&playerID=50062332001&playerKey=AQ~~,AAAAC5-T5PE~,wqUSmzEilcGZ42JykwY_hXzUSV0g2AVf&domain=embed&dynamicStreaming=true" /><param name="base" value="http://admin.brightcove.com" /><param name="seamlesstabbing" value="false" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="swLiveConnect" value="true" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><embed src="http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" flashVars="videoId=1425032752001&playerID=50062332001&playerKey=AQ~~,AAAAC5-T5PE~,wqUSmzEilcGZ42JykwY_hXzUSV0g2AVf&domain=embed&dynamicStreaming=true" base="http://admin.brightcove.com" name="flashObj" width="486" height="412" seamlesstabbing="false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowFullScreen="true" swLiveConnect="true" allowScriptAccess="always" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash"></embed></object>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2828887631702699420.post-36882965546587003532014-05-26T04:00:00.000-07:002015-08-21T15:53:36.953-07:00Speeding up brain networks might boost IQ<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwjRzUFFKnAZ-mf88ZGxEFPMRc-j35J-V7tkJjBLb6op5SmNxor7cSufnR9IKTZzOKqjeIsOTUYeGUHxwh85LNftK9BUfcvwZ0-q8hQoAqhEc3TM0G-InBqLtkFvR3EEF0GuS6NuaiILw/s1600/ait+forec.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwjRzUFFKnAZ-mf88ZGxEFPMRc-j35J-V7tkJjBLb6op5SmNxor7cSufnR9IKTZzOKqjeIsOTUYeGUHxwh85LNftK9BUfcvwZ0-q8hQoAqhEc3TM0G-InBqLtkFvR3EEF0GuS6NuaiILw/s1600/ait+forec.jpg" width="200" /></a>Back in 2009 a team of dutch scientists were analyzing the brain. They found that for all the denseness of the<br />
<br />
<br />
brain doesn't really matter. It does just not as much as they originally thought. Its really about the efficiency of the wired brain. They found that the most intelligent people have the fastest connections not the most<br />
<br />
Thus suggests that you may be able to increase your brain performance or boost your intelligence via drugs. It also suggests that by speeding up ANN's (Artificial Neural Networks) may boost the intelligence of the system<br />
<br />
In 2011 There were some studies done by Air Force researchers. They found that they could cut training time in half for air force pilots by delivering a mild electrical current (two milliamperes of direct current for 30 minutes).You can read the full article <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/amping-up-brain-function/" rel="nofollow">here</a><br />
<br />
There are already a number of consumer products being created to try and take advantage of this discovery and its starting to hit the mainstream. Wired did an article on it <span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: small;">"Inside the Strange New World of DIY Brain Stimulation". As well self described biohackers like Tim Ferriss and Dave Asprey are touting the positive effects it has had on them.</span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh720Sa3smxP08ofRmPM4ZW0E9h5z4DCVKDNdgSRRmDl9olhw06Z_-N8hw0rjLu60y3Ayn9FaiNp7ldHk-NYh3MloSsAFXlslJHXzI_TFSm6dwmTB5F4vgTo_BGTQcHnpLLS017OfZ8lxA/s1600/foc.us-red-box-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Foc.us" border="0" height="112" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh720Sa3smxP08ofRmPM4ZW0E9h5z4DCVKDNdgSRRmDl9olhw06Z_-N8hw0rjLu60y3Ayn9FaiNp7ldHk-NYh3MloSsAFXlslJHXzI_TFSm6dwmTB5F4vgTo_BGTQcHnpLLS017OfZ8lxA/s1600/foc.us-red-box-2.jpg" title="Foc.us" width="200" /></a>Foc.us has released several product geared for gamers. And Fisher Wallace has release a slightly different product to help people treat insomnia<br />
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You can check out foc.us <a href="http://www.foc.us/" rel="nofollow">here</a><br />
<br />
You can check out Fisher wallace's product <a href="http://www.fisherwallace.ca/?gclid=CInEuaeIxr4CFXQ1MgodaQwAdA" rel="nofollow">here</a> <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij8sNv0fBRz6y0oAK6IYBydRDlTr9Df1HX4D-PKvjPCutieWhDO2zoI5Y1zs9HbTug-4W3Wd-JRD3GDwHcRf5mI3uwvwFgzAtt_M2R40OmMqb4VYm1q7iLXxuLphHcQG3NM_SmATSM_zY/s1600/fisher+wallace.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Fisher WAllace" border="0" height="175" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij8sNv0fBRz6y0oAK6IYBydRDlTr9Df1HX4D-PKvjPCutieWhDO2zoI5Y1zs9HbTug-4W3Wd-JRD3GDwHcRf5mI3uwvwFgzAtt_M2R40OmMqb4VYm1q7iLXxuLphHcQG3NM_SmATSM_zY/s1600/fisher+wallace.jpeg" title="Fisher Wallace" width="200" /></a></div>
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So I decided to buy one a year ago and test it on myself. I got a cheaper <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00YG4D6UW/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00YG4D6UW&linkCode=as2&tag=cfi08-20&linkId=DZWSWSBHRYQBZ2XL">tDCS ApeX Type A</a><img alt="" border="0" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=cfi08-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B00YG4D6UW" height="1" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" /> from Amazon. It worked great just like I expected. Being a connoisseur of nootropics(aka smart drugs) I usually run a battery of tests on myself to see if they are actually doing anything like the dual and back test. I did notice some improvement in working memory. I am still using it once a week to this day. I do believe I am gaining a benefit from it.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2828887631702699420.post-82861899200887347362014-05-24T06:21:00.000-07:002014-05-24T18:33:00.800-07:00Primordial Gravitational Waves: The future of probing the past<div style="text-align: left;">
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_%28sacecraft%29" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" rel="nofollow" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="primordial gravitational waves" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9I5zSUo7Phc5Kvs0fFXXO2BGC2VqPYqzP-eJ1fve5w9QQ_9fQsvR-zHgImAaFikn_36VMVV_gOdpm7C1FZ6l3uWlXL709lU2sAeuvn9a_Ekm5YGblxp0aejktnWldO1bq0X-dCrVIjtc/s400/mg20227073.700-1_300.jpg" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5334927618511098178" style="display: block; height: 185px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 300px;" title="primordial gravitational waves" /></a></div>
Launched back on May 14,2009 the European Space Agency's Planck satellite will<br />
enable us to find out what happened just fractions of a second after the big bang by examining the cosmic<br />
microwave background in exquisite detail. <br />
<br />
Now 5 years later they are getting closer than ever to finally getting some answers. They recently released an announcement saying they have just found some signs of primordial gravitational waves.<br />
<br />
A ways back Einstein theorized that gravitational waves were a kind of ripple in
space-timeand did in fact exist.<br />
<br />
Scientists were using Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarisation (BICEP2 for short) at an
experiment at the South Pole and may have found footprints these waves.<br />
<br />
What might this mean in lamens terms?<br />
<br />
Studying the Universe with gravitational waves can bring about a
wealth of new data. Produced mostly by catastrophic events like
collisions of black holes, these waves are completely different in their
nature from electromagnetic radiation. It is like adding sound to our
image of the Universe.<br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2828887631702699420.post-25630505582543122812013-12-08T21:37:00.002-08:002014-05-21T09:18:10.441-07:00voice control for your home for time and money savingsBeing hands free and well be freeing. I've been experimenting with an older version of dragon naturally speaking for the last couple of years. I started using it for just commanding my pc but quickly started messing around with it for my AI robotics projects, syncing it up with various devices attached to my house like our lighting, heating, water, window systems and my cell phone. I have found great time savings in using these technologies.<br />
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<u>Advantages of using a voice control system for your house</u><br />
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When i walk into my house i don't have to turn on 3-5 light switch's. When i leave my house my kids are running around over 3 floors and its time consuming to have to go back checking every light to make sure they are all off. Its easier just to speak into your cell phone "shut it all down" and your good to go. When you are doing something in a room for a long period of time you can save electricity by telling your system to shut everything else off. Many appliances get left on especially if you area busy person or have kids running all over your house like I do. You can hook up your water sprinkler systems to this also but it really isn't necessary if you get a cheap 5$ timer from your local hardware store.<br />
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What i found is a way to hook all this up with some free software online. You will of course need to get the right devices to control each. Afterwards you will have to sync them up with your controller of choice(desktop computer, cell phone, tablet etc) and do some adjustments with voice control software. But it is very doable even for the non-techie.It you really want to go all out you could hook up mics in each room or wear a bluetooth or headset around the house<br />
<br />
<u>Software</u><br />
Epeaking software is the free one I was talking about. Its biggest benefit is that's its free. The downside is that you will have to do a little more tinkering with it.<br />
<a href="http://www.e-speaking.com/free_pc_voice_control.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.e-speaking.com/free_pc_voice_control.htm</a><br />
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The best software that's the easiest to use that I started with was <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008MR36FE/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B008MR36FE&linkCode=as2&tag=cfi08-20&linkId=FCUXY2I5FGI4RFZI">Dragon NaturallySpeaking Home 12.0, English</a><img alt="" border="0" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=cfi08-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B008MR36FE" height="1" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" />. It runs about 50$<br />
<br />
<b><u>mics/controller</u></b><br />
<b><u><br /></u></b>
There are lots of reasonably priced mics for under 100$ that will suit your needs.Make sure they are omni-directional which means they will pick up sound from the entire area around the mic and not just directly in front of it.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2828887631702699420.post-37461151812539095542013-10-14T00:04:00.003-07:002013-10-14T00:04:38.287-07:00Are We Still the Same Person After a Consciousness Upload?<h4 style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: #f9f9f9; border: 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px; margin: 1.5em 0px 1em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<b style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">How Realistic is This?</b></h4>
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Ok, this one is a bit of a leap. We’re nowhere near uploading our entire minds into a computer, depending on who you ask. But there are definitely some folks working on figuring out how to do it. Earlier this year, famous futurist (and director of engineering at Google) Ray Kurzweil said a conservative estimate would have us uploading our brains into a computer by 2045. And, hey, if Google says it will happen there’s no reason to think it’s not possible. Though, in the same speech he also said the singularity would be upon us by 2100. So, grain of salt. Others argue uploading our brains may actually never be possible at all.</div>
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<b style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Ethical Conundrum</b></h4>
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You’re going to have to decide how much you like your body and want to hang on to it. Once you upload your consciousness there’s very likely no going back. You also have no idea what to expect from living inside a computer, which means you’ll have to accept the fact that your very idea of consciousness might change once you’ve become fully digital. If your friends and family aren’t uploading themselves you’ll also have to decide if you’re willing to give up your current way of interacting with them. Or accept the fact that you may never see them again. But if the singularity has already happened, then you’ll get the added benefit of being smarter, faster, and better than a human.</div>
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<b style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What the Ethicists Say</b></h4>
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There isn’t a whole lot of legitimate writing on the ethics of uploading the brain. But those considering it often point to The Ship of Theseus, or Theseus’s Paradox, which goes something like this (excerpt from Logical Paradoxes):</div>
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<i style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Theseus is remembered in Greek mythology as the slayer of the Minotaur. For years, the Athenians had been sending sacrifices to be given to the Minotaur, a half-man, half-bull beast who inhabited the labyrinth of Knossos. One year, Theseus braved the labyrinth, and killed the Minotaur.</i></div>
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<i style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The ship in which he returned was long preserved. As parts of the ship needed repair, it was rebuilt plank by plank. Suppose that, eventually, every plank was replaced; would it still have been the same ship? A strong case can be made for saying that it would have been: When the first plank was replaced, the ship would still have been Theseus’ ship. When the second was replaced, the ship would still have been Theseus’ ship. Changing a single plank can never turn one ship into another. Even when every plank had been replaced, then, and no part of the original ship remained, it would still have been Theseus’ ship.</i></div>
<div style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: #f9f9f9; border: 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<i style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Suppose, though, that each of the planks removed from Theseus’ ship was restored, and that these planks were then recombined to once again form a ship. Would this have been Theseus’ ship? Again, a strong case can be made for saying that it would have been: this ship would have had precisely the same parts as Theseus’ ship, arranged in precisely the same way.</i></div>
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<i style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">If this happened, then it would seem that Theseus had returned from Knossos in two ships. First, there would have been Theseus’ ship that has had each of its parts replaced one by one. Second, there would have been Theseus’ ship that had been dismantled, restored, and then reassembled. Each of them would have been Theseus’ ship.</i></div>
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<i style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Theseus, though, sailed in only one ship. Which one?</i></div>
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In other words, if we upload our consciousness into a computer, removing our physical brain and body from the equation entirely, are we still human? At this point you have to ask, what makes us human? Another nearly impossible question to answer -- though some argue it’s our intelligence and creativity. According to The American Museum of Natural History, our brains play the biggest role:</div>
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<i style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">All species on Earth, including humans, are unique. Yet our intelligence and creativity go well beyond those of any other animal. Humans have long communicated through language, created and appreciated art and music, and invented complex tools that have enabled our species to survive and thrive, though often at the expense of other species.</i></div>
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<i style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">We owe our creative success to the human brain and its capacity to think symbolically. While some other species can solve problems and communicate with each other, only humans use symbols to re-create the world mentally and dream up endless new realities. Although humans have not lost their selfish motivations, symbolic thought has opened our minds to spirituality and a shared sense of empathy and morality.</i></div>
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Will we still be capable of these things once we’re inside the machine? And do we care? Maybe by the time we upload ourselves being human don't be so important anymore. It will be time to evolve beyond that.</div>
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<b style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">So what say you? Should we leave our fragile bodies behind and embark on a brave new world of consciousness inside the computer? Or will uploading our minds make us lose everything that makes us human? Discuss!</b></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2828887631702699420.post-73277028780162932092013-05-18T19:11:00.003-07:002014-05-21T09:19:44.636-07:00Benefits of Nicotine for Improved Performance <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGlnka0MHrP_-efOiTgZ3QqtbKaGGbUlVoVjPAkOLRZeGciX82665zx7QM3gvqlp4Yhh2dmjufwMdCP4YQEsyOY7E27CTJ4FakPPNAis0wtg_6qXABYnWFi3vUTQfCuQln4Z-O_nFQBCM/s1600/nicotine-gum.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGlnka0MHrP_-efOiTgZ3QqtbKaGGbUlVoVjPAkOLRZeGciX82665zx7QM3gvqlp4Yhh2dmjufwMdCP4YQEsyOY7E27CTJ4FakPPNAis0wtg_6qXABYnWFi3vUTQfCuQln4Z-O_nFQBCM/s200/nicotine-gum.jpg" height="200" width="200" /></a>Most people think that the main negative impact of cigarette smoking is from nicotine but that's pretty <br />
misleading. There are 1000's of chemicals that are far stonger and more dangerous than nicotine. In fact there many studies that have been done that showing there can be benefits when using small amounts of nicotine.<br />
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There are several studies done that show Nicotine has quickened the response time and helped concentration in rats and humans alike. An article in Cosmos magazine links to several studies that show it has shown to help reduce symptoms of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and dementia sufferers as well.<br />
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The Study titled "<span style="background-color: white; color: #202020; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; line-height: inherit;">Effect of nicotine on brain activation during performance of a working memory task" </span><a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/98/8/4728." rel="nofollow">(find article here)</a>full showed that 4mg of nicotine gum or <span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; text-align: justify;">two pieces of polacrilex gum to chew for 15 min at a rate of one chew every 3 sec which is the same as the average American cigarette </span>improved<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; text-align: justify;"> small improvements in finger-tapping rate, motor response on tests of focused and sustained attention, and recognition memory.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">If you've decided to try it out the biggest health risk that I could find any information on showed that you need to be concerned with long term use and of course addiction if you overuse it. There is one study that blamed long-term use of nicotine gum </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #191919; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.5; text-align: inherit;">leads to insulin resistance, metabolic abnormalities associated with the insulin resistance syndrome, and increased cardiovascular morbidity. Thus, the use of nicotine replacement therapy during smoking cessation should be transient and limited.You can see the study<a href="http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/94/5/878.full" rel="nofollow"> here</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #191919; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.5; text-align: inherit;">Just make sure you don't use it regularly. To a large extent people frankly eat shit all day long and don't eat a healthy diet. The increase in cardiovascular disease and insulin resistance can pretty much be reduced with a low inflammation diet and a healthy lifestyle. A great little site <a href="http://theconsciouslife.com/top-10-inflammatory-foods-to-avoid.htm" rel="nofollow">"The Conscious Mind"</a> I found the other day has tons of free information on it.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #191919;"><span style="line-height: 24px;"> Also one more caveat. If you are new to using this and don't smoke then start small. Use 2mg at first or even half a piece and use for about 10-15 mins. If you use the full 4mg like I did it'll likely be too much or for too long then you'll probably experience light-headedness or dizziness and some nervousness.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #191919;"><span style="line-height: 24px;">If you have decided to give it a shot there is a great deal at amazon right now on equate for 20 pieces 4mg mint flavored nicotine gum.You can find it below</span></span></div>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2828887631702699420.post-66360230657667626322013-05-10T07:52:00.000-07:002014-05-21T09:22:57.626-07:00New Poll Shows People Favor TranshumanismIn case you were wondering if people favor transhumanism a new poll on the Nationstates political forum from May 2013 shows people favor transhumanism.by a wide margin.<br />
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The results of that poll are below<br />
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I'm all for it 106 57%<br />
Needs to be controlled 64 35%<br />
Should be banned 15 8%<br />
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Forum thread for Nationstates <a href="http://forum.nationstates.net/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=240159&start=350" rel="nofollow">here</a><br />
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Another similar poll from the Escapist.com forum in 2010 shows people favor transhumanism also<br />
72.3% Yes<br />
25.5% No<br />
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Forum thread for The Escapist <a href="http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/528.204111-Poll-Transhumanism?page=2" rel="nofollow">here</a><br />
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Where do you stand?<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2828887631702699420.post-19786438569472781262013-04-29T16:56:00.000-07:002014-05-21T09:23:22.205-07:00How do I know this isn't a mind control device?<br />
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I have seen a few forum strings with people discussing concerns about brain computer interfaces. Mainly<br />
people asking if they are safe. will extended use cause any side effects or even if they are mind control devices or if someone can read your mind with them.<br />
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Any time radically new technology is introduced there are concerns about its safety like cell phones causing brain tumors. Its impossible to tell any long term side effects but there are many people that have been using them for decades without any health issues related to eeg use. sometimes when using mine for hours i have experienced a sore scalp due to the eeg sensors rubbing against my scalp caused design issues but nothing related to reduced cognitive ability or headaches.<br />
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I found a good FAQ page for the muse by interaxon you can find <a href="http://interaxon.ca/muse/faq.php" rel="nofollow">here</a>. They even address concerns about it stealing your mind ;-)Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2828887631702699420.post-24024559790851927832013-04-26T13:38:00.001-07:002014-05-21T09:23:45.425-07:00Carbon CopiesI recently found a site devoted solely towards research as substrate independent minds or mind uploading or whole brain emulation. A little similar to the 2045 project.<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">Carboncopies.org</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #565555; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"> is a nonprofit organisation with a goal of advancing the </span><b style="background-color: white; color: #565555; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><span style="color: black;">reverse engineering</span></b><span style="background-color: white; color: #565555; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"> of neural tissue and complete brains and to reproduce the functions thereof, creating what we call </span><a href="http://www.carboncopies.org/substrate-independent-minds" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: white; color: #360860; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><b>Substrate-Independent Minds</b></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #565555; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"> (SIM).</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #565555; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="line-height: 19px;">Here is a video presentation of Randall Koene of the Carbon Copies Project</span></span></span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2828887631702699420.post-41270491522573773692013-04-26T07:14:00.002-07:002014-05-19T19:56:04.129-07:00Interview with Ramez Naam on his new book<div style="border: 0px; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 21.046875px; margin-bottom: 24px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Brain tech, telepathic drugs, and ass-kicking Buddhists: a fascinating talk with Ramez Naam about his new transhuman science fiction novel "Nexus". </div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><u><i><span style="color: lime;">Testimonials</span></i></u></strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Wired</strong> says “Good. Scary good… stop reading now and have a great time reading a bleeding edge technical thriller that is full of surprises.”</span> </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing </strong>says “Nexus is a superbly plotted high tension technothriller… full of delicious moral ambiguity… a hell of a read.”</span> </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><strong style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Wall Street Journal </strong>says “Provocative… a double-edged vision of the post-human.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ars Technica </strong>says “Nexus is a lightning bolt of a novel… with a sense of awe missing from a lot of current fiction.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Booklist</strong> says “<strong style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Starred Review. </strong>Naam turns in a stellar performance with his debut SF novel… What matters here is the remarkable scope of the story and its narrative power.”</span> </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><strong style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Publisher’s Weekly</strong> says “Mesmerizing”.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><strong style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">SFX Magazine </strong><span style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">says “Naam displays a Michael Crichton-like ability to explain cutting-edge research via the medium of an airport techno-thriller.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ben Goertzel</span> at HPlus Magazine</strong> says “speculative yet impressively plausible… Nexus, as well as being a fun read, has something to contribute to the dialogue that humanity is now having with itself”</span> </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><strong style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">WTF Ar<span style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">e You Reading? </span></strong><span style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">says “the perfect blend of “The Matrix” and “War Games”… I would recommend this book to anyone who has ever sat in from of the glow of their computer screen and wondered “what if”…”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Katherine McCarthy at the IEET</strong> says “If it isn’t the cinematic handling of some very futuristic images or the curious immersion of cybernetic pondering into the narrative flow; Ramez Naam’s Nexus will impress a reader”</span> </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">PageOfReviews </strong>says “<em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Nexus </em>is a fascinating study into how technology might inform human evolution. At times it is also a scathing commentary on the United States’ “War on Drugs” and “War on Terror”.</span>” </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Timothy Ward</strong> says “Ramez writes excellent action sequences, incorporating his technology well, and the lives at stake are more than just cardboard cutouts. No one in this story is “as meets the eye,’”</span> </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><strong style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Trevor Hogg at Flickering Myth </strong>says ““Naam has a visual style with his words which leads to one experiencing cinematic scenes rather than being swamped with textbook exposition.” </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><strong style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Bookworm Dreams</strong> says “Five Stars. <em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Nexus</em> by Ramez Naam reminds me of my favorite science fiction authors: Cory Doctorowwith dystopia/government conspiracy theme, Michael Crichton with unexpected twists and action/adventure, Arthur C. Clarke because everything Ramez Naam described has a scientific background.” </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://rameznaam.com/" style="border: 0px; color: #21759b; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank" title="This external link will open in a new window">http://rameznaam.com/</a></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2828887631702699420.post-27861104172289680382013-04-22T07:10:00.005-07:002014-05-21T09:24:30.357-07:00Ridiculous Argument Against the 2045 Projecti just wanted people to know of the ignorant view points of those that are against teh 2045 project which I <br />
am invested in. This article goes on to compare iphones to an immorality vessel as another piece of disposable consumer technology.<br />
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Ive asked myself many times why anyone wouldnt want to live as long as possible. There are many reasons but one could debate but because it would create an environmental hazard is a very poor arguent. If you have time read this article and knock some sense into its writer.<br />
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Its people like this that are spreading seeds of doubt that need to be educated.<br />
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Immortality through robotics ignores concerns about environment, economic privilege, humanity</h1>
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Stories of cyborgs like Darth Vader have always been limited to the realm of science fiction, but that might change. The 2045 Initiative, a group of like-minded scientists and intellectuals, has formulated a four-step plan that predicts that humans will be able to live in artificial bodies, or avatars, by the year 2045.</div>
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Science fiction has made a sudden jump into reality, and the supporters of the 2045 Initiative and its founder Dmitry Itskov are fully confident in the value of this transition. The Initiative’s website comes equipped with a comprehensive timeline as well as an international manifesto. This manifesto makes many bold statements, including the group’s idea that “it is possible and necessary to eliminate aging and even death” through scientific progress.</div>
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The 2045 Initiative expresses the idea that the very ideology of human beings needs to change, and that we need to take control of our own evolution. This brings up the question, what is wrong with an ideology that is unconcerned with artificial intelligence and immortality? The group’s appeal for many seems to be in its desire to create a sturdier body for human beings, but would this type of body appeal to people who don’t see any merit in living forever?</div>
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There are plenty of other problems with the 2045 Initiative aside from its foundation in the desire for immortality. Although the program claims that its avatar machines will eventually cost about as much as a car, the affordability of this program is debatable. There are plenty of people on this planet who cannot afford a car, let alone something more expensive. Will these artificial bodies become a privilege for the rich and entitled?</div>
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It is mentioned several times that the progress made by this initiative will help in the medical field, especially with disabilities and missing limbs. Perhaps such progress will eventually be beneficial, but in its initial stages I find it highly unlikely that a financially-restricted person could afford such a treatment. It seems that these artificial shells may just be another way for people with more money to show off their status, especially considering that Itskov himself is a billionaire.</div>
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Those spearheading the project seem to believe that the best thing we can do with our technology is to create bodies that rid ourselves of our physical limitations. The international manifesto states that “iPhones and Segways cannot save mankind from the limitations in the physical abilities of our bodies,” and goes on to say that commercial technology is not the best use of our time.</div>
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I can agree with this statement, but immortal bodies for humans seems like just as much of a distraction from necessity as the newest model of smartphone. What use will artificial bodies have if our planet is destroyed by pollution because we weren’t researching new ways to fuel our lives? Scientific efforts should be focused on curing and preventing disease rather than preparing for our eventual decay. Immortality is a convenient distraction from the immediate problems that need addressing. We’ve been living mortal lives for a while now, I think we can do it for a while longer.</div>
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On a more romantic note, many people agree that there is unique feeling that goes along with being human. We have a connection to the world through our senses that cannot be imitated by any artificial being. Why are we so ready to discard our physically-limited human bodies?</div>
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The 2045 Initiative claims the bodies it plans on creating “will achieve perfection of form and be no less attractive than the human body.” If we are so unattached to our weak human forms, why would we care if our new bodies looked the same? There is no guarantee that the smell of flowers will be as special if we’re not smelling it with our own nose. Without a limit on our lifespans, would we appreciate the things that surround us in the same way, or would everything just blur together after a while?</div>
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When the cyborg movement hits the public arena, don’t look for me anywhere nearby. I have read enough science fiction novels to know that these sorts of projects don’t usually go very well. Some may see it as harmless, but I don’t plan on joining the 2045 Initiative, despite the ominous “join us” at the top of their homepage.</div>
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You can leave comments <a href="http://www.kstatecollegian.com/2013/04/18/immortality-through-robotics-ignores-concerns-about-environment-economic-privilege-humanity/" rel="nofollow">here</a></div>
</aside>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2828887631702699420.post-48578123018351980032013-04-22T06:45:00.001-07:002013-04-22T06:45:08.515-07:00<br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">Nietzsche:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">“Man is a rope stretched between the beasts and the Superman — a rope over an abyss. A dangerous crossing, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous trembling and halting. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal.”</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2828887631702699420.post-36999998606305859272013-04-22T06:44:00.000-07:002013-06-16T15:54:17.335-07:00Quote<blockquote style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 20px;">
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<b style="font-size: x-large;"><i>Human is a step in evolution, not the culmination.</i></b></div>
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-<span style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 20px;">Sarte. Danaylov </span><br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2828887631702699420.post-21636488360534225342013-04-19T07:07:00.005-07:002013-04-19T07:07:59.588-07:00Samsung Demos a Tablet Controlled by Your Brain<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-size: small; text-align: start;"><b style="border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Thought launch:</b><span style="font-variant: inherit; line-height: 1.4rem;"> </span><span style="font-variant: inherit; line-height: 1.4rem;">A Samsung researcher <br />tests an EEG-controlled app on a tablet.</span></i></td></tr>
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The number of ways to interact with your mobile devices.<br />
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One day, we may be able to check e-mail or call a friend without ever touching a screen or even speaking to a disembodied helper. Samsung is researching how to bring mind control to its mobile devices with the hope of developing ways for people with mobility impairments to connect to the world. The ultimate goal of the project, say researchers in the company’s Emerging Technology Lab, is to broaden the ways in which all people can interact with devices.</div>
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In collaboration with Roozbeh Jafari, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at the University of Texas, Dallas, Samsung researchers are testing how people can use their thoughts to launch an application, select a contact, select a song from a playlist, or power up or down a Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1. While Samsung has no immediate plans to offer a brain-controlled phone, the early-stage research, which involves a cap studded with EEG-monitoring electrodes, shows how a brain-computer interface could help people with mobility issues complete tasks that would otherwise be impossible. </div>
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Brain-computer interfaces that monitor brainwaves through EEG have already made their way to the market. NeuroSky’s headset uses EEG readings as well as electromyography to pick up signals about a person’s level of concentration to control toys and games (see “Next-Generation Toys Read Brain Waves, May Help Kids Focus”). Emotiv Systems sells a headset that reads EEG and facial expression to enhance the experience of gaming (see “Mind-Reading Game Controller”).</div>
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To use EEG-detected brain signals to control a smartphone, the Samsung and UT Dallas researchers monitored well-known brain activity patterns that occur when people are shown repetitive visual patterns. In their demonstration, the researchers found that people could launch an application and make selections within it by concentrating on an icon that was blinking at a distinctive frequency.</div>
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Robert Jacob, a human-computer interaction researcher at Tufts University, says the project fits into a broader effort by researchers to find more ways for communicating with small devices like smartphones. “This is one of the ways to expand the type of input you can have and still stick the phone in the pocket,” he says.</div>
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Finding new ways to interact with mobile devices has driven the project, says Insoo Kim, Samsung’s lead researcher. “Several years ago, a small keypad was the only input modality to control the phone, but nowadays the user can use voice, touch, gesture, and eye movement to control and interact with mobile devices,” says Kim. “Adding more input modalities will provide us with more convenient and richer ways of interacting with mobile devices.”</div>
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Still, it will take considerable research for a brain-computer interface to become a new way of interacting with smartphones, says Kim. The initial focus for the team was to develop signal processing methods that could extract the right information to control a device from weak and noisy EEG signals, and to get those methods to work on a mobile device.</div>
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Jafari’s research is addressing another challenge—developing more convenient EEG sensors. Classic EEG systems have gel or wet contact electrodes, which means a bit of liquid material has to come between a person’s scalp and the sensor. “Depending on how many electrodes you have, this can take up to 45 minutes to set up, and the system is uncomfortable,” says Jafari. His sensors, however, do not require a liquid bridge and take about 10 seconds to set up, he says. But they still require the user to wear a cap covered with wires.</div>
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The concept of a dry EEG is not new, and it can carry the drawback of lower signal quality, but Jafari says his group is improving the system’s processing of brain signals. Ultimately, if reliable EEG contacts were convenient to use and slimmed down, a brain-controlled device could look like “a cap that people wear all day long,” says Jafari.</div>
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Kim says the speed with which a user of the EEG-control system can control the tablet depends on the user. In the team’s limited experiments, users could, on average, make a selection once every five seconds with an accuracy ranging from 80 to 95 percent.</div>
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“It is nearly impossible to accurately predict what the future might bring,” says Kim, “but given the broad support for initiatives such as the U.S. BRAIN initiative, improvements in man-machine interfaces seem inevitable” (see “Interview with BRAIN Project Pioneer: Miyoung Chun”).</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2828887631702699420.post-55650725446128304022013-04-18T14:02:00.000-07:002014-05-20T13:38:59.632-07:00Could Brain Computer Interfaces be used to Hack our Mind?<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<b>Consumer grade EEG-scanners used in mind-controlled games can be turned against their user to extract private information, research shows.</b></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 13px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are gaining popularity as prices drop and the technology develops. The gaming industry, always ahead of the curve when it comes to innovative interfaces, already embraces the devices as game-controllers. The multiplayer online game<a href="http://www.techthefuture.com/technology/crush-your-enemies-with-your-mind/" rel="nofollow" style="border: 0px; color: #0085c0; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank"> Throw Trucks With Your Mind</a> measures brain activity with an affordable EEG-headset to integrate parameters like focus and calm into the game. </span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 13px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But hooking up your brain to a computer linked to the internet –although extremely fascinating- unfortunately also has its disadvantages. A team of researchers from the University of Oxford, UC Berkeley and the University of Geneva are the first to examine the security risks involved in using such technology. From a series of experiments they concluded it is possible to collect private and secret information from unsuspecting users. Their findings were published in the paper On the Feasibility of Side-Channel Attacks with Brain-Computer Interfaces (link below).</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 13px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In order to recreate a realistic test environment the researchers used the EPOC neuroheadset made available to the consumer market by the company Emotiv Systems. The EPOC, like most BCIs, uses EEG (electroencephalography) to measure brain wave patterns by recording the electrical fields produced by neuron activity.</span></div>
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For their research the team made use of a phenomenon that shows up on EEG read-outs called event-related-potential (ERP). An ERP is a change in the voltage pattern a short time-interval after the subject is presented with a certain stimulus. For instance, when a person is shown a series of pictures of people she doesn’t know the EEG-signal stays fairly constant but when a familiar face flashes by there is an amplitude peak 300 milliseconds after the event.</div>
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<a href="http://www.techthefuture.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/ERP-graph.gif" rel="lightbox[4913]" style="border: 0px; color: #0085c0; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="ERP graph" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-4918" src="http://www.techthefuture.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/ERP-graph.gif" height="225" style="border: 3px solid rgb(238, 238, 238); float: left; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 1em 1em 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="ERP graph" width="300" /></a></div>
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In theory ERPs can reveal secret knowledge of the user to an attacker who is in the position to ask the right questions. To test the hypothesis the team set up an experiment where 30 students were asked to wear the EPOC while watching a computer screen. In one test they were asked which month they were born and then names of the months were randomly shown on the screenIn another test designed to filch the PIN code of the subjects no questions were asked but numbers were randomly presented to them.</div>
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The results of the tests varied. The success rate of data extraction was measured against a random guess attack. Attacks using the EEG data were 10 to 40 percent more successful than random guesses. That may seem modest but BCI technology is still in the early stages of its development cycle and is expected to improve significantly.</div>
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The experimental set-up the researchers used in which they were in the position to pose questions to the users can also be found in the wild. Companies selling neuroheadsets like Emotiv and its competitor Neurosky allow third parties to develop applications for their products. That is understandable since the EPOC wouldn’t be much fun if there weren’t games available to use it on. But developers have full access to the EEG data and the applications have complete control over the stimuli presented to the user. Both conditions are necessary to develop applications like Throw Trucks With Your Mind. But in the hands of a malicious developer it could lead to dark scenario’s.</div>
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Ryan Calo, an academic who combines his law degree with an expertise in emerging technologies,advises brain app stores should be heavily curated to prevent brain spyware from being released. He also points out that the technology might be to good for overzealous law enforcements agencies to resist. He gives the example of an Amber alert in which the picture of a missing child is distributed online. BCI wearing gamers could find themselves on the suspects list based merely on their brain response.</div>
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On the Feasibility of Side-Channel Attacks with Brain-Computer Interfaces (link to PDF at the bottom of that page).</div>
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Images: Drawing: Mynameiskavi, <span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 13px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ERP graph: </span>Neurofeedback.visaduma.info</div>
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ARTICLE BY TESSEL RENZENBRINK FOR TECHTHEFUTURE.COM</h4>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2828887631702699420.post-37389994808314405702013-04-17T12:00:00.000-07:002014-05-24T18:32:34.763-07:00How AI and Virtual Sex May Be a Driver of the Coming Singularity<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8nwplx9G6CFuAm_D_2znGnsAYmUIB2-FU7FYQorxQau4FeldH4HqFBlpdCD7wWGHXDKE0XIsHY_SWFuXa25Xpg9MV_nIkdtSTy51JMNDKv9z4Y5EgS2b5RGanYvGV7sxvzIu-ZS9xO2o/s1600/2.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8nwplx9G6CFuAm_D_2znGnsAYmUIB2-FU7FYQorxQau4FeldH4HqFBlpdCD7wWGHXDKE0XIsHY_SWFuXa25Xpg9MV_nIkdtSTy51JMNDKv9z4Y5EgS2b5RGanYvGV7sxvzIu-ZS9xO2o/s1600/2.jpeg" /></a>The sex industry has always been a big one. Its well over the billion dollar mark. It will likely evolve along <br />
with technology as it evolves.<br />
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<u>Internet and Porn Industry</u><br />
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Societal and technological changes have set the commercial sex industry on a trajectory to become more conventional and normalized. Below are five trend clusters shaping the future of the commercial sex industry:<br />
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1. The commercial sex industry will expand the definition of sex. Augmented reality coupled with advances in robotics will allow sex add-ons to supplement traditional offerings. Future of Sex editor Meg White points to three emerging areas of commercial sex including virtual sex worlds, remote sex and robot sex. For instance, online sex workers increasingly will link their movements to remote sex toys or even robotic look-alikes. In effect, these new areas may reduce the risks associated with sex workplace violence and STIs, modernizing the online sex marketplace globally.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqhdfh4Y9F78jX-b1tSQDnOYe8ajs6teaP3gOT6w9Y0WctNz1tVFoz17SyJMdZZfd8NSKarS7VcKFDJAXL4-gPa3_SpjSCJijanub2XwE11y0XNvEHf0NALryzVly-tVhyphenhyphen5BJpdad3p7A/s1600/1.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqhdfh4Y9F78jX-b1tSQDnOYe8ajs6teaP3gOT6w9Y0WctNz1tVFoz17SyJMdZZfd8NSKarS7VcKFDJAXL4-gPa3_SpjSCJijanub2XwE11y0XNvEHf0NALryzVly-tVhyphenhyphen5BJpdad3p7A/s200/1.jpeg" height="200" width="140" /></a>On the other hand, artificial intelligence capabilities may add heightened levels of social interactions with non-human machines. As our non-sexual needs are increasingly fulfilled by robots, avatars or digital communities, our sexual needs may follow along. Further, distinctions between virtual and real interactions will blur in the future. The accessibility of technology will create a greater demand for sex-based products and services. “Sex-ond” lives will redefine what it means to be in a relationship, have sex, and be in love. Couples will seriously discuss whether sex with robots constitutes cheating; and policy makers will debate what rights exist for sex workers in online communities. <br />
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2. Tech innovations will raise the intimacy level of commercial sex. Passive sex industry consumption will be replaced by greater sex intimacy in the future. Successful sex workers from prostitution, pornography and adult entertainment will integrate technology into their workplaces in order to differentiate themselves. An actress in adult entertainment could create a realistic "girlfriend" add-on experience complete with anniversary gifts and love letters.<br />
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A high level of personalization would be achieved by monitoring how a user acts in both sexual and non-sexual spaces throughout the virtual and real world. According to a study conducted by UK researcher Jon Millward, the “girlfriend experience” -- the sense that the client has a personal, ongoing emotional relationship with the sex worker -- ranks above the “porn-star experience” in online escort advertisements and ratings. As technologies advance, sex workers may sell not only traditional sex, but also value-added services such as personal relationships with levels of sociability that transcend machines.<br />
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Sex-based technologies already intersect with the dating industry. Long-distance couples use technology to create remote sex lives for themselves. One start-up company appropriately named Pillow Talk simulates the intimate experience of lying in bed with a partner by mimicking a heartbeat in a large pillow. Another tech application known as Pair allows couples to share pictures, messages, videos, sketches, and locations privately. FakeGirlfriend invites male singles seeking female companionship to create a unique “girlfriend.” Men using FakeGirlfriend receive computer-generated text messages to fool others into thinking they are in a serious relationship.<br />
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Innovations such as these will create new types of commercial sex intimacy that use technology, yet are still personal and customized. Sex workers will borrow from relationship innovations to enhance their own client interactions. For instance, sex workers may offer their regulars a paid personalized video or text service option in addition to a monthly romp. These personalized tech-driven services will make consumers believe they are engaged in actual relationships rather than economic transactions with sex workers.<br />
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3. Commercial sex will converge with pop-tech. Currently, the commercial sex sector is repurposing pop-tech (mainstream tech ideas) to make it sex-specific. Innovators within commercial sex are connecting current platforms to sex in everyday life. For instance, Offbeatr is a crowd-funding platform akin to Kickstarter, a funding company for adult projects. Snatchly, recently launched, is the adult pornographic version of Pinterest, a virtual pin board that allows for the social sharing of content. Both ideas evolved because mainstream platforms currently reject adult content. Popular technology will adapt to accommodate commercial sex needs that are not currently being met.<br />
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In the future, the line between mainstream and underground sex work will blur to the point of non-existence. Personalization technologies, artificial intelligence and privacy settings will make it easier for users to apply pop-tech platforms to meet their sexual needs. In fact, mainstream pop-tech will partner with sex- based services in order to create alternative revenue streams. Ratable and shareable online content available through popular technology will allow users to customize their own sex-based content. Individuals will get increasingly enhanced user experiences and personal security. At the same time, they will be able to see and store all of their favorite NSFW material on one platform that's accessible from anywhere.<br />
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4. Sex work will be dependent on region. Even though technology has created digital bridges across the globe, sex-based services will continue to be different in the developed and developing regions of the world. In developed nations, technology will move sex work off the streets and into entrepreneurial ventures. This change will provide a safer and more stable work environment for sex workers, who will be empowered by technology to take ownership of their careers by using collaborative networks and online promotion for personal marketing. Sex workers will use tools to position themselves as businesswomen. They'll be able to personally connect with potential clientele in a specific niche, instead of relying on a third party. By cutting pimps out of the loop, the sex workers will make more money -- and increase their own freedom and safety as well.<br />
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Conversely, in developing regions such as Southeast Asia, men will continue to travel abroad to leave traditional Western “female empowerment” behind. The inequities between the developed and developing world that fuel the dark side of global sex tourism are unlikely to change any time soon. According to the Commission on AIDS in Asia, men who buy sex are driving Asia’s HIV epidemic. As a result, Asia stands to be the first region in the world in which governments will get serious about regulating working conditions for sex workers; and international organizations will make AIDS and STI prevention in developing regions such as Asia a priority.<br />
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5. Mainstream organizations will realize the economic value of commercial sex. Mainstream brands, governments and investment firms are aligning with commercial sex to not only attract consumer attention, but also to raise revenue. In 2011, PETA announced plans to launch an .xxx site to promote vegetarianism. In the past, the organization commissioned porn stars to film racy advertising segments about “Veggie Love." Actresses were filmed engaging in naughty behavior with an assortment of veggies from celery to beets. Though the short was banned from the Super Bowl, the campaign went viral online.<br />
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Recently, Sony Entertainment partnered with Playboy’s Cybergirl Jo Garcia to launch its new PlayStation Vita, which is a handheld gaming device that can be used in conjunction with a PlayStation 3. Sex-specific investment firms like Ackrell Capital will continue to attract investors who want to reap the financial rewards associated with the commercial sex industry.<br />
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The International Labor Organization reports that the sex industry accounts for 2% to 14% of economic activity in the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia. It also estimates commercial sex is worth 4.4% of Korean GDP -- which is more than forestry, fishing and agriculture combined. In the early 1990s, tax revenues from phone sex calls in San Tome increased so significantly that the government was able to construct a new telecommunications system with the funds. In addition, private and public organizations of all types will openly support or engage with the commercial sex industry to increase revenue and gain attention.<br />
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In the future, the public face of the commercial sex industry will change dramatically. The traditional definition of sex will be redefined by not only technological innovation that expands the ability to create intimacy online, but also by popular technology platforms that will help users meet their sexual needs. Sex work will be dependent on region with developed nations accepting sex work into the mainstream, while developing nations will continue to accommodate the darker side of the industry. Mainstream organizations will seek economic growth through commercial sex affiliations and governments will realize more tax revenue from these pursuits.<br />
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With or without mainstream support, the commercial sex industry will move ahead as an established and essential industry because of these technological and societal trends. As a result, sex work is already beginning to move out of the back alleys and onto Main Street. Views towards sex, specifically toward the sex industry, will be debated instead of ignored, stigmatized or generalized by the global masses. The implications of commercial sex will be considered alongside the complex web of faces and experiences associated with sex work.<br />
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Technology won’t replace sex workers; but it looks like it's leading to the creation of a new industry that augments our current experiences with sex, and could eventually take us to new and fantastic places where no human has gone before.<br />
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Foreword by J5un and article by Emily Empel (@localrat) is a trend spotter, marketing disciple and futurist.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2828887631702699420.post-48900960393834496312013-04-16T17:10:00.003-07:002014-05-20T11:39:20.788-07:00When Wheelchairs Become Obsolete-Thought Controlled Exoskeleton Availble By 2015?At the world cup of soccer summer of 2014 <span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">Neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"> expects to unveil to </span><br />
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the world his thought controlled robotic exoskeleton. Back in 2011 he <span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">went on</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"> </span><em style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The Daily Show</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">and told Jon Stewart that he would develop a robotic body suit that would allow paralyzed people to walk again simply by thinking about it — and he’d do it in just 3 or 4 years.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">Some neuroscientists in the field of Brain computer interfaces think his claim is premature and fear that if it fails it could hurt funding for other BCI projects by promising too much too soon. There is also the issue of safety for the user of the device. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">On the other hand if he does pull it off he would cause a lot of attention to this field and attract tons of research funds or even private money.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">If history is an indicator the scientists who promote their inventions the most successfully have enjoyed the most success financially. compare Tesla vs Edison and you'll get an idea. BCI researchers who fear Nicolelis failing should maybe lend a hand too make sure he succeeds then the whole field in general would benefit.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">If you think that he is bonkers then you should consider that right now there have been many successful projects with Brain computer interfaces </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">that allow paralyzed humans to move a computer cursor or even use a robotic arm to pick up a piece of chocolate or touch a loved one for the first time in years.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"> In another recent example </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">In December, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"> </span>published a case study<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">in</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"> </span><em style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The Lancet</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">of a 53-year-old woman named Jan Scheuermann who was paralyzed from the neck down by a genetic neurodegenerative condition. Scheuermann learned to control a nearby robotic arm after surgeons implanted a small grid of electrodes in her brain.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">A recent video on <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50137987n" rel="nofollow">60 minutes</a> show here moving </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">the arm in 3 dimensions and uses it to grasp and move objects, stacking several plastic cones. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">It cost DARPA more than $100 million to develop, and its hand and fingers can do almost everything the real deal can. Scheuermann’s movements are slow and sometimes faltering, but they are astonishing nonetheless. After all, she’s controlling the arm just by thinking about it. And she’s making the most sophisticated movements yet made by a human being with a brain-controlled prosthetic.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">Recently this year in an interview with a wired magazine reporter he stated that "</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">“We’re getting close to making wheelchairs obsolete,” </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">Nicoleius speculated that the next big leap in BCI performance will come from 2 kinds of advances:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><b>1)</b>Being able to gather information from a larger number of neurons. The researchers at Duke currently have the highest amount at around 500 neurons. With great numbers of neurons being read they can acheive greater fluidity of movements.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><b>2)</b></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">incorporating tactile feedback.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">In 2011, his team</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"> </span><a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v479/n7372/full/nature10489.html" style="color: #007ca5; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">broke new ground</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">by demonstrating a neural prosthesis with an artificial sense of touch in monkeys. Electrodes implanted in a brain region responsible for the feeling texture enabled the monkeys to identify different virtual objects by “feel.”</span></div>
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Sensors on the exoskeleton will eventually feed directly into the brain in a similar manner to provide crucial feedback on the position of the limbs and when the feet hit the ground, Nicolelis says. “None of these robotic devices will work for real without tactile feedback,” he said. “You can’t walk without knowing where the floor is.“ The extent to which sensory feedback will be ready for the World Cup demo remains to be seen.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbPPC62I_YQqiUm6llYxgrOqf4g-A2ZD8nEGQJrvmq8OiOxNYG9uhRorhEuMFU_7qjaOA9FDGYfkk9kMYiaJGrQpOOVyW_8C_x9ybm84Z8TAKSObai93mg44-aeewC8dnppyiGHa9iS8k/s1600/3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbPPC62I_YQqiUm6llYxgrOqf4g-A2ZD8nEGQJrvmq8OiOxNYG9uhRorhEuMFU_7qjaOA9FDGYfkk9kMYiaJGrQpOOVyW_8C_x9ybm84Z8TAKSObai93mg44-aeewC8dnppyiGHa9iS8k/s200/3.jpg" height="200" width="145" /></a>Nicolelis’ team is currently training the two monkeys to sit in the harness and let their legs go limp so the exoskeleton can do its thing. A few months from now the whole system will be subjected to a sterner test: Researchers will temporarily paralyze the legs of a monkey with an injection, and the primate will then try to transfer what it’s learned from playing with the avatar to control the exoskeleton with its thoughts. If it goes according to plan, the monkey will walk on the treadmill.</div>
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Gordon Cheng, the roboticist who is developing the physical exoskeleton at the Technical University of </div>
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Munich in Germany admits that the deadline is tight. “We have bits and pieces of different prototypes being built and tested, we even have a complete mockup built,” he said. “We’re pushing it.”<br />
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By design, the exoskeleton will use a mix of signals. “If the signal from the brain is very good, the brain will take control. If the signal from the brain is not so reliable, the robot can take over more of the control,” Cheng said. “This is mainly to guarantee safety.”</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgichAwxUXrhX6goZXQ3f48nGfGSF2RoBGTYPi1PJGean1bvcYx59hkfT5mzizUjHcpy_CX5dB_GQQAG218PEIJltaF0JwRv9_-SDZn-47RQyKTS_VJXWTSffNwC4EN3lXrFGxeKwDCgVA/s1600/1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgichAwxUXrhX6goZXQ3f48nGfGSF2RoBGTYPi1PJGean1bvcYx59hkfT5mzizUjHcpy_CX5dB_GQQAG218PEIJltaF0JwRv9_-SDZn-47RQyKTS_VJXWTSffNwC4EN3lXrFGxeKwDCgVA/s200/1.jpg" height="166" width="200" /></a>Nicolelis says his colleagues in Brazil are currently combing a database of thousands of patients to identify 10 for initial training. Their ideal profile: a smallish young adult, no more than 70 kilograms (roughly 150 pounds), whose injury isn’t too new or too old. Like the monkeys in the lab at Duke, the trainees will start by learning to control an avatar on a computer screen, but with brain signals recorded by non-invasive EEG electrodes to start. Then, if the plan stays on track, one brave recipient will go under the knife to receive electrode implants in his or her motor cortex.</div>
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<i>Article by Dave Drinkwalter for Emerging Tech Trends for Transhumanism</i></div>
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Based on article form <a href="http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/02/robotic-exoskeleton/" rel="nofollow">wired magazine</a></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2828887631702699420.post-72584943835189418272013-04-15T02:28:00.000-07:002014-05-20T13:41:49.410-07:00Common Misconceptions about Transhumanism<br />
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Transhumanism is often misunderstood and maligned by who are ignorant of it – or those who were exposed solely to detractors such as John Gray, Leon Kass, and Taleb himself. This essay will serve to correct these misconceptions in a concise fashion. Those who still wish to criticize transhumanism should at least understand what they are criticizing and present arguments against the real ideas, rather than straw men constructed by the opponents of radical technological progress.</div>
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<img alt="" src="http://www.ieet.org/images/uploads/stolyarovii20130306e.jpg" style="border: 0px; float: left; height: 534px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px; width: 300px;" />After the publication of my <a href="http://transhumanity.net/articles/entry/fragile-reasoning-in-nassim-talebs-antifragile-an-enlightenment-transhumani" rel="nofollow" style="color: blue; text-decoration: none;">review</a> of Nassim Taleb’s latest book <i>Antifragile, </i>numerous comments were made by Taleb’s followers – many of them derisive – on Taleb’s Facebook page. (You can see a screenshot of these comments <a href="http://i.imgur.com/z6f66Rf.png" style="color: blue; text-decoration: none;">here</a>.) While I will only delve into a few of the specific comments in this article, I consider it important to distill the common misconceptions that motivate them. Transhumanism is often misunderstood and maligned by who are ignorant of it – or those who were exposed solely to detractors such as John Gray, Leon Kass, and Taleb himself. This essay will serve to correct these misconceptions in a concise fashion. Those who still wish to criticize transhumanism should at least understand what they are criticizing and present arguments against the real ideas, rather than straw men constructed by the opponents of radical technological progress.</div>
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<b>Misconception #1: Transhumanism is a religion.</b></div>
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Transhumanism does not posit the existence of any deity or other supernatural entity (though some transhumanists are religious independently of their transhumanism), nor does transhumanism hold a faith (belief without evidence) in any phenomenon, event, or outcome. Transhumanists certainly hope that technology will advance to radically improve human opportunities, abilities, and longevity – but this is a hope founded in the historical evidence of technological progress to date, and the logical extrapolation of such progress. Moreover, this is a contingent hope. Insofar as the future is unknowable, the exact trajectory of progress is difficult to predict, to say the least. Furthermore, the speed of progress depends on the skill, devotion, and liberty of the people involved in bringing it about. Some societal and political climates are more conducive to progress than others. Transhumanism does not rely on prophecy or mystical fiat. It merely posits a feasible and desirable future of radical technological progress and exhorts us to help achieve it. Some may claim that transhumanism is a religion that worships man – but that would distort the term “religion” so far from its original meaning as to render it vacuous and merely a pejorative used to label whatever system of thinking one dislikes. Besides, those who make that allegation would probably perceive a mere semantic quibble between seeking man’s advancement and worshipping him. But, irrespective of semantics, the facts do not support the view that transhumanism is a religion. After all, transhumanists do not spend their Sunday mornings singing songs and chanting praises to the Glory of Man.</div>
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<b>Misconception #2: Transhumanism is a cult.</b></div>
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A cult, unlike a broader philosophy or religion, is characterized by extreme insularity and dependence on a closely controlling hierarchy of leaders. Transhumanism has neither element. Transhumanists are not urged to disassociate themselves from the wider world; indeed, they are frequently involved in advanced research, cutting-edge invention, and prominent activism. Furthermore, transhumanism does not have a hierarchy or leaders who demand obedience. Cosmopolitanism is a common trait among transhumanists. Respected thinkers, such as Ray Kurzweil, Max More, and Aubrey de Grey, are open to discussion and debate and have had interesting differences in their own views of the future. A still highly relevant conversation from 2002, "Max More and Ray Kurzweil on the Singularity", highlights the sophisticated and tolerant way in which respected transhumanists compare and contrast their individual outlooks and attempt to make progress in their understanding. Any transhumanist is free to criticize any other transhumanist and to adopt some of another transhumanist’s ideas while rejecting others. Because transhumanism characterizes a loose network of thinkers and ideas, there is plenty of room for heterogeneity and intellectual evolution. As Max More put it in the “Principles of Extropy, v. 3.11”, “the world does not need another totalistic dogma.” Transhumanism does not supplant all other aspects of an individual’s life and can coexist with numerous other interests, persuasions, personal relationships, and occupations.</div>
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<b><img alt="" src="http://www.ieet.org/images/uploads/stolyarovii20130306c.jpg" style="border: 0px; float: right; height: 219px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px; width: 250px;" />Misconception #3: Transhumanists want to destroy humanity. Why else would they use terms such as “posthuman” and “postbiological”?</b></div>
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Transhumanists do not wish to destroy any human. In fact, we want to prolong the lives of as many people as possible, for as long as possible! The terms “transhuman” and “posthuman” refer to overcoming the historical limitations and failure modes of human beings – the precise vulnerabilities that have rendered life, in Thomas Hobbes’s words, “nasty, brutish, and short” for most of our species’ past. A species that transcends biology will continue to have biological elements. Indeed, my personal preference in such a future would be to retain <i>all</i>of my existing healthy biological capacities, but also to supplement them with other biological and non-biological enhancements that would greatly extend the length and quality of my life. No transhumanist wants human beings to die out and be replaced by intelligent machines, and every transhumanist wants today’s humans to survive to benefit from future technologies. Transhumanists who advocate the development of powerful artificial intelligence (AI) support either (i) integration of human beings with AI components or (ii) the harmonious coexistence of enhanced humans and autonomous AI entities. Even those transhumanists who advocate “mind backups” or “mind uploading” in an electronic medium (I am not one of them, as I explain <a href="http://rationalargumentator.com/issue256/Iliveforever.html" style="color: blue; text-decoration: none;">here</a>) do not wish for their biological existences to be intentionally destroyed. They conceive of mind uploads as contingency plans in case their biological bodies perish.</div>
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Even the “artilect war” anticipated by more pessimistic transhumanists such as Hugo de Garis is greatly misunderstood. Such a war, if it arises, would not come from advanced technology, but rather from reactionaries attempting to forcibly suppress technological advances and persecute their advocates. Most transhumanists do not consider this scenario to be likely in any event. More probable are lower-level protracted cultural disputes and clashes over particular technological developments.</div>
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<b><img alt="" src="http://www.ieet.org/images/uploads/stolyarovii20130306h.jpg" style="border: 0px; float: left; height: 328px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px; width: 250px;" />Misconception #4: “</b><b>A global theocracy envisioned by Moonies or the Taliban would be preferable to the kind of future these traitors to the human species have their hearts set on, because even the most joyless existence is preferable to oblivion.</b><b>”</b></div>
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The above was an actual comment on the Taleb Facebook thread. It is astonishing that anyone would consider theocratic oppression preferable to radical life extension, universal abundance, ever-expanding knowledge of macroscopic and microscopic realms, exploration of the universe, and the liberation of individuals from historical chains of oppression and parasitism. This misconception is fueled by the strange notion that transhumanists (or technological progress in general) will destroy us all – as exemplified by the “Terminator” scenario of hostile AI or the “gray goo” scenario of nanotechnology run amok. Yet all of the apocalyptic scenarios involving future technology lack the safeguards that elementary common sense would introduce. Furthermore, they lack the recognition that incentives generated by market forces, as well as the sheer numerical and intellectual superiority of the careful scientists over the rogues, would always tip the scales greatly in favor of the defenses against existential risk. As I explain in “Technology as the Solution to Existential Risk” and “Non-Apocalypse, Existential Risk, and Why Humanity Will Prevail”, the greatest existential risks have either always been with us (e.g., the risk of an asteroid impact with Earth) or are in humanity’s past (e.g., the risk of a nuclear holocaust annihilating civilization). Technology is the solution to such existential risks. Indeed, the greatest existential risk is fear of technology, which can retard or outright thwart the solutions to the perils that may, in the status quo, doom us as a species. As an example, Mark Waser has written an excellent commentary on the “inconvenient fact that not developing AI (in a timely fashion) to help mitigate other existential risks is itself likely to lead to a substantially increased existential risk”.</div>
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<b>Misconception #5: Transhumanists want to turn people into the Borg from </b><i><b>Star Trek.</b></i></div>
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The Borg are the epitome of a collectivistic society, where each individual is a cog in the giant species machine. Most transhumanists are ethical individualists, and even those who have communitarian leanings still greatly respect individual differences and promote individual flourishing and opportunity. Whatever their positions on the proper role of government in society might be, all transhumanists agree that individuals should not be destroyed or absorbed into a collective where they lose their personality and unique intellectual attributes. Even those transhumanists who wish for direct sharing of perceptions and information among individual minds do not advocate the elimination of individuality. Rather, their view might better be thought of as multiple puzzle pieces being joined but remaining capable of full separation and autonomous, unimpaired function.</div>
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My own attraction to transhumanism is precisely due to its possibilities for preserving individuals <i>qua</i>individuals and avoiding the loss of the precious internal universe of each person. As I expressed inPart 1 of my “Eliminating Death” video series, death is a horrendous waste of irreplaceable human talents, ideas, memories, skills, and direct experiences of the world. Just as transhumanists would recoil at the absorption of humankind into the Borg, so they rightly denounce the dissolution of individuality that presently occurs with the oblivion known as death.</div>
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<b><img alt="" src="http://www.ieet.org/images/uploads/stolyarovii20130306x.jpg" style="border: 0px; float: left; height: 244px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px; width: 250px;" />Misconception #6: Transhumanists usually portray themselves “like robotic, anime-like characters”.</b></div>
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That depends on the transhumanist in question. Personally, I portray myself as me, wearing a suit and tie (which Taleb and his followers dislike just as much – but that is their loss). Furthermore, I see nothing robotic or anime-like about the public personas of Ray Kurzweil, Aubrey de Grey, or Max More, either.</div>
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<b>Misconception #7: “</b><b>Transhumanism is attracting devotees of a frighteningly high scientific caliber, morally retarded geniuses who just might be able to develop the humanity-obliterating technology they now merely fantasize about. It's a lot like a Heaven's Gate cult, but with prestigious degrees in physics and engineering, many millions more in financial backing, a growing foothold in mainstream culture, a long view of implementing their plan, and a death wish that extends to the whole human race not just themselves.</b><b>”</b></div>
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This is another statement on the Taleb Facebook thread. Ironically, the commenter is asserting that the transhumanists, who support the indefinite lengthening of human life, have a “death wish” and are “morally retarded”, while he – who opposes the technological progress needed to preserve us from the abyss of oblivion – apparently considers himself a champion of morality and a supporter of life. If ever there was an inversion of characterizations, this is it. At least the commenter acknowledges the strong technical skills of many transhumanists – but calling them “morally retarded” presupposes a counter-morality of death that should rightly be overcome and challenged, lest it sentence each of us to death. The Orwellian mindset that “evil is good” and “death is life” should be called out for the destructive and dangerous morass of contradictions that it is. Moreover, the commenter provides no evidence that any transhumanist wants to develop “humanity-obliterating technologies” or that the obliteration of humanity is even a remote risk from the technologies that transhumanists do advocate.</div>
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<b>Misconception #8: Transhumanism is wrong because life would have no meaning without death.</b></div>
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Asserting that only death can give life meaning is another bizarre contradiction, and, moreover, a claim that life can have no intrinsic value or meaning <i>qua </i>life. It is sad indeed to think that some people do not see how they could enjoy life, pursue goals, and accumulate values in the absence of the imminent threat of their own oblivion. Clearly, this is a sign of a lack of creativity and appreciation for the wonderful fact that we are alive. I delve into this matter extensively in my “Eliminating Death” video series. Part 3 discusses how indefinite life extension leaves no room for boredom because the possibilities for action and entertainment increase in an accelerating manner. Parts 8 and 9 refute the premise that death gives motivation and a “sense of urgency” and make the opposite case – that indefinite longevity spurs people to action by making it possible to attain vast benefits over longer timeframes. Indefinite life extension would enable people to consider the longer-term consequences of their actions. On the other hand, in the status quo, death serves as the great de-motivator of meaningful human endeavors.</div>
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<b><img alt="" src="http://www.ieet.org/images/uploads/stolyarovii20130306d.jpg" style="border: 0px; float: right; height: 183px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px; width: 250px;" />Misconception #9: Removing death is like removing volatility, which “fragilizes the system”.</b></div>
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This sentiment was an extrapolation by a commenter on Taleb’s ideas in <i>Antifragile</i>. It is subject to fundamentally collectivistic premises – that the “volatility” of individual death can be justified if it somehow supports a “greater whole”. (Who is advocating the sacrifice of the individual to the collective now?) The fallacy here is to presuppose that the “greater whole” has value in and of itself, apart from the individuals comprising it. An individualist view of ethics and of society holds the opposite – that societies are formed for the mutual benefit of participating individuals, and the moment a society turns away from that purpose and starts to damage its participants instead of benefiting them, it ceases to be desirable. Furthermore, Taleb’s premise that suppression of volatility is a cause of fragility is itself dubious in many instances. It may work to a point with an individual organism whose immune system and muscles use volatility to build adaptive responses to external threats. However, the possibility of such an adaptive response requires very specific structures that do not exist in all systems. In the case of human death, there is no way in which the destruction of a non-violent and fundamentally decent individual can provide external benefits of any kind worth having. How would the death of your grandparents fortify the mythic “society” against anything?</div>
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<b>Misconception #10: Immortality is “a bit like staying awake 24/7”.</b></div>
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Presumably, those who make this comparison think that indefinite life would be too monotonous for their tastes. But, in fact, humans who live indefinitely can still choose to sleep (or take vacations) if they wish. Death, on the other hand, is irreversible. Once you die, you are dead 24/7 – and you are not even given the opportunity to change your mind. Besides, why would it be tedious or monotonous to live a life full of possibilities, where an individual can have complete discretion over his pursuits and can discover as much about existence as his unlimited lifespan allows? To claim that living indefinitely would be monotonous is to misunderstand life itself, with all of its variety and heterogeneity.</div>
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<b><img alt="" src="http://www.ieet.org/images/uploads/stolyarovii20130306j.jpg" style="border: 0px; float: left; height: 188px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px; width: 250px;" />Misconception #11: Transhumanism is unacceptable because of the drain on natural resources that comes from living longer.</b></div>
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This argument presupposes that resources are finite and incapable of being augmented by human technology and creativity. In fact, one era’s waste is another era’s treasure (as occurred with oil since the mid-19<sup>th</sup> century). As Julian Simon recognized, the ultimate resource is the human mind and its ability to discover new ways to harness natural laws to human benefit. We have more resources known and accessible to us now – both in terms of food and the inanimate bounties of the Earth – than ever before in recorded history. This has occurred in spite – and perhaps because of – dramatic population growth, which has also introduced many new brilliant minds into the human species. In Part 4 of my “Eliminating Death” video series, I explain that doomsday fears of overpopulation do not hold, either historically or prospectively. Indeed, the progress of technology is precisely what helps us overcome strains on natural resources.</div>
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<b>Conclusion</b></div>
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The opposition to transhumanism is generally limited to espousing some variations of the common fallacies I identified above (with perhaps a few others thrown in). To make real intellectual progress, it is necessary to move beyond these fallacies, which serve as mental roadblocks to further exploration of the subject – a justification for people to consider transhumanism too weird, too unrealistic, or too repugnant to even take seriously. Detractors of transhumanism appear to recycle these same hackneyed remarks as a way to avoid seriously delving into the actual and genuinely interesting philosophical questions raised by emerging technological innovations.</div>
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These are questions on which many transhumanists themselves hold sincere differences of understanding and opinion. Fundamentally, though, my aim here is not to “convert” the detractors – many of whose opposition is beyond the reach of reason, for it is not motivated by reason. Rather, it is to speak to laypeople who are not yet swayed one way or the other, but who might not have otherwise learned of transhumanism except through the filter of those who distort and grossly misunderstand it. Even an elementary explication of what transhumanism actually stands for will reveal that we do, in fact, strongly advocate individual human life and flourishing, as well as technological progress that will uplift every person’s quality of life and range of opportunities.</div>
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Those who disagree with any transhumanist about specific means for achieving these goals are welcome to engage in a conversation or debate about the merits of any given pathway. But an indispensable starting point for such interaction involves accepting that transhumanists are serious thinkers, friends of human life, and sincere advocates of improving the human condition.</div>
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<b style="font-family: verdana; line-height: normal;">Article by Gennady Stolyarov II</b><span style="font-family: verdana; line-height: normal;"> who is an actuary, </span>science-fiction novelist<span style="font-family: verdana; line-height: normal;">, independent philosophical essayist, poet, amateur mathematician, and composer. Mr. Stolyarov is Editor-in-Chief of </span><a href="http://rationalargumentator.com/" rel="nofollow" style="color: blue; font-family: verdana; line-height: normal; text-decoration: none;">The Rational Argumentator</a><span style="font-family: verdana; line-height: normal;">, a magazine championing the principles of reason, rights, and progress.</span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: xx-small; line-height: normal;"></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2828887631702699420.post-25668148406895099132013-04-13T04:00:00.000-07:002013-04-13T04:00:11.035-07:00Neil Harbisson is a cyborg who hears more of the world than we see<br />
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Neil Harbisson was born with achromatopsia, a rare condition that causes complete colour blindness. In 2004, Harbisson and Adam Montandon developed the eyeborg, a device that translates colours into sounds. He has been claimed to be the first recognized cyborg in the world, as his passport photo now includes his device.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2828887631702699420.post-80209748541531002302013-04-12T03:40:00.003-07:002014-05-20T13:42:53.151-07:00Talking Transhumanism With Novelist Ramez Naam<br />
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I’m really excited to bring you a great interview with a brilliant writer. Ramez Naam is the author of Nexus by Angry Robot and a professional technologist. He was involved in the development of widely-used software products such as Microsoft Internet Explorer and Microsoft Outlook and has a keen interest in human evolution and transhuman technologies.</div>
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Without further ado, on to the interview.</div>
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1. <b style="border: 0px; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">In your book, Nexus, you explore transhumanism through the lens of a government/public struggle for technology. In Kade and his friends we have the altruistic view of transhuman technology, and with the various government agencies they represent a more militaristic view of the technology, seeking to keep it out of the hands of the public. Do you think going forward, the governments of this world will stifle transhuman progression, or like Kade, do you think independent entrepreneurs and scientists will be able to develop this technology themselves?</b></div>
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Ramez: My best guess is that consumer demand is going to drive this, and governments are going to have to bow to that. People have pretty baked in desires to live longer, be healthier, have greater capabilities, etc… In most cases, governments are going to bow to that. That’s going to mean change. Today there’s no mechanism in the world to approve a drug or genetic tweak that makes you smarter. We don’t have a way to approve enhancements – only to approve things that cure diseases or heal injuries. That’s likely to change as the technology matures.</div>
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Now, the wild card is terrible things happening. 9/11 shocked this country, and led to the reversal of what had been a long-term trend towards greater and greater civil liberties. If the technologies I’m writing about – biotech, nanotech, neurotech – get used in major terrorist attacks, or are central in terrible accidents, you may see society recoil away from them, and governments lock them down. That’s the backstory of the world in<i style="border: 0px; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"> Nexus </i>– that between now and 2040 there have been some terrible things done with these technologies, and that’s part of why they’re so restricted.</div>
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2. <b style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">My personal belief is that transhumanism, or posthumanism, is our likely next evolutionary step, but given the increasing burdens on our liberty by government and religious organisations do you think we’ll actually achieve that evolutionary path? Do you see a place in this progression for religion and government?</b></div>
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Ramez: There’s a lot of legitimate roles for government, to be sure. Safety testing. Funding basic research. Shutting down frauds and hucksters. All of that is quite helpful.</div>
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As for religion, it doesn’t have to be at odds with biotechnology at all. Within the US you see a wide spectrum of beliefs. Some churches are adamantly opposed to embryonic stem cell use, for example. But some are okay with it. I think going forward the religions and churches that survive and thrive are going to be those that are a little flexible, that adapt to the changes in technology and the human condition that we’re going to be seeing.</div>
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<b style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">3. A lot of transhuman tech is coming from the medical research sector; everything from 3D printed organs, ear and eye prosthesis and implants, all the way up to brain modifications. What do you think will likely be the ‘singularity’ within this field, and given the pharmaceutical companies corporation mindset, will it ever make it out of the labs and into the hands of the public? Would it create a new elite, with only the mega-wealthy having access to such technology, thus having a society of altered and non-altered people?</b></div>
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Ramez: The scenario where only the rich can afford new technologies is one of the most worrisome ones. If it costs a lot of money to buy enhancements, and those enhancements increase your ability to earn <i style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">more </i>money, then you could have a runaway feedback loop, and a real pulling away of one layer of society from the rest. That’s definitely something to keep an eye out for.</div>
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But so far, it doesn’t seem to be happening. With technology that’s sold on the open market, what we see instead is incredible declines in price that are putting it into the reach of more and more people. There are around 5 billion cell phones in the world today. Tribesman in Africa and poor farmers in India have smart phones. Each of them has more computing power and more access to information in their pocket than the President of the United States had twenty-five years ago. People who are, by our standards, incredibly poor still have capabilities that the richest man alive in the 1980s didn’t have. That’s because of the incredible rate of innovation in bringing prices down in those technologies.</div>
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So that’s what we want to see in enhancement tech. Is it guaranteed to happen? Absolutely not. We need to watch for it and encourage it. But is it guaranteed to go the other way, with a permanent over class that can afford the tech and no one else? That seems even less likely to me.</div>
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<b style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">4. A lighter question this time. Given the current level of tech available, or perhaps what will likely be available say in the next 5 years, what’s the one modification/alteration that you would choose for yourself? And an extrapolation of that question, if it were possible, would you upload your own brain into a computer entity?</b></div>
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Ramez: Medical tech moves slowly. The tech itself can come along fast. But the process of experimentation involves human beings. The first rule of human trials is the same as in the rest of medicine – ‘do no harm’. That means that we’re extremely conservative.</div>
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As a result, I think 5 years from now is likely to look an awful lot like today. Will we have some new things on the market? Probably. If I had to hope for one or two, I’d say there’s a chance we’ll have a drug therapy that just barely retards the aging process in animals. And we may have a next generation of drugs – aimed at people with Alzheimer’s and senile dementia – that just slightly enhance the rate of learning in healthy normal people. So those are two I’d look at.</div>
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Would I upload, if it were possible? Absolutely. I wouldn’t be the first. I’d want to see it proven out. But once it was, I’d be right there in line for it.</div>
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<b style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">6.Following on from the ideas of individuals creating this new tech as opposed to corporations, what are your views on the ‘grinder’ subculture where people experiment on themselves and perhaps stretch the boundaries of legality?</b></div>
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<img alt="more-than-human-cover-smaller" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-1692" src="http://www.colinfbarnes.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/more-than-human-cover-smaller-197x300.jpg" height="300" style="border: 0px; color: transparent; float: right; font-size: 0px; height: auto; margin: 5px 0px 20px 20px; max-width: 630px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: middle;" width="197" />Ramez: People are going to experiment. There are always going to be some – usually young people – who want to explore the edges of what’s possible. You have to be safe, though. You need to be careful. The more powerful a technology is, the greater the chance of hurting oneself accidentally.</div>
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<b style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">7. As I got thinking about all this tech it occurred to me that hardwire aside, we’re going to need a revolution in software to make the most of the technology. Do you see this happening now, or will it take a while for universities and other research centres to take experimental ideas and put them into a curriculum?</b></div>
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Ramez: We’ll definitely need new software. As far as I can tell, though, the hardware is the limiting factor. How do we get data in and out of the brain? The more data you have, the more readily you can analyze to find patterns and learn to decode it. And ultimately you can experiment with software far faster than you can with hardware. So if the hardware is there, we’ll quickly develop software to use it.</div>
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<b style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">8. On the subject of evolution, ageing seems to be one of the potential singularities in this march towards transhumanism. This could cause a population problem if people continue to live much longer lives. Can you see a solution to the resource issue of an essentially immortal race?</b></div>
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Ramez: I think we’re a pretty long way from having to worry about this. But even if we did have a complete cure for aging, that would put less of a strain on resources than you might expect. The real variable in population growth rate is the fertility rate – how many children does the average woman have? In the 1970s, around the world, this was over 5. Now it’s about 2.5 children, worldwide, that an average woman will have in her lifetime. Once it gets to 2, you have a steady state population.</div>
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Now, if no one ever dies, you have to go lower than that. But that’s happening. In Japan the fertility rate is 1.4 children per woman. In Germany it’s the same. In Iran, it’s dropped from more than 7 children per woman in the 1980s to 1.7 today. These are all countries where the trends are towards a smaller population instead of a larger one. So I think we can figure it out.</div>
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I’m also an optimist about our ability to use natural resources wisely. I have a non-fiction book that just came out, called The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet, that talks about how vast the energy, food, water, and material resources on the Earth are, if we use them wisely. We have the raw resources to use 100 times more energy, grow food for 100 times as many people as we have today, etc.. IF we make the right decisions.</div>
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<b style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">9. A couple of questions on your fiction now. You have an impressive professional background within IT, how did you come to write fiction? Is it something you’ve done much of before? Any particular authors that influenced you?</b></div>
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<img alt="infinite-resource-final-cover-96dpi" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-1691" src="http://www.colinfbarnes.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/infinite-resource-final-cover-96dpi-231x300.jpg" height="300" style="border: 0px; color: transparent; float: left; font-size: 0px; height: auto; margin: 5px 20px 20px 0px; max-width: 630px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: middle;" width="231" />Ramez: I’ve always been a huge sci-fi fan, and I sort of dreamt of writing sci-fi myself, without ever really believing it would happen. Among my influences, I’d say, two of the greatest and least sung science fiction authors of the last 20 years: John Barnes and Ian McDonald. They’re both incredible wordsmiths with really unique and complex world building. Alastair Reynolds is another influence. And I’ve been a huge fan of Iain Banks, and his ability to write these dark, compelling, page-turning tales that happen on the edge of what is essentially a utopia. It’s incredible sad to learn of his cancer, but my life – and a lot of lives – are a lot richer because of him.</div>
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<b style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">10. Nexus has proven to be quite a well-regarded and popular book, and I was pleased to see you have a follow-up coming out. Could you tell us a little bit about it, and when we might look forward to reading it?</b></div>
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Ramez: Thanks! I’ve been incredibly gratified by the reception. It’s gone better than I had any right to expect. The sequel, Crux, comes out this summer. It’s set a few months after Nexus. The events that happen at the end of Nexus have changed a lot of things around the world. More people have access to the Nexus technology. The governments of both the US and China have reacted to the events of the first book. And a lot more conflict is brewing, inside of both countries. There will ultimately be three books in the story, and Crux is sort of the <i style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Empire Strikes Back </i>of the three. It’s a little darker. Some bad things happen. And, while it’s a stand-alone book, it doesn’t end quite as cleanly as Nexus. It definitely sets the reader up for the third book, where a number of these conflicts will come to a head.</div>
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<b style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Here’s the official plot synopsis:</b></div>
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Six months have passed since the release of Nexus 5. The world is a different, more dangerous place.</div>
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In the United States, the terrorists – or freedom fighters – of the Post-Human Liberation Front use Nexus to turn men and women into human time bombs aimed at the President and his allies. In Washington DC, a government scientist, secretly addicted to Nexus, uncovers more than he wants to know about the forces behind the assassinations, and finds himself in a maze with no way out.</div>
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In Thailand, Samantha Cataranes has found peace and contentment with a group of children born with Nexus in their brains. But when forces threaten to tear her new family apart, Sam will stop at absolutely nothing to protect the ones she holds dear.</div>
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In Vietnam, Kade and Feng are on the run from bounty hunters seeking the price on Kade’s head, from the CIA, and from forces that want to use the back door Kade has built into Nexus 5. Kade knows he must stop the terrorists misusing Nexus before they ignite a global war between human and posthuman. But to do so, he’ll need to stay alive and ahead of his pursuers.</div>
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And in Shanghai, a posthuman child named Ling Shu will go to dangerous and explosive lengths to free her uploaded mother from the grip of Chinese authorities.</div>
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The first blows in the war between human and posthuman have been struck. The world will never be the same.</div>
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I’d like to thank Ramez for taking the time for this interview, it was a fascinating discussion. Ramez’s links:</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2828887631702699420.post-71464485646161636062013-04-11T04:14:00.001-07:002013-04-11T14:36:48.795-07:00Non-invasive brain-to-brain interface: links between two brains<br />
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Direct communication between the brains of human and rat .... or between humans</div>
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We reported last month how Duke University researchers remotely <a href="http://www.nicolelislab.net/?p=369" style="color: #5288cb; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">linked</a> the brains of two rats. Now researchers from</div>
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<span style="color: #666666;">Block diagram of brain-to-brain interface (BBI). Left: steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP)-based brain-to-computer interface; right:focused ultrasound-based computer-to-brain interface (CBI). (Credit: Yoo S-S et al./PLoS ONE)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent;">the U.S and South Korea have have taken it a step further: a non-invasive functional link … and between the brains of different species (human and rat) — a brain-to-brain interface (BBI).</span></div>
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The researchers — at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. — set up a system intended to allow a human to remotely make a rat’s tail flick. There was to be no direct connections between human and rat, and no direct connections to their brains (such as the implantable cortical microelectrode arrays, like those used in the Duke research and in BCI systems for quadriplegic patients, such as BrainGate).</div>
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The BBI system had two parts: a BCI, using EEG sensors and computer to pick up intenton from the human; and transcranial sonication of focused ultrasound (FUS) to modulate the neural activity of specific brain regions in the rat’s brain.</div>
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<strong>Wagging the rat</strong></div>
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Here’s how it worked:</div>
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1. Human volunteers looked at a strobed image (flickering) and EEG sensors picked up the resulting visual-evoked-potentials synchronized with the light.</div>
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2. The acquired EEG signal was filtered through a digital bandpass filter centered at the flickering frequency (to eliminate other brain signals). A computer analyzed the resulting signals, determined statistically when there was a significant detection, and sent a signal to the rat.</div>
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3. A piezoelectric ultrasound transducer operating at 350 kHz delivered focused acoustic pressure waves on the motor area of an anesthetized rat’s brain associated with tail movement.</div>
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4. The rat’s tail movement was detected by a motion sensor.</div>
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<strong>The “Brainstorm’ scenario</strong></div>
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<img alt="brainstorm" class=" wp-image-129328" height="127" src="http://www.kurzweilai.net/images/brainstorm.png" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgb(147, 147, 147) 0px 0px 5px; border: 1px solid rgb(255, 255, 255); box-shadow: rgb(147, 147, 147) 0px 0px 5px; margin: 0px;" title="brainstorm" width="196" /><br />
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Brainstorm (credit: MGM)</div>
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This experiment was limited to a simple on-off signal. However, the researchers say it should be possible to detect hand movements by multiple EEG signals or real-time fMRI.</div>
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Those signals (on multiple channels) could be used to “sonicate each of the corresponding hemispheric forepaw motor areas of the rat’s brain, resulting in mirror-like limb-to-limb control of the rodent forepaw motion.”</div>
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But the research could go a lot further. In a concept right out of the movies<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0209958/" style="color: #5288cb; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">The Cell</a> (an FBI agent persuades a social worker to enter the mind of a comatose serial killer to learn where he has hidden his latest kidnap victim) and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainstorm_(1983_film)" style="color: #5288cb; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><em>Brainstorm</em></a> (a team of scientists invents “the Hat,”a brain/computer interface that allows sensations to be recorded from a person’s brain so that others can experience them), the researchers also see this happening between two awake human subjects. And it could be bidirectional, and over great distances, using the Internet.</div>
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What’s more, “Potential linking/sharing of neural processing information between individual identities can be conceptually applied to a feedback loop of the neural signal, enabling ‘autologous BBI’”— that is, the information would be fed back to the originating person. So it could be used to actively control or modify specific neural processing and associated cognitive/neural behavior, “which may confer unexplored opportunities in the study of neuroscience with potential implications for therapeutic applications.”</div>
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The findings suggest “intriguing new possibilities for computer-assisted volitional control/communication of brain states between individuals,” the researchers hint. “The BBI method may be used to augment this mutual coupling of the brains, and may have a positive impact on human social behavior” — or negative, if misused.</div>
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This technology raises some ethical questions, the researcher admit, and “complex challenges, possibly even undesirable consequences that may arise with the future application of this emerging technology.”</div>
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<li style="background-image: none; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;"><a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0060410" style="color: #5288cb; text-decoration: none;">Yoo S-S, Kim H, Filandrianos E, Taghados SJ, Park S, Non-Invasive Brain-to-Brain Interface (BBI): Establishing Functional Links between Two Brains, <em>PLoS ONE</em>, 2013, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0060410 (open access)</a></li>
</ul>
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Original article by KurzweilAi</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2828887631702699420.post-87631345006242562492013-04-10T17:09:00.001-07:002014-05-20T16:04:47.779-07:00Mapping the ‘fountain of youth’<br />
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University of Copenhagen researchers and an international team have for the first time mapped telomerase, an enzyme </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB_NKPDQhCtHk_P77ar2vij4kozGwS0vM7R73m0sbDP5Nj2vSq_pAVBtlcMbVucqqGHgblRtQH7_Z-ObkCUNeOW_6TusHZzlq51lYliWc8ah7ZV_W5GiUqiEpehg1CrmGVgWhNU-_zW0M/s1600/Tibolium_castaneum_TERT_structure.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB_NKPDQhCtHk_P77ar2vij4kozGwS0vM7R73m0sbDP5Nj2vSq_pAVBtlcMbVucqqGHgblRtQH7_Z-ObkCUNeOW_6TusHZzlq51lYliWc8ah7ZV_W5GiUqiEpehg1CrmGVgWhNU-_zW0M/s320/Tibolium_castaneum_TERT_structure.png" height="283" width="320" /></a></div>
with a rejuvenating effect on cell aging.<br />
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This is one of the results of a major research project involving more than 1,000 researchers worldwide, four years of hard work, DKK 55 million from the EU, and blood samples from more than 200,000 people.</div>
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It is the largest collaboration project ever to be conducted within cancer genetics, the researchers say.</div>
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Stig E. Bojesen, a researcher at the Faculty of Health and Medicial Sciences, University of Copenhagen, and staff specialist at the Department of Clinical Biochemistry, Copenhagen University Hospital, Herlev, has headed the efforts to map telomerase — an enzyme capable of creating telomeres (new ends on cellular chromosomes).</div>
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“We have discovered that differences in the telomeric gene are associated both with the risk of various cancers and with the length of the telomeres. The surprising finding was that the variants that caused the diseases were not the same as the ones which changed the length of the telomeres. This suggests that telomerase plays a far more complex role than previously assumed,” says Bojesen.</div>
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The mapping of telomerase is an important discovery because telomerase is one of the very basic enzymes in cell biology. It re-lengthens the telomeres so that they get the same length before embarking on cell division.</div>
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“The mapping of telomerase may, among other things, boost our knowledge of cancers and their treatment, and with the new findings the genetic correlation between cancer and telomere length has been thoroughly illustrated for the first time,” says Bojesen.</div>
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<b>Telomeres a cellular ‘multi-ride ticket’</b></div>
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The human body consists of 50,000,000,000,000 or fifty trillion cells, and each cell has 46 chromosomes, which are the structures in the nucleus containing our hereditary material, the DNA. The ends of all chromosomes are protected by telomeres.</div>
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Telomeres serve to protect the chromosomes in much the same way as the plastic sheath on the end of a shoelace. But each time a cell divides, the telomeres become a little bit shorter and eventually end up being too short to protect the chromosomes.</div>
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But some special cells in the body can activate telomerase, which again can elongate the telomeres. Sex cells, or other stem cells which must be able to divide more than normal cells, have this feature.</div>
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Unfortunately, cancer cells have discovered the trick, and it is known that they also produce telomerase and thus keep themselves artificially young. The telomerase gene therefore plays an important role in cancer biology, and it is precisely by identifying cancer genes that the researchers imagine that the identification rate and the treatment can be improved.</div>
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“A gene is like a country. As you map it, you can see what is going on in the various cities. One of the cities in what could be called Telomerase Land determines whether you develop breast cancer or ovarian cancer, while other parts of the gene determine the length of the telomeres.</div>
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“Mapping telomerase is therefore an important step towards being able to predict the risk of developing different cancers. In summary, our findings are very surprising and point in many directions. But as is the case with all good research, our work provides many answers but leaves even more questions,” says Bojesen.</div>
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<li style="background-image: none; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">Stig E Bojesen et al., Multiple independent variants at the TERT locus are associated with telomere length and risks of breast and ovarian cancer, <i>Nature Genetics</i>, 2013, DOI: 10.1038/ng.2566 (open access)</li>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2828887631702699420.post-8186139366123726752013-04-09T04:15:00.003-07:002014-05-20T16:05:12.577-07:00Why bother with passwords when you can have passthoughts?<br />
Some Berkeley researchers think they can get you to emit your password through your thoughts. Well, we're <br />
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always thinking "12345," aren't we?<br />
<br />
Would you choose to save your fingers by wearing cat ears on your head.<br />
I am not imbibing alcoholized catnip. I am merely marveling at the ideas that emerge from the minds of clever cats at Berkeley.<br />
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One of these ideas uses a technology called Neurosky. Those who find Google Glass to be highly inventive -- but maybe not so stylish -- will look at the Neurosky headsets and wonder just how soon after putting them on they will be intercepted by people in long, white coats.<br />
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There is a probe touching your forehead, resembling the same motion you sometimes make with your finger when you're feeling particularly stupid.<br />
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Still, these fine Berkeley minds believe that once you buy one of these relatively cheap pieces of headgear ($199), you'll be able to avoid ever having to type a password.<br />
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Yes, your favorite e-mail address or entertainment Web site will open with a mere passthought.<br />
As The Verge reports, such an astonishingly subtle action can be achieved with an off-the-shelf electroencephalogram (EEG).<br />
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The Neurosky Mindset is one such device and its error rate in passing along passthoughts was allegedly 1 percent.<br />
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I do wonder, though, whether these results might be affected by mood. I know that when I am in a certain mood of, say, despair, my thoughts wander along a path that often gets me lost before night fall.<br />
As you can see from the TechCrunch video I have embedded, this technology can be used for all kinds of useful pursuits, such as twitching cat ears perched on one's head.<br />
Surely the two tasks can be combined.<br />
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Please imagine how beautiful it would be if you were sitting at work, cat ears on your head, and they twitched every time you entered a password.<br />
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If there's anything technology has taught us, it's that the mundane must be mixed with the entertaining to take hold.<br />
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I know so many people -- at least in the tech world -- who would dearly love to wear cat ears all day while performing life-affirming tasks, such as designing new apps to make you buy more things more often.<br />
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Original article by <a href="http://www.cnet.com/profile/ChrisMatyszczyk/" rel="nofollow">Chris Matyszczyk</a> for Cnet news.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2828887631702699420.post-67304156691974991762013-04-06T17:38:00.000-07:002014-05-20T16:05:31.103-07:00Japanese BCI Lab Decodes Dreams <br />
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The institute used a database of brain wave patterns representing thoughts about various <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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objects</h2>
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A Japanese research institute says it can tell what people are dreaming about by analyzing their brain waves.</div>
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The lab at the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International, or ATR, said Friday that its method matches the subject of dreams to one of about 20 general categories, with roughly 70 percent accuracy. The lab created software that can identify brain wave patterns corresponding to general concepts such as "book," "food," or "female."</div>
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ATR, whose investors include Japan telecommunications giant NTT and wireless operator KDDI, said it aims to improve the field of brain-machine interfaces with the research. ATR's Brain Information Communication Research Lab, which carried out the experiments, said the results may also be applied to subjects that are awake but have trouble expressing themselves, such as people who suffer from hallucinations or are mentally ill.</div>
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The lab experimented on three test subjects, hooking them up to an EEG (electroencephalogram) and having them sleep inside an MRI machine to measure their brain waves. When an identifiable pattern emerged, the subjects were immediately awakened and asked what they were dreaming about, a process that was repeated about 200 times for each person, creating a database of dream subjects and corresponding brain wave patterns.</div>
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The results were grouped into general categories, and the subjects were then shown images that corresponded to each category, with their resulting brain waves patterns also recorded. As brain activity when dreaming about objects or actually viewing them is thought to be similar, this added more entries to the database created during the sleeping tests.</div>
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The lab said it found that databases created in this way could be used to accurately determine what the subjects were dreaming about. The results were most accurate when used on dreams that the subjects experienced less than 15 seconds before they were awakened. As more time elapsed, the subjects appeared to forget what they had been dreaming about.</div>
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The lab said it is unsure whether similar results can be obtained for identifying patterns or colors, as opposed to general concepts and ideas.</div>
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ATR is based in Kyoto Prefucture in central Japan. In addition to working with corporations, it also works with government agencies on projects ranging from robotics to wireless technologies.</div>
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The institute said the experiment and results were published in the latest issue of the magazine Science, in an article titled <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2013/04/03/science.1234330.abstract" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: #206ba4; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">"Neural Decoding of Visual Imagery during Sleep."</a></div>
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By Jay Alabaster through IDG News Service</div>
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