March 23, 2006
V For Vendetta
Set against the futuristic landscape of totalitarian Britain, V For Vendetta tells the story of a young working-class woman named Evey who is rescued from a life-and-death situation by a masked man known only as “V.”
Profoundly complex, V is at once literary, flamboyant, tender and intellectual, a man dedicated to freeing his fellow citizens from those who have terrorized them into compliance. He is also bitter, revenge-seeking, lonely and violent, driven by a personal vendetta.
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Home >> PhilosophyFebruary 15, 2006
Biocosm
Why is the universe life-friendly? Columbia physicist Brian Greene says it's the deepest question in all of science. Cosmologist Paul Davies agrees, calling it the biggest of the Big Questions.
Complete Article @ KurzweilAI.net
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Home >> PhilosophyJanuary 10, 2006
What Is Your Dangerous Idea?
The history of science is replete with discoveries that were considered socially, morally, or emotionally dangerous in their time; the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions are the most obvious. What is your dangerous idea? An idea you think about (not necessarily one you originated) that is dangerous not because it is assumed to be false, but because it might be true?
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Home >> PhilosophyNovember 10, 2005
The creative mind
Everyone has it, some a lot more than others. The development of humans, and possibly the universe, depends on it. Yet creativity is an elusive creature. What do we mean by it? What is going on in our brains when ideas form? Does it feel the same for artists and scientists? We asked writers and neuroscientists, pop stars and AI gurus to try to deconstruct the creative process - and learn how we can all ignite the spark within.
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Home >> PhilosophyOctober 28, 2005
Waiting for the lights to go out
We've taken the past 200 years of prosperity for granted. Humanity's progress is stalling, we are facing a new era of decay, and nobody is clever enough to fix it. Is the future really that black, asks Bryan Appleyard
The greatest getting-and-spending spree in the history of the world is about to end. The 200-year boom that gave citizens of the industrial world levels of wealth, health and longevity beyond anything previously known to humanity is threatened on every side. Oil is running out; the climate is changing at a potentially catastrophic rate; wars over scarce resources are brewing; finally, most shocking of all, we don't seem to be having enough ideas about how to fix any of these things.
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Home >> PhilosophySeptember 29, 2005
The code of life
Look carefully at The Last Supper. Measure the angle between the sloping right-hand side of Christ and the figure — John the Baptist, or is it Mary Magdalene? — leaning away on his right. It measures 81 degrees. This is the exact angle at which the hypodermic must be be inserted into the aorta for a successful angioplasty. Leonardo da Vinci not only knew the geometry of a quadruple bypass: but he left a detailed set of coded instructions on procedure. Count the number of transverse rafters on the ceiling: seven. Now balance these against the five supporting beams: there you have the precise ratio of camphor and opium required for successful anaesthesia. Finally, note the position of the disciple’s hands on the left, held up vertically as a clear sign — or is it a warning? — that a reflux of blood back towards the ventricle alone cannot be the force that closes the valve. As Francis Wells, a consultant surgeon at Papworth Hospital, notes: “All cardiac surgeons will know this phenomenon when the valve is ‘tripped’ open during the infusion of antegrade aortic cardioplegia.”
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Home >> PhilosophyJune 18, 2005
Mind Science Foundation
Einstein once walked these hallways as did the bongo-drum beating physicist Richard Feynman. Both offered theories that turned the scientific doctrine of their time on its head.
Next week at the famed California Institute of Technology some of the world's leading researchers in the fields of neuroscience, psychology, neurology, artificial intelligence, philosophy and physics will gather to ponder one of the top questions in modern science -- an enigma that has eluded brilliant minds for centuries: how does consciousness arise in human beings?
"How does the pulsating gray matter in our brains give rise to the sensorial richness of the world around us and the intricate complexities of our own self-perception?" asks Joseph Dial, Executive Director of the Mind Science Foundation, which is the lead sponsor of this year's Cal-Tech conference.
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Home >> PhilosophyJune 09, 2005
Intelligent Design
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Home >> PhilosophyJune 03, 2005
Transhumanist Values
Transhumanism is a loosely defined movement that has developed gradually over the past two decades. It promotes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding and evaluating the opportunities for enhancing the human condition and the human organism opened up by the advancement of technology. Attention is given to both present technologies, like genetic engineering and information technology, and anticipated future ones, such as molecular nanotechnology and artificial intelligence.
The enhancement options being discussed include radical extension of human health-span, eradication of disease, elimination of unnecessary suffering, and augmentation of human intellectual, physical, and emotional capacities. Other transhumanist themes include space colonization and the possibility of creating superintelligent machines, along with other potential developments that could profoundly alter the human condition. The ambit is not limited to gadgets and medicine, but encompasses also economic, social, institutional designs, cultural development, and psychological skills and techniques.
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Home >> PhilosophyMay 29, 2005
The future is a chip inside your head
Imagine a world where you can never lose your mobile phone because the technology has been implanted in your jawbone; a future where elite football teams play to neurally downloaded tactics and where everything you buy comes with GPS software to help you keep track of it. It may sound like science fiction but, according to a leading academic based in Scotland, it could soon be fact.
Andy Clark, a shock-haired professor of philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, believes his finger is on tomorrow’s pulse. He burst into the academic stratosphere with the 2003 publication of Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies and the Future of Human Intelligence. That book explored the way human minds might interact with emerging technology, instantly becoming both a key scientific text and a crossover hit in the United States, casting Clark in the role of scientific seer.
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Home >> PhilosophyMay 28, 2005
Human Changing
Dr. James Hughes, bioethicist and sociologist at Trinity College and director of the World Transhumanist Association, published Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future in late 2004, examining the ways in which the technological enhancement of human capabilities and lives can strengthen liberal democratic cultures, not threaten them. (I interviewed Dr. Hughes last November, shortly after Citizen Cyborg was released: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.) In March of this year, Ramez Naam, software engineer and technology consultant, brought out More Than Human: Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement, focusing on the ways in which biomedical treatments can and will improve human abilities and happiness. Both of these books -- which I highly recommend reading, even if you're a skeptic about the implications of human augmentation technologies -- received highly positive reviews and greatly advanced the conversation over whether and how to enhance human capabilities through technological intervention.
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Home >> PhilosophyMay 27, 2005
The most dangerous idea on earth?
t is easy to see how you could be tempted. It might start with genetically screening your children for a lower risk of a hereditary cancer. Or perhaps with a pill that promised to keep your memory fresh and clear into old age.
But what if, while you were having your future children engineered to be cancer-free, you were offered the chance to make them musically gifted? Or, if instead of taking a memory-enhancing pill, you were offered a neural implant that would instantly make you fluent in all the world’s languages? Or cleverer by half? Wouldn’t it be difficult to say no? And what if you were offered a whole new body - one that would never decay or grow old?
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Home >> PhilosophyMay 07, 2005
Animals that are part-human
On a farm about six miles outside this gambling town, Jason Chamberlain looks over a flock of about 50 smelly sheep, many of them possessing partially human livers, hearts, brains and other organs.
The University of Nevada-Reno researcher talks matter-of-factly about his plans to euthanize one of the pregnant sheep in a nearby lab. He can’t wait to examine the effects of the human cells he had injected into the fetus’ brain about two months ago.
Read Also: The New Ethics Guidelines
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Home >> PhilosophyMay 02, 2005
The Genographic Project
The National Geographic Society, IBM, geneticist Spencer Wells, and the Waitt Family Foundation have launched the Genographic Project, a five-year effort to understand the human journey—where we came from and how we got to where we live today. This unprecedented effort will map humanity's genetic journey through the ages.
The fossil record fixes human origins in Africa, but little is known about the great journey that took Homo sapiens to the far reaches of the Earth. How did we, each of us, end up where we are? Why do we appear in such a wide array of different colors and features?
Such questions are even more amazing in light of genetic evidence that we are all related—descended from a common African ancestor who lived only 60,000 years ago
Read more about The Genographic Project @ The National Geographic
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Home >> PhilosophyApril 21, 2005
Whatever happened to machines that think?
In futurology, a technological singularity is a predicted point in the development of a civilisation at which technological progress accelerates beyond the ability of present-day humans to fully comprehend or predict. The singularity can more specifically refer to the advent of smarter-than-human intelligence, and the cascading technological progress assumed to follow.
CLEVER computers are everywhere. From robotic lawnmowers to intelligent lighting, washing machines and even car engines that self-diagnose faults, there's a silicon brain in just about every modern device you can think of. But can you honestly call any machine intelligent in a meaningful sense of the word?
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Home >> PhilosophyApril 18, 2005
The end is nigh
When you've gotta go, you've gotta go - but how, and when? Experts from around the world assess the natural and man-made threats to human survival.
How will it all end? Some say we are likely to go with a bang, others predict a slow, lingering end, while the optimists suggest we will overcome our difficulties by evolving into a different species.
Humans have a 50-50 chance of making it through the 21st century without serious setback, says Sir Martin Rees, the astronomer royal, professor of cosmology and astrophysics at the University of Cambridge in England, and author of Our Final Century.
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Home >> PhilosophyMarch 15, 2005
Sentient machines will raise human questions
There is very little left in the canon of science fiction that has not already been made a reality by the continuing advancement of scientific discovery. From cloning complex organisms to building supercomputers that can perform billions of calculations per second, many of the concepts and imaginings of various science-fiction creators have leapt from page and film into our everyday society.
Everything, that is, except machines that can truly think and feel as we can. Surely, though, that could never be done. Surely, humanity could never be duplicated artificially. This notion will always be relegated to the realm of fiction and fantasy.
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Home >> PhilosophyMarch 09, 2005
Thinking robots – not quite yet
Noel Sharkey is in the mood to debunk a few myths.
The 56-year-old professor of computer science at Sheffield University is at the forefront of robotic technology in this country and there's a few things he wants to get off his chest.
"Everybody wants to hear that robots are going to take over the world but it's not going to happen," he says.
"You get a lot of scientists, particularly American scientists, saying that robotics is about at the level of the rat at the moment, I would say it's not anywhere near even a simple bacteria."
With his gentle Irish lilt, long grey hair held back in a ponytail, this softly-spoken 56-year-old grandfather appears every bit the wacky scientist – he looks somewhere between The Fast Show's mad professor, Denzil Dexter, and a Grateful Dead fan.
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Home >> PhilosophyFebruary 26, 2005
Evolution Revolution
The college biology student felt yanked in two directions - as if he were being forced to choose between the scientific evidence he was encountering in college and the religious beliefs with which he'd been raised.
He went to see his teacher, Margaret Towne, a visiting distinguished professor at Juniata College in Pennsylvania. Towne was not only a devout Protestant Christian, but a pastor's wife. Yet, oddly enough, she embraced and taught evolutionary principles to college students.
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Home >> PhilosophyFebruary 14, 2005
TESTING DARWIN
If you want to find alien life-forms, hold off on booking that trip to the moons of Saturn. You may only need to catch a plane to East Lansing, Michigan.
The aliens of East Lansing are not made of carbon and water. They have no DNA. Billions of them are quietly colonizing a cluster of 200computers in the basement of the Plant and Soil Sciences building at Michigan State University. To peer into their world, however, you have to walk a few blocks west on Wilson Road to the engineering department and visit the Digital Evolution Laboratory. Here you'll find a crew of computer scientists, biologists, and even a philosopher or two gazing at computer monitors, watching the evolution of bizarre new life-forms.
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Home >> PhilosophyJanuary 19, 2005
ET Visitors: Scientists See High Likelihood
Decades ago, it was physicist Enrico Fermi who pondered the issue of extraterrestrial civilizations with fellow theorists over lunch, generating the famous quip: "Where are they?" That question later became central to debates about the cosmological census count of other star folk and possible extraterrestrial (ET) visitors from afar.
Fermi’s brooding on the topic was later labeled "Fermi’s paradox". It is a well-traveled tale from the 1950’s when the scientist broached the subject in discussions with colleagues in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Thoughts regarding the probability of earthlike planets, the rise of highly advanced civilizations "out there", and interstellar travel -- these remain fodder for trying to respond to Fermi’s paradox even today.
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Home >> PhilosophyDecember 27, 2004
Just how old can he go?
His regimen for longevity is not everyone's cup of tea (preferably green tea, Kurzweil advises, which contains extra antioxidants to reduce the risk of heart disease and cancer). And most people would scoff at his notion that emerging trends in medicine, biotechnology and nanotechnology open a realistic path to immortality--the central claim of a new book by Kurzweil and Dr. Terry Grossman, a physician and founder of a longevity clinic in Denver. "I am serious about it," said Kurzweil, a wiry man with few lines on his face for a 56-year-old. "I think death is a tragedy. I think aging is a tragedy. And going beyond our limitations is what our species is all about."
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Home >> PhilosophyDecember 17, 2004
Robots' "personality".
Korean scientists have created the world's first "artificial species" - a robot with genes that it can pass on to other robots.
Professor Kim Jong-Hwan, already known as the creator of "robot football", has developed 14 artificial chromosomes that he says will determine robots' "personality".
He believes that within 20 years lonely people will use their personal robots to keep them company, replacing cats and dogs.
"If you come back to your home after work, the robot will greet you and you can talk to him like a friend," he said.
"For example, a senior person who is living alone might feel loneliness. If they use their pet robot, they will feel more comfortable."
Dr Kim is in New Zealand as the keynote speaker at the second international conference on "autonomous robots and agents".
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Home >> PhilosophyDecember 14, 2004
Consequences of technology not always desirable
Will we live happier, healthier, safer and more satisfying lives because of scientific advancements in robotics, nanotechnology, genetic engineering and other areas? Or will we drift into a future with ever-increasing dangers and frustrations because of these advancements?
Advances in technology often result in unexpected and undesirable consequences. The automobile allowed people to travel more rapidly and more easily than could be done with horses and wagons, but it also helped to accelerate the breakdown of families and entire communities.
Complete Article by Gerard Voland
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Home >> PhilosophyDecember 10, 2004
Where Science, Fiction Meet
In 1947, Robert A. Heinlein published a novel called "Rocket Ship Galileo," about a group of whiz kids who build their own ship and fly into space.
This summer, 57 years after the book, SpaceShipOne was launched from the Mojave Desert, becoming the first manned spaceflight by private citizens. The accomplishment capped a remarkable story about a group of whizzes who decided one day to build their own ship and fly into space.
If the stories sound similar, it's because one inspired the other.
Science fiction became science fact. And now the stories of "Rocket Ship Galileo," SpaceShipOne and the connection between the two occupy the same display case as the newest exhibit in the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame.
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Home >> PhilosophyDecember 08, 2004
Beyond Human
A single word was stamped in bold, black ink across the top of the file. To the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Freddie Boyce was just another one of the "morons" warehoused at the Walter E. Fernald State School for the Feeble-minded, located just outside Boston in Waltham, Mass.
Freddie arrived at Fernald in 1949 after the last of his foster parents died. He never knew his father and barely knew his mother. After taking a primitive version of an IQ test, he was determined to be mentally insufficient and labeled a moron – just one of many scientific terms given to kids with slight mental capacities. He was given a school uniform and put to work. It didn't matter that Freddie would be considered normal by today's standards. He was simply poor, uneducated and had nowhere else to go. So they locked him away.
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Home >> PhilosophyNovember 13, 2004
Emotional computing
People talking back to a computer is common enough — usually in a moment of pique or frustration. Getting the computer to respond in kind is a far different task, one that computer scientists are undertaking with various degrees of success and consternation.
The challenge isn't simply a matter of inventing new software and sometimes hardware, difficult enough as that is, but also of coming to grips with some of the ethics involved.
If computers are to have emotional components, what role would they play in everyday life? Do human beings really want an emotional relationship with a mechanical mind?
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Home >> PhilosophyNovember 10, 2004
What does it mean to be human?
"The existence of 'Mini-Man' should destroy religion," claims Desmond Morris.
I can't help thinking we've been here before. Indeed, Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist, still cannot understand why religion survived Darwin.
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Home >> PhilosophyNovember 07, 2004
NASA scientists taking a peek at Utahn's brain
NASA scientists are scanning the brain of a Utah man who was an inspiration for the 1988 hit movie "Rain Man" in hopes that the technology used to study the effects of space travel on the brain will help explain the mental capabilities and inconsistencies of Kim Peek.
He's called a "mega-savant" because he is a genius in about 15 different areas, from history and literature and geography to numbers, sports, music and dates. He is also severely limited in other ways. Ask him where the silverware is kept and he likely won't know. He doesn't do simple things. He can't dress himself. He may not be able to figure out the light switch, his father Fran says. But Kim Peek's mental abilities in certain categories seem to be getting even stronger with age. That's one reason scientists in California are so interested in running tests.
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Home >> PhilosophyOctober 16, 2004
Transhumanism at the Crossroads
For as long as I can remember, I've been fascinated by prospects for the future of our society and our species. This has kept me actively involved in the science fiction field, which has likely provoked sighs and raised eyebrows from my staider colleagues in academia and legal practice.
Yet this is nothing compared to the social stigma of being involved in the transhumanist movement. Since about 1997, much of my thinking, reflected in my fiction and nonfiction writing, has focused on issues that concern transhumanists: the prospects of artificial intelligence and uploading; the rights and wrongs of reproductive cloning, genetic engineering and radical life extension; and the general merits of human enhancement technologies. My viewpoint has generally been sympathetic to transhumanist approaches and at least one commentator has labeled me a "transhumanist technophile," which is fair enough.
Complete Article by Russell Blackford
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Home >> PhilosophyOctober 14, 2004
Mind over Matter
Sometime in the not-too-distant future, the worlds of people and robots will merge.
Humans already are heading in artificial directions. We have false teeth and hair, plastic limbs, intraocular lenses, mechanical organs and drug-dispensing implants. Robots are becoming more like us in facial expression, voice recognition, and ability to walk, talk and make decisions.
The big question, however, isn't whether people become more techno than flesh, but whether robots develop some form of consciousness - self-aware minds of their own.
Sidney Perkowitz raises this question in "Digital People: From Bionic Humans to Androids" (Joseph Henry Press), a book that describes how a new generation of robots could serve as "the next level of humanity."
Complete Ariticle
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