Category Archives: Transhuman

Pluriverse:A Post-Development DictionaryEdited by Ashish Kothari, Ariel Salleh, Arturo Escobar, Federico Demaria and Alberto Acosta384 pp, paperback, $35

In a Trumpian world of winners and losers, of populist racism and algorithms drilling ever further into the layers of our souls for profit, remaining hopeful for a better world can seem a futile exercise. Add extinction crises and global warming and we have good reason to retreat into the reassuring world of the Great British Bake Off or endless repeats of QI.

Pluriverse:A Post-Development Dictionaryreminds us that nihilism is not the only option. Other possible worlds exist, not just in the realm of ideas but in living grassroots and intellectual movements, some young and tender, others old and hardy, all over the globe.

Arranged alphabetically, this book gives bite-sizes samples from traditions that have been with us for some time feminism, anarchism and ecosocialism for example along with tasters of newer strains of thought around notions of transhumanism, biocivilisation and the movement for free code to fight monopolies like Google and Facebook.

Have you ever heard of Mediterraneanism, Jain Ecology or Ibadism? They are about diversity and conviviality in one place, an extreme form of non-violence, and a tradition of Islamic egalitarianism, respectively. We hear Indigenous voicestoo, including an entry from a member of the Tao (or Yami) people of Taiwan and an Australian woman from the Fitzroy River (Mardoowarra) country of northern Western Australia.

Countering the flattening discourse of global capital the brand, the startup, the entrepreneur, the customer we get the liveliness of local tradition engaging with wider concerns. For example, WA writer Anne Poelinapoints out that she is the property of the river. To that end, she and like-minded people are campaigning for the First Water Law of the Mardoowarra.

Poelina writes: "This is a story of hope, innovation and cultural creativity as we explore our rights and responsibilities to create our own systems by going back to the principles of First Law, the law of country. This First Law encompasses our relationship with each other, our neighbours, and most importantly our family of non-human beings - animals and plants."

There is a genial spirit running through the book, with each writer given their moment to explain themselves without having to argue it out with the other contributors. Both ecosocialists (win power to implement social justice and pro-ecological policies) and eco-anarchists (eschew power and work in small self-governing communities) each get their moment in the sun.

Some pieces seem to thrive on brevity and accessibility, while in others there is a sense of struggle. Luke Novaks piece on transhumanism, for example, tries to explain the difference between the techno-evolution of human beings (transhumanism) and the radical de-centering of the human subject (posthumanism) but I am not sure the casual reader is going to be able to make much of it.

Still, the risks of brevity are more than overcome by the fact that, sometimes, an appetiser is all we want: a plate of nibblies to help fuel a convivial discussion across genuinely diverse perspectives.

[Tracy Sorensen is a PhD candidate researching climate change communication at Charles Sturt University, Bathurst, and writer-in-residence at the Charles Perkins Centre, University of Sydney.]

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'Pluriverse': A handbook of hope - Green Left Weekly

I've been playing RimWorld for the better part of a decade now, since 2013, when it was an alpha you could only get from the developer's website. Much of RimWorld's successas of 2018 it had sold a million copiescomes from its power as a story generator. It builds a procedural arc using an AI director that forces interesting outcomes and interwoven relationships. That arc is stapled to a greater backbone with a single goal: escape the RimWorld. There are a couple ways to do that, like trekking overland or building a new spaceship to escape. The new expansion, Royalty, adds a third escape path to RimWorldwith attendant increase in characters, technologies, and a slew of new quests based on them. The AI storyteller interweaves this new material seamlessly with the old.

Here's the tale of how three crash survivors were marooned on an alien world, made their psychopath leader into space-empire nobility, and got hoodwinked into rescuing a terrible drunk who was far, far more useful than they realised.

In the Royalty expansion, the remnants of an ancient stellar empire have fled to the RimWorld. Where previously the only other inhabitants were regressed tribals, other scattered survivor factions and vicious pirates, there's now a certain civilized air upon the backwater planet. While it was once immeasurably powerful, the shattered empire has lost its home worlds, but the remnants of its military fleet in orbit and its advanced technology make its members the top dogs on the rim. If you can make friends with them and rise through their ranks they might just help you get off this rock and give you sweet psychic powers to boot. This is the kind of stuff that has been implicit in RimWorld's lore for years, but is just now appearing in the game proper.

After a space accident, colonists Onesan, Faina, Xiaohan, and their cat Mr. Boots crash-land on an unknown rimworld. They're in the far south of the Sendor Forest at the crux of a dirt trading road and a river, just west of uninhabited White Sparrow Plateau and east of the sprawling desert of the Stingray Mountains. Mr. Boots is eaten by a bear a few days after landing.

Faina is a beautiful drifter who grew up in a cult. Xiaohan is just 21, but he's brillianttoo brilliant for his own good, and annoying because of it. And then there's Onesan. She's good at manipulating thingsand peoplebecause she grew up on the street and then became a successful merchant. She wants to be eternally better, stronger, faster, and is a transhumanist because of it. She's fascinated with body augmentations.

She's also a psychopath.

A few days into their trials, as they establish a few small stone buildings beside the river, they receive a message: the Empire of Eternity wants to talk. They've offered a position in their society for one of the new colonists if they can shelter a nearby hapless nobleman who's being pursued by an angry, vicious snow hare. (Did I mention the nobleman is hapless?)

Naturally, I choose vicious, amoral Onesan as the colony's new de jure noble leader. I welcome in the Baron and Onesan point-blank executes the rabbit with a revolver.

There are some advantages to having a psychopath as a leader. No matter what happens to the others, Onesan won't lose her cool. She won't get mood penalties when others die along the way which is good because the expectations of an imperial noble are hard to meet on the rim, and that causes mood penalties. Stacking these penalties can lead to colonists going a bit over the edge: throwing tantrums, binge drinking, murdering their rivals. These are not desirable behaviors in a leader. The new path to escape via nobility is hard because I need the wealth to satisfy our noble's desires. But if a character progresses too quickly up the ranks, they will, to put it plainly, lose their shit at the disconnect between expectation and reality. So I put the most predictable person in charge.

In the immortal words of reality TV show contestants the world over: I am not here to make friends, I am here to win.

There are some advantages to having a psychopath as a leader.

Things go well for a while. The nobility wants us to let their pets get a break from the space station life, so they send down a pair of foxes for us to care for. In exchange, Onesan gets promoted high enough in the imperial nobility that they send down a psychic enhancement device for her to plug in. She carves herself a throne out of solid jade and I spend a week building a grand marble hall for it to sit in. Over the next year, she never once sits on the throneshe doesn't even enter the throne room. She is very pleased by its grandeur nonetheless. I guess she just likes to know it's available? The mind of the blessed nobility must operate on a much higher level than my own.

Finally, the imperials turn over the quest for the endgame: if Onesan can reach the rank of Countess, imperial Stellarch Adeodata will come visit us. If I keep her happy she'll fly my colonists off-world.

Royalty presents a new twist on RimWorld for me. Previously the game really focused on building up a base of supplies for an overland trek to an established ship, or on a defensible technological base so you could build a new ship of your own. Royalty wants you to thrive rather than simply survive. The colony must become a lucious, luxurious palace. You must accumulate wealth, and the power to defend it, in a sustainable way.

I'm given several more pets to babysit. I apparently now run a doggie daycare for the miscellaneous animals of the eccentric, bored space nobility. A labrador. An arctic wolf. A pig named Carlos. All of the animals arrive injured in some way. I begin to wonder if the good Baron, fleeing from a snow hare, was not simply fleeing retribution for animal abuse of his own. Another noble asks us to build a monument to the power of his muscles. Onesan rises high enough in the ranks that, when attacked by an overwhelming force of the local tribals, she's able to call down a contingent of imperial shock troops to see them off.

I get a message from the leader of a nearby industrialized settlement, begging us to go out and help a wounded friend. It's a two-day trek, requiring all our supply of travel foods. I saddle up a donkey and go, but am dismayed when the colonists arrive two days later. The man I've been sent to rescue is little more than a wounded drunk lost in the desert. He's heavily alcohol-dependent, with cirrhosis and a cancerous tumor on his liver. His only real skill is cooking, and that offers little to our colony. He'd be more of a drain on resources than he's worth. I consider leaving him for dead or having Onesan put him out of his misery rather than trying to stabilize him and carry him home.

Before I do, I absentmindedly click over to his social tab, curious if the game has given him a relationship with the settlement leader I want to please. It hasn't, but the storyteller has kicked up a relationship for him: he's the father of someone called Adeodata Kosmatos. It says she's a faction leader, but not which one it is. Is he the father of the person who sent me here? Why does that name sound familiar?

I burst out laughing as it strikes me: that's the Empire of Eternity's Stellarch. This wandering drunk fathered the empress herself. Suddenly, making it to orbit doesn't seem quite so hardI just have to reunite a drunken old man with his long-lost daughter.

Royalty is one of those expansions that on the face of it might seem very simple. It adds a bunch of procedural quests, some cool new technological toys, and an interesting new NPC faction. But it's due to RimWorld's nature that I enjoyed it so much. Like a fractal design, these slight increases in complexity lead to entirely novel stories and bizarre new characters. It's a whole new style of game to play with, and I want to play a hundred more hours of it.

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I turned a psychopath into a noble and rescued drunk royalty in the new RimWorld expansion - PC Gamer

Like most health reporters, I know what Im supposed to be doing during this coronavirus outbreak: washing my hands, not touching my face, cleaning high-use surfaces like my phone. But what Im supposed to be doing and what Im actually doing... well. Listen, Im trying.

Washing my hands: easy, love it, lets do it more. Cleaning: dont love it, but doable. Not touching my face, though, is the real challenge.

Heres the thing about your face: its got a bunch of points of entry on it. Specifically, your eyes, nose, and mouth. Thats how the virus gets in, man. You touch something thats contaminated, and then you touch your face, and congratulations! Youre a patient now.

In order to try to hold myself accountable, Ive attempted to document all the times Ive touched my face today. Lets see how this goes.

6:15AM: As my boyfriends alarm goes off, I blearily rub my eyes. So... not off to a great start, then.

6:20AM: I wash my hands, then put my contacts in. That means holding my eyelids open so I can slide the little plastic discs into my eyes. This is probably the most intense face-touching Ill do all day at least until I take my contacts out.

6:34AM: Brushing my bangs out of my eyes, I come in contact with my own forehead. Also, does touching my hair count as touching my face? I decide to wear a ponytail.

6:35AM: The side of my nose itches, and I scratch it before I realize what Im doing.

6:43AM: I lean the side of my face into the palm of my hand to read something, a habit and a mistake. How am I supposed to read anything now?

6:45AM: Apparently by turning my left hand into a fist and placing it against my lips. At least I havent left the house yet.

6:47AM: Scratched my cheek. Also my neck.

6:50AM: Dammit.

7:17AM: I only go this long without touching my face by making myself scrambled eggs with garlic. As long as both hands are occupied, I cant touch my face. The minute I sit down to eat and my left hand is free, I immediately rub my eye.

7:19AM: Nose this time.

7:23AM: Eyes again.

7:29AM: Head resting on hand for who knows how long.

7:34AM: I had no idea this was a hobby of mine.

7:37AM: Apparently I have spent at least half my life with my hands on my face, and I didnt notice until now. I have noticed now only because I apparently cannot stop doing this.

7:41AM: What is the point of having a face?

7:44AM: I mean, I cant see it, so how do I know its there if I dont touch it?

7:46AM: What would make this easier is if I could just peel my face off and keep it somewhere safe, for instance, under my bed.

7:49AM: Several Google searches later (how to make face a void, face a black hole, peel off face live free), I rub my eyes.

7:51AM: If I keep this diary I will do nothing else all day.

7:52AM: That sounds nice, actually. Im not going to commute. Im going to keep touching my face, apparently my favorite thing, at home.

7:55AM: Googling skin care face removal. Rub my nose.

7:59AM: Rubbing my eye.

8:02AM: Everyone keeps saying stop touching your face like its a simple and easy thing to do and their nose never itches. I bet theyre touching their faces constantly, too.

8:06AM: I am leaning on my right hand. No idea how long my cheek has been planted there.

8:09AM: What if I have touched my face without knowing it already this morning? What if this is an undercount?

8:11AM: Putting in eyedrops in the hopes this will get me to stop touching my face.

8:14AM: Maybe if I hadnt been wasting my life with my hands on my face, I would have amounted to something.

8:17AM: Scratched my lip.

8:21AM: Removed an uncomfortable, grainy eye booger from my eye by touching my face.

8:25AM: Does scratching my ear count as touching my face? Lets say yes.

8:27AM: Nose itched again.

8:31AM: What I would prefer to having a face is simply a smooth, black reflective surface surrounded by my hair. I could use Windex to clean it.

8:32AM: All these transhumanists are busy trying to do nothing useful when they could be replacing my face with something that doesnt itch. I resent them.

8:38AM: Im a failure.

8:41AM: Forehead this time.

8:44AM: Searching for face removal service will get you waxing providers and other people who remove facial hair. This is not, however, what I am looking for.

8:54AM: Leaning on my right hand to read again. No idea how long its been there or what else on my face Ive touched.

8:56AM: Ready to take a baseball bat to the kneecaps of anyone telling me to stop touching my face. Im trying, Karen!

8:58AM: I am definitely not noticing every time I touch my face in this diary. Nose again.

9:00AM: What if I put on a ski mask and then only touch the ski mask?

9:07AM: The easiest way to prevent the coronavirus, huh?

9:12AM: Eyes again.

9:17AM: Went to the bathroom and washed my face so I could touch it with impunity. Felt good.

9:21AM: What am I supposed to lean my chin on, if not my hand?

9:23AM: Lips.

9:29AM: Nose.

9:33AM: Eyes.

9:34AM: Eyes again.

9:35AM: Eyes.

9:37AM: Searching Amazon for ski mask.

9:40AM: Despair.

9:43AM: Eyebrows.

9:47AM: Is my cat allowed to touch my face? She definitely just stuck her nose up one of my nostrils.

9:49AM: What if I fashion a mask out of aluminum foil and tie it to my face?

9:53AM: I am trapped in this itchy flesh prison and the only hope of escape is death, which seems inconvenient.

9:57AM: Leaning on my hand. What if I just keep my hands on my face and dont remove them? They cant pick up germs that way. Checkmate.

9:58AM: Rubbed my eye. I cant keep living like this.

Now, at 10:03AM, I am aborting the mission because I touch my face too often; updating this diary has precluded any actual work getting done. Some things I have discovered: my will power is nil, I touch my face without noticing, I am getting increasingly desperate, and the simple advice to stop touching your face is so hard to follow that I would prefer to go on touching my face and simply never leave the house again.

In conclusion, my co-workers should expect me to work from home for the foreseeable future.

Total times touching my face: 57 (that I noticed, anyway)

Average times touching my face per hour: 14

How many times I will touch my face by the end of the day: at least 196

How many times I will touch my face this year: at least 71,736

Originally posted here:
All the times I touched my face today - The Verge

In September 2019, it became known that Facebook bought the developer of neural interfaces CTRL-Labs. Google Glasses are compatible with the NeuroSky EEG biosensor through the open-source MindRDR application. In July 2019, Elon Musk's startup introduced the revolutionary Neuralink brain-machine interface claiming to start the trans-human evolution.

All these pieces of news indicate the direction the industry is heading to. Internet companies that receive their main profit from showing targeted advertising try to take into account the interests of their users. To determine these interests, they massively collect data, tracking the user's actions on the web, building profiles and social graphs, monitoring messages, calls, physical movements, shopping carts, contact lists. But it seems this is not enough for them.

So far, EEG scanners and implants have very limited functionality, but this technology is developing rapidly. Based on the results of a brain activity scan, it is already possible to recognize basic emotions, some unspoken words, and mental attempts to make physical movements. Scientists have found similarities in how different peoples brains process information. It is now possible to make assumptions about a persons thoughts based on his or her brains neural activity.

Medical brain-computer interfaces should help people regain control of their limbs or control prostheses. Inexpensive headsets are positioned as relaxation tools or entertainment gadgets. However, companies have already begun experimenting with EEGs to evaluate the performance of advertising campaigns.

Facebook and startups like Neuralink are developing a new generation of neurotechnology tools and making bold promises. For example, Facebook promises to let people type by simply imagining themselves talking, and Elon Musk anticipates the merger of the human brain with AI.

On September 10, 2019, the Royal Society of London published a 106-page report on the future and risks of neurotechnology. It predicted that a neural revolution" will happen in the coming decades.

Brain-computer devices generate a huge amount of neural data potentially one of the most sensitive forms of personal information. And the main problem is how this brain data will be commercialized. Advertisers are already using confidential information about people's preferences, habits, and locations. Adding neural data to the mix will seriously increase the threat to privacy.

Getting data directly from the brain will be a real paradigm shift. If Facebook, for example, combines neural data with its extensive collection of personal data, then it can create much more accurate and comprehensive psychographic profiles.

Experts say that for now, there are almost no legal obstacles to prevent companies from trading neural profiles.

Neuromarketing is a new industry in marketing research that uses brain scans to know consumers better than they know themselves. Neuromarketers clearly promise to exploit neural profiles commercially.

By non-invasively recording the bioelectrical activity of the brain (electroencephalography), neuro marketers monitor the brain's response to viewing ads. In the future, they hope that this technology will also allow tracking brain activity while using applications, communicating on the Internet, watching movies and TV shows. This will help to maximize the effectiveness of advertising (and, perhaps, other methods of influencing people.)

It is already clear that such technologies will be used not only in the advertising industry. In arecent interview, Edward Snowden explained that technology giants are tools in the hands of even more powerful players: We see how authoritarianism is growing all over the world, and the reality is that all of them are parts of the same threat. These companies function as weapons in the hands of governments. Its too easy to say that tech giants are a real threat; in reality, all of them are part of the same threat the system.

Snowden pointed out that it is better to use WhatsApp rather than simple unencrypted SMS, but it is still not a good idea to use WhatsApp if you are a prime minister and wish to communicate with your staff. For now, you can encrypt and hide your communication if you usevirtual private networks. Withbrain-computer interfaces, it is impossible to encrypt neural signals inside your brain.

Ethics experts also fear that information from the brain may be potentially used for discrimination. For example, if there are patterns of brain activity similar to patterns observed in drug addicts or people suffering from depression or other diseases, perhaps, on the basis of such patterns, employers will refuse to hire people. In addition, insurance companies could raise premiums and banks offer loans on less favorable terms.

The future we are striving for is a world in which our neural data, which we do not even have access to, can be used against us. For now, our thoughts are the last frontier of the defense in the war for privacy. It is sad, but all previous battles have been unconditionally lost.

Link:
The Neural Revolution Is Almost Here. Should We Fear It? | Articles | Chief Data Officer - Innovation Enterprise

Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum. Photo: Guo Chen/Xinhua News Agency/PA Images

New technologies in society raise important questions about the soul, according to a Catholic delegate attending the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Fr Philip Larrey, Chair of Logic and Epistemology at the Pontifical Lateran University, who has been in discussions with tech companies about the ethical questions around Artificial Intelligence and robots,took part in a discussion Faith in the Fourth Industrial Revolution", sponsored by the United Arab Emirates.

Fr Larrey told The Tablet that how emerging technologies raise questions about immortality and the soul. Among Silicon Valley billionaires, he explained, heavy investment was going into technologies about how to vastly extend life expectancy and the transhumanist movement looking at ways to transfer human consciousness into a digital format.

The smartest ones [tech companies] want to dialogue with the Catholic Church because we have a 2,000 year tradition about what it means to be human, he said.The richness of the Catholic tradition gives us the framework to speak out the technologies we have. How we were created and what is our purpose.

Fr Larrey, from Mountain View, California, where Google has its HQ, and who helped arrange the 2016 meeting between the Pope and Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google holding company Alphabet,pointed out that the question of whether we can we really become immortal goes back to the Book of Genesis.

He said some of the tech gurus have made it clear they are not interested in having a dialogue with the Vatican.

They want to do their own thing, and are pushing ahead with a lot of money with projects to try and keep them immortal, or solve health issues, said Fr Larrey, who has written two books,Connected World and Artificial Humanity.

Last September, Silicon Valley big hitters went to the Vatican to discuss ethics amid talk of a potential papal document on artificial intelligence. Archbishop Vincenzio Paglia, the Popes point man on family and pro-life issues, has met Brad Smith, the President of Microsoft. The next assemblyof his Pontifical Academy of Life department will focus on AI.

Fr Larrey stressed that whatever the technological developments, it was important to put people before platforms

The Church is not against the use of machines, but what the Pope is saying is put the human being at the centre of technology, he explained .

The priest-philosopher pointed out that parishes, while using digital technology, are places of human contact. He said claims about robots taking over the world are overblown, and that governments will not allow machines to take over peoples jobs right away. The same is true for pastoral ministry.

I dont see robot priests in the future, he added.

Pope Francis in his messagereminded those at the gathering for the World Economic Forum that their overriding concern must be for the one human family, and warned against the isolationism, individualism and ideological colonisation of contemporary debate.

Digital and technological changes, he said, had benefited humanity, but also left people behind. The Popes message was delivered by Cardinal Peter Turkson, of the integral human development dicastery, who was in Davos, and who was joined by Fr Augusto Zampini-Davies, an official at the dicastery.

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Catholic priest at Davos on AI and the soul - The Tablet

SAN JOSE, Calif. Editors note: The picture above is a file image from a 2012 furry convention in Pittsburgh.

When you think of furry crimefighters, sharp-toothed police K-9s usually come to mind.

But the heroes in this story are humans in big furry costumes.

ABC7 reports three people attending FurCon a gathering of people who dress in large and elaborate animal costumes stopped a violent assault on the streets of San Jose, California.

According to the local news station, a dinosaur, a tiger and a cowboy, for some reason saw a car drive up and witnessed a man beating his girlfriend in the front seat.

KTLA reports the anthropomorphic trio pulled 22-year-old Demetri Hardnett out of the car, took him to the ground and restrained him until officers arrived.

The girl driver was yelling for him to get out, as he started trying to fight us off, Robbie Ryans told CNN, which reported Hardnett was booked into the Santa Clara County Jail on a domestic violence charge.

According to ABC7, the furry convention continued uninterrupted with an event-filled weekend including dance programs, a furry boxing workout and a panel discussion on transhumanism the belief that humans can evolve beyond their current limitations.

RELATED: Suspects, victims in Calf. killings were 'furries'

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Vigilante furries band together to stop an assault - WTSP.com