Category Archives: Transhuman

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Transhuman Space Line Editor: Phil Masters

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In the year 2100, humanity is remaking itself using mature biotechnology and creating new kinds of living things. Transhuman Space gamers have the option to play genetically edited human upgrades, enhanced or specialized parahumans, or completely synthetic bioroids. Even if they don't decide to tamper with genetics, they'll encounter plenty of modified beings walking down the street or flying spaceships.

Transhuman Space: Bioroid Bazaar completes the job started in Transhuman Space: Changing Times of updating relevant game templates from earlier Transhuman Space supplements to GURPS Fourth Edition, this time covering the setting's genetic marvels and half-human monstrosities. It also gathers a couple of Fourth Edition templates from other supplements, and features a few new designs, including the disturbing Leonardo and Bngmyng bioroids and the tragic J7-S53 "upgrade." In all, Bioroid Bazaar delivers:

From the ocean depths to the Arctic wastes, and outward from there to the "Flying Dome" of Luna City and comet herder ships in the Outer System, biotechnology is changing what it means to be human or more (or less) than human. Come, see what's on the market in the Bioroid Bazaar!

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Transhuman Space: Bioroid Bazaar

A U.S. biotech company has been given the green light to begin recruiting 20 brain-dead patients to test if parts of their central nervous systems can be regenerated literally raising them from the dead.

The company, Bioquark Inc., plans to inject a cocktail of stem cells and peptides into the brains of the patients over a six-week period to see if it can jump-start their functions.

Philadelphia-based Bioquark asks on its website: What if your body came with a restart button?

Finding that button is the essence of the firms research.

The company describes its mission as a life sciences company developing proprietary biological products for both the regeneration and repair of human organs and tissues. The companys core program is focused on the development of novel combinatorial biologics capable of directly remodeling diseased, damaged, or aged tissues, creating micro-environments that induce efficient and controllable regeneration and repair.

The company says it is capable of creating dynamics in mature tissues that are normally only seen during human fetal development, as well as during limb and organ regeneration in organisms like amphibians.

WND reported in January on the growing promise of anti-aging or gene therapy science, a technology known as CRISPR/Cas9, which seeks to deliver immortality to human beings. Some of the worlds richest men are investing billions in this research including Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, Ray Kurzwell of Google, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, venture capitalist Paul Glenn and Russian multi-millionaire Omitry Itskov.

Besides injecting the brain with stem cells and peptides, scientists at Bioquark say they will use lasers and nerve stimulation therapies thathave been shown to bring people out of comas.

The 20 human patients will have been declared clinically dead due to a traumatic brain injury but kept alive on ventilators and other life support, the Telegraph reported.

They will be watched closely for about six months using brain imaging equipment that looks for signs of regeneration of the upper spinal cord, which is the lowest part of the region of the brain and controls independent breathing and heartbeat.

Military also on quest to transcend humanity

Assistant Secretary of Defense Stephen Welby testified before the Senate recently saying the U.S. is at a pivotal moment in history with regard to military research, and the DoDs DARPA unit now has 39,000 scientists and engineers working in military labs across 22 states trying to harness the latest technological advances for military application.

Christian author and filmmaker Tom Horn says scientists are redefining what it means to be human, with the goal of transcending humanity.

Right here in North Carolina at your university, they have what is called a transgenic lab, which means they have mice that have human genetic material, for testing to see if the human parts in that animal are responding, he told TV host Sid Roth in a recent interview.

Using the CRISPR gene-editing technique, one university lab cured cancer in a group of rats, but the unintended consequences were that the rats started aging very quickly and died at half-life, and nobody knows why that happened, Horn said. There is a danger in playing God because youre not God and you dont know.

But its one thing to experiment on animals and another to experiment on humans.

Searching for the restart button

The scientists at Bioquark believe the brain stem cells may be able to erase their history and restart life based on their surrounding tissue, the Telegraph reported.

Bioquark CEO Dr. Ira Pastor told the British newspaper that this represents the first trial of its kind and another step toward the eventual reversal of death in our lifetime.

The ReAnima Project has just been approved by a review board at the National Institutes of Health in the U.S. and in India, and the team plans to start recruiting patients immediately.

The first stage will take place at Anupam Hospital in India.

Horn has been researching and writing about transhumanism and mans drive to achieve immortality for 20 years. His documentary, Inhuman, recently won a Silver Telly Award.

Check out Tom Horns award-winning research put forth in best-selling books and documentary films in the WND Superstore.

He said the Bioquark projects focus on brain-stem death paints a picture reminiscent of Robin Cooks Coma, where brain-dead patients are kept alive for later organ harvests.

Are they really dead?

The Telegraph article points out that while someone who is brain dead loses many life functions, their bodies are still able to circulate blood, digest food, excrete waste, balance hormones, grow, sexually mature, heal wounds, spike a fever, and gestate and deliver a baby, raising the question, Are they really dead?

One wonders if these alive/yet not alive humans would be considered legally sentient,' Horn says. While the possibilities offer hope to families whose loved ones have suffered brain trauma leading to death, it is rife with ethical and medical ambiguities.

Horn said advances in recent years have pushed the boundaries of biotech to the place where scientists now stand at the precipice of revitalizing long-dead extinct species such as the Wooly Mammoth and Cave Lions through cloning.

So it is not a stretch of the imagination that persons technically certified as deceased, yet still on life support, could be within range of somehow reawakening the neurons or electrical pulses of their brain associated with soul, mind, or identity,' he said.

Recently a frozen rabbit brain was brought back to life in near perfect condition in what was heralded as a major cryonics breakthrough.

But does a rabbit have a soul? Or does it have a soul but not an eternal spirit?

Horn says this is where the ethical dilemmas come into play.

These are the questions philosophers and theologians have debated since the dawn of time, but in the Bible only mankind is described as having Gods breath breathed into them at the moment of their creation, Horn said. For conservative Christians, this should be a major point of debate regarding the ethics of bringing people back from the dead.

Could a person be returned alive, yet without that God-part that makes them in the image of their creator?

What would they then be? Horn asks. Would they be fully human?

Are they a living construct no longer suitable as a fit-extension of the Holy Spirit? Or would they be fine and the miraculous science that brought them back to life celebrated by all believers? These were the type difficult questions we sought to answer in the documentary Inhuman.'

Watch trailer for the new documentary film Inhuman:

Carl Gallups, a Christian pastor, radio host and author of several books including Be Thou Prepared and Final Warning, said this field of research holds much promise for legitimate medical advancements especially for neurological injuries. But, taken too far, it becomes fraught with moral and ethical questions.

The haves and have nots

If perfected, Gallups asks, will the ability to be brought back from the dead be available for everyone or just an elite few?

Imagine if a Saddam Hussein, Hitler, Stalin or ISIS leaders could live forever.

What entity or governmental power will make the decisions concerning who gets their death reversed and who must die? Gallups asks.

Many will ask if this is not simply the ultimate step in mans attempt to play God deciding who will continue to live and who will not.

There is going to be a divide between people who can afford that type of technology and those who cannot, Horn says. But that bothers me much less than the divide that is coming when we start talking about war fighters.

The Jasons, described by the New York Times as one of the most elite boards of scientists in the world that offers advisory services to the Pentagon, has named super soldier technology as the next big arms race.

The truth is, the defense departments of all countries would love to have the best soldier on the planet, says Sharon Gilbert, the science adviser for SkyWatch TV. And if rumors start going around that, hey, Chinas got an artificial intelligence that theyre blending with humans and theyre starting to put chips in their soldiers and theyre giving them wolf DNA or Hawk DNA so they can run really fast and see really well and be really vicious and never have to sleep well, we better do that, too.

Its the same with the new gene-editing CRISPR technology, Gilbert added.

Scientists are being told, The other countries are doing it. Theyre not going to stop just because we are not doing it, so we have to get there, first.'

One of the global elites most oft-stated concerns is overpopulation.

If they are so concerned with the planets current population explosion, and continually speak of the need for a culling of the inhabitants of the earth what in the world would happen if everyone currently alive could live forever? Gallups asks. The questions are myriad, and the answers to most of them are rather disturbing.

The scientists and journalists reporting on this emerging technology are giddy with the possibilities.

Not only do they speak of living forever, but also of erasing history, reversing death and restarting life, Gallups notes.

What does the Bible say?

But serious students of the Bible know that all of these concepts are spoken of in the ancient texts.

The entire Gospel is founded on the understanding that Jesus Himself reversed death and arose from the grave,' Gallups said.

And while Christ Himself offered eternal life, saying, You too shall live forever, Gallups said most of the scientists and technology gurus arent interested in an eternity spent in heaven.

We are told in Revelation 21:5 and in Isaiah 65:17 that the mind of the child of God will eventually be made entirely new and that the old things will not come to mind anymore,' he said.

When I read the scientific journal articles and examine carefully what many of the researchers are actually saying regarding the exploration of these possibilities, I am reminded of that famous line from the 1931 movie Frankenstein. Dr. Henry Frankenstein, upon the creation of his monster exclaims, Oh, in the name of God! Now I know what it feels like to be God!

This has been mans desire since the Garden of Eden it was the very first seduction Satan presented to Eve: You will be like God. I cant help but believe, in spite of the wonderful potential some of this technology could hold, that somehow Satan is not once again in the mix.

Gilbert says, Its possible that we are looking at a modern-day cautionary tale. Victor Frankenstein used a collection of ambiguous chemicals and a spark of electricity to restore animation to dead flesh, but todays scientists invoke the modern terms stem cells, peptides and lasers in the hopes of restoring life where medicine says none now exists.

Check out Tom Horns award-winning research put forth in best-selling books and documentary films in the WND Superstore.

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Groundbreaking project seeks to bring dead back to life ...

This book uses gorgeous artwork to tell an original story about the rise of Transhumanism as a corporate pissing match, and it embodies everything that is wrong with Jonathan Hickman as a writer.

Don't get me wrong, Hickman is incredibly creative and kind of a mad genius he's just a terrible storyteller. I've come to accept this fact. TRANSHUMAN is told as a "documentary" about the rise of the 3 largest Transhumanist corporations, which I guess is a clever conceit, except (1) why make a fiction

Don't get me wrong, Hickman is incredibly creative and kind of a mad genius he's just a terrible storyteller. I've come to accept this fact. TRANSHUMAN is told as a "documentary" about the rise of the 3 largest Transhumanist corporations, which I guess is a clever conceit, except (1) why make a fictional documentary as a graphic novel? Why not, ya know, write a screenplay? and (2) the nature of those "60 Minutes"-style factual reporting documentary is, by nature, a summary, and therefore not a story. The story is told through interviews with a narrator and the people involved in the story, but they are literally just TELLING the reader what happened. It's almost remarkable that a graphic novel a medium which is visual by nature could rely so much on telling and not showing, and therefore breaks one of the cardinal rules of fiction writing.

Sure, there are some interesting characters, and probably some cool dramatic, personal moments between them namely, the divorced couple who end up working together on the Transhumanist project despite their mutual hatred for one another, who ultimately backstab each other again but frankly, it's not very interesting to just see someone tell you that. I want to see it happen, I want to witness their interpersonal relations. If these were a real-life documentary from 50 years from now, and it aired on 60 Minutes or whatever, it would probably be great, because investigative journalism can get away with digging deep and just reciting facts (although I'd argue that most award-winning works of investigative journalism still manage to find a compelling human angle, something for the audience to emotionally engage with that makes them follow the story through to the end). In TRANSHUMAN, we just get a bunch of talking heads telling us what already happened, and a narrator / director to steer us away from any unreliable sources. There is literally nothing compelling or human to pull you through the story.

When Hickman first broke out onto the comics scene, I thought he was fantastic, but the truth is, he's good at creating the ILLUSION of good story telling. Everything he writes is done in summary, with a few cool moments in between to make it feel human. A friend of mine summed it up well as citing the difference between "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Silmarillion" one is a story about characters that we care about, the other is a play-by-play history book, and Hickman writes the latter. I think Hickman would be better off as an idea man, leaving other people to actually execute these epic stories of his. Because the worlds he creates are always unique and fascinating, full of complex politics and otherworldly visions. But saying "HERE'S THIS CRAZY WORLD I CREATED AND THERE ARE THESE GUYS AND THEN THESE TWO FOUGHT AND THEN THIS GUY BETRAYED THIS GIRL AND THEN THIS PERSON WON, THE END" is really not a fun story to read.

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Transhuman by Jonathan Hickman - Goodreads

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The singularity is near.

Links of interest:

big think

Future at Alltop

Futureseek Daily Link Digest

H+ Magazine

Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies

Kurzweil Accelerating Intelligence

Less Wrong

Singularity Hub

H+Pedia

Multi-reddit of reddits you might enjoy

Upcoming events:

May 21-25, 2018 International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Brisbane, Australia

May 24-27, 2018 International Space Development Conference 2018, Los Angeles, CA USA

May 30-June 1, 2018 fPET2018 Forum on Philosophy, Engineering and Technology, Washington, DC USA

June 11-12, 2018 CogX 2018, London, UK

June 20-22, 2018 EthConference 2018: Investigating Transhumanisms and Their Narratives, Lille, France

July 11-13, 2018 Human-Technology Relations: Postphenomenology and Philosophy of Technology, Enschede, The Netherlands

July 14-19, 2018 14th International Conference on Machine Learning and Data Mining, New York, NY USA

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Chat ServicesDiscord: http://www.transhumanism.chat/

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These and more, curated by /u/Deku-Shrub, at https://hpluspedia.org/wiki/Chat

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Transhumanity

A transhuman is a life form with an intelligence comparable or superior to that of humans.

It thus has the following characteristics:

A posthuman or post-human is a hypothetical future being whose capabilities so radically exceed those of present humans as to be no longer human by current standards. A posthuman can also be described as the creature that results from radical human enhancement. In these ways, the difference between the posthuman and other hypothetical sophisticated non-humans is that a posthuman was once a human, either in its life time or in the life times of some or all of its direct ancestors. As such, a prerequisite for a posthuman is a transhuman, the point at which the human being begins surpassing his own limitations, but is still recognisable as a human person.

Posthumans could be a symbiosis of human and artificial intelligence, or uploaded consciousnesses, or the result of making many smaller but cumulatively profound technological augmentations to a biological human, i.e. a cyborg. Some examples of the latter are redesigning the human organism using advanced nanotechnology or radical enhancement using some combination of technologies such as genetic engineering, psychopharmacology, life extension therapies, neural interfaces, advanced information management tools, memory enhancing drugs, wearable or implanted computers, and cognitive techniques.

The term can also refer to the possibility of a technological singularity or that humanity or a segment of humanity will create or evolve into a "posthuman God".

Homo excelsior (Latin for "higher man") is an alternate term used in the literature of transhumanism for the posthuman.[citation needed] The use of the Latin binomial implies the transhumanist idea of participant evolution as a hypothetical human progression through an intermediary form of the transhuman to a new species distinct from Homo sapiens.

As used here, "posthuman" does not refer to a conjectured future where humans are extinct or otherwise absent from the Earth. As with other species who diverge from one another, both humans and posthumans could continue to exist.

"Posthuman" should not be confused with "posthumanism," which is a European philosophical extension of humanism.

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For persons transitioning to a non-human species, see Otherkin.

Transhuman, or trans-human, is the concept of an intermediary form between human and posthuman.[1] In other words, a transhuman is a being that resembles a human in most respects but who has powers and abilities beyond those of standard humans.[2] These abilities might include improved intelligence, awareness, strength, or durability. Transhumans sometimes appear in science-fiction as cyborgs or genetically-enhanced humans.

The use of the term transhuman goes back to French philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who wrote in his 1949 book The Future of Mankind:

Liberty: that is to say, the chance offered to every man (by removing obstacles and placing the appropriate means at his disposal) of trans-humanizing himself by developing his potentialities to the fullest extent.[3]

And in a 1951 unpublished revision of the same book:

In consequence one is the less disposed to reject as unscientific the idea that the critical point of planetary Reflection, the fruit of socialization, far from being a mere spark in the darkness, represents our passage, by Translation or dematerialization, to another sphere of the Universe: not an ending of the ultra-human but its accession to some sort of trans-humanity at the ultimate heart of things.[4]

In 1957 book New Bottles for New Wine, English evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley wrote:

The human species can, if it wishes, transcend itself not just sporadically, an individual here in one way, an individual there in another way, but in its entirety, as humanity. We need a name for this new belief. Perhaps transhumanism will serve: man remaining man, but transcending himself, by realizing new possibilities of and for his human nature. I believe in transhumanism: once there are enough people who can truly say that, the human species will be on the threshold of a new kind of existence, as different from ours as ours is from that of Peking man. It will at last be consciously fulfilling its real destiny.[5]

One of the first professors of futurology, FM-2030, who taught new concepts of the Human at The New School of New York City in the 1960s, used transhuman as shorthand for transitional human. Calling transhumans the earliest manifestation of new evolutionary beings, FM argued that signs of transhumans included physical and mental augmentations including prostheses, reconstructive surgery, intensive use of telecommunications, a cosmopolitan outlook and a globetrotting lifestyle, androgyny, mediated reproduction (such as in vitro fertilisation), absence of religious beliefs, and a rejection of traditional family values.[6]

FM-2030 used the concept of transhuman as an evolutionary transition, outside the confines of academia, in his contributing final chapter to the 1972 anthology Woman, Year 2000.[7] In the same year, American cryonics pioneer Robert Ettinger contributed to conceptualization of transhumanity in his book Man into Superman.[8] In 1982, American Natasha Vita-More authored a statement titled Transhumanist Arts Statement and outlined what she perceived as an emerging transhuman culture.[9]

Jacques Attali, writing in 2006, envisaged transhumans as an altruistic vanguard of the later 21st century:

Vanguard players (I shall call them transhumans) will run (they are already running) relational enterprises in which profit will be no more than a hindrance, not a final goal. Each of these transhumans will be altruistic, a citizen of the planet, at once nomadic and sedentary, his neighbors equal in rights and obligations, hospitable and respectful of the world. Together, transhumans will give birth to planetary institutions and change the course of industrial enterprises.[10]

In March 2007, American physicist Gregory Cochran and paleoanthropologist John Hawks published a study, alongside other recent research on which it builds, which amounts to a radical reappraisal of traditional views, which tended to assume that humans have reached an evolutionary endpoint. Physical anthropologist Jeffrey McKee argued the new findings of accelerated evolution bear out predictions he made in a 2000 book The Riddled Chain. Based on computer models, he argued that evolution should speed up as a population grows because population growth creates more opportunities for new mutations; and the expanded population occupies new environmental niches, which would drive evolution in new directions. Whatever the implications of the recent findings, McKee concludes that they highlight a ubiquitous point about evolution: every species is a transitional species.[11]

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Transhuman Wikipedia

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Transhuman Wikipedia | Futurist Transhuman News Blog