Category Archives: Transhumanism

Robotophile and transhumanist Ana Matronic took to the Inspirefest stage predicting a future where gender doesnt matter when were all cyborgs.

If you couldnt tell, the name Ana Matronic is a sure sign that someone has not just an interest in robots, but an outright fascination and love for them.

That was made clear on stage at Inspirefest 2017 when the Scissor Sisters singer, DJ and author took us back through her life from an obsession with the cult 70s TV show The Bionic Woman and writing her first self-published zine about robots, to dressing as a robot at a burlesque show in San Francisco.

However, the real focus of her talk was the fascinating philosophical questions posed to us in a present and future where the line between human and robot is becoming increasingly blurred.

And if so, what role does gender play if any when our brains are in robots or uploaded to the cloud?

During those days of creating her fanzine in college for The Bionic Woman, played by Jaime Sommers, Matronic went as far as to create her own robot-infused religion, called Bionic Love, based on the philosophies of Joseph Campbell and with Sommers as its muse and messiah.

My religion playfully painted the caring and compassionate Ms Sommers as the union of opposing forces of science and nature, she said. Shes the embodiment of the future and herald of the coming technological age and a reminder to never lose your humanity in the face of it.

It was the work of academic and writer Donna Haraway, however, that roused Matronics real interest in the topic of cyborgs and where the concept fits in with human constructs.

What triggered Matronics many philosophical questions was Haraways surprising revelation that, for her, we dont have to wait to be a cyborg in the future, as we already are cyborgs.

She wrote [a book] confirming my deification of The Bionic Woman and transformed my love of robots into something more, Matronic said.

According to Haraways argument, a cyborg doesnt have to be a half-human, half-machine entity with bionic limbs, but anyone who has had science alter their body in some capacity, such as getting a vaccination.

Quoting Haraway: In the tradition of Western science and politics, the relation between organism and machine has been a border war. The cyborg manifesto is an argument for the pleasure in the confusion of boundaries and the responsibility for their construction and a world without gender and world without end.

It was in reading this that Matronics discovery and interest in the topic of transhumanism began.

An example of transhumanism would be the uploading of a persons consciousness online so that they can continue on, something that is already underway with early brain emulation software.

Unlike things like time travel and inter-dimensional travel, Matronic said, robots are here and theyre real not just as physical robots, but artificial intelligence as well.

Robots confuse the boundaries between life and death, human and machine, male and female, master and servant, thinking and feeling, ability and disability, creation and destruction, she said.

I take pleasure in the confusion of these boundaries and, as an artist, I have a unique platform to share and study these stories; and, as a transhumanist, I take responsibility of this examination and the construction of new boundaries.

So what are these boundaries being broken down and built again in a cyborg future?

For people like Martine Rothblatt working on brain emulation software and as a transgender person robots and robot bodies offer a way to detach ourselves the limitations of anatomy. Or, more simply, personhood is about equity, not equipment.

We have an opportunity in this moment to be prepared for the arrival of mechanical and digital people and I believe it is our responsibility to be prepared, Matronic said.

When robots do occupy space in our society. When robot rights and robo-sexuality is not just spoken about in an episode of Futurama.But when its actually here, humans will be forced to look around and ask how well we have done for the rights of our fellow humans.

She continued: If you dont do that before the robo-demonstrations, we are going to have problems and not just with the robots.

In a sense, Matronic argued, the rise of robots offers humans the chance to reboot our operating system in every sense.

It certainly seems as if we are moving into a brave new world.

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Ana Matronic: 'Robots confuse the boundaries between life and death' - Siliconrepublic.com

Artificial intelligence. Androids. Transhumanism. Once just fodder for pulp science fiction, technological advances over the past 30 years have brought these subjects to the forefront of any discussion about the future.

Italian Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, the president of the Vaticans Council for Culture, has been trying to make sure the Church is part of that discussion.

Technology runs and proposes new things at a speed that theology and other paths of human knowledge fail to follow, Ravasi told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica on Sunday.

Ravasi runs the Courtyard of the Gentiles, an initiative first proposed by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009 to dialogue with non-believers. The name comes from the space set aside at Herods Temple that was accessible to non-Jews who wanted to speak to rabbis and other Jewish authorities about God and religion.

The Courtyard is currently hosting a series of meetings on future technology, and what effect it could have on what it means to be human.

Right now, major corporations such as IBM, Apple, and Facebook are pouring money into developing Artificial Intelligence (AI). Although the idea of a conscious computer system still exists only in the realm of science fiction, one of the major tasks people want AI for is to create bots for customer service, which should respond to people in such a way that they cant tell they arent talking to a person.

In other words, a computer which isnt conscious, but no one can really tell.

Meanwhile, transhumanism is the idea of transforming the human body through technological progress.

Some of this is already happening, and can be a good thing: Pacemakers, high-tech artificial limbs, and other new medical devices have improved the lives of millions. In a very real way, cyborgs have lived among us for years.

Other examples of a transhumanist future can be seen with Google Glass, the headset which could record what you were seeing, as well as overlay information into your field of view; and the idea of permanent implants to replace credit cards (and possibly many of the functions of your smartphone), which is already being tested in some countries.

These technologies are not inherently wrong, yet may soon present serious ethical dilemmas.

If an artificial limb becomes better than the original, is it okay for a person to upgrade?

If you can record everything you see, should you? Is it any different than an enhanced memory? And who should have access to the images?

But before you can even discuss the implications of the latest technology, yet another gadget hits the market raising new questions.

Ravasi expressed concern over the overproduction of technological gadgets, and complained of an era of bulimia in the means, and atrophy in the ends.

The cardinal said one problem is schools and universities do not cover enough general anthropology, and humanity finds itself flattened in the onslaught of technological change.

If I learn to create robots with a high level of human attributes, if I develop an artificial intelligence, if I intervene in a substantial way with the nervous system: Im not only making a big technological advance, in many cases very valuable for therapeutic medical purposes, Ravasi said. Im also making a real anthropological leap, touching on issues such as freedom, responsibility, guilt, conscience and if we want the soul.

The cardinal said the digital natives who have grown up in this new era are functionally different from older people, often overlapping the relationship between real and virtual, and the traditional way of considering what is true and false. It is as if they were in a video game.

(Ravasis concern is more prescient than even he might know: Many of the technological advances, especially in the field of virtual reality, are being made in the game industry, where the ethical questions about the technological advances are often overshadowed by the cool factor.)

Ravasi also expressed concern about how biotechnology is changing the role of humanity from being a guardian of nature into being a kind of creator.

Synthetic biology, the creation of viruses and bacteria that do not exist in nature, is an expression of this tendency, he said. All these operations have ethical and cultural implications that need to be considered.

Ravasi is not the first Vatican official to speak on these themes.

In 2004, the International Theological Commission issued a document on Human Persons created in the Image of God.

The document affirms that bodiliness is essential to personal identity, and calls for people to exercise a responsible stewardship over the biological integrity of human beings created in the image of God.

The document reads:

Because the body, as an intrinsic part of the human person, is good in itself, fundamental human faculties can only be sacrificed to preserve life. After all, life is a fundamental good that involves the whole of the human person. Without the fundamental good of life, the values like freedom that are in themselves higher than life itself also expire. Given that man was also created in Gods image in his bodiliness, he has no right of full disposal of his own biological nature. God himself and the being created in his image cannot be the object of arbitrary human action.

It goes on to list conditions for any bodily intervention:

For the application of the principle of totality and integrity, the following conditions must be met: (1) there must be a question of an intervention in the part of the body that is either affected or is the direct cause of the life-threatening situation; (2) there can be no other alternatives for preserving life; (3) there is a proportionate chance of success in comparison with drawbacks; and (4) the patient must give assent to the intervention. The unintended drawbacks and side-effects of the intervention can be justified on the basis of the principle of double effect.

Yet in many ways, the document talks past the conversation now happening, especially since those having the conversation are often working out very specific problems how to fix this medical disorder, how to create a better customer interface, how to create a more realistic game and are not considering the larger picture they may be helping to create.

Ravasi is hoping the new dialogue will help everyone stand back and see that picture, and seriously consider the implications of what they are doing.

It is essential for believers and nonbelievers to re-propose the great cultural, spiritual, and ethical values like a positive shock against superficiality, the cardinal said now that we are living through an anthropological and cultural change which is complex and problematic, but is certainly also exciting.

Read the original:
Vatican cardinal on a quest for the soul inside the machine - Crux: Covering all things Catholic

Tomasz Pierscionek is a doctor specialising in psychiatry. He was previously on the board of the charity Medact, is editor of the London Progressive Journal and has appeared as a guest on RTs Sputnik and Al-Mayadeens Kalima Horra.

The dream that we may one day transcend our physical and intellectual barriers through advancements in cybernetics and nanotechnology could became a reality during this century. But would this be a blessing or a curse?

As science expands its frontiers and technology continues to evolve, ideas once deemed fanciful or considered part of science fiction find themselves within the realm of possibility. New discoveries may give rise to unique potential and perils, as the field of ethics struggles to keep pace with the latest technological advancements. The dream that one day we humans may eclipse our physical and mental fetters through augmentation by cybernetics or nanotechnology could become a reality. Although transhumanism and posthumanism are considered modern concepts, the idea of improving or transcending the human condition has been explored in philosophy and literature since at least the mid-19th century.

In his bookThus Spoke Zarathustra, 19th century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche introduced the concept of the bermensch (overman or superman) as a goal towards which humans ought to strive, whereby they take control of their own destinies, work collectively towards the betterment of humanity and create a higher set of ideals to give their existence greater meaning. Nietzsche wrote Man is something that shall be overcome. (The notion of bermensch was later corrupted by the Nazis, who integrated it into their perverse racial theories).

Samuel Becketts playEndgame (1957) suggests some possible outcomes from refining the human body with technology, before rejecting transhumanism as a sinister concept: the very technology which keeps Becketts characters alive, after they have exceeded their natural lifespans, also entraps them and makes them over-reliant upon it. Even as far back as 1839, American writer Edgar Allan Poe made reference to unnatural life extension in a satirical short story The Man That Was Used Up where a mysterious and eulogized war hero, whose body parts have been replaced with prosthetics, needs to be assembled piece by piece each day by his African American valet.

Artificial limbs, mechanical heart valves, and devices such as pacemakers already exist to reduce disability and improve, or extend, an individuals quality of life. British engineer Professor Kevin Warwick and his wife took things to another level in 2002 when they had microchips and sensors implanted into their arms, and connected to their nervous systems, enabling them to feel each others sensations. Professor Warwick could reportedly feel the same sensations as his wife from a different location.

Some might dismiss this project as a curious gimmick, but Warwick has voiced plans to expand the project and develop a community of fellow cyborgs connected via their chip implants to superintelligent machines, creating, in effect, superhumans.

He hopes such future technology might greatly enhance human potential, commenting Being linked to another persons nervous system opens up a whole world of possibilities.

The prospect of attaining superior intelligence or physical attributes may be tempting or appear liberating, but cybernetic enhancement could, theoretically, also be used as a means of control. Whoever manufactures the technologies that augment humans would be in a very powerful position and wield an immense degree of control over their human customers (or subjects). Moreover, cybernetically enhanced humans could see their microchips hacked, have their sensations detected by unwanted parties and stored in a database, or be at risk of receiving unsolicited or unpleasant impulses. Might we evolve from homo sapiens to homo servus?

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Ray Kurzweil, American author and advocate for transhumanism, predicted in his 2005 book The Singularity Is Near that within a few decades time the human organism will become upgraded, due to mindboggling advancements in genetics, nanotechnology and robotics, to create, in effect, a new species with superior skills and intelligence, virtually immortal lifespans, and unforeseen capabilities. Kurzweil predicts the Singularity will occur by the middle of this century and realize the culmination of the merger of our biological thinking and existence with our technology, resulting in a world that is still human but that transcends our biological roots. There will be no distinction, post-Singularity, between human and machine or between physical and virtual reality.

While considering the possibly that augmented humans might exist within our lifespans, it becomes clear that the technology to transcend our bog-standard homo sapiens existence would not be available to all simultaneously. The wealthy, or otherwise privileged, could become yet more powerful and emotionally distant from those they rule, or over whom they exert economic control. Would the elites use bermensch making technologies to forever establish themselves as a ruling class with God like powers to laud over the Untermensch poor and oppressed who toil until their comparatively short and expendable lifespans give out?

Alternatively, if the means to augment humans became widely available, would there be pressure to convert to a transhuman state? Would those who transcend, or those who refuse to do so, be discriminated against? While many barriers presently divide humans (economic, religious, cultural, political, ethnic), is it wise to introduce what could become yet another excuse for division and antipathy?

Of course, military applications of human enhancing technologies would soon be found. Armed forces across the globe would want to give their soldiers an edge over the enemy. Soldiers having no physical, physiological, or cognitive limitation will be key to survival and operational dominance in the future, says Michael Goldblatt, former director of the Defense Sciences Office (DSO), part of the US Department of Defense's DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). DSOs scientists have reportedly sought ways to make soldiers remain active on the battlefield for up to seven days with little or no sleep, and have considered how neural implants might improve cognitive function or allow future soldiers [to] communicate by thought alone.

Whilst we humans spend much time feuding and fighting, is it wise to give ourselves superhuman abilities before we have developed the ethical reasoning, moral compass, and maturity to wield such power? Upgrading ourselves by way of advances in genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics could usher in a new era of ultimate freedom, where even the most oppressed are liberated from their drudgery, or condemn the human race to permanent slavery. Although new technologies can be used for either laudable or nefarious purposes, they are typically used for whatever purpose creates the most profit.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

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Would human enhancement create Supermen or super tyrants? - RT

With yesterdays futuristic technologies increasingly becoming todays product announcements, the progress of science seems unstoppable. Mark OConnells excellent new book To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death follows the authors interactions and interviews with self-professed transhumanists.

This eclectic collection of scientists, tech giants, journalists, and enthusiasts are prophets of a coming post-human species that embraces technology as the means to transcend present biological and psychological limitations. The book itself is masterfully and humorously written, and gives the reader a thorough introduction to the ideas and people behind the transhumanist movement.

The book serves a more important purpose than simply describing transhumanism, however: OConnells interactions with transhumanists show that modern man is not prepared to argue against transhumanism. He must either accept it or find a theological alternative.

It seems that, sociologically speaking, transhumanism springs from the same part of man that desires to create religion. Man fears death, so must overcome it in some way. From this fear, the social scientists tell us, man creates fantasies about deities and paradises, resurrection and glorification. In its own way, transhumanism becomes religious insofar as it represents another in a long line of sets of belief adopted by man in hopes of overcoming his mortality. This time, man seeks help not from mystical transcendent beings but from his own will, instantiated in technology.

Some religious sects like Mormonism have made a place for transhumanist ideas, but transhumanists like Max More have made clear that traditional Christian doctrine and transhumanism are largely incompatible, given the difficulty of reconciling both sets of claims. However, on at least one point, the transhumanist and the Christian agree: death is an enemy to be conquered. The Christian New Testament claims the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. Transhumanists concur, and propose that if death can be conquered through technology, death should be conquered through technology.

I am not a scientist. I lack the knowledge to tell scientists who advocate transhumanist ideas that they are wrong about what technology can accomplish. When non-experts like myself grapple with the transhumanist ideas, we traffic in intuitions and philosophies about consciousness, personality, death, and what it means to be human, rather than in scientific arguments.

This is true of OConnell as well. In his research, OConnell encounters scientists who tell him that living to extreme ages will be possible soon, within his and his childs lifetime. Some subjects interviewed even theorize that eventually we could theoretically upload consciousness and become more machine than man. OConnell clearly sees the progression from the thought of men like Thomas Hobbes to the ideas of transhumanism. Hobbes saw man as fundamentally an organic machine, so there seems to be no reason that machine could not be upgraded.

Despite hearing the arguments and understanding their source, OConnell refuses to accept transhumanism. This is not because he thinks transhumanist ideals are unachievable, but because he cannot stomach the idea of living forever, or being himself in any other physical form. He ultimately objects not to the practicality of the transhumanist project but to the propriety of it.

OConnells resistance to transhumanism culminates in a fascinating exchange in the book where OConnell is forced to defend death and mortality as preferable to eternal life and vitality. He mounts standard arguments: Lifes brevity is what gives it value. Impending death makes our continued existence meaningful in some way. Also, life sucks; why extend it?

OConnells transhumanist companions deftly deflect his objections. There [is] no beauty in finitude, they say. They argue that OConnells qualms come from an essential human need to grapple with death and somehow justify it as good so we can avoid constant dread and despair. And, OConnell admits, the transhumanists are right. There is something palpably absurd about defending death as some sort of human good.

Despite conceding the point, OConnell concludes the book by restating his rejection of transhumanism, and the reader is left wondering why. If the transhumanists are correct in theorizing that our continued acceptance of death is just an evolutionary symptom of a disease that can and will be cured, what possible reason could we have to deny the inevitable?

In a poignant scene in the book, OConnells child begins to wrestle with mortality following the death of his grandmother. The boy is comforted when he learns that his father is writing a book on people who are trying to create a world in which people no longer have to die. What comfort is there to offer if we are to reject both religion and transhumanism? What compelling reason do we have to embrace despair when technology offers hope?

Simply put, defending death is a lost cause. Even if, as OConnell theorizes, the idea of meaning [is] itself an illusion, a necessary human fiction, man has continued maintaining that illusion for millennia and seems to persist in preferring life to death. Unless OConnell and others like him are prepared and able to convince the bulk of humanity that death is a happy end to be embraced, not fought against, it seems a choice has presented itself. This choice is between different religions that offer escape from death. Transhumanism offers the materialist a religion through which to conquer death; other religions offer the same to those who have faith in gods other than technology.

Will OConnell and others who reject both transhumanism and other religions refuse anti-aging treatments if they become available? Will they abstain from extending their lives, if given the choice? Only time, the one thing transhumanism cannot hope to overcome, will tell.

Philip is a senior political philosophy student at Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, VA, and will begin graduate study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the fall

More:
The Only Way Humankind Stops The Machines From Taking Over Is Getting Religion - The Federalist

TREXIT?: TRANSNATIONALISM AND TRANSHUMANISM AND WHY THEY ARE THE REAL ISSUES OF 2016

NASHVILLE Are you ready to cede your body to the global body and to Transhumanist technology under Transnationalistss control? Or, are you looking for the Trexit?

U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry, recently invited a group of Northeastern University commencement students to see the future with him. As they peered into his crystal ball, Kerry urged his audience to see a world with no nations or borders.

Imagine. One world. No boundaries. It sounds wonderful, futuristic, hopeful; like an apple anyone would wish to pluck from a tree.

This is the transcendent world vision of the Transnationalists.

Transnationalism is a new type of consciousness. Also called Globalism, it is a social agenda, or revolution, grown out of the accelerating technology-driven interconnectivity and interdependence between people and the receding economic and social significance of boundaries among nation states.

Free flows of capital and people (legal and illegal) across the sphere of earth is one goal of Transnationalism. The unity of all of the rolling stones of humanity into a monolithic rock is the other.

As Kerry noted, hiding behind walls in this new borderless world will be impossible.

The walls reference was a shot at Donald Trump, who wants to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico.

What Kerry did not say is that this wall-less world will happen via technologywhich sooner than later will be implanted in our bodies. The technology we now depend on for our very lives in the online world will soon mesh with our flesh and make our flesh and blood lives a transparent and open book. No physical walls will be necessary.

The technical term for meshing our flesh with technology is Transhumanism. Not every Globalist advocate is a Transhumanist, but sooner or later, they will realize that turning humans into cyborgs IS the globalist agenda and certainly is the key to its success. If Google, Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, SONY and other mega corporations driving Globalism have their way, this technology will soon come off your desktop and inside your body. Soon equals 2020-2030.

Clearly, Globalism offers unparalleled new opportunities matched only by its potential for unmatched tyranny. This is its great danger. Combined with Transhumanism, the results could be catastrophic for humanity. In fact, it is the end of the human race as we know it.

WE are the ones who are deciding the future for all of humanity. Many seek a Trexit. Others embrace a Trentrance or the Transhuman/Transnationalist route.

AGENDA 2030

One World government and one economy is the globalists next great leap forward in what the UN calls the new universal agenda for humanity that it hopes will be fulfilled by 2030. Called Agenda 2030, this far-reaching program was unanimously adopted on September 25, 2015 by the United Nations General Assembly. Its noble goal is to improve the lives of poor people the world over.

According to the Agenda, by 2030, the majority of us will cease identifying ourselves with the nationality or country of our birth and will instead get religion and see ourselves as global citizens living in the light.

Massive redistribution of wealth is the cornerstone of the Agenda.

Whether or not the 1% who control 85% of the worlds wealth will voluntarily give their billions away is yet to be seen.

Whether or not Agenda 2030 is a positive development is also yet to be determined.

Agenda 2030 has raised alarm bells among analysts who do not see it as a way for all of us to love each other. They see it as a move toward a global totalitarian state.

Membership is mandatory. Non-negotiable. It is already a done deal.

Some believe this plan can only be achieved by absolute dictatorial power or at the point of a gun. My belief is that no guns will be involved. Microchips will do the job. The UN has already begun giving biometric identity cards to refugees in order to track them as they make their way to their new homes. Agenda 2030 calls for ALL of humanity to have biometric cards in their hands by 2030. These cards may literally be IN our hands, YOUR hands. This is why Transnationalism and Transhumanism are linked.

If we the people do not like the Agenda, now is the time to speak.

Silence is consent.

Britains June 23, 2016 vote to Brexit the Globalist EU will have a lot to say about the rise of Transnationalism and Transhumanism across the globe and the fulfillment of the UNs agenda.

Americas vote in November will amplify the feelings on both sides of Brexit.

The larger choice here is to take the Transnational / Transhuman path or to Trexit.

SMARTEN UP

Socialist Democrats in America have the global body or Global U (a pun on you) of Agenda 2030 in mind. They aim to unify the human body. Their message is come together. Smarten up.

Donald Trumps popularity is partly attributed to his stand against Transnationalism. Instead of eliminating walls, Trump is promising to build one between US and the World. Donald Trumps America First strategy is as mosaic as his autocratic lawgiver tendencies and he is wrong about building the Wall, but not completely. Personally, I think we need gates, not walls. Trumps stand-ins are providing further warnings or insight into the possible dark side of the light of Transnationalism or Globalism, which they equate with Fascism. The perceived global stakes of Trumps America First strategy are spelled out in a May 12, 2016 USA Today editorial by Senator Jeff Sessions who wrote: For the first time in a long time, this November will give Americans a clear choice on perhaps the most important issue facing our country and our civilization: whether we remain a nation-state that serves its own people, or whether we slide irrevocably toward a soulless globalism that treats humans as interchangeable widgets in the world market.

Sessions is partly right about globalism being soulless. Some believe the process of globalization will result is a religion-less world. Others think it will lead to greater understanding among the worlds religions. Globalisms relationship with religion and spirituality is complex. Sessions is totally right about the globalist agenda to treating humans as widgets, which means mechanical devices, in the globalist marketplace. For clarity, what I believe Sessions should have said is that soulless globalism treats humans as interchangeable smart or transhumanist widgets in the world market. Smart widgets or things are electronic objects connected to and communicating with the Internet. Sessions and Globalists alike must realize that, since 2003, the U.S. Government has been promoting the transformation ofour bodies into widgets via smart technology and the evolution of humanity into a hive mind. This is the core of globalist apple. By smart is not meant more intelligent. It means interfaced with computer technology that makes us more watchable, programmable, trackable and controllable.

PLAYING GOD In my 2015 book, The Skingularity Is Near, I documented how this smart technology is now in the wearable phase, but ULTIMATELY is aimed at our skin.

In the wearable phase body-born devices are being used to augment the human body. These include smart watches and sensors.

These devices will become less and less about performing functions such as biometric measuring for us and more and more about our identity. These devices will resemble jewelry with an extraordinary array of functions.

The ultimate wearable is Googles proposed nano-nutrient garment that is designed to promote longevity. This robe of many colors will send nano bots into every orifice of your body on missions to seek and destroy pathogens in your blood and keep your arteries clean as a whistle. The result will be dramatically extended life spans. It echoes the miracle garments or robes of power of the ancient gods. It is the coat of light once worn by Adam and Eve, who were hermaphrodites or two-sexed.

The wearable phase will not last long. This technology will shrink in the immediate future so that systems can be embedded or implanted in the body. The smart phone in your hand will sooner-than-you-think be implanted in your ear.

SkinTrack, a new wearable technology developed at Carnegie Mellon University, basically turns the entire lower arm into a touchpad. It differs from previous skin-to-screen approaches because SkinTrack requires the user to wear a special ring that propagates a low-energy, high-frequency signal through the skin when the finger touches or nears the skin surface. Blink. Blink. Blink. Blink.

In another few blinks of the eye, smart contact lenses that will give us super-human vision and will offer heads-up displays, video cameras, medical sensors and more. These are safest of these new technologies. Sony, Samsung and Google have all filed patents for smart contact-lens technology in the early months of 2016.

2020 here we come!

Or is it 2030?

By safe I dont mean they wont have potential harmful effects. Rather, I mean that like other implantables, smart lenses can be removed or inserted by the user. They are not under or in the skin permanently.

Googles Verily Life Sciences is leading the way to bring the IoT to your eyeball. In the new cognitive era, as IBM calls it, human beings will hike over to Best Buy, or some other electronics outlet, to pick out your new lens. Your natural lens will be removed from your eyeball. A fluid will be injected into your eye. In a few moments this fluid will fuse with your eyes lens capsule. As it solidifies your new eye contains storage, battery, sensors, a radio and other electronics. When you leave the store you will now be a transhuman being who will have perfect vision, the ability to see in the dark, sensors to detect blood glucose levels and other applications we havent yet dreamed of.

Of course, with super vision glasses comes supervision. The great fear is that the implantation of this technology will come at a cost greater than our organic eye lenses. It will cost us our free will and will turn us into emotionless cyborgs.

Another Google start-up, Magic Leap, has raised a billion dollars to create an implantable contact lens that injects computer-generated images or floats virtual objects into the real world field of view. Called the worlds most secretive startup, its aim is to bring magic back into the world by rethinking the relationship technology has with people. Its aim is remove the shackles binding humanity by tossing away the boxes on our desk by uniting the brain and body with technology. Actually, Google may want you to think about eliminating your physical body altogether.

Its chief futurist, author Neal Stephenson, is most famous for the concept of Metaverse from his 1992 sci-fi classic Snow Crash. Stephenson imaged a virtual universe where users create avatars to communicate and interact. Who needs a physical body when your avatar is so much better?

TRANSHUMANISM Brexit just put a wrench in that plan, just like the rejection of Google Glass slowed down Googles aim to control your body, mindand soul. Transhumanism promises to take the potentials of this right to new levels. Life extension via synthetic organs, drugs and other new technologies eliminate the barriers to our pursuit of life, liberty and immortality.

Transhumanism is a human re-engineering project based on the meshing of human flesh with smart technology or electronic devices. Born out of NASAs realization in 1962 that we will not be able to transcend earth in our flesh and blood suits, the U.S. Government began working on the transformation of humans into cyborgs (a term coined by NASA).

Transhumanism is aimed at perfecting the human body by seeding it with or ceding it to Artificially Intelligent technology, giving it a new layer of skin, and connecting every human on the planet to the Internet of Things (IoT). In less than ten years every organ and body part will be replaceable by a technological version.

These new technologies comprise the Internet of Things (IoT) that drives Transnationalism / Globalism. The IoT is presently composed of 20 billion+ smart things or widgets phones, toasters, refrigerators, cars, computers that will balloon to over 50 billion such smart things by 2020.

The IoT will essentially become an Artificially Intelligent global brain of which each individual human brain is a neuron.

How the Internet of Things Will Change Everything-Including Ourselves.

Presently included among these things are nearly four billion human beings, who are rapidly shedding all that is human and adopting the transhuman upgrades devised by the wizards of Silicon Valley. If you wonder how dependent, if not addicted, we are to these technologies we are just try to take our cell phones away. Just try to run a One World without them.

Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerburg, has made it is his life to goal to have every human being online as a human being thing. Facebook will be the portal or conduit linking all human being things.

Hundreds of millions, if not billions, of these present and future Facebook users do not have toilets or clean water. They are the poor the UN seeks to uplift. How turning them into smart things and wiring them to IoT will make them better humans is an, as yet, unanswered question.

However, it is certain that the Internet is a great leveler. Take a look at this Microsoft Empowering commercial. Today, more than half the worlds population does not have access to the Internet. We believe that everyone deserves the social and economic opportunities afforded by connectivity.

Ultimately, the global citizen view promoted by transnationalism is a transient step toward a trans-earth or multi-planet civilization with transhumans (machine-enhanced humanoids) transcending the boundaries of earth life and coming and going between earth, the moon, Mars and beyond.

I am for helping the poor to elevate their lives and for transcending the boundaries of earth. But Im just not sure about doing so as man-chines.

As I discussed in The Skingularity Is Near, Transhumanism is the fulfillment of both the Christian prophecy and ethos of a new, perfected human and Americas we can do anything with the right technology attitude.

Ever since Adam and Eve were evicted from Eden, humanity has sought to redeem itself and reclaim our original perfect status.

Some Globalists and Transhumanists believe our species should embrace our transition to smart human being things as part of our hive evolution and our return to perfection. For them, a new human race connected by implanted technologies is a quantum leap. Others believe this vision is trumped-up.

However, human rights advocates, including this author, warn that as technology becomes more and more invasive and merges with us we become and more transparent. Privacy (or hiding) will become impossible. Homo sapiens as a species will cease to exist.

In this way, the 2016 American election is a vote for Transhumanism and Transnationalism or against it. Will we make a Trentrance or a Trexit?

You decide.

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Trexit?: Transnationalism and Transhumanism and why They ...

In Sense8, the Wachowskis find another way out of the Matrix: empathy.CreditPhotograph by Murray Close / Netflix / Everett

The defining scene of Sense8, the new sci-fi drama on Netflix, comes about halfway through the first season. It starts in San Francisco, where Nomi, a hacktivist and transgender lesbian, is making out with her girlfriend, Amanita. At the same time, in Mexico City, Lito, a smoldering actor, is lifting weights with his boyfriend, Hernando. In Berlin, Wolfgang, a safecracker, is relaxing, naked, in a hot tub. And in Chicago, Will, a police officer, is working out at the gym. The premise of Sense8 is that Nomi, Lito, Wolfgang, and Willalong with four other sensates in Nairobi, Seoul, Mumbai, and Reykjavikare telepathically linked. They are able to feel each others emotions, appear in each others minds, and even control each others bodies. In this instance, because theyre all feeling sexy, the sensates find themselves having an impromptutelepathic orgy. Theyre a little freaked out until they realize that they can all enjoy Wolfgangs hot tubsimultaneously.

All sorts of crazy things happen in Sense8. Theres a big conspiracy that may explain how the sensates came to be linked. Theres sci-fi theorizing about human evolution and psychic phenomena. There are euphoric action sequences in which Sun Bak, the Korean sensate, deploys heracrobatic martial-arts skills. (Two of the shows three executive producers, Andy and Lana Wachowski, were responsible for The Matrix.) When a car chase ensues, the sensates can take turns driving the same car. One episode includes aBollywood dance number. Other scenes, in which the sensatescombine their skills and consciousnessesto solve insurmountable problems, have a ludic, dance-like energy: in one of the shows best moments, all eight main characters find themselvessinging Whats Up, by 4 Non Blondes. In another scene, they allflash back to their own birthswhile listening to Beethovens Emperor Piano Concerto No. 5. (The Wachowskis havesaidthat they filmed live births for the show, and, watching the scene, you believe it.)

In sci-fi speak, Sense8 is about transhumanismthe idea that in the future, as a species, we might become more than we are right now. Julian Huxley, the brother of Aldous, coined the term in a 1927 book called Religion Without Revelation, in which he wrote that transhumanism was man remaining man, but transcending himself, by realizing new possibilities of and for his human nature. Huxley helped found the World Wildlife Fund and was the first director of UNESCO; he was also, for a time, the president of the British Eugenics Society. Like him,the transhumanist movementwhich now tends to focus on high-tech enhancementis both intriguing and scary.

Sense8, though, isnt really about the negative aspects of transhumanism. It makes emotionally expansive telepathic empathy seem like a great ideaits global, sexy, useful, and romantic. The sensates become friends and even fall in love with one another. (Will, the Chicago cop, gets together with Riley, an Icelandic d.j.) In one scene, set at the Diego Rivera Museum, in Mexico City, Nomi, the transgender hacker, helps Lito, who is closeted, come out. Sense8 is not subtlethis is sci-fi T.V.but their scene together issimple, direct, and moving: theres a lot of authentic emotion to go with all the artifice. (Slate has called Sense8 a queer masterpiece; Jamie Clayton, the actress who plays Nomi, is transgender, as is Lana Wachowski.) Some people dont like the sensatesan evil biotech corporation has it out for them, and some reviewers have found Sense8 to be cheesy, nonsensical, and slow. Fair enough, but if youre in the shows target audienceif you rooted for Neo and Trinitys romance in The Matrixyoull enjoy it. Despite its sci-fi premise, Sense8 is almost entirely about strong feelings. Its transhumanism for softies.

Sci-fi stories divide roughly into three categories. First, there are stories about regular people who just happen to live in the future, like Star Trek and Star Wars. Second, there are transhumanist stories, such asDuneandSense8, in which human nature is somehow altered. And third, there are robot stories, in which human nature is, for the most part, fixed, the better to be inherited by our technological replacementsthe Cylons in Battlestar Galactica, say, or Ava, the robot in Alex Garlands recent film, Ex Machina. Many great works of science fiction weave these mini-genres together. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, HAL inherits our flawed human nature and goes mad. At the same time, the film is a transhumanist tale, in which the ships surviving astronaut ascends to a new plane of consciousness. Transhumanist stories and robot stories are mirror images of each other. Robot stories ask whether our spiritual flaws will trickle down to the new beings we create; transhumanist stories ask whether they will propagate up into the beings we become.

Recently, in awonderful essayin theNew York Review of Books, Daniel Mendelsohn wrote about the ancient roots of the robot story. He pointed out that there are robots in theIliad, and that robot tales address theological questions about creators and their creations. Today, though, stories about robotsparticularly human-shaped oneshave come to feel a little quaint. Technology has made the classic robot obsolete. In Humans, a new show on AMC, robots that look and act like human beings are shown tending tomato plants on a farm. Its a striking image, but we all know that, in real-life, agricultural robots arelikely to be weird-looking. In Ex Machina, Ava, the robot played by Alicia Vikander, is a compelling femme fatale; even so, you cant help noticing that, unlike every other piece of technology in the modern world, she isnt networked, and can communicate with other robots only by speaking. Samantha, the artificial intelligence voiced by Scarlett Johansson in Her, seems more in sync with technological reality: shes a cloud-based software program capable of realizing herself at many physical locations simultaneously, the same way Google appears on many screens at once. (Genisys, the evil A.I. in the new Terminator movie, operates on a similar principle.) This doesnt make Her better than Ex Machina, but it does mean that, while Her seems to present a plausible vision of the future, Ex Machina feels more like a fable.

For a while now, robot stories have been shifting to the cloud. In the CBS showPerson of Interest,two cloud-based A.I.s are locked in a power struggle, manipulating stock exchanges, operating shell corporations, and giving orders to acolytes who regard them with quasi-religious reverence. In Ann Leckies novel Ancillary Justice, a single intelligence, housed in a spaceshipa giant robot, in a sensemakes its presence felt through people, called ancillaries, whose bodies it controls remotely; in effect, its turnedusinto robots. This is a big reversal. Traditional robot stories tend to be Promethean: theyre about people who seize the forbidden and god-like power of creation. By contrast, artificial-intelligence stories are about people who invent their own god-like overlords. They know that the new gods are just complicated programs, but they end up subjugated by them anyway.

Theres always been some crossover between robot and transhumanist stories, because people, if they are transformed enough, can become posthuman. That process, too, has changed over time. In the 1965 novel Dune, the hero used a psychedelic drug to upgrade his consciousness; by contrast, in last years Transcendence, Johnny Depp uploaded himself into a quantum computer. But most transhumanist stories stop far short of total transformation, instead exploring the discrete consequences of highly specific transhuman upgrades. In Starfish, Peter Watts imagines a power station, located at a deep-sea vent, where physical modifications (replaced lungs, enhanced eyes) allow the workers to swim among the tube worms; some divers go native, developing a new sensibility suited for the sea floor. Liking What You See: A Documentary, a short story by Ted Chiang, takes place at a hyper-progressive liberal-arts college where the students have modified their brains so that they cant distinguish between beautiful people and ugly people. (For decades peopleve been willing to talk about racism and sexism, but theyre still reluctant to talk about lookism, one student complains.) Some professors think this is a great idea, because the hierarchy of personal beauty is offensive; others wonder how the new, beauty-blind student body is supposed to produce any great painters or sculptors. Theres a gleeful, brutal curiosity to these stories. They envision a future when our economic and cultural niches shrink and we change ourselves to fit within them. Today, we have subcultures; in the future, well have subspecies.

Many transhumanist stories have a circular structure: theyre about the rediscovery (or nostalgic appreciation) of old human virtues. The most optimistic transhumanist novel that Ive read recently is Ramez Naams Nexus. Naam is a programmer by trade; in a previous life, he helped develop Microsoft Outlook and Internet Explorer. In his book, billions of people take a drugactually a soup of nano-machinesthat allows them to network their brains together, so that they can experience each others thoughts, sensations, and memories. Then, usingmeditation techniquesthat theyve learned from Buddhist monks in Thailand, they synchronize their minds, merging into a single, vast consciousness. In this form, the transhumans must confront the menace posed by a posthuman: an intelligent Chinese computer system, based upon the mind of a gifted scientist, that controls weapons and other gadgets all over the world. On one level, Nexus is a libertarian techno-fable about how bottom-up innovation will win out over top-down systems of control. But its also wistfully old-fashioneda paean to Buddhist meditators, who, when you think about it, probably came up with this whole transhumanism thing in the first place.

If you read a lot of science fiction in one go, you notice that it has two weaknesses. The first is the future, which tends to be complicated, depressing, and fatiguing to read about; the second is the aesthetic of futurism, which is grim and predictable. Everything is big, scary, and metallic (or else small, gross, and biotechnological). The implicit message of futurism is thathuman progress is inseparable from suffering; often, the only kind of beauty is terrible beauty. Futurism is what gives sci-fi itsfrisson. The supposedly horrific vision of the future in The Matrix, for example,is also undeniably cool; the robots may have won, but the survivors look great in their leather and shades. This paradox makes the movie great, but its also a kind of trapan aesthetic cynicism.

Sense8, though, is joyful, in part because it shows us transhumanism without futurism. Its not a superhero show, in which a random individual is elevated into something better; it hints, science-fictionally, at a fundamental change in human nature generally. At the same time, theres no technological explanationand, therefore, no futurist costfor that change.(In one episode, its suggested that, in the distant evolutionary past,allhuman beings were once telepathic, but no one seems to care very much about this hand-wavey idea.) On some level, the sensates telepathic empathy is a metaphor for the Internet, which seems, in some ways, to be making us more open to others experiences (especially queer experiences). The show also evokes the joys of creative collaboration: people who watch the Wakowskis work together often say that they have two bodies, one brain. Really, though, the point of Sense8 is to revel in the broadening of empathyto fantasize about how in-tune with each other we could be. In its own, low-key way, therefore, Sense8 is a critique of sci-fi. It asks whether, in tying our dreams about human transformation to fantasies of technological development, we might be making an error. The show suggests another path to transcendence: each other.

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Sympathetic Sci-Fi - The New Yorker