IEET Fellow Stefan Lorenz Sorgner was interviewed on emerging technologies on German national television.

IEET Affiliate Scholar Roland Benedikter will deliver a Keynote Speech on June 16, 2016, in Vienna, Austria.

We are living in what is likely the golden age of deception. It would be difficult enough were we merely threatened with drowning in what James Gleick has called the flood of information, or were we doomed to roam blind through the corridors of Borges’ library of Babel, but the problem is actually much worse than that. Our dilemma is that the very instruments that once promised liberation via the power of universal access to all the world’s knowledge seem just as likely are being used to sow the seeds of conspiracy, to manipulate us and obscure the path to the truth.

this essay was co-written with Seth Shostak

To start, I need to be specific about what Buddhism means in this context.

I suggest there is no such thing as ‘Buddhism’, but rather ‘Buddhisms’. There is little in common with Buddhism as taught in the Theravada (the earliest Buddhist teachings as based on those of Siddhartha Gautama - ‘the Buddha’), Zen, or the Tibetan tantric traditions. Although they all maintain the base of their teachings on the realisation of the Buddha, the methods they employ vary widely.

We have already seen thinkers like Ray Kurzweil and Hans Moravec defend the idea that cosmic evolution is progressive. But what of biological progress? The debate between those who defend evolutionary progress and those who deny it has been ongoing throughout the history of biology. On the one hand, more recent biological forms seem more advanced, on the other hand no one agrees on precisely what progress is.

“The Great Brain Robbery”  was the most highly rated episode of 60 Minutes in seven years, about the systematic use of industrial espionage by China and others, featuring interviews based on the work of international tech-econ guru Mark Anderson, whose Strategic News Service is vital for you business-newsletter subscribers, and whose Future in Review” (FiRe) Conference is one of the most important and fun conclaves going.

A team of surgeons at the Cleveland Clinic have performed the first uterus transplant in the United States. A 26-year-old woman underwent the nine-hour operation on Wednesday, setting the stage for a future pregnancy—and what might possibly become a routine procedure in US hospitals.

This post is a bit of a departure for me. I’m not an economist. Not by any stretch of the imagination. I dabble occasionally in economics-related topics, particularly those concerning technology and economic theory, but I rarely get involved in the traditional core of economics — in topics like property prices, economic growth, debt, wealth inequality and the like. But it’s precisely those topics that I want to get involved with in this post.

Here is a teaser from the Longevity Cookbook project.

The first chapter is on pharmacologic enhancement of lifespan. This chapter includes different ways of trying to develop pharmaceuticals to combat aging.

What follows is a description of experiments using the medium of sound and emerging sound technologies to destabilize conceptions and reposition ourselves to histories of social trauma and to our own sense of self. Can we interrogate these intersections of meaning and data in new ways? Can we dilate emotional immediacy through such re­imaginings? Does technology allow and help us to reconsider these approaches?

Je tenterai, dans cet article, de poser quelques réflexions sur le sujet de l’Emulation de Cerveau Entier (ECE), qui me semble trop rapidement traité dans l’espace francophone, alors que c’est précisément un sujet qui évolue très vite et qui permet de toucher à beaucoup de domaines de connaissances de l’humain. Fasciné par les perspectives qu’il ouvre, je suis depuis plusieurs années les aventures des (trop) rares scientifiques qui le prennent au sérieux. Dans une deuxième partie, je comparerai le chantier de l’ECE avec d’autres grands projets humains récents ou moins récents.

After interviewing my friend Susanne Tarkowski Tempelhof, founder of Bitnation, for my recent Bitcoin Magazine article titled “Bitnation Launches World’s First Blockchain-Based Virtual Nation Constitution,” I am thinking of the parallels between Susanne’s vision of Do-It-Yourself (DIY) “Governance 2.0” and my vision of DIY “Religion 2.0.”

Bitnation’s vision of future open societies is, in one word, awesome.

I support the generous intention of Basic Income Guarantee: the notion of “sharing the wealth”, rescuing people from impoverishment, granting a cushion to help people pursue their dreams.

I am on board with all that but I have three hesitations. Quibbles that trouble me…

Most people think death is bad. They approach it with a degree of trepidation, possibly even denial. The prospect is particularly acute for someone who does not believe in an afterlife. Could such a person ever view death as a gift, something for which they should be grateful? That’s the intriguing question asked by Mikel Burley in his article “Atheism and the Gift of Death”. I want to take a look at his answer in this post.

Concerning a way to pay for an Unconditional Basic Income that grows instead of fails or remains just enough to relieve severe poverty:

A Basic Income project was announced at Transhumanity.net on November 24, 2014.(1) The approach described involves a practical way of enlarging the space economy so as to create ongoing revenue for eliminating global poverty.

For the first time ever, researchers have successfully demonstrated a system that enables a person to move the individual fingers of a prosthetic hand using just their thoughts.

According to ReWalk Robotics Ltd. via PR Newswire:

“ReWalk Robotics Ltd., the leading global exoskeleton developer and manufacturer, announced today that a commercial health plan in the Northwest region of the United States has approved coverage and reimbursement for a ReWalk Personal exoskeleton system, following the ruling of an external independent review organization that overturned the health plan’s initial denial of coverage.”

The trend is clearly visible: sensors, and actuators, together with computation, memory and communication capabilities, are making all the objects around us smarter and smarter. Too many times, wether we call them robots, or AIs, the trend is depicted in menacing tones, represented in the dystopian futures preferred by Hollywood movies, and shape the gut reactions of policymakers eager to please the reactionary impulses of their electorates.

Can UBI function as reparations?

One very interesting but not so easy to understand element of universal basic income is how it disproportionately helps traditionally marginalized groups more than anyone else.