In our last poll we asked IEET readers about their relationship with meat, and more than 60% of the 337 respondents still ate meat. But of those more than 60% would switch to meat grown from stem cells.

Transhumanism is all about the creative and ethical use of technology to better the human condition. Futurists, when discussing topics related to transhumanism, tend to look at nano-tech, bio-mechanical augmentation and related technology that, for the most part, is beyond the comprehension of lay-people.

A woman came up to me after I gave a talk about the future and said “It’s nice that you say positive things to make us feel better, but you know there isn’t any hope, right?”  I’ve heard similar things after almost every talk.  Usually from one person, sometimes a few more. Crushed words.  Sadness.  Wistfulness.  Sometimes a deep sense of loss permeates these total strangers.

By definition, the Technological Singularity is a blind spot in our predictive thinking. Futurists have a hard time imagining what life will be like after we create greater-than-human artificial intelligences. Here are seven outcomes of the Singularity that nobody thinks about — and which could leave us completely blindsided.

To the self-righteous, boring New Atheists, I wish to counterpoint the smiling (or perhaps smi2ling followers of Timothy Leary’s transhumanist vision), science-oriented New Believers.

After a former NSA contractor revealed extensive US government data mining operations, pundits, activists, and journalists proclaimed “I’m outraged the government would do this!” But there was also another type of response, though more muted. Some of us said “I sure as hell hope the government is doing this.”

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) wants to understand the science behind human violence; and then find ways to alter an enemy's thoughts by implanting false, but believable stories in their brains. The goal is to create a more peaceful scenario: We're your friend, not your enemy.

Could we achieve digital immortality by uploading our minds? Would such a process prolong our existence? Those are the questions being asked in this series of posts. The series is looking at Michael Hauskeller’s article “My Brain, My Mind and I: Some Philosophical Assumptions of Mind-Uploading”, which casts a sceptical eye over the notion of mind-uploading.

At the end of the documentary Transcendent Man, Ray Kurzweil says, “Does God exist? Well, not yet.” I agree. It certainly brings up a topic that isn’t easily understood, nor well received by those dictated under dogmatic belief systems. Does God exist? Not yet. Do angels exist? Not yet. Do ghosts exist? Not yet. These questions are long-term byproducts of a single question in general: What exists and when?

Did you know that there are only 138 mutations that play the major role in making a cell cancerous? Well, 138 found so far, however, the number of these driver mutations inside the genes won’t grow significantly, at least that’s not anticipated. Obviously there are thousands of mutations in cancer cells, but not all of them give the selective grow advantage.

On Science 2.0, Hank Campbell interviews the folks from Lone Signal who plan to beam "messages to ET" starting on Monday, targeting signals at the Gliese 526 star system. Read their profit-and-ego-centered rationalizations, then scroll to the bottom and see the announcement of their opening party in New York City on June 17.

Many people are concerned about our size and status in the universe. The universe is mind-bogglingly big, old, empty, and largely inhospitable to life; we are small, short-lived and confined to a remote and humdrum corner of it. This difference in scale is often thought to have some philosophical implications. In particular, it is thought to rob us of significance, meaning and value. But is this right?

If your daily routine took you from one homegrown organic garden to another, bypassing vast fields choked with pesticides, you might feel pretty good about the current state of agriculture. If your daily routine takes you from one noncommercial progressive website to another, you might feel pretty good about the current state of the Internet. But while mass media have supplied endless raptures about a digital revolution, corporate power has seized the Internet—and the anti-democratic grip is tightening every day.

A lot of people would like to live forever, or at least for much longer than they currently do. But there is one obvious impediment to this: our biological bodies break down over time and cannot (with current technologies) be sustained indefinitely. So what can be done to avoid our seemingly inevitable demise? For some, like Aubrey de Grey, the answer lies in tweaking and re-engineering our biological bodies. For others, the answer lies in the more radical solution of mind-uploading, or the technological replacement of our current biological bodies.

Hottest Articles of the Last Month

The Hubris of Neo-Luddism by Franco Cortese May 26, 2013 (3493) Hits • (13) Comments

End of Eating Food by Dick Pelletier May 25, 2013 (3002) Hits • (13) Comments

Abolition is Imperative in Kurzweil’s Sixth Epoch Scenario by Jønathan Lyons May 25, 2013 (2441) Hits • (37) Comments

How the Singularity Makes us Dumber by David Eubanks May 29, 2013 (2287) Hits • (2) Comments

Call for Papers for Special Issue of JET on “Technological Unemployment and Universal Basic Income” Jun 4, 2013 (2238) Hits • (0) Comments

The singularity: merging human/machine to achieve immortality by Dick Pelletier May 21, 2013 (2112) Hits • (4) Comments