  ETHICAL TECHNOLOGY
Robot factory predictions
by Mike Treder
Thirty years ago, a robotics and AI researcher named James Albus published a book called People’s Capitalism. Most of the book, as the title suggests, is about economic reform. I won’t comment on the economic ideas in the book. But Chapter 5 is very relevant to molecular manufacturing predictions.
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Why not push beyond the boundaries?
by Russell Blackford
Imagine that there are certain natural boundaries to human capacities, beyond which any increase is “enhancement”, rather than “therapy”. Does that mean we have a moral obligation to stay within those boundaries? I don’t see why. Such reasoning seems like a clear case of the fallacy of claiming what “is” also “ought” to be.
For the sake of argument, leave to one side the problem that defining a therapy/enhancement boundary may often be an impractical task, and that it may defy coherent specification in some contexts.
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Access to Organ Transplants for the World
Changesurfer Radio
In Your Life or Mine Martine Rothblatt proposes a program for expanding global access to xenotransplant organs, combined with global monitoring of emerging infectious diseases.
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Smart’s “Laws on Technology”
by Dale Carrico
Nato Welch recently called my attention to John Smart’s “Laws on Technology,” over the course of a discussion on the technoliberation discussion list. I thought Smart’s Laws were interesting and useful to a point, but I’ll admit that I found their framing rather disturbing in some ways.
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Genetic chimeras - and why give a damn about morality?
by Russell Blackford
I just made some comments like the following in another forum, where my pal Damien Broderick was discussing the morality of scientific experiments that involve inserting human genes into non-human animals. Damien, quite rightly, fulminated against the bizarre essentialism implicit in some of the attacks on these experiments.
This provoked me to some thoughts about what morality is actually for. Why give a damn about it, as most of us obviously do?
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Future Hype: Myths of Tech Change
Changesurfer Radio
According to Bob Seidenstcker, tech change is not exponential. Products are not invented or adopted faster. The Internet does not change everything. We can’t control technology change unless we know how it works.
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Mark Walker on superlongevity
Sentient Developments
On April 20, 2006 at the University of Toronto’s Bahen Centre for Information Technology, Dr. Mark Walker delivered a presentation about the ethics of radical life extension, or as Walker refers to it, ‘superlongevity.’ The talk was organized by the Toronto Transhumanist Association.
The talk was party adapted from his recent paper, “Universal Superlongevity: Is it Inevitable and is it Good?”
Mark Walker Ph.D. is a research associate in philosophy at Trinity College, University of Toronto. He is founder and president of Permanent End International, a nonprofit organization devoted to ending hunger, illiteracy and environmental degradation. He serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Evolution and Technology and served on the Board of Directors of the World Transhumanist Association from 2002 to 2006.
Attendance for the event was good with about 20 people present. Walker spoke for about an hour discussing ethical issues surrounding life extension. He focused on two major objections or concerns to superlongevity, namely the potential boredom problem of radically extended lives and the issue of overpopulation. Walker presented a fair and balanced case in favour of life extension, noting that while overpopulation may be an issue in the future, it’s not an untenable one. He offered a number of solutions, including the idea of individuals voluntarily choosing not to procreate, or as Walker dubbed it, a ‘non-proliferation pact’ for human reproduction.
After his presentation, Walker entertained questions for about 30 minutes, which was in turn followed by more informal person-to-person discussions.
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Miraculous memory for mere mortals
by George Dvorsky
If you’re looking to significantly augment your memory skills, but don’t have the patience to wait for a cybernetic memory implant, mnemonic techniques may be the answer.
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Funding Robotic Freedom
by Marshall Brain
In the May 15 issue of Time Magazine, columnist Joe Klein takes an interesting stance. The article is called A Fair Trade for Lower Gas Prices and his suggestion is simple: raise the gasoline tax to discourage consumption, and then give the money collected back to people:
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Arguing about biological immortality
by Russell Blackford
I owe an account of why I am slightly sceptical about an argument offered by Aubrey de Grey, who has defended the strong claim that there is a moral imperative to “cure” the process of human aging. (I’ll henceforth drop the scare quotes around the word “cure”, but I intend to signal that I am well aware of the controversies that surround whether the word is apt in this context.)
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Peter Singer: Gengineering Past Ethical Impasses
by Dale Carrico
The following exchange occurs in an interview published today on Salon.com in connection with the appearance of ethicist Peter Singer’s new book (co-written with Jim Mason), The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter:
SALON: f it were possible to genetically engineer a brainless bird, grown strictly for its meat? Do you feel that this would be ethically acceptable?
Singer: It would be an ethical improvement on the present system, because it would eliminate the suffering that these birds are feeling. That’s the huge plus to me.
SALON: What if you could engineer a chicken with no wings, so less space would be required?
Singer: I guess that’s an improvement too, assuming it doesn’t have any residual instincts, like phantom pain. If you could eliminate various other chicken instincts, like its preference for laying eggs in a nest, that would be an improvement too.
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Nanoethics and Technological Revolutions: A Precis
by Nick Bostrom
If we believe that nanotechnology will eventually amount to a technological revolution, and if we are going to attempt nanoethics, we should consider some of the earlier technological revolutions that humanity has undergone and how our moral principles and technology impact assessment exercises would have fared.
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Christian Bioethics Group Denounces NIH Funding of Enhancement Ethics
I always enjoy looking at the world through the Xian Right’s eyes, because they think the forces of progress have accomplished so much more. In this case, transhumanists have apparently taken control of the National Institutes of Health. The Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity Denounces NIH Funding of Genetic Re-Engineering Project
CHICAGO, May 3 /U.S. Newswire/—The Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity strongly denounces the decision by the National Institute of Health (NIH) to fund a project to develop guidelines for the use of human subjects in genetic enhancement research. The grant, totaling almost three-quarters of a million dollars, is being given to Maxwell Mehlman and Case Law School to promote the genetic re-engineering of human beings for non-therapeutic purposes under the rubric of “enhancement.”
“This is a violation of the spirit of the NIH-sponsored Human Genome Project,” says CBHD Senior Fellow C. Ben Mitchell. “Providing this grant signals a fundamental and dangerous change in the policy of the NIH, resurrecting the mistaken goals of the eugenics programs in the United States and Europe in the early twentieth century.”
The project has been charged with “determining the conditions under which it would be ethical to conduct genetic enhancement research using human subjects,” implying that scientists, physicians, politicians, ethicists or the public at large, condones such research.
“The project presupposes that it is ethical to reengineer normal human beings,” says CBHD President Dr. Andrew Fergusson. “But in a society which correctly decries the use of artificial means, such as steroids to ‘enhance’ athletic abilities, the presumption of the NIH to pursue the re-engineering of human beings is the height of scientific and social arrogance.”
By choosing to pursue an agenda for re-engineering humankind, the NIH has clearly demonstrated an inadequate degree of oversight of its funding activities. The White House and Congress must investigate this blatant misuse of taxpayer funds. CBHD is a strong advocate of research for healing, and is deeply saddened that this incredibly important instrument of good is being used for a course of evil.
I think they see that the Bush administration’s implosion may mean that the influence of the Christian Right in Washington science policy are numbered. Time to return to the trenches and throw hand grenades. For the record, Max Mehlman is a thoughtful analyst of an enhanceed future, an advocate of judicious regulation. He is author of Wondergenes: Genetic Enhancement and the Future of Society Listen to my Changesurfer Radio interview with Mehlman here.
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Lock up your nubile daughter!
by Russell Blackford
 At Conjure a couple of weeks ago, Jenny and I found ourselves in the unusual situation (for us) of being on a panel together - in this case, we were two members of a suitably high-powered panel on what real scientists can learn from their science fictional counterparts.
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Simon Smith on Sentient Developments
Sentient Developments
I recently interviewed Simon Smith, the editor-in-chief of Betterhumans. Topics discussed include Betterhumans, transhumanist culture, cryonics, life extension, systems theory and emergence.
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Spanish socialists want to give apes human rights
by George Dvorsky
 Holy, toldeo, now this is interesting and welcome news: Spanish socialists want to give apes human rights. The blurbage from the Spain Herald reads:
The Spanish Socialist Party will introduce a bill in the Congress of Deputies calling for “the immediate inclusion of (simians) in the category of persons, and that they be given the moral and legal protection that currently are only enjoyed by human beings.” The PSOE’s justification is that humans share 98.4% of our genes with chimpanzees, 97.7% with gorillas, and 96.4% with orangutans.
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The myth of our exalted human place
by George Dvorsky
 I’m still stewing about Spiked Online and their misguided mission to malign the animal rights movement. In particular, I’m upset at Chris Pile’s assertion that animal rights activists are acting misanthropically by putting the welfare of animals on par with those of humans.
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Real Virtuality in your Second Life and beyond
by Giulio Prisco
Virtual Reality is ready for prime time and is catching up with science fiction literature
Versión en Español
April 1: the virtual world Second Life has more than 170.000 “residents”, about a thousand more than yesterday. There are more than 5000 residents online at this moment, and they are spending a lot of real money in the virtual world. In the last 24 hours, residents have spent almost 500.000 US dollars in Second Life. And all these numbers are growing fast. More than a decade after Neal Stephenson‘s popular science fiction novel Snow Crash (1992), a vision of a future Internet (the Metaverse) based on Virtual Reality (VR), defined many of the Virtual Reality (VR) concepts used today, VR technology is catching up with science fiction literature. In the picture above I am working in my virtual office in Second Life.
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Hughes participates in cognitive enhancement consultation for Sandia Labs
Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes at
Arizona State University, together with the
Advanced Concepts Group of Sandia National Laboratories
Arizona State University
May 3-5, 2006
IEET Executive Director James Hughes will join invited workshop participants (neuroscientists, bioengineers, neuroethicists, social scientists, relevant entrepreneurs, and people with legislative, executive, and regulatory experience) to address how a converging set of new technologies that promise to give human beings opportunities to develop, heal and alter their cognitive abilities in a variety of ways will impact society. Governments increasingly will be called upon to support, permit, require, or limit, research and application of such cognitive enhancement technologies.
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Transhumanism and Disability Rights
by Anne Corwin
If anyone clicks on my profile, they might notice that I have “disability rights” listed as one of my interests. I think it is necessary to explain my position here. I do consider myself a “transhumanist” because that philosophy is closely in-line with the outlook I’ve developed independently of even learning of transhumanism—but I am not in favor of some of the more eugenic-like aspects of some transhumanist lines of thought.
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The speciest Spike
by George Dvorsky
Spiked Online clearly has an agenda in favour of promoting animal experimentation and they’re masking it by using their “science section” as a guise for their pro animal torture propaganda.
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Audiocast: James Hughes interview, part 2 of 2
Sentient Developments
In part 2 of the interview, we discuss the prospects and reasons for world federalism, managing potential risks wrought by burgeoning technologies, the weaponization of space, and human gene patenting.
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R. Campa featured in spread in Voce di Mantova
The article focuses on the World Transhumanist Association, of which Riccardo is a Board member.
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Virtual Cybergoths and Vegans
Changesurfer Radio
IEET Fellow George Dvorsky is a Toronto-based technoprogressive and H+ thinker, who blogs and podcasts on a wide variety of topics, from Battlestar Galactica to bioethics to the fate of the multiverse. He talks here about virtual worlds and veganism. 40min version
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Metaverse Roadmap
by Jamais Cascio
I’ve been fascinated for many years by the emergence of virtual worlds. Their attractiveness is obvious to anyone who has read a work of fiction and imagined themselves in that world, either alongside the heroes or off exploring new spaces. Paper and dice role-playing games (such as D&D or Transhuman Space) offered an approximation of virtual existence, but did so through descriptive language (and, often, little lead wizards, goblins and the like). As personal computers grew to have powerful visual capacities and global network connections, however, the opportunity arose to create immersive alternative worlds that could be experienced by anyone, regardless of imagination.
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Lovelock’s environmentalist sabotage
by George Dvorsky
 James Lovelock, the environmentalist and deep ecologist who popularized the Gaia Hypothesis, is as infuriating as he is fascinating. I’m still not quite sure what to make of this man, but my gut instinct tells me he’s a bit off his rocker.
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Meet Noelle, the Pregnant Robot
by Linda MacDonald Glenn
Noelle, the first lifelike, birthing simulator is being used in a growing number of medical schools and hospital maternity wards.
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Why I’m not afraid of the future
by Russell Blackford
 I disagree with so many claims that I hear from various of my transhumanist friends that I sometimes wonder why, at the end of the day, I stand with them, rather than the bioconservatives - but there’s no doubt that I do.
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James Hughes Interview on Sentient Developments Radio, Part 1 of 2
Sentient Developments
I recently interviewed Dr. James Hughes, executive director of the World Transhumanist Association and the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. In part 1 of the interview, we discuss Dr. J’s ongoing projects, his future hopes and plans for the WTA and IEET, and current global issues facing techprogressives.
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Nanobots help kids fight cancer today
by J. Hughes
As virtual reality and meat reality begin to blur, future nanomedical reality is merging with current virtual medical therapy. A non-profit company, Hopelab, has released a first person shooter computer game for kids undergoing treatment for cancer.
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