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Kathryn Hinsch is the founder of the Women’s Bioethics Project. In this reportshe documents the strategic investments the Christian Right has been making in a network of conservative bioethics thinktanks.
And in this speech she gives a summary of her findings:
I am a long-distance member for one of Yale’s inter-disciplinary bioethics group, which soon receives a talk from Professor Deb Roy. Taking a closer look at Roy’s work draws me even nearer to the work at MIT. I visited there in April this year and was struck by the breadth of creative invention taking place there.
This project 10x Human-Machine Symbiosis is discussed in an outline paper available from its website, wher Roy explains ths relationship between art, science and design.
In my various travels, I have found the richest of environments where a range of disciplines and views inform an approach to a problem, where it is difficult to characterise researchers as having expertise in specific domains. The more intriguing researchers seem to be those who apply a set of understandings to a range of applications.
More recently, I have been drawn towards architecture in work related to technology - such as William Mitchell’s ‘city of bits’ - to research surrounding media spectacles - the Situationist Internationale are integral to a course I wrote on Spectacle. Today, I was reading an article about Unifying Urbanism, which described a use of communication technology within the city to de-fragment its evolving character. I struggle to separate out disciplinary perspectives when writing about culture. Far too much is connected.
IEET Fellow and media/business writer Douglas Rushkoff has a new book coming out, Get Back In The Box: Innovation from the Inside Out (hint: it’s really good). He’ll be posting excerpts for the next ten weeks - here’s the first one.
Just last year, I got a phone call from the CEO of a home electronics chain, asking if I could devise a new communications strategy for him. He had read one of my books on Internet culture and was wondering if I could help him make use of some of this ‘below the line’ advertising he’d been hearing so much about lately. He wanted his marketing to be ‘less Saatchi and Saatchi and more craigslist.’ By this he meant he wanted to rely less on the expensive, high-concept traditional television advertising created by agencies like Saatchi & Saatchi, and somehow do his communications through bottom-up online communities, like the one that had developed around the craigslist online bulletin board.
As I reviewed the company’s dossier, product line, and customer experience reviews, I realized this CEO had a much bigger problem than his ads. The chain had lost its way. It had alienated its core customer base by abandoning the electronics business and becoming more of an appliance store. It had pushed design and manufacturing offshore, leaving headquarters without talent who really understood electronics. As a result, the quality of store-brand products had deteriorated, leading customers to buy other brands at thinner margins. Finally, corporate HQ had alienated its store managers through infantilizing incentives schemes, and irritated its employees with oppressive ‘loss prevention’ (antitheft) policies. Yet this CEO really thought a shift in marketing would change his whole business.
That’s when it hit me: What this fellow needed was not to hire companies who could market like craigslist but to be more like craigslist, himself. That is, simply understand what specific product or service he’s really offering, and then do it as well and expertly as possible. That’s not what he wanted to hear. No, he wanted a new marketing campaign to define his business for him, from the outside in.
Too many companies are obsessed with window dressing because they’re reluctant, no, afraid, to look at whatever it is they really do and evaluate it from the inside out. When things are down, CEO’s turn to consultants and marketers to rethink, rebrand or repackage whatever it is they are selling, when they should be getting back on the factory floor, into the stores, or out to the research labs where their product is actually made, sold, or conceived. Instead of making their communications less Saatchi and more Craig, they should be reinventing their core enterprise…
Over the past ten years, I’ve spoken with a lot of people about this conundrum, its historical context, and the ease with which so many businesses could transcend their reluctance to draw on their own expertise. Invariably, the Fortune 500 CEOs, billionaire entrepreneurs, and intellectual leaders with whom I engaged implored me to share these insights with the audience who needed them most: businesspeople. That’s why I’m making such a simple proposition: stop solving your problems from the outside in. Get back in the box and do the thing you actually do best. This disciplined commitment to your own core passion - and not a consultant, ad campaign, or business plan - is the source of true innovation.
The longevity and prosperity of any enterprise depends most on its participants’ ability to maintain the wellspring of innovation. And the way to do this is to remember that you are always the source of your own best ideas. The most successful businesses for the next century will turn out to have been based not on infinitely repeatable Harvard Business School lesson plans, but on a combination of competence and passion. Dissecting an enterprise after the fact to see what made it work is akin to conducting on autopsy on a person to see what made him live. The very pursuit is symptomatic of the highly fragmented approach to business we’re leaving behind.
So let’s be clear: this is not a business book. Or at least it’s not just a business book. For your career is not your job and your company is not its balance sheet. Your most personal choices are, in fact, your business choices. And your business choices may as well be your civic choices. Whether you realize it or not, your product purchases and brand loyalties express your politics, and your relationship to money says a lot about your understanding of time, of power, and of belief. It’s all one dynamic picture.
That’s why I’m going to ask you to look at commerce, communications, civics, and community as if they are all part of the same system - an ecology, really, of interdependent activities and needs. There is just one thing going on, here. Pretending that each aspect of your existence or your enterprise can be compartmentalized is, itself, a product of the Industrial Age thinking I’ll be asking you to abandon, and the surest path toward forgetting what it is you might have once, originally, hoped to accomplish.
To the delight of the volunteers at the Methuselah Foundation, an anonymous donor has given $1 million to the Methuselah Mouse Prize, or Mprize for Rejuvenation, the scientific research prize aimed at bringing an end to the degenerations and indignities of aging. Volunteers for the Mprize couldn’t believe it when they saw the size of the latest check: topping previous and exceedingly generous five- and six-figure donations, this was a check for $1 million out of the blue!
We stand within reach of a cure for human aging, according to trailblazing biomedical gerontologist Aubrey de Grey of Cambridge University, Chairman and Chief Science Officer of the Methuselah Foundation (www.mprize.org). Like de Grey, more and more people are convinced of the power that prizes have shown in making a difference to the future of health and longevity — and are putting their money where their hopes are!
Over the past several years, a growing band of enthusiasts - regular folk from all corners of the world have donated to the Mprize, a scientific research prize modeled on the extraordinarily successful prizes such as the Longitude Prize and the X Prize. The Mprize, or Methuselah Mouse Prize, rewards scientists who increase the maximum healthy lifespan by rejuvenating mice that are already in late middle age.
In early 2005, the Mprize hit its first million-dollar mark in pledges, entirely made up of small donations from people in more than 18 countries around the world. Today’s anonymous donation will push the Mprize fund to nearly 3 million dollars.
The anonymous $1 million donor cited an initial skepticism — and then a growing understanding of the real possibility of curing aging in our lifetimes, as his reason for making such a tremendous investment. He first learned about de Grey’s work from the popular press. The donor then learned more by following the Fight Aging! blog (www.fightaging.org) and the online newsletter Longevity Meme (www.longevitymeme.org). Both sites explore the coming reality of life extension and how we are likely to achieve it. These blogs advocate de Grey’s work and the Mprize in particular. In the Mprize, this donor saw a popular movement in the making, where every dollar in the prize fund represents a powerful voice, calling for the scientific community to take audacious yet practical steps towards real, working anti-aging medicine.
Why didn’t he tell us his name? Like many who have donated, including the originator of a $125,000 grant donated earlier this year, he didn’t want to become the news story. He wanted to make sure that the message was: End aging as we know it? A million times - Yes! The Mprize is an all-volunteer effort. All donations go directly into the Prize fund—there is no overhead. This December, Mprize Three Hundred Members, the group of donors who commit to giving $1000 per year for 25 years, plan to celebrate the recent growth of the prize with a Three Hundred member dinner where the speakers will be Aubrey de Grey and Mprize donor Ray Kurzweil, author of _The Singularity is Near_. For more information, please see www.mprize.org.
Aubrey de Grey believes that some people alive right now could live to be 1,000 years old. Aging is not, in his view, inevitable, and medical science should be able to reverse its effects in the next decade or two. Mr. de Grey’s ideas have won him plenty of praise and criticism. Supporters say that Mr. de Grey is brilliant, if overly optimistic. Detractors say his theories are ludicrous, and point out that he never sets foot in a laboratory. But does Mr. de Grey’s ability to step back and review others’ research allow him to make connections that a specialist might miss? Is mainstream gerontology handicapped by viewing death as a foregone conclusion? What about Mr. de Grey’s claim that the best thinkers tend to avoid gerontology because progress in the field is so incremental? If he turns out to be right, what are the implications? And if his theory is bunk, why hasn’t anyone accepted an offer of $20,000 to prove it?
Organized by the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies http://ieet.org
Co-Sponsors*: Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics, Stanford Center for Law and the Biosciences
*Sponsors list in formation
Much of the criticism of enhancement technologies has focused on the potential for increased discrimination against women, people of color, the poor, the differently enabled, or “unenhanced” humans. Some bioethicists have proposed a global treaty to ban enhancement technologies as “crimes against humanity.”
Defenders of enhancement argue that the use of biotechnologies is a fundamental human right, inseparable from the defense of bodily autonomy, reproductive freedom, free expression and cognitive liberty. While acknowledging real risks from genetic, prosthetic, and cognitive enhancement, defenders of enhancement believe that bans on the consensual use of new technologies would be an even greater threat to human rights.
Health care, disability and reproductive rights activists have argued that access to technology empowers full and equal participation in society. On the same grounds a generalized right to “technological empowerment” might connect defenders of enhancement technologies with disability activists, reproductive rights activists with would-be parents seeking fertility treatments, the transgendered with aesthetic body modifiers, drug policy reformers and anti-aging researchers with advocates for dignity in dying.
Yet, what, if any, limits should be considered to human enhancement? On what grounds can citizens be prevented from modifying their own genes or brains? How far should reproductive rights be extended? Might enhancement reduce the diversity of humanity in the name of optimal health? Or, conversely, might enhancements inspire such an unprecedented diversity of human beings that they strain the limits of liberal tolerance and social solidarity? Can we exercise full freedom of thought if we can’t exercise control over our own brains using safe, available technologies? Can we ensure that enhancement technologies are safe and equitably distributed? When are regulatory efforts simply covert, illiberal value judgments?
Between the ideological extremes of absolute prohibition and total laissez-faire that dominate popular discussions of human enhancement there are many competing agendas, hopes and fears. How can the language of human rights guide us in framing the critical issues? How will enhancement technologies transform the demands we make of human rights?
With the Human Enhancement and Human Rights conference we seek to begin a conversation with the human rights community, bioethicists, legal scholars, and political activists about the relationship of enhancement technologies to human rights, cognitive liberty and bodily autonomy. It is time to begin the defense of human rights in the era of human enhancement.
To The Best of Our Knowledge from Wisconsin Public Radio
FUTURE PERFECT Program 05-10-23-A
Consider this future world: a vaccine that makes you continually happy. A chip in your brain that lets you communicate telepathically with your spouse. Human lives that span hundreds of years. Sound far-fetched? Not according the James Hughes of the World Transhumanist Association. He says all this will happen. It’s not just a matter of when - not if. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge we’ll speculate on what some are calling the post-human future.
Great news: the IEET website... looking mostly the same. So why all the excitement? Because now that the site is running over a modern content engine, we’ll be much more efficient at keeping the site updated. More importantly, you will have a hand in that too.
The Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET) was founded in 2004 by philosopher Nick Bostrom and bioethicist James J. Hughes to support and promote thinkers examining the social implications of scientific and technological advances, especially human enhancement technologies. The IEET publishes the Journal of Evolution (JET) and Technology.
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CONTENTS:
News from the Front
TRANSVISION 2006: CALL FOR PROPOSALS
IEET CONFERENCE 2006: CALL FOR PROPOSALS
Aubrey de Grey in the Chronicle of Higher Education
IEET Fellows for 2005-2006
Events
My new novel, Kong Reborn, has been released from ibooks (New York) and should be getting into stores very soon. This is a sequel to the original 1933 King Kong movie, set in the present and near future, and obviously in the world in which the original events of the movie took place. The premise is that samples of blood from the original Kong, who was killed by military planes in 1933, are used in a scientific race to clone the giant ape.
Apart from involving action and adventure, this plot also allows for a certain amount of (sympathetic) discussion of cloning, genetically modified food, and other biotechnology. Just for once, this is not a bioconservative thriller about genetic science.
I’ve just received my author’s copy of The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Themes, Works, and Wonders, edited by Gary Westfahl for Greenwood Press. It comes in three attractively gaudy hardback volumes which contain a total of 600 entries by about a quarter that number of contributors (each entry is 1000 words, including a short bibliography).
The City of Hartford (Connecticut, USA) is hosting a ground-breaking conference on reforming urban drug policy, October 21-22, at Trinity College in Hartford. On Saturday, October 22, at 10:45, Dr. Hughes will address the meeting and moderate a panel on emerging rehabilitation technologies and their impacts on drug policy.
IEET Fellow Ramez Naam appeared on the June 1, 2005 Berkeley Groks radio program “Breakthroughs in biomedical research will soon allow us to live longer, grow stronger, and think smarter. But, will these advances come at a price? On this program, Ramez Naam discussed the promise of biological enhancement.” (Download and listen here.)
Also, this week’s Changesurfer Radio, which is produced by IEET Executive Director J. Hughes, carries a fascinating talk by philosopher David Wasserman on the chemical control of emotion (Download MP3).
For those of you who are not yet subscribed to the podcast feed for my radio show, you can listen to the latest show here: 2005.8.27 - Critical BioArt - Dr. J. chats with Steve Kurtz, a member of the Critical Art Ensemble, a group focused on “biotechnology, its colonising effects and ideological layering, and the biorevolution in global capitalism.” Kurtz and CAE are engaged in a legal battle with the US District Attorney over a politically motivated investigation of alleged bioterrorist activities.
IEET Fellow Mike Treder has announced that the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology that he directs has convened a group to study the societal implications of nanotechnology. IEET Chair Nick Bostrom will serve on the group, along with SF author David Brin, UNU Millenium Program Director Jerry Glenn and futurist/inventor Ray Kurzweil.
Email info(at-sign)ieet.org if you would like information about having dinner with Dr. Hughes and other local human enhancement activists on Thursday, Sept 1 or Friday, Sept 2.
The Terasem Movement, Inc., a non-profit foundation focused on geoethical nanotechnology, plans a live webcast of its 1st Annual Workshop on Geoethical Nanotechnology, featuring transhumanist writer Ray Kurzweil, IEET Fellow and Center for Responsible Nanotechnology Director Mike Treder, Nobel Laureate Barry Blumberg, IEET Executive Director James Hughes, cognitive liberty campaigner Wrye Sententia and other luminaries.
Nick Bostrom, the Chair of the IEET, has been named to head the new The Oxford Future of Humanity Institute (OXFHI), part of Oxford’s new James Martin 21st Century School. OXFHI will assess technologies that have the potential to radically transform the human condition, such as human enhancement medicine, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence. OXFHI will also study threats to human survival and global catastrophic risk. Using multi-disciplinary scientific research and ethical analysis, the Institute will seek to identify high-leverage points where a moderate investment could bring enormous benefits for humanity. By confronting big picture issues, the OXFHI will supply an essential background that is missing from contemporary bioethical and biopolitical discussions.
The 21st Century School is James Martin’s second major benefaction to Oxford, following the setting up of the James Martin Institute for Science and Civilization last year, bringing his total endowment for the benefit of this University to $100m (£60m). The new School will be designed on a ‘hub and spoke’ model, with a Director and small staff at the centre, and a number of institutes each undertaking leading-edge research in its own subject area. At the launch of the School, these will be: the James Martin Institute for Science and Civilization; the Environmental Change Institute; the e-Horizons Institute; the Oxford Institute of Ageing; the International Migration Institute; the Oxford Future of Humanity Institute; the Programme on Ethics of the New Biosciences; the Institute for Emergent Infections of Humans; and the Institute for the Future of the Mind.
The World Academy is a network of approximately 500 individuals from diverse cultures, nationalities, and intellectual disciplines, chosen for eminence in art, the natural and social sciences, and the humanities. Its focus is on the social consequences and policy implications of knowledge, and the challenges confronting people in a rapidly changing global civilization. It has in several instances chosen to concentrate on cutting edge issues—such as biotechnology and genetic resources—well ahead of general public recognition of their importance.
The Academy was formally founded in 1960, and its first officers were: as President, Lord John Boyd Orr of Scotland; as Vice Presidents, Hermann Joseph Muller of the United States and Hugo Ostvald of Sweden; and, as Secretary General, Hugo Boyko of Israel.
John Rodat’s “More Human than Human” review of my April 13 talk in Albany New York, published in the Metroland magazine, is far less skeptical than the run of the mill reception:
The author of Citizen Cyborg was on hand to discuss the controversial and wide-ranging topic of transhumanism in democratic society, and in light of recent events such as the Terri Schiavo case, it’s understandable that Hughes would be ready for objections to a philosophy that seeks to ‘deconstruct’ the notion of what it is to be human. Nevertheless, giving the lie to his comprehensive PowerPoint presentation, Hughes claimed with easy assurance that he is confident about the prospects for a transhumanist future: ‘I sometimes feel that I’m arguing for the plow.’
Hughes made the point that the transhumanist agenda to mitigate or eliminate the effects of aging, and to enhance human intellectual, physical and psychological capacities through emerging technologies such as psychopharmacology, genetic engineering, artificial intelligence and nanotechnology, is already being enacted. Still, extrapolation from such everyday modifications as the contact lens or specialized medical devices like computer-assisted prostheses to the downloading of an entire human conciousness into a non-organic host, such as a computer, pulls on the very last nerve of the ‘bioLuddites,’ as Hughes characterized opponents of transhumanism.”
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Contact: Executive Director, Dr. James J. Hughes,
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Email: director @ ieet.org phone:
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