Cyborg Buddha Project
Cyborg Buddha Blog
“In sorting priorities, I adopt what I term the central principle of cultural evolution, which I refer to as the Intelligence Principle: the maintenance, improvement and perpetuation of knowledge and intelligence is the central driving force of cultural evolution, and that to the extent intelligence can be improved, it will be improved.”—Stephen J. Dick
Jun 20, 2009
Markets Love Selfish People
Life Inc.For all the ability of genes and even memes to battle for survival against one another, human beings are just as likely to share and cooperate as they are to cheat and compete. But the ascendance of market rhetoric in America and Britain was accompanied by the assertion of some decidedly antiromantic science. University anthropologists seemed determined to correct the hopeful impressions that so many still clung to of peaceful, vegetarian gorillas enjoying one another’s company in the jungle. Like stories of supposedly peaceful aboriginal tribes as yet untainted by corrupt Western civilization, such visions—according to the new social Darwinists—were pure fantasy.
Life Inc. Dispatch 05: Markets Love Selfish People from Douglas Rushkoff on Vimeo.
DOWNLOAD/LISTEN/VIEWJun 15, 2009
“Keeping an Open Mind is a Virtue, but not so Open that Your Brains Fall Out.”
by Athena Andreadis – saying attributed to Jim Oberg, space journalist and historian
Jun 13, 2009
Brains - Military, Disgusted, Forgetful
Changesurfer RadioJonathan Moreno on The use of neuroscience by the US military, Douglas Rushkoff on the need to train citizens in digital combat arts, the relationship of disgust sensitivity to conservatism, and Greg Beato’s defense of memory deletion in the participatory panopticon. (MP3)
Jun 8, 2009
Existential Movie War
by Mike TrederOver on his Sentient Developments blog, IEET board member George Dvorsky has compiled and posted a list of what he calls “The Top 10 Existential Movies of All Time.” As a serious film buff, I was immediately prompted to respond by naming a few important—and great—existential movies that George left off his list. I’ll get to my own favorites in a moment, but first we should lay down some ground rules.
Jun 5, 2009
Moral Relativism vs. Moral Authority
by Mike TrederBorn in Hawaii—a crossroads of culture between Far East and Far West—of a white mother from Kansas and a black father from Kenya and raised partially in Indonesia by a Muslim stepfather, an African-American man with an unlikely background and an even more unlikely name, Barack Hussein Obama, arose to become President of the United States. Does that globalized pedigree, along with a prodigious intellect, give him a unique moral authority?
May 30, 2009
Evil Genes Part 2
Changesurfer RadioDr. J. chats with Barbara Oakley about her book Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed, and My Sister Stole My Mother’s Boyfriend (evilgenes.com), a sweeping review of the emerging neuroscience of psychopathy and Machiavellianism, and their relationship to history, politics and evolution. (Part 2 of 2)
May 30, 2009
Evil Genes Part 1
Changesurfer RadioDr. J. chats with Barbara Oakley about her book Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed, and My Sister Stole My Mother’s Boyfriend (evilgenes.com), a sweeping review of the emerging neuroscience of psychopathy and Machiavellianism, and their relationship to history, politics and evolution. (Part 1 of 2)
May 23, 2009
Participatory Panopticon Trial One: FAIL
by Mike TrederIt is 2007 on the steamy tropical streets of Rangoon, Burma, where journalism is against the law, and where no outside reporters are allowed. Fed up with living under the oppression of a heavy-handed military dictatorship, a few courageous citizens dare to speak out. They are quickly silenced and carried off by police and plain-clothes thugs—but a small band of video journalists is able to capture the events and begin leaking the news to the outside world.
May 18, 2009
Choosing Our Imaginary Communities and Identities
by J. HughesIn June 1983 I arrived in Sri Lanka with a starry-eyed commitment to grassroots Buddhist social change, and a lot of romanticism about national liberation movements and Asian Buddhism. The Sri Lankan civil war that started five days later forced me to confront how dangerous all identities and communities are unless we understand that they are fundamentally imaginary. My two years in Sri Lanka convinced me of the desperate need for a new project of global citizenship.
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