Shannon Vyff is author of 21st Century Kids, an SF novel for kids. We talk about futurism, cryonics, social justice, calorie restriction, talking to kids about death, and teaching transhumanism in the Unitarian Universalist Sunday School program. (MP3)
# An overview of my recent talk at the Center for Inquiry
# Discussing Twitter and Google Apps
# Part 3 of my Fermi Paradox talk: Possible solutions and next steps
# Why the male birth-control pill is so important for men; sorry, ladies—this pill isn’t about you
Science journalist John Horgan rejects the idea that human aggression and war are inevitable. (See his article “Has Science Found a Way to End All Wars?”) He marshals evidence that we may be able to evolve beyond war. (MP3)
Columbia U historian Matthew Connelly‘s Fatal Misconception documents 150 years and a cast of thousands involved in the effort to control the fertility of women in the name of population control. We discuss eugenics, China, India and the reality of population stabilization. (MP3)
Our friend Miriam, a futurist analyst in Germany and member of DeTrans the German Transhumanist Association, put together this little video for a Colony 5 song. Check it out.
Lyrics:
Tragedies and suffering
I hear them scream
screaming for help
The prophets preach
the end of the world
only fools believe their words
No truth without evidence
it’s easy to lie
who can seek the answers
who can see through the sky
Such a great temptation
who can carry such a quest
and gain that information
we don’t need no god
We don’t need no god no more
We don’t need a tyrant
We want to love
we want to breathe
we want to be
Rebuild the world
with the knowledge
we retrieve
We want to feel
we want to live
we want to see
seek the wisdom
from the future
and believe
“Jamais Cascio, a futurist writer, gives four possible scenarios for how the increasing integration of technology into our lives will unfold. These scenarios are the the combination of values on two variables: whether technology is used to augment or simulate reality, and whether it is externally focused or looking inside a person. These scenarios are not inherently good or bad but will be shaped by the process used to create them.
Since all technology is a product of its creators, even the first intelligent machines will be biased toward the interests and beliefs of those who make it. For a globally significant event like the Singularity, we need to be sure that the process that leads to it includes input from all of the stakeholders that will be affected by it. These diverse interests can’t be slapped on at the end, but rather need to be brought in early in the process. Democracy is messy, but participation is more important than efficiency.
As part of his recommendation that we should be working as hard on global inclusion as on the creation of an artificial general intelligence, Jamais makes a few recommendations. All development should be based on trust, honesty, and transparency. Controls should be in place on access to personal information. And lastly, open access to information makes the risks associated with all of these scenarios more manageable. The interference of the many is better than the secrecy of the few.”
(Part 1 of 2) Nicolas Rasmussen is professor of history and philosophy at University of New South Wales, Australia, and author of On Speed: The Many Lives of Amphetamine. We talk about the lessons to be learned for drug policy reform from the history of amphetamines. We also hear Australian Professor Rodney Detritus (comedian Rodney Marks) on the state of bioethics, by permission of the Science Show from Australia. Part 1: (MP3) Part 2: (MP3)
Jamais Cascio and Dr. J. talk about the concept of geo-engineering as a possible solution to climate change, but also as a possibly offensive weapon in geostrategy. Who would stand to benefit from unstopped warming, and who would benefit from warming slowed by man-caused volcanic eruptions or other kinds of human intervention? Also Tom Smith’s song Dead Again, from the Podsafe Music Network. (MP3)
Essays: “Post-gender” by George Dvorsky and James Hughes; “The Future of Humanity” by Nick Bostrom; “Dreamers of a Better Future, Unite!” by Athena Andreadis. And songs from the Podsafe Music Network.
Cameron Reilly, voice of ”G’Day World,” on Australia’s Podcast Network, listened to “The Chorus”—the scenario jamais had constructed for the Futurist’s Sandbox panel at SXSW—and was thoroughly disturbed by the story it told. Disturbed enough, it turns out, to ping him to do an interview for his podcast on where we seem to be going with social media technologies, and just what it might mean to opt out.
(Via Ectoplasmosis) As Ross notes, this video of a boy, a dog and a robot is a portent of the displacement of humanity by automation. “Our time left on this planet is short and one day — no doubt sooner rather than later — mechanized monstrosities will cleanse us from this sapphire spheroid in a wave of robotic fury, probably with lasers in their eyes....”
Austin Dacey and Dr. J. chat about his new book The Secular Conscience. Dr. Dacey is representative to the United Nations for the secularist Center for Inquiry, and on the editorial staff of Skeptical Inquirer and Free Inquiry magazines.
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