On April 23,2007 Prof. Kevin Warwick, author of I, Cyborg addressed the World Transhumanist Association’s Second Life chapter on “Upgrading Humans: Why not?”
It was real fun to organize an event of this magnitude. Myself (Manoj Undercity in Second life), xyryx Simca and Arcturus Gregory worked in tandem with Giulio Perhaps to bring the real world cyborg to the virtual world. A person who is seeped in artiificial intelligence and cyborg research in real life truly deserves a one of a kind avatar..one that truly captures his essence. In his first visit to Second Life to test the grounds alongwith his researcher (Telemaxos in Second Life), he came as any newbie would come but he was already amazed at the possibilities within the virtual world. He expressed the desire to avatarize himself as a cyborg and that is exactly what he got ! a complete cyborg transformation step by step :
Above picture shows me (Manoj Undercity), Giulio Prisco (Giulio Perhaps) watching and directing Rein Mitra create the avatar for Prof. Warwick.
Prof. Warwick in his new avatar suit for the event (seated clockwise third from left) Also seen standing in the extreme right end is Dr. Thanos, Prof. Warwick’s researcher.
A view of the venue.
Prof. Warwick in his shiny cyborg avatar delivering his talk. Talk was delivered live via an audio stream which were accompanied by display of slides at appropriate intervals. He then answered live to questions typed by the audience via audio. On the whole, a very interesting experience.
The very cute group photo : From left to right : Khannea Suntzu, Giulio Perhaps, Rein Mitra, Prof. Kevin Warwick, Manoj Undercity, Arcturus Gregory, xyryx Simca, Dr.Thanos.
Me with xyryx Simca as the droid, and Arcturus Gregory in the picture on the right. These two people helped organize the whole event. Thanks guys !
Believe it or not, thats the IEET’s Dr. J. Hughes stopping by to witness the event!
The event was very popular and widely publicized in the media.
Some links:
http://www.uvvy.com/index.php/Kevin_Warwick_in_SL
http://www.slnn.com/article/warwickinsl/
http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2007/04/warwick_inworld.html
IEET Blog