“Armed with an astonishing breadth of knowledge, John Danaher engages with pressing public policy issues in order to lay out a fearless exposition of the radical opportunities that technology will soon enable. With the precision of analytical philosophy and accessible, confident prose, Automation and Utopia demonstrates yet again why Danaher is one of our most important pathfinders to a flourishing future.”  - James Hughes, Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies

Introduction À la suite de l’annonce retentissante de la naissance de bébés génétiquement modifiés par le biologiste Chinois He Jankui, l’Organisation mondiale de la santé, prise de cours, a réuni 18 experts chargés de participer à la régulation internationale de l’édition du génome humain. Leur mission est de “viser au développement de standards de gouvernance… [lire la suite]

One of the major obstacles associated with socialist or communist systems is the Economic Calculation Problem. If we no longer allow a “free market” to decide what is produced and at what price, then how do we decide how to direct a society’s limited resources and labor?

It’s a book that’s going to change the conversation about the future.

It starts well, with six short vignettes, “Six characters in search of a future”. Then it moves on, with the quality consistently high, to sections entitled “Chaos under heaven”, “New travellers”, and “Paradise found”. Paradise! Yes, that’s the future which is within our grasp. It’s a future in which, as Bastani says, people will “lead fuller, expanded lives, not diminished ones”:

Timothy Leary (1920-1996) marqua de son empreinte l’évolution du mouvement progressiste et techno optimiste des années 70 à 90. Cet article fait partie de la série “Histoire du transhumanisme”.

[Vidéos] Bébés génétiquement modifiés : comment gérer le risque ?

Chez de nombreuses familles d’êtres vivants, y compris l’être humain, ce qu’on appelle l’instinct de conservation de l’espèce consiste en général à donner la priorité aux nouvelles générations - notamment pour l’apport alimentaire ou la sécurité face à un danger. Aura-t-on la même attitude vis-à-vis d’une prochaine génération 100% artificielle ?

One of the key conceptual difficulties faced by those grappling with the resurgence of nationalism today is to hold fast to the recognition that this return of the nation state occurs in an already globalized world. In other words, this isn’t our grandparents’ nationalism we are confronting but something quite new, and forgetting that fact leads to all kinds of intellectual mistakes, most notably imagining that the ghosts of the likes of Hitler, Tojo, and Mussolini have risen from the grave like Halloween ghouls.

Professor and media theorist Douglas Rushkoff recently penned an article that went viral, “Survival of the Richest.” It outlines how the super wealthy are preparing for doomsday. Here is a recap followed by a brief commentary.

David Wood, a man that helped revolutionize communication in the early days of the smart phone, now wants to make the government smarter too. The British transhumanist helped pioneer today’s smartphone industry when he co-founded mobile operating system developer Symbian in 1998, and now he’s calling for changes that would radically rethink how people and politicians interact.