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.

IEET Fellow Stefan Lorenz Sorgner explains that smart city needs upgraded humans at the Global Solutions (GS) Taipei Workshop 2018. There, his transhumanist reflections get discussed intensely by world leading politicians, scholars, and policy makers. In the photo below, you find him standing in between Prof. Blair Sheppard from Duke University and Dr. Chen Mei-ling, the current Taiwanese Minister of the Development Council. Next to her is the former General Director of the World Trade Organization, Pascal Lamy, who was a special guest at th...

Part of the problem with utopia is the question of where do you put it. After all, what any imaginary ideal society ultimately ends up being is its “own world turned upside down”, which means that the world, as it is, must not have a place for anything like a paradise on earth, otherwise an author would have had no reason to dream up a utopia in the first place.

Futurists tend to exaggerate, overestimating the change that’s heading our way. Most likely there will be no new species, no destructive post-human scenario, no sci-fi movie style acceleration of evolution. However, what we can say or even predict with certainty is that the way we interact with the world and with the machines of the future will change. Human beings will remain so, but their relationship with objects will be deeper, a kind technological intimacy

IEET Fellow Kevin LaGrandeur was recently quoted in the article “Is artificial intelligence the great job eliminator or creator?” by Karen Talley.  The news article is posted on FierceCEO.

Is it possible to significantly improve politics, over the course of, say, the next dozen years, without first significantly improving human nature?

Transhumanism is more often regarded as a faith by its detractors than its supporters. For my own part, I have long argued that the signature themes of transhumanism – especially the preoccupation with intellectual immortality and physical resurrection – bear the marks of Abrahamic theology. Indeed, without that theological backdrop, transhumanism’s zeal for mind uploading and cryonics looks simply bizarre. However, in this context, transhumanists can reasonably argue that they are scientifically delivering on those original theologica...

Leo Igwe PhD, a Nigerian journalist and activist, has designed a 5-Step Critical Thinking (CT) workshop called “iDOUBT” that aims to obliterate dangerous superstitions in Subsaharan Africa, and in tribal groups of The Philippines.