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In “Engineering Transcendence” I argued that science may someday develop the capability to resurrect the dead and build (and/or become) God(s), and proposed to base a “transhumanist religion” on this idea. I also argued that the ultra-rationalist, aseptic engineering language dear to most transhumanists does not seem able to have an emotional impact on the majority of other people. This means that “traditional” transhumanist ideas will remain confined to a very small minority of technically oriented nerds, and never make a difference to the rest of people.

My purpose in this article is not to try to surmise who — or what — is correct about this particular scenario or about any of the dozens of other disaster scenarios that seem to confront us. My purpose is to examine how people deal with the intrusion of “scientific” information that may not only disrupt their models of reality but their projects-already-in-progress.

“Mathematicians, likewise, have decided that the smooth, geometric model of reality they have used since Euclid first drew a triangle on papyrus is obsolete. Instead, using computers, they churn out psychedelic paisley patterns which they claim more accurately reflect the nature of existence. And who appears to be taking all this in first? The kids dancing to electronic music at underground clubs. And the conclusion they have all seemed to reach is that reality itself is up for grabs. It can be dreamt up.”

Sexual selection is a good way to model the evolution of information technology. It yields bioluminescence – the most common communication strategy on the planet – chirping insects, singing birds, Peacocks fanning their feathers, singing whales, speaking humans, and humans with internet access. These are all techniques of information production, transformation or evaluation.

For thousands of years, humans have strived to move beyond the limits of their own minds through education, philosophy and meditation. Cognitive neuroscientists like myself are trying to turn such aspirations into reality by applying knowledge of neuroplasticity and cognition to cognitive training programs. Millions of people use their income to buy cognitive training games. This trend will continue as new discoveries foster the development of improved training programs, and the implementation of these programs will eventually cause a significant impact in society and education.

I first encountered Mohamad Tarifi on an AI email list, where he was discussing his deep and fascinating work on hierarchical temporal memory architectures.  Using a combination of rigorous mathematics and computational experiments, he treats these constructs very broadly as an approach to both vision processing and artificial general intelligence.

Ramez Naam is the author of More than Human: Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement, which offers a tour of emerging technologies and makes a case for embracing human enhancement, showing readers how these technologies are powerful new tools in humanity’s quest to improve ourselves, our offspring and our world.

Hello everyone! I’m the new Co-Editor at H+ Magazine, Michael Anissimov. Many of you already know me as the author of the Accelerating Future blog.

At a recent TED Conference, a dinner was organized by the Edge Foundation, a think tank and nonprofit that celebrates big ideas. The theme of the evening was the “New Age of Wonder,” and the discussion drew comparisons to the Romantic Age, the period between 1770 and 1830 when science and art were friends. It was a time when astronomers and poets were in some ways indistinguishable, as artists were inspired by science’s intoxicating sense of awe and wonder. Somewhere down the line, however, these two worlds became disjointed.

An oxymoron? Maybe.

Burgeoning lifestyle choice for a growing number of futurists? Most definitely.

Look, it’s 2011 and it’s glaringly obvious that we’re still quite a ways off from achieving the much heralded posthuman condition. The sad truth is that all interventions or augmentations currently available are fairly low impact by any measure. There aren’t a whole lot of high tech and sophisticated options available to radically alter human performance, experience, or life expectancy.