Elevating the Human Condition
There were many moments of high irony before we Sonoma Film Festival attendees got to preview a somewhat unfinished version of The Singularity is Near: The Movie — based on the Ray Kurzweil book of the same name.
The Summer 2010 Humanity+ Conference is emphasizing DIY with the brilliant theme "The Rise of the Citizen Scientist." (Our last magazine edition was organized around the DIY theme, focusing particularly on DIY Bio.)
In 1960, South Korea was poorer than two-thirds of the nations in sub-Saharan Africa. Today it’s the world’s most digital nation, with a per capita income of nearly $28,000, higher than New Zealand ($27K) or Portugal ($22K).
I just got back from a short trip to Mexico where I went for the express purpose of having a few grams of placental tissue transplanted beneath the skin of my lower abdomen.
If anyone is going to persuade us to abandon the flesh, be downloaded, and live forever as information, it is Martine Rothblatt.
Watch children, or adults, at play. And by “play” I mean the real thing — experimental, messy, reality-shifting and explorative, not the routinized pseudo-work we call “leisure” or “recreation.”
If you watch 27-year-old Jason Silva on Current TV — the Emmy-winning youth-oriented cable network co-founded by Al Gore — you’d never guess that he’s a first-rate transhumanist thinker, skeptic, and passionate advocate of science in overcoming the biological limitations of being human.
The Singularity. If you’re an h+ reader, you’ve been sufficiently introduced to the concept (and if not, see Resources at the end of this interview).