News
From Translook
Conference Announcement: The Future of Religions - Religions of the Future - June 4, 5
First Scientific Conference in World of Warcraft
Next event: Max More in Second Life
Unresolved Issues in Transhumanism
Sunday June 8, 10am SLT / PST
See my report on yesterday's Sophrosyne's Saturday Salon: Religion, Spirituality and the Avatar
Don't miss this event! Sophrosyne's Saturday Salon: Religion, Spirituality and the Avatar From Soph's blog: Next week's Salon kicks off a cycle of several months of absolutely fascinating guests. On Saturday, March 15, from 1-3pm at the Central Nexus in Extropia Core, our Salon Spotlight Guest will be Soren Ferlinghetti (Robert M Geraci). Robert M. Geraci is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Manhattan College in New York City. He studies the interactions of religion, science and technology with particular emphasis upon robotics, artificial intelligence and (more recently) online gaming. he has conducted fieldwork at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute and in Second Life through discussions and interviews. In addition to publishing a number of essays on religion and robotics, he has just finished a book on the subject (tentatively titled _Apocalyptic AI: Visions of Heaven in Robotics, Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality_) and is planning a new book about religion and online games. Soren and I have spoken occasionally over many months about spirituality and identity in the digital world. We have profoundly different perspectives, and attitudes towards technology in general, but I've always found him curious, open-minded, warm-hearted and fascinating. Soren's work was recently covered in New World Notes: The Soul Of Second Life: In SL Spirituality Survey, 48% Open To Mind Upload, 62% To New SL-Based Religions Thanks to Hamlet Au, we not only got Soren's remarkable conclusions (more people go to church in SL than have sex, what?!), but the raw data supporting them. At the Salon we'll discuss Soren's research, the interplay between spirituality and identity in the digital world, the evolution of religion, and many more fascinating topics sparked by his work. This one's a must-see!
During yesterday's seminar our tireless super organizer Khannea Suntzu issued this call for volunteers: “After our recent successes, we’d love to expand our SL-Transhumanists endeavor, and for that purpose we’d like to see volunteers. If you have the urgency to spread this viral meme around a bit do join us. Start by joining the SL-Transhumanists group (!!) and have a look at our online resources. We have regular office hours and we’d love to increase our coverage in that. Additionally expect a sizeable increase in the number of big events like today’s”.
March 9, 12:00-13:30 SLT (noon PST, 3pm EST, 9pm EU, 8pm UK) - seminar on Morphological Freedom in Second Life, by Natasha Vita-More & Anders Sandberg: Do individual humans have a natural right to Morphological Freedom - the right to seek augmentation and enhancement - and the right not to be coerced to augment and enhance?
Natasha and Anders are two of the principal transhumanist thinkers. Natasha has given a good definition of transhumanism in a recent interview: “Transhumanism is a set of ideas which represents a worldview to improve the current situation that we as humanity are facing, which includes short lifespan, limited cognitive abilities, limited sensoral abilities, erratic emotions…starvation, lack of housing, or lack of, basically, getting any of the necessary fundamental needs met. We look ardently at how technologies, including the NBIC technologies—nanoscience, bioscience, information science, and cognitive science – can possibly be used to help solve some of the problems in the world that address humans being stuck in a state of stasis.” See also Anders’ recent list of top genetic enhancements that have already been done in mammals (and hence could presumbaly be done in humans).
See the seminar report on Transumanar
Philippe Van Nedervelde, international spokesperson for the Lifeboat Foundation, has been the featured guest of the 27 February episode of the award-winning podcast The Future And You. (He is also Executive Director for the Foresight Nanotech Institute in Europe, and a Global Task Force Member for the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology.) This episode also contains an essay by your host describing the dramatic changes which the internet will experience in the next five to ten years; as well as an announcement of a presentation which will be given on March 9, 2008, at Extropia Core inside Second Life by the esteemed pioneers of international transhumanism and extropy: Natasha Vita-More and Anders Sandberg. Their topic: Do humans have a natural right to augmentation and enhancement?
I will participate tonight Feb 28 in this interesting debate on Immersionism vs. Augmentationism. Topic: These deep thinkers, all fairly well-known for their positions on immersion vs augmentation, will have an energetic debate about their differences in opinion. Expect the conversation to touch on issues such as avatar rights, voice verification, and avatars as legal entities. This is a debate you won’t want to miss! Come to Orange Island tonight. See full article on metaXLR8.
My interview on The Future and You podcast
I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Stephen Euin Cobb for his award-winning podcast The Future And You. Stephen is a U.S. science fiction author, futurist, a columnist and contributing editor for Jim Baen’s Universe Magazine, the online magazine from Baen Books. Within Second Life his avatar’s name is “Boc Cryotank.” Stephen is also a game designer, artist, essayist and transhumanist. In each episode of The Future And You Stephen interviews a variety of authors, scientists, celebrities and “pioneers of the future” as to what they believe both the near future and distant future will be like for individuals as well as for humanity in general.
My interview focused on Second Life, Virtual Reality technology and business, possible mid and long term evolutions of VR, Artificial Intelligence and other technologies, our work at metafuturing, transhumanism, the WTA, the IEET, and various thoughts about the future (and the present). Stephen’s thoughts on “schisms” in virtual and physical realities (at the beginning) are quite similar to my own.
See full article with links on Transumanar
I just moved here, from a to-be-deleted wiki, the article Shadows and the concept of self, by By Giulio Prisco and Richard L. Miller, March 11, 2005. Enjoy.
This site has been implemented on Mediawiki. Mediawiki is a very fast and efficient platform for group edit.
Old content from the uvvy site will be copied here. This wiki is closed for public edit and registration (the platform is vulnerable to spam), and a sysop account is needed to contribute. SL-Transhumanists core team members will have sysop accounts.
