/patternHunter [/ph]

"Sample transhumanist apps could include cell phone implants (which would allow virtual telepathy), memory backups and augmenters, thought recorders, reflex accelerators, collaborative consciousness (whiteboarding in the brain), and a very long list of thought-controlled actuators. Ultimately, the technology could extend to the uploading and downloading of entire minds in and out of host bodies, providing a self-consciousness that, theoretically, would have no definitive nor necessary end." /CIO Magazine/

"So I’m going on about cellular automata all the time and you’re thinking, “Yes, but can CAs get me high?” I’ll say! Stephen Wolfram’s mascot is the textile coneshell, famous for having a one-dimensional CA wrapped around its shell." Rudy Rucker's blog/

"Apple cripples recording on an ipod... but don’t worry, there’s a way around it and you can record at high quality, all for free." /ipod.hackaday.com/

"(Blogs) can be improved by adding semantic metadata to the snippits and to their links. The querying and search can be aided by this knowledge. The result is a form of the Semantic Web, overlaid on a simple blog structure. Of course, this does make the use of the blog structure more complex. It has to be loaded with the semantic knowledge, perhaps through the use of a pre-arranged ontology for classifying and sharing knowledge. This is important work... with the potential of linking very simple knowledge storing ideas, like blogs, with more complex knowledge management classification and retrieval methods." /IFTF's Future Now/

"In the 2003 science fiction novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, author Cory Doctorow imagines a society where all of life's necessities are free, and market laws such as supply and demand cease to exist for everything else. Instead of trading in a hard currency, citizens living in this 'post-scarcity economy' measure their wealth with an ephemeral, reputation-based currency called 'Whuffie.' Doing something that benefits the community, like baking a cake or writing beautiful poetry, increases a person's Whuffie, while causing a traffic accident or publishing clumsy prose can temporarily put you in a virtual poorhouse. Everyone is wired into the Internet via brain implants and can routinely view and modify others' standing instantly (and free of charge), ultimately making one's status the subject of majority opinion." /The Karma Economy (Promo) Brendan Themes/

"'Digital devices are the social lubricant now,' said Derek White, an executive vice president at Alloy Inc., a youth marketing and research firm. While their time spent in front of the computer and online has grown, teens are now spending less time on other social activities... Chris Saribay, 17, of Hawaii, quit the regular school scene altogether for an all-online public high school, where he watches video lectures and frequently instant messages or e-mails his teachers. But the junior is anything but lonely -- he has friends from all over the world and has maxed out the allowed instant messaging buddy list of 200." /Technology Review/

I would argue that technological progress is more than inevitable, it is natural. Humanity has evolved in what seems to be a unique way: a) we are no longer victims of "natural selection" given that 99% of humanity survives to reproductive age, b) we are increasingly engineering non-random mutation (which could have potentially devastating consequences), c) for more than 30,000 years, we have merged with the technology of language and reason, and d) computational power is growing at an exponential rate that will soon require no human intervention to continue.

Second, the sci-fi visions of terminator cyborgs whose humanity has been overcome by unfeeling calculation - even in an effort to protect us from our animal nature (ala I Robot) - is not a goal of transhumanists (none that I have met anyway). For me, the greatest promise of a transhumanist future is one where humanity evolves its intelligence in proportion to its power. Having "weapons of mass destruction" in the hands of mentally-impaired religious nuts like (fill in your own group here) who are incapable of considering the consequences of "protecting their way of life at any cost" is something we should be far more concerned about than mass ritalin injections and demon clones.

I tend to agree with the Procactionary Principle outlined by Max Moore of the Extropy Institute:

People’s freedom to innovate technologically is highly valuable, even critical, to humanity. This implies several imperatives when restrictive measures are proposed: Assess risks and opportunities according to available science, not popular perception. Account for both the costs of the restrictions themselves, and those of opportunities foregone. Favor measures that are proportionate to the probability and magnitude of impacts, and that have a high expectation value. Protect people’s freedom to experiment, innovate, and progress.

Many concerns about transhumanist progress assert that technology interferes with human connection despite far more compelling support for the opposite conclusion. For example, do you feel more or less connected to the Red Menace / Russkis / Russians that the average person did 50 years ago? Is that because of less technology or more technology? Even Gorbachev acknowledge that the end of the cold war was brought about by movies, television, blue jeans and rock and roll (products of communication and transportation technologies) as much if not more so than politics. Of course, the same technology that helped us to realize that "the Russians love their children too" (to quote Sting) is used to amplify our bloodlust and hatred of "the other" in a "if it bleeds, it leads" mediaspace.

My guess is that the deeper human spirit has always been distracted by materialistic influences whether they be television, the internet, war, famine, plague or disease. I would go even further to suggest that it is not these external circumstances that deny our spirit, but rather our "natural" egotism and xenophobia once necessary for the continuation of our "blood lines" (genetic heritage) in times of limited resources and "survival of the fittest."

For me, the true spirit of the transhumanism philosophy is that IT IS OUR NATURE TO CHANGE OUR NATURE. Hopefully, we can evolve our intelligence (which includes compassion and ecology) beyond our capacity for destruction.

"Science fiction in electronic games is nothing new; many of the arcade games of the medium's "Golden Age" (1977-84), such as Space Invaders, Asteroids, Defender, and Missile Command, utilize familiar scenarios such as alien invasions or global thermonuclear war as a backdrop... Baby Boom authors like William Gibson and Orson Scott Card (use) the iconic visual language of arcade games to convey the vastness of spaces both real and virtual. And many noteworthy genre writers have lent their talents to game-related novelizations, in addition to collaborating on games based on their works." /Locus Online/

"Part of the future I believe I'm seeing is a change in the software ecosystem which, for the moment, I'm calling situated software. This is software designed in and for a particular social situation or context. This way of making software is in contrast with what I'll call the Web School (the paradigm I learned to program in), where scalability, generality, and completeness were the key virtues." /Clay Shirky/

Dig this cool concept map of Smart Mobs.

"Can cooperative behaviour emerge from groups of selfish individuals? Here you can use a popular puzzle called the Prisoner's Dilemma Game to examine how cooperation might arise and evolve in animal groups. The results might surprise you!" /The Evolution of Cooperative Behaviour/

"Solving The Puzzle of Human Cooperation succinctly states the issues and positions regarding the biological origins and evolution of cooperation. Another great find from http://del.icio.us/tag/cooperation." /Smart Mobs/

"Thinking about my own failures in conversations with those that are important to me, here’s some enlightening questions from Timothy Leary I’d like to keep in mind..." /Dispatch from the Progressive Front/

• Is your expert talking from direct experience, or simply repeating cliches?
  
• Do his words spring from a spiritual or mundane point of view? Is he motivated by a dedicated quest for answers to basic questions, or is he protecting his own social-psychological position, his own game investment? Is he struggling towards sainthood, or is he maintaining his status as a hard-boiled scientist or hard-boiled cop?
  
• How would his argument sound if it was heard in a different culture? (for example, in an African jungle hut, a ghat on the Ganges, or on another planet inhabited by a form of life superior to ours) or in a different time (for example, in Periclean Athens, or in a Tibetan monestery, or in a bull session led by any one of the great religious leaders - founders - messiahs)? Or how would it sound to other species of life on our planet today - to the dolphins, to the conciousness of the redwood tree? In other words, try to break out of your usual tribal game set and listen with the ears of another one of God's creatures.
  
• How would the debate sound to you if you were fatally diseased with a week to live, and thus less comitted to mundane issues?...
  
• Is this point of view one which opens up or closes down? Are you being urged to explore, experience, or gamble out of spiritual faith, join somone who shares your cosmic ignorance on a collaborative voyage of discovery? Or are you being pressured to close off, protect your gains, play it safe, accept the authoritative voice of someone who knows best?
  
• When we speak, we say little about the subject matter and disclose mainly the state of our own mind. Does your psychedelic expert use terms which are positive, pro-life, spiritual, inspiring, opening, based on faith in the future, faith in your potential or does he betray a mind obsessed by danger, material concern, by imaginary terrors, administrative caution or essential distrust in your potential? Dear friends, there is nothing in life to fear; no spiritual gain can be lost.
  
• If he is against what he calls "artificial methods of illumination," ask him what constitutes the natural. Words? Rituals? Tribal customs? Alkaloids? Psychedelic vegetables?
  
• If he is against biochemical assistance, where does he draw the line? Does he use nicotine? alcohol? penicillin? vitamins? convential sacremental substances?
  
• If your advisor is against LSD, what is he for? If he forbids you the psychedelic key to revelation, what does he offer you instead?

"George Masters'... homemade (iPod mini) ad has been watched more than 37,000 times, and is making the rounds on blogs and e-mail." /Wired News/

"With electrodes implanted directly on their brains, two Madison patients were able to control a computer cursor and play a basic video game just by thinking about it... (S)everely disabled people may soon be able to communicate and even regain movement by tapping directly into the brain and training it to bypass damaged nerve cells." /JS Online/

"Twenty years later, the same man who had once been labeled the most dangerous man in America by a federal judge in California was selling blue jeans and T-shirts to a whole new generation as Timothy Leary, Philosopher. Leary had successfully surfed his way right onto the cybercultural cutting edge. He had become what Mondo 2000 was calling a "cyber-delic guru.... The MVP (Most Valuable Philosopher) of the 20th Century." 'The 90s are here,' declared William Gibson, the cyberpunk novelist, 'and the Doctor is in!'" /DenverPost.com/

"Wild Divine connects three biofeedback finger sensors that monitor heart rate and perspiration to control what's happening on-screen. Stay serene, for example, and the on-screen juggler keeps all the balls in the air. Get jiggy, and you get a floor full of spheres. Seemingly cribbing from William Gibson's 'Neuromancer' novel is current research using brain-wave headsets that will one day enable a player to control a game using brain impulses only." /Washington Post (subscription required)/

"(S)peed of access is one of the determining factors in whether a mobile information device will be used for mundane and casual tasks, according to a paper Starner recently published. Two seconds from storage to use is optimal. More than 10 seconds, the device stays unused."

Does it take too long to get out your PDA? Try the Twiddler! /Technology Review/

Inventor and Futurist Ray Kuzweil recently presented Warfighting in the 21 st Century – The Remote, Robotic, Robust, Size-Reduced, Virtual Reality Paradigm at the 24th Army Science Conference.

"The scribes at this ICANN meeting are amazing. They are using steno keyboards to type what people are saying in realtime and it is being projected on a big screen. What is amazing is that they are typing in English, even when the speakers are speaking French." /Joi Ito's Web/

Howard Rheingold's new class on Cooperation is revving up: "Darwin had a blind spot. It wasn't that he didn't see the role of cooperation in evolution. He just didn't see how important it is. So for two centuries -- a time during which the world passed from an agrarian landscape into a global post-industrial culture of unprecedented scale and complexity -- science, society, public policy and commerce have attended almost exclusively to the role of competition. The stories people tell themselves about what is possible, the mythical narratives that organizations and societies depend upon, have been variations of 'survival of the fittest.' The role of cooperation has been largely unmapped." /Toward a Literacy of Cooperation/

"Sitting at a conference, walking down the hallway, or talking with an associate, he might see something he wants to remember. Rather than committing it to memory, he grabs the Twiddler, bangs a few buttons, then sticks the device back in its place. Wham. The words are not preserved through weak and flimsy neurons, but with silicon permanence." /Technology Review/