A couple of days ago I gave a talk online to some members of the Zero State about my exocortex. It's a pretty informal talk done as a Hangout where I talk about some of the day to day stuff and where the project came from. I didn't have any notes and it was completely unscripted.
A common theme of science fiction in the transhumanist vein, and less commonly in applied (read: practical) transhumanist circles is the concept of having an exocortex either installed within oneself, or interfaced in some way with one's brain to augment one's intelligence. To paint a picture with a fairly broad brush, an exocortex was a system postulated by JCR Licklider in the research paper Man-Computer Symbiosis which would implement a new lobe of the human brain which was situated outside of the organism (though some components of it might be internal). An …
It seems like everybody is reviewing the book To Be A Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death by Mark O'Connell, and most of the book reviews are, to be frank, kind of pants. The mainstream book reviewers seem to have read only the first and last chapters and make light (at best) or a joke (at worst) of the life's work of people who are actually doing the work in some parts of the medical profession instead of just playing "Won't it be nice when..." on Slack channels and Facebook. A …
Now that I've got some spare time (read: Leandra's grinding up a few score gigabytes of data), I'd like to write up some stuff that's been floating around in my #blogfodder queue for a couple of weeks.
First up, private-sector aerospace engineering and orbital insertion contractor SpaceX announced not too long ago announced that one of their unmanned Dragon spacecraft delivered an inflatable habitat module to the International Space Station. Following liftoff from Cape Canaveral the craft executed a rendezvous with the ISS in low earth orbit, where the ISS' manipulator arm grappled the craft. In addition to supplies and …
The Brighter Brains Institute is holding another transhuman debate on 2 April 2016 in Oakland, CA, and they've put out a call for participants. The topics up for debate this time around will be:
Eugenics
Gun laws
Capitalism
Psychedelics
Sexbots
The debate styles this time will be one-on-one, two-on-two, and a three-on-three verbal battle royale. A couple of discussion panels will also be on the schedule this time around, with audience participation. The audience will vote to determine the winner of each debate.
If you are interested in taking part in the debates, please e-mail brighterbrainsinstitute at gmail dot com …
Readers of my site or social aquaintenances may be aware of independent presidential candidate and outspoken transhumanist Mr. Zoltan Istvan, who is at this time on the campaign trail. More specifically Zoltan is one of the residents of the Immortality Bus which is driving across the country to raise awareness of death and why time and funds must be allocated to study cures for aging and decrepitude in the human animal. Zoltan Istvan seems, in the times I've spoken with him on a casual basis a reasonably decent, intelligent, and well read person. He is a very successful and ambitious …
EDIT: While I will be attendence at this conference, I am no longer in the lineup of speakers.
On 18 October 2015 I'll be presenting at the Future of Politics Conference held by the Brighter Brains Institute. I'll be giving a talk (which doesn't have a title yet, and in fact I have yet to start writing) on tools and strategies for grassroots organization in a time when we're all connected on a 24x7x365 basis (which is to say, today).
At long last, here are my notes from the Transhuman Strategies conference held by the Brighter Brains Institute on 21 March 2015. It took me a while to find the notebook I wrote them in, so that's why they're a few months late in coming. Anyway, my notes are under the cut.
Hank Pellissier - Transhumanitarian Projects
Goals: Extending life, increasing mental ability
Life expectency in Japan is 80, in Sierra Leone is 35
Hunger is still the greatest killer
Shipping food or backing projects
De-worming - parasiting infections in children
The energy deficit incurred by parasitic infection lowers IQ in children …
Now that I've had a couple of days to sleep and get most of my brain operational again, how about some stuff that other parts of me have stumbled across?
Building your own electronics is pretty difficult. The actual electrical engineering aside you still have to cut, etch, and drill your own printed circuit boards which is a lengthy and sometimes frustrating task. Doubly so when multi layer circuit boards are involved because they're so fiddly and easy to get wrong. There is one open source project that I know of called the Rabbit Pronto which is a RepRap print …
I now have a contact page for the Brighter Brains Speakers Bureau. If you are interested in having me present on a professional basis, please look over my bio and contact me through that route. We'll work it out from there. Whoa. Is this what being grown up is like? Weird.
