Stop Dave, I’m Afraid.

  Here’s a link to an intriguing blog post and paper by Professor of Law at the Brookings Institute, James Boyle on the implications for prospective developments in AI and biotechnology for our legal conceptions of personhood. The paper opens by considering the challenges posed by prospects of Turing-capable artificial intelligences and genetic chimera.

Stop Dave, I'm Afraid.

  Here’s a link to an intriguing blog post and paper by Professor of Law at the Brookings Institute, James Boyle on the implications for prospective developments in AI and biotechnology for our legal conceptions of personhood. The paper opens by considering the challenges posed by prospects of Turing-capable artificial intelligences and genetic chimera.

I don’t want to be human… I want to smell dark matter!

  Brother Cavil’s speech from BSG’s episode ‘No Exit‘ is the plaint of a being whose morphological freedom has been arbitrarily denied. Cavil’s romantic transhumanism is far more cogent and appealing, here, than Ellen Tigh’s feeble humanism.

I don't want to be human… I want to smell dark matter!

  Brother Cavil’s speech from BSG’s episode ‘No Exit‘ is the plaint of a being whose morphological freedom has been arbitrarily denied. Cavil’s romantic transhumanism is far more cogent and appealing, here, than Ellen Tigh’s feeble humanism.

Excision Ethos

A flat ontology would allow emergent discontinuities between the human and non-human. Here we understand radical differences between humans and non-humans as emergent relations of continuity or discontinuity between populations, or other such particulars, rather than kinds or abstract universals.[1][2] The most widely accepted definition of emergence holds that an emergent phenomenon P cannot be […]

Why Nuke Liberals? A Response to Sorgner

  In ‘Nietzsche, the Overhuman, and Transhumanism’ Stefan Sorgner takes me to task for approving a departure from liberal institutions by future posthumans (Roden 2010): Given the argument of the previous section, it is not surprising that I was slightly worried when I read that Roden affirms the move away from “bio-political organizations such as liberalism […]

Interview with Max More

James Hughes interviews transhumanist philosopher Max More in this podcast from Changesurfer Radio. More provides a critique of technological determinist accounts of the singularity and advocates the adoption of a proactionary principle in opposition to the conservative terror reflex dignified under the rubric of ‘the precautionary principle’.

Singularity Clarity Ain’t Near

Here’s a historically informed  piece by Analee Newitz over at io9 which takes to task low church singularity enthusiasts. She points out that radical new technologies such as 19th Century Factory Production (the steampunk singularity) always generate new, unanticipated problems. They don’t leave us in problem free super-productive paradises. So we should induce the same […]

Singularity Clarity Ain't Near

Here’s a historically informed  piece by Analee Newitz over at io9 which takes to task low church singularity enthusiasts. She points out that radical new technologies such as 19th Century Factory Production (the steampunk singularity) always generate new, unanticipated problems. They don’t leave us in problem free super-productive paradises. So we should induce the same […]

Accelerationism and Posthumanism

I’ve just been listening to Ray Brassier’s presentation on Nick Land’s work at the recent Accelerationism conference at Goldsmiths, University of London with an appropriately night-black, supercharging Lavazza in hand. Here, Ray patiently anatomizes tensions within Land’s ‘thanatropic’ politics. This advocates intensifying the deracinating power of Capital to generate pure, unbound intensities beyond the scope of […]