Offering multiple perspectives from many fields of human inquiry that may move all of us toward a more integrated understanding of who we are as conscious beings.
From Bookforum's Omnivore blog, here is a collection of links to articles on the intersection and interconnection of human and machine. Let me never live long enough to desire or have access to this technology.
Brett Lunceford (South Alabama): Posthuman Visions: Creating the Technologized Body.
Roland Benedikter on how an emerging tech-driven industry is trying to merge man and machine — yet we have barely begun to understand what constitutes our humanity.
L. Kirk Hagen reviewsHuman No More: Digital Subjectivities, Unhuman Subjects, and the End of Anthropology.
Posthuman politics under biocapitalism: Samuel Grove interviews Eva Giraud on the “posthumanist” thought of Donna Haraway.
Does enhanced human equal transhuman? Armand Vespertine wonders.
From Singularity 1 on 1, an interview with Robin Hanson: Details matter and for that you need social science.
David Rieff on the Singularity of Fools: A special report from the utopian future.
You can download several chapters from Singularity Hypotheses: A Scientific and Philosophical Assessment.
From The RSA, Steve Fuller, Rachel Armstrong, China Mieville, Dr Sarah Chan, and Andy Miah debate how we will ascribe status to human life in a 'post-human' world.
How will we ascribe status to human life in a ‘post-human’ world? Should we take post-humanism seriously? If so, how do we define and value our humanity in the face of a future that will only otherwise confer advantage on the few? As we re-engineer the human body, and even human genome, are we attempting to realize dreams that hitherto have been largely pursued as social-engineering projects or are we doing something new?
From traders and dreamers to technogeeks and philosophers, whose ideologies run the gamut from collectivism to libertarianism, a large constituency is already engaged with our enhanced future. This constituency may radically reconfigure the global political space.
The RSA gathers a high-profile panel of speakers to explore the hidden agendas behind our values and attitudes toward the place of ‘the human’ in today’s societies, and debate what must now be a key issue for the 21st century.
Speakers:Professor Steve Fuller, Auguste Comte Chair in Social Epistemology, the Department of Sociology, the University of Warwick and author of 'Humanity 2:0'; Dr Rachel Armstrong, Senior TED Fellow and co-director, AVATAR (Advanced Virtual and Technological Architectural Research) in Architecture & Synthetic Biology, The School of Architecture & Construction, University of Greenwich; China Miéville, author of several works of fiction and non-fiction; and Dr Sarah Chan, deputy director, ISEI (Institute for Science, Ethics and Innovation) & research fellow in Bioethics and Law, University of Manchester.
Chair: Dr Andy Miah, chair, Ethics and Emerging Technologies in the Faculty of Business & Creative Industries, the University of the West of Scotland.
