meat puppets
remember that one nin video yeah well so do i and ill be d*****d if I watch it again
30 years aint nothing when you got an ancient orgone pyramid and midi-controlled canopic jars
places please its time for rehearsal
Either they’re made of mechanically separated meat, bleeps and bloops, or flickering extinct anatomies
#HOW CAN YOU CALL ME OBSOLETE HOW CAN YOU
well, pretty easily, actually. I just wait for the dial-tone, then fax you the cassette by pony-express.
Take this and eat, for it is of my body
In a few centuries, people won’t call human enhancement “transhumanism.” They’ll call it something like “health care.” And we don’t call sick people today “egotistical” for seeking health care to make them better.
Wow. If there’s such a thing as a posthuman hymn, this has got to be it.
And honestly, what the song describes would be so f’ing cool to me. I would totally give up everything to live in a future like that.
Knock yourself out. You’re likely to make something nice in the time otherwise spent waiting.
That’s too messy, and limited. Can’t we just develop some nanintes that we could just inject, and they’ll find their way to the brain and set up shop where they’re supposed to automagically? Then the brain and the computer wouldn’t just be interfaced electronically. They’d be integrated physically too. Punching a hole in the skull in order to install an upgrade is so barbaric.
MEAs don’t have sufficient throughput to be worth lashing into the skull, I’d just connect them to other nerves. Unless you need to connect them directly to anything specific.
If you’re going to use artificial nanotech to interface your brain, you might as well use it for cognition as well.
My thoughts exactly. The interface is the computer. Plus whatever other hardware you want to tether to. Or dog-forbid the internet. Which I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want to connect my brain to directly, even under the best circumstances.
Here is a much lighter take on the theme, which still is as concept-rich as it gets:
Mimicking borgian behavior nonetheless.
Those criticisms came from industrial Rockefeller-type institutions. Don’t let the vanishing point of the railroad tracks into the horizon fool you.
Was that the utterly insufferable and surprisingly dim Leon Kass, of ‘Wisdom of Repugnance’ fame, or did he have more than one?
The potential problem with such institutions is that there are people who don’t ignore them.
The problem is magnified if such institutions preferentially target highly positioned decisionmakers.
They’re he-ere…
It was an advisory committee, and I don’t remember who was on it.
It was Francis “End of History” Fukuyama.
Many of these arguments and dramas are artificially distorted by hyperbolic and inaccurate language.
How many huge philosophical flame wars would be avoided by just using “life extension” instead of “immortality”?
You can want to stay healthy longer, and maybe still be bright, happy, healthy, and adventurous at 110 years old without the need to contemplate endless millenia as a cursed godling praying futilely for death at the entropic ebb tide of the universe.
How significant is it that transhumanism often involves talk about this kind of more or less permanent modification to your body? It seems like a lot of the functions in Cannon’s device are perfectly possible right now without actually attaching anything to yourself. This one seems to be using pretty basic equipment - they’re talking about measuring things like temperature and pulse, and sending you a text if you may be getting a fever. That’s already possible in a much smaller size, which you can remove when you don’t want it or if you need an upgrade. These earphones are much smaller and have more features, and you won’t need surgery if they get damaged. It’s like the difference between a Borg-style modified eye and a removable headset. Why attach it if you don’t have to? In most cases, non-surgical technology will provide the same or better results without the ethical or health related issues. If you have good eyesight to start with, there’s no need to make permanent modifications apart from for aesthetic purposes. You could change your eye to be able to sense more colours, but you could probably do the same with special glasses. You can place a chip in your arm to track your movements, but you could also just carry a phone around with you and not bring it if you don’t want to be tracked. You could connect your brain to a computer, but you’re already doing that with your eyes and hands. In this case, you have even more options with external devices, such as speech to text and gesture control; you also have more interactivity with others and can share your device. Upload your brain to the cloud and change your identity, allowing you to overcome your physical constraints? I’m a macaque and you’re an anthropomorphic hexagon. Even more involved processes like an extra limb should also be possible without surgery - that’s mainly how they do it now and you can switch limbs for different purposes.
I’m sure that there are a number of applications that will be used in the future, but a lot of the appeal that I can see at the moment is making your own tech, sci fi LARPing and cosmetic body modifications. Not that those aren’t worthwhile in themselves, but they don’t provide any extra practicality and the permanence is a bug, given the speed of tech development.
“• Transhumanists are often more Ayn Randian in character, Grinders more Pinky and the Brain.”
So you’re saying neither should be allowed anywhere near any position of power or authority. Noted.
Convergent technologies, my friend. Of course these can be done as outside attachments. That is definitely true. But that’s not the point here.
The applications are merely the demo part here. The implant tech framework test is the very purpose.
There are things that can’t be easily done from the outside. This guy is paving the way for them. Because once they get needed, his work already proves that they are possible and feasible. Maybe more important, his work is out there in the open, not locked behind publishers’ paywalls nor guarded by arse-covering cowards in ethical commissions.
