Extreme Futurist Festival 2011
Picture an event where the bridge between the counterculture and academia is finally crossed. From live tech demonstrations to futuristic presentations to provocative performance art to live music we will take you off the grid as we explore a new kaleidoscopic wonderland. If the original Burning Man was to meet the Singularity Summit, you would have Extreme Futurist Fest 2011.
The dance for the realization of the future begins in the corridors of art, literature, and culture. Only by connecting together the greatest visionary minds with the most innovative and rule-breaking forms of artistic expression and cultural mind-melding can we unlock the full potential of the Future and bring it into the Present. We offer you the bold new interdisciplinary movement of the 21st Century. A place where the right brain and left brain merge into a new “Undivided Mind”.
The future is all around us today. The explosion of the Internet…
UK Scientists Warn Of Future ‘Planet Of The Apes’ Scenario
Could ongoing experiments involving the mixing of human and non-human DNA produce monstrous, over-intelligent hybrids down the road? In the U.S., human cells are already being implanted in mouse embryos, so we’ll likely be facing the rats of NIMH, rather than talking chimps who smoke pipes. The Telegraph reports:
Action is needed now, according to a group of eminent experts. Their report calls for a new rules to supervise sensitive research that involves humanizing animals.
“The fear is that if you start putting very large numbers of human brain cells into the brains of primates suddenly you might transform the primate into something that has some of the capacities that we regard as distinctively human..speech, or other ways of being able to manipulate or relate to us.”
Currently research involving great apes, such as chimpanzees, is outlawed in the UK. But it continues in many other countries including the US, and British scientists are…
Humanity 3.0: How Will We Evolve Next?
Writing in SEED Magazine, Mark Changizi expounds on his vision of human advancement in the centuries to come. He argues that the greatest progress will not come through changing our brains and bodies via genetic engineering or cyborg-like enhancement, but by developing technology that better accommodates the magnificently-designed brains and bodies that evolution has already given us:
Where are we humans going, as a species? If science fiction is any guide, we will genetically evolve like in X-Men, become genetically engineered as in Gattaca, or become cybernetically enhanced like General Grievous in Star Wars. All of these may well be part of the story of our future, but I’m not holding my breath.
There is, however, another avenue for human evolution, one mostly unappreciated in both science and fiction. It is this unheralded mechanism that will usher in the next stage of human, giving future people exquisite powers we do not currently…
Cyberpunk on the Small Screen (Video)
Good day, Cybernauts. We’ve been enjoying this endearing flick for some time, but are just now getting around to posting about it.
Cyberpunk is a 60-minute documentary from 1990 that serves as a charming bookend to the William Gibson documentary No Maps for These Territories. While Gibson is featured prominently in this doc, it also expands out to illuminate an entire slice of the late ’80s/early ’90s culture that used to be featured in the late, great Mondo 2000 magazine.
Cyberpunk Review offers these insights:
Cyberpunk is a documentary that looks back at the 80s cyberpunk movement, and more specifically, how this has led to a trend in the “real” world where people were starting to refer to themselves as “cyberpunk.” The documentary sees “cyberpunks” as being synonymous with hackers. A number of writers, artists, musicians and scientists are interviewed to provide context to this movement. The guiding meme, as told by Gibson, is that information “wants” to be free. 60s counter-culture drug philosopher, Timothy Leary, provides a prediction that cyberpunks will “decentralize knowledge,” which will serve to remove power from those “in power” and bring it back to the masses. Many different potential technologies are discussed, including “smart drugs,” sentient machines, advanced prosthetics — all of which serve to give context to the idea of post-humanity and its imminent arrival on the world stage.
Newton’s Third Law – The Coming Collision
The Singularity by Ken Vallario.
“To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction: or the forces of two bodies on each other are always equal and are directed in opposite directions.”
In watching the coming collision collision between one individual and the world’s mightiest government, we are about to see if these forces are in fact equal, or if these laws will soon be broken.
The Good News
In the light of the latest Wikileaks events I have been thinking very deeply about citizen empowerment and how technology enabled a small group of people to threaten the legitimacy of the most powerful government the world has ever known. And surprisingly that same government has yet to find a legitimately effective response against this very big pie in their very large collective face.
As many of us have done, I have attempted to fill this void with my own speculations about the retaliatory…
Indie Game Designers Talk About Their Transhumanist RPG FreeMarket
Luke Crane and Jared Sorensen talk about their new science fiction role playing game FreeMarket. Via Technoccult:
It also sounds like it’s a more intellectual game than most – you’ve said you can, for instance, play the role of a philosopher and have that be meaningful within the game.
Luke: Yeah, but don’t think you can’t play Soulshitter Killfuck and have fun, too. But, unlike many other games that I’ve played, you can play an artist and have serious conflict about what you do. It’s impossible to just make a piece of art in this game and have it sit there, inert. Art is controversial.
Jared: And conflicts (especially philosophical, critical and artistic) are both internal and external and can have wide-reaching and unplanned repercussions.
Right. So you could do a more typical hack and slash scenario, or you could do something where you’re dealing with post-scarcity speculation. Or maybe both.
Luke: Yes. But the “typical”…
Adderall Receives Honorary Degree From Harvard
The above headline is from the good folks at The Onion, please read their story here. What is alarming is, if you watch this recent report from 60 Minutes, this really isn’t a joke.
I have to imagine the chemically induced behavior (i.e. “productivity”) makes it way into the workforce, what does this say about the state of America, is this is commonplace among the so-called best and brightest?
Perform Amateur Home Surgery to Implant Tech Into Your Body
Lepht Anonym writes on h+ magazine:
“Biohacker” Lepht Anonym discusses amateur home surgery to implant technology into her body — and challenges the media portrayal of cyborg prosthetics “that only the elite can afford…”
“I’ve made scalpel incisions in my hands, pushed five-millimeter diameter needles through my skin, and once used a vegetable knife to carve a cavity into the tip of my index finger…”
“Anesthetic is illegal for people like me, so we learn to live without it.”
Now RFID readers can recognize her hand-implanted biochip, and she’s added a series of implants that also sense electromagnetic fields. The implants can register power lines, an active hard drive, and even signals sent by a cell phone, while its magnetism can hold screws to the back of her hand.
“I’m an idiot, but I’m an idiot working in the name of progress. You just need curiosity and the willingness to withstand some pain.”
Read More: h+ magazine
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“Mind Uploading” Predicted By Satellite Radio Founder
The co-founder of Sirius Satellite Radio predicts that in the future, we’ll upload our minds!
She argues today’s phone technology already provides the underlying framework for “mindware”, and while “It will be different, and some people will notice the difference,” she cites the ultimate advantage: it’s “better than being dead.”
“Some people would use uploading just for storage. Other people would want to stay digital…” And there’s a sexual component, too, since everyone “will explore the countless gender possibilities along the male-female continuum…”
This article also appears in the latest issue of H+ magazine.
