Tuesday, December 14, 2010
VIDEO - my talk on The Cosmic Visions of the Turing Church at the Transhumanism and Spirituality Conference 2010
The video of my talk on The Cosmic Visions of the Turing Church (at the Transhumanism and Spirituality Conference 2010) is online on Vimeo. The conference explored the intersection of religion, science, spirituality and technology, from a transhumanist perspective. See this post for the slides of the talk on Slideshare. I also gave a similar talk at the Turing Church Online Workshop 1 on November 20, 2010.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
The Turing Church of transhumanist spirituality, online in virtual reality for people and pets
The Turing Church Online Workshop 1, on Saturday November 20 2010 in Teleplace, explored transhumanist spirituality and “Religion 2.0″ as a coordination-oriented summit of persons, groups and organizations active in this area. See my report with pictures and videos.
Here I prefer to show this picture of three participants with their pets before the formal start of the workshop. On the left video screen I am holding my sweet little Sacha, who is NOT a cat like the other two pets but a Shih-Tzu doggy with her own Facebook page. En passant, last week we webcast Sacha's 12th birthday party on Facebook via Livestream, see the picture below and the video on YouTube.
Back to the Turing Church Online Workshop 1. Topics and issues discussed:
- To discover parallels and similarities between different organizations and to agree on common interests, agendas, strategies, outreach plans etc.
- To discuss whether it makes sense to establish a umbrella organization, or to consider one of the existing organizations as such.
- To develop the idea of scientific resurrection: our descendants and mind children will develop “magic science and technology” in the sense of Clarke’s third law, and may be able to do grand spacetime engineering and even resurrect the dead by “copying them to the future“. Of course this a hope and not a certainty, but I am persuaded that this concept is scientifically founded and could become the “missing link” between transhumanists and religious and spiritual communities.
- And of course, how to make our our beautiful ideas available, understandable and appealing to billions of seekers.
The workshop made evident that the participants, persons and groups, share very similar, overlapping and compatible ideas. It is also evident that there are different approaches to transhumanist spirituality, each with its own focus and priorities. Some participants observed that, since all of the spiritual transhumanist groups represented at the workshop are inclusive, it makes sense joining all (I am a member of all the groups represented at the workshop which have a formal concept of membership, and I consider myself a member of the others as well). The idea of establishing a umbrella organizations for spiritually inclined transhumanists was discussed. An alternative is one of the existing groups, or perhaps Humanity+ (subject to their interest of course) as umbrella organization. The MTA and Terasem reported significant growth.
My own presentation was very similar to my talk on The Cosmic Visions of the Turing Church at the Transhumanism and Spirituality Conference 2010, with some new elements. In particular I added a few references to Possibilianism, a middle, exploratory ground between religion and atheism first defined by neuroscientist David Eagleman in relation to his book of fiction Sum. Eagleman: "I call myself a Possibilian: I'm open to ideas that we don't have any way of testing right now... Our ignorance of the cosmos is too vast to commit to atheism, and yet we know too much to commit to a particular religion… with Possibilianism I'm hoping to define a new position -- one that emphasizes the exploration of new, unconsidered possibilities. Possibilianism is comfortable holding multiple ideas in mind; it is not interested in committing to any particular story." This makes a lot of sense to me, and I consider myself as a Possibilianist and a Cosmist. Our universe is a very big place with lots of undiscovered and unimagined "things in heaven and earth" which science will uncover someday, and perhaps in this mysterious and beautiful complexity there will be room for the old promises of religion.
This was a great workshop of 4 very intense hours and a lot of interesting things were said. I don't have the time to write a full report, please watch the videos.
Here I prefer to show this picture of three participants with their pets before the formal start of the workshop. On the left video screen I am holding my sweet little Sacha, who is NOT a cat like the other two pets but a Shih-Tzu doggy with her own Facebook page. En passant, last week we webcast Sacha's 12th birthday party on Facebook via Livestream, see the picture below and the video on YouTube.
Back to the Turing Church Online Workshop 1. Topics and issues discussed:
- To discover parallels and similarities between different organizations and to agree on common interests, agendas, strategies, outreach plans etc.
- To discuss whether it makes sense to establish a umbrella organization, or to consider one of the existing organizations as such.
- To develop the idea of scientific resurrection: our descendants and mind children will develop “magic science and technology” in the sense of Clarke’s third law, and may be able to do grand spacetime engineering and even resurrect the dead by “copying them to the future“. Of course this a hope and not a certainty, but I am persuaded that this concept is scientifically founded and could become the “missing link” between transhumanists and religious and spiritual communities.
- And of course, how to make our our beautiful ideas available, understandable and appealing to billions of seekers.
The workshop made evident that the participants, persons and groups, share very similar, overlapping and compatible ideas. It is also evident that there are different approaches to transhumanist spirituality, each with its own focus and priorities. Some participants observed that, since all of the spiritual transhumanist groups represented at the workshop are inclusive, it makes sense joining all (I am a member of all the groups represented at the workshop which have a formal concept of membership, and I consider myself a member of the others as well). The idea of establishing a umbrella organizations for spiritually inclined transhumanists was discussed. An alternative is one of the existing groups, or perhaps Humanity+ (subject to their interest of course) as umbrella organization. The MTA and Terasem reported significant growth.
My own presentation was very similar to my talk on The Cosmic Visions of the Turing Church at the Transhumanism and Spirituality Conference 2010, with some new elements. In particular I added a few references to Possibilianism, a middle, exploratory ground between religion and atheism first defined by neuroscientist David Eagleman in relation to his book of fiction Sum. Eagleman: "I call myself a Possibilian: I'm open to ideas that we don't have any way of testing right now... Our ignorance of the cosmos is too vast to commit to atheism, and yet we know too much to commit to a particular religion… with Possibilianism I'm hoping to define a new position -- one that emphasizes the exploration of new, unconsidered possibilities. Possibilianism is comfortable holding multiple ideas in mind; it is not interested in committing to any particular story." This makes a lot of sense to me, and I consider myself as a Possibilianist and a Cosmist. Our universe is a very big place with lots of undiscovered and unimagined "things in heaven and earth" which science will uncover someday, and perhaps in this mysterious and beautiful complexity there will be room for the old promises of religion.
This was a great workshop of 4 very intense hours and a lot of interesting things were said. I don't have the time to write a full report, please watch the videos.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Turing Church Online Workshop 1, Teleplace, Saturday November 20, 9am-1pm PST
Turing Church Online Workshop 1, in Teleplace, Saturday November 20, 9am-1pm PST (noon-4pm EST, 5pm-9pm UK, 6pm-10pm EU). The workshop will explore transhumanist spirituality and "Religion 2.0" and it will be a coordination-oriented summit of groups and organizations active in this area.
Format:
Online-only workshop in Teleplace. Those who already have Teleplace accounts for teleXLR8 can just show up at the workshop. There are a limited number of seats available for others, please contact me if you wish to attend.
Panelists:
- Lincoln Cannon (Mormon Transhumanist Association)
- Ben Goertzel (Cosmist Manifesto)
- Mike Perry (Society for Universal Immortalism)
- Giulio Prisco (Turing Church)
- Martine Rothblatt (Terasem)
Agenda:
- Talks by the panelists in the first 2 hours.
- Discussion between the panelists in the last 2 hours, with the participation of the audience.
Objectives:
- To discover parallels and similarities between different organizations and to agree on common interests, agendas, strategies, outreach plans etc.
- To discuss whether it makes sense to establish a umbrella organization, or to consider one of the existing organizations as such.
- To develop the idea of scientific resurrection: our descendants and mind children will develop “magic science and technology” in the sense of Clarke’s third law, and may be able to do grand spacetime engineering and even resurrect the dead by “copying them to the future“. Of course this a hope and not a certainty, but I am persuaded that this concept is scientifically founded and could become the “missing link” between transhumanists and religious and spiritual communities.
- And of course, how to make our our beautiful ideas available, understandable and appealing to billions of seekers.
My own presentation will be a revised and expanded version of my talk on The Cosmic Visions of the Turing Church at the Transhumanism and Spirituality Conference 2010. The main point can be summarized in one sentence (Slide 4): "A memetically strong religion needs to offer resurrection besides immortality."
Format:
Online-only workshop in Teleplace. Those who already have Teleplace accounts for teleXLR8 can just show up at the workshop. There are a limited number of seats available for others, please contact me if you wish to attend.
Panelists:
- Lincoln Cannon (Mormon Transhumanist Association)
- Ben Goertzel (Cosmist Manifesto)
- Mike Perry (Society for Universal Immortalism)
- Giulio Prisco (Turing Church)
- Martine Rothblatt (Terasem)
Agenda:
- Talks by the panelists in the first 2 hours.
- Discussion between the panelists in the last 2 hours, with the participation of the audience.
Objectives:
- To discover parallels and similarities between different organizations and to agree on common interests, agendas, strategies, outreach plans etc.
- To discuss whether it makes sense to establish a umbrella organization, or to consider one of the existing organizations as such.
- To develop the idea of scientific resurrection: our descendants and mind children will develop “magic science and technology” in the sense of Clarke’s third law, and may be able to do grand spacetime engineering and even resurrect the dead by “copying them to the future“. Of course this a hope and not a certainty, but I am persuaded that this concept is scientifically founded and could become the “missing link” between transhumanists and religious and spiritual communities.
- And of course, how to make our our beautiful ideas available, understandable and appealing to billions of seekers.
My own presentation will be a revised and expanded version of my talk on The Cosmic Visions of the Turing Church at the Transhumanism and Spirituality Conference 2010. The main point can be summarized in one sentence (Slide 4): "A memetically strong religion needs to offer resurrection besides immortality."
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
TransVision 2010, October 22-24, 2010
TransVision 2010 is over! I wish to thank all speakers and participants, those who came to Milan and those who participated remotely via Teleplace. Special thanks to Kim for her work at the main Teleplace workstation and for handling many technical problems, and to Cosimo and Jacopo for their work at the HD video camera. I wish to thank the volunteer Italian to English translator (I am not mentioning your name here because I guess you prefer it this way, but you know who you are and thank you so much), who gave also a great unscheduled presentation of the Polytopia Project. And of course I also want to thank Riccardo and Stefano for their support in organizing and running the conference. In particular Stefano should really have stayed at home to recover from recent surgery, but he made a special effort to be with us.
In the first two pictures, Dan Massey and Max More giving their talks. In the foreground, the Terasem 1 O'Neill Island One Space Habitat, a Bernal sphere model built by Simon Deering for the Terasem Movement of Martine Rothblatt and presented at TV10 by Khannea Suntzu. The model is now on its way to Florida to be delivered to the Terasem Movement. We had many great talks, not only about visionary technologies but also about literature, politics, philosophy and art. The second half of the first day has been dedicated to Italian neo-Futurist literary and artistic movement, but strike neo- because Futurism is always Neo by definition. I have been disappointed by not seeing as many people as I hoped: I counted about 65 participants in Milan over 3 days including a dog. The problem is that participating in conferences costs money and time, and in my own presentation (which I shortened to less than ten minutes to make time for other speakers) I proposed online conferences 2.0 as a solution.
We had about 30 remote participants in the in the TVirtual online extension of TransVision 2010, hosted by the teleXLR8 project based on the Teleplace online telepresence platform. Remote participants have been able to watch all talks in realtime, and interact with speakers and other participants. In the picture above, Max More's talk is shown to remote participants in Teleplace, and the virtual Teleplace conference hall is shown to the participants in Milan. We used two Teleplace workstations, one to stream the video and voice of the speaker and to interact with remote participants, and one to stream the speaker's slides. Lesson learned: if the text on the slides is small it is better to upload also the original .ppt or .pdf to Teleplace. We did this in realtime during the conference, but we should have done it in advance. For those speakers without presentations in .ppt or .pdf, we used the second Teleplace workstation to show the audience in Milan to the audience in Teleplace.
In the afternoon of the second day we have reversed the procedure outlined above and shown remote talks from speakers in Teleplace to the audience in Milan. After great talks by Eugen Leitl and Robert Geraci, Natasha Vita-More started her talk (picture above)... but 20 minutes into Natasha's talk all the Internet connections in the conference hall in Milan died, perhaps due to overload caused by too many WiFi connections in parallel (about 10 participants were using the hotel's WiFi connection). The Internet service provider's technicians could not fix the problem. The remote participants in Teleplace continued without us, and we have video recordings of the talks by remote speakers. However, all remote speakers have been invited to repeat their talks to the teleXLR8 community.
In the morning of the third day, not only the Internet connections in the conference hall were still dead, but also the screen projection system was dead! I had a (very) heavy-handed "exchange of views" with the hotel's personnel (wife says I can be quite unpleasant on occasions), and the technical problems were fixed.
This was a very interesting event, with great talks by great speakers. I am happy to have seen again many old friends and made many new ones. In the picture above, some speakers and participants at a dinner after the end of the conference. I was not really able to pay attention to any of the talks including my own, and I look forward to watching the video coverage. We recorded everything on video, both in HD with the cameras on site, and from Teleplace. The videos will be available online and on the conference's DVD proceedings. The videos recorded in Teleplace will be available online in a few days, and those recorded on site in a few weeks.
I have started two blog posts as containers and index pages for material to be posted later. Both posts have the same title as this one. The post on the TransVision 2010 blog will have links to the HD videos recorded in Milan, and the post on the teleXLR8 blog has links to the videos recorded in Teleplace. The Twitter feed created by participants at #TV2010 has the twitting history of the conference.
UPDATE - (almost) full video coverage recorded in Teleplace.
UPDATE - Transhumanist Science, Futurist Art, Telepresence and Cosmic Visions of the Future at TransVision 2010 @ KurzweilAI
In the first two pictures, Dan Massey and Max More giving their talks. In the foreground, the Terasem 1 O'Neill Island One Space Habitat, a Bernal sphere model built by Simon Deering for the Terasem Movement of Martine Rothblatt and presented at TV10 by Khannea Suntzu. The model is now on its way to Florida to be delivered to the Terasem Movement. We had many great talks, not only about visionary technologies but also about literature, politics, philosophy and art. The second half of the first day has been dedicated to Italian neo-Futurist literary and artistic movement, but strike neo- because Futurism is always Neo by definition. I have been disappointed by not seeing as many people as I hoped: I counted about 65 participants in Milan over 3 days including a dog. The problem is that participating in conferences costs money and time, and in my own presentation (which I shortened to less than ten minutes to make time for other speakers) I proposed online conferences 2.0 as a solution.
We had about 30 remote participants in the in the TVirtual online extension of TransVision 2010, hosted by the teleXLR8 project based on the Teleplace online telepresence platform. Remote participants have been able to watch all talks in realtime, and interact with speakers and other participants. In the picture above, Max More's talk is shown to remote participants in Teleplace, and the virtual Teleplace conference hall is shown to the participants in Milan. We used two Teleplace workstations, one to stream the video and voice of the speaker and to interact with remote participants, and one to stream the speaker's slides. Lesson learned: if the text on the slides is small it is better to upload also the original .ppt or .pdf to Teleplace. We did this in realtime during the conference, but we should have done it in advance. For those speakers without presentations in .ppt or .pdf, we used the second Teleplace workstation to show the audience in Milan to the audience in Teleplace.
In the afternoon of the second day we have reversed the procedure outlined above and shown remote talks from speakers in Teleplace to the audience in Milan. After great talks by Eugen Leitl and Robert Geraci, Natasha Vita-More started her talk (picture above)... but 20 minutes into Natasha's talk all the Internet connections in the conference hall in Milan died, perhaps due to overload caused by too many WiFi connections in parallel (about 10 participants were using the hotel's WiFi connection). The Internet service provider's technicians could not fix the problem. The remote participants in Teleplace continued without us, and we have video recordings of the talks by remote speakers. However, all remote speakers have been invited to repeat their talks to the teleXLR8 community.
In the morning of the third day, not only the Internet connections in the conference hall were still dead, but also the screen projection system was dead! I had a (very) heavy-handed "exchange of views" with the hotel's personnel (wife says I can be quite unpleasant on occasions), and the technical problems were fixed.
This was a very interesting event, with great talks by great speakers. I am happy to have seen again many old friends and made many new ones. In the picture above, some speakers and participants at a dinner after the end of the conference. I was not really able to pay attention to any of the talks including my own, and I look forward to watching the video coverage. We recorded everything on video, both in HD with the cameras on site, and from Teleplace. The videos will be available online and on the conference's DVD proceedings. The videos recorded in Teleplace will be available online in a few days, and those recorded on site in a few weeks.
I have started two blog posts as containers and index pages for material to be posted later. Both posts have the same title as this one. The post on the TransVision 2010 blog will have links to the HD videos recorded in Milan, and the post on the teleXLR8 blog has links to the videos recorded in Teleplace. The Twitter feed created by participants at #TV2010 has the twitting history of the conference.
UPDATE - (almost) full video coverage recorded in Teleplace.
UPDATE - Transhumanist Science, Futurist Art, Telepresence and Cosmic Visions of the Future at TransVision 2010 @ KurzweilAI
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
My presentation at TransVision 2010: Online conferences 2.0
My presentation at TransVision 2010: Online conferences 2.0
One problem with conferences is that participating costs money and time. Today many conferences offer live video streams of all talks and discussion, which is very important for those who cannot attend physically. Some recent conferences like the ASIM 2010 Conference in San Francisco (satellite to the Singularity Summit 2010) have offered fully interactive remote participation with multi-user video, audio, text and document sharing (“mixed-reality”).
Mixed-reality via modern telepresence technology permits opening conferences to remote participants by merging on-site and remote participants in one virtual group. The 2-way video and audio link enables each participant, on-site or remote, to be seen and heard by all other participants, on-site or remote. Remote speakers and attendees are able to actively participate, follow the talks via interactive video streaming, ask questions to the speakers, contribute to the discussion, and give talks themselves. Of course, modern telepresence technology permits also online-only “conferences 2.0″, and I think this is an important trend. Going back to “one problem with conferences is that participating costs money and time“, it is evident that online conferences 2.0 permit saving a lot of money and time, thus enabling more people to participate in cultural acceleration.
I will present our teleXLR8 project based on Teleplace, recently covered by Hypergrid Business, one of the best online magazines focused on professional applications of virtual reality, “as an online open TED, using modern telepresence technology for ideas worth spreading, and as a next generation, fully interactive TV network with a participative audience.” See also “teleXLR8 Project News – a telepresence community for cultural acceleration“, our mini-manifesto Telepresence Education for a Smarter World on the IEET site and the interview MIND and MAN: Getting Mental with Giulio Prisco, by Natasha Vita-More, on H+ Magazine.
One problem with conferences is that participating costs money and time. Today many conferences offer live video streams of all talks and discussion, which is very important for those who cannot attend physically. Some recent conferences like the ASIM 2010 Conference in San Francisco (satellite to the Singularity Summit 2010) have offered fully interactive remote participation with multi-user video, audio, text and document sharing (“mixed-reality”).
Mixed-reality via modern telepresence technology permits opening conferences to remote participants by merging on-site and remote participants in one virtual group. The 2-way video and audio link enables each participant, on-site or remote, to be seen and heard by all other participants, on-site or remote. Remote speakers and attendees are able to actively participate, follow the talks via interactive video streaming, ask questions to the speakers, contribute to the discussion, and give talks themselves. Of course, modern telepresence technology permits also online-only “conferences 2.0″, and I think this is an important trend. Going back to “one problem with conferences is that participating costs money and time“, it is evident that online conferences 2.0 permit saving a lot of money and time, thus enabling more people to participate in cultural acceleration.
I will present our teleXLR8 project based on Teleplace, recently covered by Hypergrid Business, one of the best online magazines focused on professional applications of virtual reality, “as an online open TED, using modern telepresence technology for ideas worth spreading, and as a next generation, fully interactive TV network with a participative audience.” See also “teleXLR8 Project News – a telepresence community for cultural acceleration“, our mini-manifesto Telepresence Education for a Smarter World on the IEET site and the interview MIND and MAN: Getting Mental with Giulio Prisco, by Natasha Vita-More, on H+ Magazine.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
teleXLR8 on Hypergrid Business as "online TED", Teleplace talk on BCI
The teleXLR8 project has been covered by Hypergrid Business, one of the best online magazines focused on professional applications of virtual reality, "as an online open TED, using modern telepresence technology for ideas worth spreading, and as a next generation, fully interactive TV network with a participative audience."
The Hypergrid Business article has the first public indications of the monthly membership fee for teleXLR8: $15, or $10 if paid annually. See this administrative note for more details.
I am organizing the TransVision 2010 conference in good old brickspace, and unfortunately many people will not be able to come for the usual reasons: money and time. Of course, the conference will be open to remote participants and speakers via teleXLR8. I am persuaded that, with Teleplace, telepresence technology has achieved critical performance, usability and immersion for online-only conferences, and I believe more and more conferences will move online.
Later today (or tomorrow morning depending on where you are: Sunday October 17, 2010, at 10am PST, 1pm EST, 6pm UK, 7pm CET) Max Hodak will give a talk in Teleplace on Brain-machine interfacing: current work and future directions. In the picture above, Max lectures in Teleplace. UPDATE: This was a great talk. About 30 participants attended the talk and contributed to the discussion with very interesting questions and comments. For those who could not attend we have recorded everything (talk, Q/A and discussion) on video.
Brain-Machine Interfacing (BMI), or Brain-Computer Interfacing (BCI) is one of the emerging technologies which will start having a very big impact in the next decade of the 10s. From the abstract of Max' talk: "Fluid, two-way brain-machine interfacing represents one of the greatest challenges of modern bioengineering. It offers the potential to restore movement and speech to the locked-in, and ultimately allow us as humans to expand far beyond the biological limits we’re encased in now."
See also "teleXLR8 Project News - a telepresence community for cultural acceleration", our mini-manifesto Telepresence Education for a Smarter World on the IEET site and the interview MIND and MAN: Getting Mental with Giulio Prisco, by Natasha Vita-More, on H+ Magazine. Besides the existing Facebook Group and Linkedin Group, we have created a teleXLR8 mailing list on Google Groups. Please feel free to join the mailing list to discuss the project.
The Hypergrid Business article has the first public indications of the monthly membership fee for teleXLR8: $15, or $10 if paid annually. See this administrative note for more details.
I am organizing the TransVision 2010 conference in good old brickspace, and unfortunately many people will not be able to come for the usual reasons: money and time. Of course, the conference will be open to remote participants and speakers via teleXLR8. I am persuaded that, with Teleplace, telepresence technology has achieved critical performance, usability and immersion for online-only conferences, and I believe more and more conferences will move online.
Later today (or tomorrow morning depending on where you are: Sunday October 17, 2010, at 10am PST, 1pm EST, 6pm UK, 7pm CET) Max Hodak will give a talk in Teleplace on Brain-machine interfacing: current work and future directions. In the picture above, Max lectures in Teleplace. UPDATE: This was a great talk. About 30 participants attended the talk and contributed to the discussion with very interesting questions and comments. For those who could not attend we have recorded everything (talk, Q/A and discussion) on video.
Brain-Machine Interfacing (BMI), or Brain-Computer Interfacing (BCI) is one of the emerging technologies which will start having a very big impact in the next decade of the 10s. From the abstract of Max' talk: "Fluid, two-way brain-machine interfacing represents one of the greatest challenges of modern bioengineering. It offers the potential to restore movement and speech to the locked-in, and ultimately allow us as humans to expand far beyond the biological limits we’re encased in now."
See also "teleXLR8 Project News - a telepresence community for cultural acceleration", our mini-manifesto Telepresence Education for a Smarter World on the IEET site and the interview MIND and MAN: Getting Mental with Giulio Prisco, by Natasha Vita-More, on H+ Magazine. Besides the existing Facebook Group and Linkedin Group, we have created a teleXLR8 mailing list on Google Groups. Please feel free to join the mailing list to discuss the project.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Talking to idiots
Amor Mundi - A Few Friendly Challenges for the Robot Cultists: "Prisco is quoted, you will recall, as declaring me "an idiot… so intellectually dishonest that, if you say 2+2=4, he will claim that you said 4+4=2 and insult you for it."
This is true: on Ben Goertzel blog I have offered this advice to Ben:
"Ben, don't waste your time debating Carrico. Besides being an idiot, he is so intellectually dishonest that, if you say 2+2=4, he will claim that you said 4+4=2 and insult you for it.
Some of us used to debate him, also because he was a member of the transhumanist community before being kicked out, but we have stopped bothering. Believe me, better ignoring him."
After calling me an idiot (of course), Carrico continues: "I am happy to propose a challenge to Prisco... to point to actual instances in which I declare 4 + 4 to equal 2"
Now, English is not my native language and I do make mistakes on occasions. But it seems to me that "claim that you said 4+4=2" and "I declare 4 + 4 to equal 2" are two very different things. Perhaps my command of the English language is not good enough, which is certainly a possibility. Another possibility is that this person is not only an idiot, but one so hopelessly idiot that he does not understand his own native language.
This is true: on Ben Goertzel blog I have offered this advice to Ben:
"Ben, don't waste your time debating Carrico. Besides being an idiot, he is so intellectually dishonest that, if you say 2+2=4, he will claim that you said 4+4=2 and insult you for it.
Some of us used to debate him, also because he was a member of the transhumanist community before being kicked out, but we have stopped bothering. Believe me, better ignoring him."
After calling me an idiot (of course), Carrico continues: "I am happy to propose a challenge to Prisco... to point to actual instances in which I declare 4 + 4 to equal 2"
Now, English is not my native language and I do make mistakes on occasions. But it seems to me that "claim that you said 4+4=2" and "I declare 4 + 4 to equal 2" are two very different things. Perhaps my command of the English language is not good enough, which is certainly a possibility. Another possibility is that this person is not only an idiot, but one so hopelessly idiot that he does not understand his own native language.
Friday, October 8, 2010
Si terra’ a Milano, nel penultimo weekend di ottobre, il congresso mondiale dei transumanisti: TransVision 2010
Si terra’ a Milano, nel penultimo weekend di ottobre, il congresso mondiale dei transumanisti: TransVision 2010.
Sarà un intenso, rapido e appassionante percorso nel pensiero transumanista contemporaneo, le tecnologie in via di sviluppo, e quelle più visionarie basate su conquiste scientifiche ancora lontane. La conferenza, che avrà luogo da venerdì 22 a domenica 24 di Ottobre alla Sala Carmagnola dell’ Hotel dei Cavalieri a Milano, esplorerà le tendenze scientifiche, tecnologiche, culturali, artistiche e sociali che promettono di cambiare il nostro mondo al di là di ogni aspettativa e potrebbero risultare in una “Singolarità ” in solo poche decine di anni.
La precedente edizione si è tenuta negli Stati Uniti d’America, con la partecipazione del futurologo milionario Ray Kurzweil e di William Shatner, il celebre capitano Kirk della serie Star Trek. Si annunciano nomi importanti anche per questa edizione italiana della kermesse.
Uno dei principali relatori sarà Aubrey de Grey, il profeta del prolungamento radicale della vita, noto per aver affermato che “la prima persona che vivrà più di mille anni è già nata”. Sembrerebbe una provocazione difficile da prendere sul serio se de Grey, direttore del progetto SENS a Cambridge, non avesse un’ impressionante serie di sviluppi teorici e risultati sperimentali su animali da laboratorio da esibire a sostegno delle sue idee rivoluzionarie.
Non si tratterà di un raduno di soli scienziati e ricercatori, ma anche di filosofi come gli italiani Riccardo Campa e Roberto Marchesini, autori di numerosi saggi sul transumanesimo e il postumano, nonche’ l’inglese trapiantato negli Stati Uniti Max More, Direttore dell’ associazione transumanista globale Humanity+ e riconosciuto come uno dei padri fondatori del transumanismo contemporaneo. Prevista anche la partecipazione di artisti: Graziano Cecchini, noto per aver dipinto di rosso futurista la fontana di Trevi, sarà affiancato da una coppia di artisti olandesi con una scultura dinamica intesa a celebrare il nostro futuro nello spazio. Quest’ opera è stata voluta dalla geniale Martine Rothblatt, transessuale, miliardaria grazie alle sue scoperte scientifiche nei settori dello spazio e della medicina di frontiera e proprietaria di un’importante casa farmaceutica.
Rothblatt sarà fra i numerosi relatori che parleranno di una delle prospettive più affascinanti: l’ immortalità . Non solo grazie al prolungamento della vita biologica sviluppato dal progetto SENS di Aubrey de Grey, ma anche grazie al lavoro d’avanguardia della “nouvelle vague” di ricercatori che si occupano di immortalità cibernetica: il trasferimento del contenuto della mente umana a computer avanzatissimi, il cosidetto “Mind Uploading” che potrebbe offrire una vera e propria imortalità post-biologica alla generazione dei nostri nipoti. E ci sono quelli che si spingono ancora più oltre e ipotizzano la realizzazione, attraverso la scienza e la tecnologia, di tutte le promesse delle religioni. Nell’ultima giornata della conferenza, si parlerà anche di nuove religioni transumaniste basate sulla scienza.
Come è naturale per una conferenza dedicata a tecnologie tanto avanzate, TransVision 2010 sarà aperta anche a coloro che non possono essere presenti fisicamente grazie all’uso delle più avanzate tecnologie di realtà virtuale.
Sito web: http://transvision.cc/
Sarà un intenso, rapido e appassionante percorso nel pensiero transumanista contemporaneo, le tecnologie in via di sviluppo, e quelle più visionarie basate su conquiste scientifiche ancora lontane. La conferenza, che avrà luogo da venerdì 22 a domenica 24 di Ottobre alla Sala Carmagnola dell’ Hotel dei Cavalieri a Milano, esplorerà le tendenze scientifiche, tecnologiche, culturali, artistiche e sociali che promettono di cambiare il nostro mondo al di là di ogni aspettativa e potrebbero risultare in una “Singolarità ” in solo poche decine di anni.
La precedente edizione si è tenuta negli Stati Uniti d’America, con la partecipazione del futurologo milionario Ray Kurzweil e di William Shatner, il celebre capitano Kirk della serie Star Trek. Si annunciano nomi importanti anche per questa edizione italiana della kermesse.
Uno dei principali relatori sarà Aubrey de Grey, il profeta del prolungamento radicale della vita, noto per aver affermato che “la prima persona che vivrà più di mille anni è già nata”. Sembrerebbe una provocazione difficile da prendere sul serio se de Grey, direttore del progetto SENS a Cambridge, non avesse un’ impressionante serie di sviluppi teorici e risultati sperimentali su animali da laboratorio da esibire a sostegno delle sue idee rivoluzionarie.
Non si tratterà di un raduno di soli scienziati e ricercatori, ma anche di filosofi come gli italiani Riccardo Campa e Roberto Marchesini, autori di numerosi saggi sul transumanesimo e il postumano, nonche’ l’inglese trapiantato negli Stati Uniti Max More, Direttore dell’ associazione transumanista globale Humanity+ e riconosciuto come uno dei padri fondatori del transumanismo contemporaneo. Prevista anche la partecipazione di artisti: Graziano Cecchini, noto per aver dipinto di rosso futurista la fontana di Trevi, sarà affiancato da una coppia di artisti olandesi con una scultura dinamica intesa a celebrare il nostro futuro nello spazio. Quest’ opera è stata voluta dalla geniale Martine Rothblatt, transessuale, miliardaria grazie alle sue scoperte scientifiche nei settori dello spazio e della medicina di frontiera e proprietaria di un’importante casa farmaceutica.
Rothblatt sarà fra i numerosi relatori che parleranno di una delle prospettive più affascinanti: l’ immortalità . Non solo grazie al prolungamento della vita biologica sviluppato dal progetto SENS di Aubrey de Grey, ma anche grazie al lavoro d’avanguardia della “nouvelle vague” di ricercatori che si occupano di immortalità cibernetica: il trasferimento del contenuto della mente umana a computer avanzatissimi, il cosidetto “Mind Uploading” che potrebbe offrire una vera e propria imortalità post-biologica alla generazione dei nostri nipoti. E ci sono quelli che si spingono ancora più oltre e ipotizzano la realizzazione, attraverso la scienza e la tecnologia, di tutte le promesse delle religioni. Nell’ultima giornata della conferenza, si parlerà anche di nuove religioni transumaniste basate sulla scienza.
Come è naturale per una conferenza dedicata a tecnologie tanto avanzate, TransVision 2010 sarà aperta anche a coloro che non possono essere presenti fisicamente grazie all’uso delle più avanzate tecnologie di realtà virtuale.
Sito web: http://transvision.cc/
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
My favorite Dawkins quote
Via the Transcript of Lincoln Cannon's Presentation at Transhumanism and Spirituality Conference 2010: In his book, "The God Delusion", the talented evolutionary biologist and leading voice of the New Atheist movement, Richard Dawkins, writes:
"Whether we ever get to know them or not, there are very probably alien civilizations that are superhuman, to the point of being god-like in ways that exceed anything a theologian could possibly imagine. Their technical achievements would seem as supernatural to us as ours would seem to a Dark Age peasant transported to the twenty-first century. Imagine his response to a laptop computer, a mobile telephone, a hydrogen bomb or a jumbo jet. As Arthur C Clarke put it, in his Third Law: 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.' The miracles wrought by our technology would have seemed to the ancients no less remarkable than the tales of Moses parting the waters, or Jesus walking upon them. The aliens of our SETI signal would be to us like gods . . . In what sense, then, would the most advanced SETI aliens not be gods? In what sense would they be superhuman but not supernatural? In a very important sense, which goes to the heart of this book. The crucial difference between gods and god-like extraterrestrials lies not in their properties but in their provenance. Entities that are complex enough to be intelligent are products of an evolutionary process. No matter how god-like they may seem when we encounter them, they didn't start that way. Science-fiction authors . . . have even suggested (and I cannot think how to disprove it) that we live in a computer simulation, set up by some vastly superior civilization. But the simulators themselves would have to come from somewhere. The laws of probability forbid all notions of their spontaneously appearing without simpler antecedents. They probably owe their existence to a (perhaps unfamiliar) version of Darwinian evolution..."
Of course, I completely agree with Dawkins and these are precisely the arguments that we use in support of a new transhumanist spirituality or, if you like, religion. See for example my own presentation at the Transhumanism and Spirituality Conference 2010, titled "The Cosmic Visions of the Turing Church".
"Whether we ever get to know them or not, there are very probably alien civilizations that are superhuman, to the point of being god-like in ways that exceed anything a theologian could possibly imagine. Their technical achievements would seem as supernatural to us as ours would seem to a Dark Age peasant transported to the twenty-first century. Imagine his response to a laptop computer, a mobile telephone, a hydrogen bomb or a jumbo jet. As Arthur C Clarke put it, in his Third Law: 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.' The miracles wrought by our technology would have seemed to the ancients no less remarkable than the tales of Moses parting the waters, or Jesus walking upon them. The aliens of our SETI signal would be to us like gods . . . In what sense, then, would the most advanced SETI aliens not be gods? In what sense would they be superhuman but not supernatural? In a very important sense, which goes to the heart of this book. The crucial difference between gods and god-like extraterrestrials lies not in their properties but in their provenance. Entities that are complex enough to be intelligent are products of an evolutionary process. No matter how god-like they may seem when we encounter them, they didn't start that way. Science-fiction authors . . . have even suggested (and I cannot think how to disprove it) that we live in a computer simulation, set up by some vastly superior civilization. But the simulators themselves would have to come from somewhere. The laws of probability forbid all notions of their spontaneously appearing without simpler antecedents. They probably owe their existence to a (perhaps unfamiliar) version of Darwinian evolution..."
Of course, I completely agree with Dawkins and these are precisely the arguments that we use in support of a new transhumanist spirituality or, if you like, religion. See for example my own presentation at the Transhumanism and Spirituality Conference 2010, titled "The Cosmic Visions of the Turing Church".
Monday, October 4, 2010
TransVision 2010 Update: program, abstracts, TVirtual online extension
TransVision 2010 Update: program, abstracts, TVirtual online extension
After the change of conference venue announced last week, the preparation of TransVision 2010 is in full swing.
We have updated the conference program with new speakers and the abstracts of Miriam Ji Sun, Francesco Monico, Roberto Guerra, Marta Rossi and Jacopo Tagliabue, Antonio Saccoccio, Randal A. Koene, Danila Medvedev, Valerija Pride, David Styles, Mike Treder, David Pearce, Anders Sandberg, Remi Sussan, Alex Lightman, Khannea Suntzu and Simon Deering, Fiorella Terenzi. Other speakers and abstracts will be added soon.
Those who wish to attend the TransVision 2010 conference and community convention (October 22, 23 and 24 in Milan, Italy) but cannot come to Milan will have the option to participate remotely in the TVirtual online extension, watch all talks in realtime, and interact with speakers and other participants. TVirtual, hosted by the teleXLR8 project based on the Teleplace online telepresence platform, will be a mixed-reality event similar to the recent ASIM 2010 Conference. TVirtual tickets are available at a very reduced price.
TransVision 2010 is a global transhumanist conference and community convention, organized by several transhumanist activists, groups and organizations, under the executive leadership of the Italian Transhumanist Association (AIT) and with the collaboration of an Advisory Board. The event will take place on October 22, 23 and 24, 2010 in Milan, Italy with many options for remote online access.
Register now
post links to Twitter, your blogs and websites, and add your name to the TransVision 2010 Facebook page.
After the change of conference venue announced last week, the preparation of TransVision 2010 is in full swing.
We have updated the conference program with new speakers and the abstracts of Miriam Ji Sun, Francesco Monico, Roberto Guerra, Marta Rossi and Jacopo Tagliabue, Antonio Saccoccio, Randal A. Koene, Danila Medvedev, Valerija Pride, David Styles, Mike Treder, David Pearce, Anders Sandberg, Remi Sussan, Alex Lightman, Khannea Suntzu and Simon Deering, Fiorella Terenzi. Other speakers and abstracts will be added soon.
Those who wish to attend the TransVision 2010 conference and community convention (October 22, 23 and 24 in Milan, Italy) but cannot come to Milan will have the option to participate remotely in the TVirtual online extension, watch all talks in realtime, and interact with speakers and other participants. TVirtual, hosted by the teleXLR8 project based on the Teleplace online telepresence platform, will be a mixed-reality event similar to the recent ASIM 2010 Conference. TVirtual tickets are available at a very reduced price.
TransVision 2010 is a global transhumanist conference and community convention, organized by several transhumanist activists, groups and organizations, under the executive leadership of the Italian Transhumanist Association (AIT) and with the collaboration of an Advisory Board. The event will take place on October 22, 23 and 24, 2010 in Milan, Italy with many options for remote online access.
Register now
post links to Twitter, your blogs and websites, and add your name to the TransVision 2010 Facebook page.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
TransVision 2010 Conference to be streamed live interactively in Teleplace
Those who wish to attend the TransVision 2010 conference and community convention (October 22, 23 and 24 in Milan, Italy) but cannot come to Milan will have the option to participate remotely in the TVirtual online extension, watch all talks in realtime, and interact with speakers and other participants. TVirtual, hosted by the teleXLR8 project based on the Teleplace online telepresence platform, will be a mixed-reality event similar to the recent ASIM 2010 Conference.
TVirtual tickets are available at a very reduced price. Those who register for the full 3-days TVirtual before or on Sunday, October 10, including of course those who have registered already, will receive a free yearly membership in teleXLR8. Those who register for the full 3-days TVirtual after this date will be offered a 50% discount for yearly membership in teleXLR8. Current teleXLR8 beta account holders will be welcome to participate in TVirtual.
If you choose to attend TVirtual, you will be able to watch all talks, see and talk to speakers and other participants, and attend special telepresence sessions during, before and after the conference. In the pictures above, a TV10 planning session and several TransVision 2010 speakers giving talks in Teleplace at recent events. Please see the teleXLR8 website for full video coverage of recent transhumanist talks.
For a more detailed description of the objectives of our online events program, see our mini-manifesto Telepresence Education for a Smarter World on the IEET site and the interview MIND and MAN: Getting Mental with Giulio Prisco, by Natasha Vita-More, on H+ Magazine. See also teleXLR8 Project News – a telepresence community for cultural acceleration.
TVirtual tickets are available at a very reduced price. Those who register for the full 3-days TVirtual before or on Sunday, October 10, including of course those who have registered already, will receive a free yearly membership in teleXLR8. Those who register for the full 3-days TVirtual after this date will be offered a 50% discount for yearly membership in teleXLR8. Current teleXLR8 beta account holders will be welcome to participate in TVirtual.
If you choose to attend TVirtual, you will be able to watch all talks, see and talk to speakers and other participants, and attend special telepresence sessions during, before and after the conference. In the pictures above, a TV10 planning session and several TransVision 2010 speakers giving talks in Teleplace at recent events. Please see the teleXLR8 website for full video coverage of recent transhumanist talks.
For a more detailed description of the objectives of our online events program, see our mini-manifesto Telepresence Education for a Smarter World on the IEET site and the interview MIND and MAN: Getting Mental with Giulio Prisco, by Natasha Vita-More, on H+ Magazine. See also teleXLR8 Project News – a telepresence community for cultural acceleration.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
The Cosmic Visions of the Turing Church
UPDATE - The video of my talk is online on Vimeo. I also gave a similar talk at the Turing Church Online Workshop 1 on November 20, 2010.
Yesterday I gave a talk on The Cosmic Visions of the Turing Church at the Transhumanism and Spirituality Conference 2010. The conference explored the intersection of religion, science, spirituality and technology, from a transhumanist perspective. Transhumanism advocates the ethical use of technology to expand human capacities, and observes that if our rapid technological evolution continues to accelerate then humanity will become a new species before the end of the 21st century.
Abstract: Following the Turing-Church conjecture, minds can be uploaded from biological brains to other computational substrates. Mind uploading research may achieve practical results within decades. Given the technology, humans may live indefinitely, colonizing the universe, and resurrecting the dead by "copying them to the future". Perhaps they will create synthetic realities inhabited by sentient minds; perhaps we are in a synthetic reality. These considerations parallel the tenets of many religions. The Turing Church will be a meta-religion, without central doctrine, characterized by common interest in the promised land where science and religion meet, science becomes religion, and religion becomes science.
I guess the talk can be summarized in one sentence (Slide 4): "A memetically strong religion needs to offer resurrection besides immortality."
I talked remotely to the audience at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City and to those who watched the live stream of the conference. I wish to thank the organizers for setting up the live stream, this should be done for all conferences. The live stream worked very well (perhaps the quality was a bit too high for those with slower Internet connections) and I was able to watch the talks and participate in the lively discussion via chat and Twitter.
The slides of my presentation are embedded below and available on Slideshare.
At the end of the presentation I showed the short movie CA Resurrection: "If we live in a simulation, the Mind can copy us to new simulation. This is illustrated by the short movie "CA Resurrection", which I made with a Game of Life program. The protagonist pattern is doomed to certain death by interaction with an environment that, except in very carefully controlled conditions, is very unfriendly to the stability of patterns (sounds familiar?), but is copied before death and restored to life in a friendlier environment."
The movie is embedded in the Slideshare show and also available on YouTube and blip.tv.
Yesterday I gave a talk on The Cosmic Visions of the Turing Church at the Transhumanism and Spirituality Conference 2010. The conference explored the intersection of religion, science, spirituality and technology, from a transhumanist perspective. Transhumanism advocates the ethical use of technology to expand human capacities, and observes that if our rapid technological evolution continues to accelerate then humanity will become a new species before the end of the 21st century.
Abstract: Following the Turing-Church conjecture, minds can be uploaded from biological brains to other computational substrates. Mind uploading research may achieve practical results within decades. Given the technology, humans may live indefinitely, colonizing the universe, and resurrecting the dead by "copying them to the future". Perhaps they will create synthetic realities inhabited by sentient minds; perhaps we are in a synthetic reality. These considerations parallel the tenets of many religions. The Turing Church will be a meta-religion, without central doctrine, characterized by common interest in the promised land where science and religion meet, science becomes religion, and religion becomes science.
I guess the talk can be summarized in one sentence (Slide 4): "A memetically strong religion needs to offer resurrection besides immortality."
I talked remotely to the audience at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City and to those who watched the live stream of the conference. I wish to thank the organizers for setting up the live stream, this should be done for all conferences. The live stream worked very well (perhaps the quality was a bit too high for those with slower Internet connections) and I was able to watch the talks and participate in the lively discussion via chat and Twitter.
The slides of my presentation are embedded below and available on Slideshare.
Transpirit2010
View more presentations from Giulio Prisco.
At the end of the presentation I showed the short movie CA Resurrection: "If we live in a simulation, the Mind can copy us to new simulation. This is illustrated by the short movie "CA Resurrection", which I made with a Game of Life program. The protagonist pattern is doomed to certain death by interaction with an environment that, except in very carefully controlled conditions, is very unfriendly to the stability of patterns (sounds familiar?), but is copied before death and restored to life in a friendlier environment."
The movie is embedded in the Slideshare show and also available on YouTube and blip.tv.
Friday, October 1, 2010
My talk tonight at the Transhumanism and Spirituality Conference 2010
UPDATE with slides and video clip: The Cosmic Visions of the Turing Church
Tonight I will give a talk at the Transhumanism and Spirituality Conference 2010. The conference will explore the intersection of religion, science, spirituality and technology, from a transhumanist perspective. Transhumanism advocates the ethical use of technology to expand human capacities, and observes that if our rapid technological evolution continues to accelerate then humanity will become a new species before the end of the 21st century.
I will give a talk on The Cosmic Visions of the Turing Church. Abstract: Following the Turing-Church conjecture, minds can be uploaded from biological brains to other computational substrates. Mind uploading research may achieve practical results within decades. Given the technology, humans may live indefinitely, colonizing the universe, and resurrecting the dead by "copying them to the future". Perhaps they will create synthetic realities inhabited by sentient minds; perhaps we are in a synthetic reality. These considerations parallel the tenets of many religions. The Turing Church will be a meta-religion, without central doctrine, characterized by common interest in the promised land where science and religion meet, science becomes religion, and religion becomes science.
I will talk remotely to the audience at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City and to those who will watch the live stream of the conference. I wish to thank the organizers for setting up the live stream, this should be done for all conferences. This is the stream URL, please come to watch all talks and participate in the discussions. After the talk I will post my slides here, and I understand that the videos of all talks will be available online after the conference.
Tonight I will give a talk at the Transhumanism and Spirituality Conference 2010. The conference will explore the intersection of religion, science, spirituality and technology, from a transhumanist perspective. Transhumanism advocates the ethical use of technology to expand human capacities, and observes that if our rapid technological evolution continues to accelerate then humanity will become a new species before the end of the 21st century.
I will give a talk on The Cosmic Visions of the Turing Church. Abstract: Following the Turing-Church conjecture, minds can be uploaded from biological brains to other computational substrates. Mind uploading research may achieve practical results within decades. Given the technology, humans may live indefinitely, colonizing the universe, and resurrecting the dead by "copying them to the future". Perhaps they will create synthetic realities inhabited by sentient minds; perhaps we are in a synthetic reality. These considerations parallel the tenets of many religions. The Turing Church will be a meta-religion, without central doctrine, characterized by common interest in the promised land where science and religion meet, science becomes religion, and religion becomes science.
I will talk remotely to the audience at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City and to those who will watch the live stream of the conference. I wish to thank the organizers for setting up the live stream, this should be done for all conferences. This is the stream URL, please come to watch all talks and participate in the discussions. After the talk I will post my slides here, and I understand that the videos of all talks will be available online after the conference.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Mind uploading via Gmail
To whom it may concern:
I am writing this in 2010. My Gmail account has more than 5GB of data, which contain some information about me and also some information about the persons I have exchanged email with, including some personal and private information.
I am assuming that in 2060 (50 years from now), my Gmail account will have hundreds or thousands of TB of data, which will contain a lot of information about me and the persons I exchanged email with, including a lot of personal and private information. I am also assuming that, in 2060:
1) The data in the accounts of all Gmail users since 2004 is available.
2) AI-based mindware technology able to reconstruct individual mindfiles by analyzing the information in their aggregate Gmail accounts and other available information, with sufficient accuracy for mind uploading via detailed personality reconstruction, is available.
3) The technology to crack Gmail passwords is available, but illegal without the consent of the account owners (or their heirs).
4) Many of today's Gmail users, including myself, are already dead and cannot give permission to use the data in their accounts.
If all assumptions above are correct, I hereby give permission to Google and/or other parties to read all data in my Gmail account and use them together with other available information to reconstruct my mindfile with sufficient accuracy for mind uploading via detailed personality reconstruction, and express my wish that they do so.
Signed by Giulio Prisco on September 28, 2010, and witnessed by readers.
NOTE: The accuracy of the process outlined above increases with the number of persons who give their permission to do the same. You can give your permission in comments, Twitter or other public spaces.
I am writing this in 2010. My Gmail account has more than 5GB of data, which contain some information about me and also some information about the persons I have exchanged email with, including some personal and private information.
I am assuming that in 2060 (50 years from now), my Gmail account will have hundreds or thousands of TB of data, which will contain a lot of information about me and the persons I exchanged email with, including a lot of personal and private information. I am also assuming that, in 2060:
1) The data in the accounts of all Gmail users since 2004 is available.
2) AI-based mindware technology able to reconstruct individual mindfiles by analyzing the information in their aggregate Gmail accounts and other available information, with sufficient accuracy for mind uploading via detailed personality reconstruction, is available.
3) The technology to crack Gmail passwords is available, but illegal without the consent of the account owners (or their heirs).
4) Many of today's Gmail users, including myself, are already dead and cannot give permission to use the data in their accounts.
If all assumptions above are correct, I hereby give permission to Google and/or other parties to read all data in my Gmail account and use them together with other available information to reconstruct my mindfile with sufficient accuracy for mind uploading via detailed personality reconstruction, and express my wish that they do so.
Signed by Giulio Prisco on September 28, 2010, and witnessed by readers.
NOTE: The accuracy of the process outlined above increases with the number of persons who give their permission to do the same. You can give your permission in comments, Twitter or other public spaces.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Transhumanism and Spirituality Conference 2010
When: Friday, 1 October 2010, 9:00am to 5:00pm MDT
Where: University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Marriott Library, Gould Auditorium
What: At the Transhumanism and Spirituality Conference 2010, we will explore the intersection of religion, science, spirituality and technology, from a transhumanist perspective. Transhumanism advocates the ethical use of technology to expand human capacities, and observes that if our rapid technological evolution continues to accelerate then humanity will become a new species before the end of the 21st century.
Who: Keynote speakers for the conference include former director of the World Transhumanist Association, James Hughes; author of the Transhumanist Manifesto, Max More; and renowned LDS scholar and author, Terryl Givens. Sponsors of the conference are the Mormon Transhumanist Association and the Transhumanist Alliance of Utah.
How: Register online (http://transhumanism-spirituality.org) for a discount and reserved seating! Online registration is $50 ($25 for students) until 29 September. Registration on the day of the conference will be $80. Students with ID will be admitted to the conference free of charge, as space permits. Students wishing reserved seating are encouraged to register at the discounted student rate.
Where: University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Marriott Library, Gould Auditorium
What: At the Transhumanism and Spirituality Conference 2010, we will explore the intersection of religion, science, spirituality and technology, from a transhumanist perspective. Transhumanism advocates the ethical use of technology to expand human capacities, and observes that if our rapid technological evolution continues to accelerate then humanity will become a new species before the end of the 21st century.
Who: Keynote speakers for the conference include former director of the World Transhumanist Association, James Hughes; author of the Transhumanist Manifesto, Max More; and renowned LDS scholar and author, Terryl Givens. Sponsors of the conference are the Mormon Transhumanist Association and the Transhumanist Alliance of Utah.
How: Register online (http://transhumanism-spirituality.org) for a discount and reserved seating! Online registration is $50 ($25 for students) until 29 September. Registration on the day of the conference will be $80. Students with ID will be admitted to the conference free of charge, as space permits. Students wishing reserved seating are encouraged to register at the discounted student rate.
Friday, September 24, 2010
teleXLR8 Project News - a telepresence community for cultural acceleration
We have been running the teleXLR8 project, a telepresence community for cultural acceleration based on Teleplace, in semi-stealth beta mode for a few months since the first talk by Anders Sandberg on Neuroselves and exoselves: distributed cognition inside and outside brains on April 18, 2010. We have produced some great events, talks by well known experts of futuristic technologies, meetings of closed working groups, and a two day "mixed reality" satellite workshop with the Singularity Summit 2010.
teleXLR8 has been running as a free, invitation-only beta on the Teleplace servers and network infrastructure since March 2010. Due to the limited resources available we have only promoted teleXLR8 in the relatively small community of future studies and "Singularity" enthusiasts. Even so, we have received many more requests to join than we could handle, and the project has been frequently covered by the blogosphere and the online press. The current beta group has about 80 members. Each talk has been recorded on video and posted to the video sharing site blip.tv the day after the talk. The videos have been seen by several thousands of viewers and covered by important technology oriented sites including internetACTU, IEET, KurzweilAI, H+ Magazine, Next Big Future and Slashdot.
We have now reached an agreement with Teleplace, which will permit running the project in fully operational mode our own dedicated servers, network and support infrastructure, and opening it to everyone for a very reasonable membership fee. The current beta will continue until the start of the next phase, and all members of the current beta group will receive extended free membership. Sponsor slots are available.
We will produce great and frequent online events, featuring first class speakers with world-changing ideas, available in interactive realtime telepresence. teleXLR8 can be thought of as an online open TED, using modern telepresence technology for ideas worth spreading, and as a next generation, fully interactive TV network with a participative audience. In the pictures, participants are watching the recent talk by Ben Goertzel on TV. At any moment, they can step in to comment, discuss and ask questions.
For a more detailed description of the project's goals, see our mini-manifesto Telepresence Education for a Smarter World on the IEET site and the interview MIND and MAN: Getting Mental with Giulio Prisco, by Natasha Vita-More, on H+ Magazine.
Besides the existing Facebook Group and Linkedin Group, we have created a teleXLR8 mailing list on Google Groups. Please feel free to join the mailing list to discuss the project.
teleXLR8 has been running as a free, invitation-only beta on the Teleplace servers and network infrastructure since March 2010. Due to the limited resources available we have only promoted teleXLR8 in the relatively small community of future studies and "Singularity" enthusiasts. Even so, we have received many more requests to join than we could handle, and the project has been frequently covered by the blogosphere and the online press. The current beta group has about 80 members. Each talk has been recorded on video and posted to the video sharing site blip.tv the day after the talk. The videos have been seen by several thousands of viewers and covered by important technology oriented sites including internetACTU, IEET, KurzweilAI, H+ Magazine, Next Big Future and Slashdot.
We have now reached an agreement with Teleplace, which will permit running the project in fully operational mode our own dedicated servers, network and support infrastructure, and opening it to everyone for a very reasonable membership fee. The current beta will continue until the start of the next phase, and all members of the current beta group will receive extended free membership. Sponsor slots are available.
We will produce great and frequent online events, featuring first class speakers with world-changing ideas, available in interactive realtime telepresence. teleXLR8 can be thought of as an online open TED, using modern telepresence technology for ideas worth spreading, and as a next generation, fully interactive TV network with a participative audience. In the pictures, participants are watching the recent talk by Ben Goertzel on TV. At any moment, they can step in to comment, discuss and ask questions.
For a more detailed description of the project's goals, see our mini-manifesto Telepresence Education for a Smarter World on the IEET site and the interview MIND and MAN: Getting Mental with Giulio Prisco, by Natasha Vita-More, on H+ Magazine.
Besides the existing Facebook Group and Linkedin Group, we have created a teleXLR8 mailing list on Google Groups. Please feel free to join the mailing list to discuss the project.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
VIDEO: Martine Rothblatt on Reconstructing Minds from Software Mindfiles, Teleplace, September 18
Martine Rothblatt gave an ASIM Expert Series talk in Teleplace on “Reconstructing Minds from Software Mindfiles” on Saturday September 18, 2010.
Some questions and comments from the audience have been of a philosophical nature and related to preservation of self (whatever that is), but most of those who attended the talk were already prepared to accept that, depending on the amount of information stored and the accuracy of the reconstruction process, the upload copy may be (and feel like) a valid continuation of the original self. The talk and the discussion have been more focused on actual technologies and technical issues: How to extract enough information? How to prove that the information extracted is enough? How to quantify a critical treshold? How to make sure that nothing really important is left behind? How to reconstruct a thinking and feeling mind from a database? Martine gave a detailed presentation of the preliminary implementation of software mindfiles in her twin projects CyBeRev and LifeNaut (similar, but kept separate mainly as a fail-safe measure) and their forthcoming mobile clients and integration with social networks.
Thanks Martine for the great talk and thanks to the (about 25) participants who contributed to the discussion with very interesting questions and comments. For those who could not attend we have recorded everything (talk, Q/A and discussion) on video. Here is a direct link to a video.
Some questions and comments from the audience have been of a philosophical nature and related to preservation of self (whatever that is), but most of those who attended the talk were already prepared to accept that, depending on the amount of information stored and the accuracy of the reconstruction process, the upload copy may be (and feel like) a valid continuation of the original self. The talk and the discussion have been more focused on actual technologies and technical issues: How to extract enough information? How to prove that the information extracted is enough? How to quantify a critical treshold? How to make sure that nothing really important is left behind? How to reconstruct a thinking and feeling mind from a database? Martine gave a detailed presentation of the preliminary implementation of software mindfiles in her twin projects CyBeRev and LifeNaut (similar, but kept separate mainly as a fail-safe measure) and their forthcoming mobile clients and integration with social networks.
Thanks Martine for the great talk and thanks to the (about 25) participants who contributed to the discussion with very interesting questions and comments. For those who could not attend we have recorded everything (talk, Q/A and discussion) on video. Here is a direct link to a video.
Friday, September 17, 2010
REMINDER - Martine Rothblatt on Reconstructing Minds from Software Mindfiles, Teleplace, September 18, 10am PST
REMINDER - Martine Rothblatt will give an ASIM Expert Series talk in Teleplace on “Reconstructing Minds from Software Mindfiles” on Saturday September 18, 2010, at 10am PST (1pm EST, 6pm UK, 7pm CET). Those who already have Teleplace accounts for teleXLR8 can just ahow up at the talk. There are a limited number of seats available for others, please contact me if you wish to attend. You can also join the Facebook page for the event.
Abstract: “I do think, however, there is a (natural) tendency to way overestimate the importance of copying our brain structure to copying our minds. I think our minds will be uploadable in good enough shape to satisfy most everyone by reconstructing them from information stored in software mindfiles such as diaries, videos, personality inventories, saved google voice conversations, chats, and chatbot conversations. The reconstruction process will be iteratively achieved with AI software designed for this purpose, dubbed mindware.“
I met Martine online earlier today to prepare the talk. She told me that, in previous presentations of software mindfiles, many questions and comments have been of a philosophical or metaphysical nature and related to preservation of self (whatever that is). But I told Martine that I believe most of those who will attend the talk tomorrow are already prepared to accept that, depending on the amount of information stored and the accuracy of the reconstruction process, the upload copy may be (and feel like) a valid continuation of the original self. I expect that the audience will prefer leaving philosophy aside and be more interested in actual technologies and technical issues: How to extract enough information? How to prove that the information extracted is enough? How to quantify a critical treshold? How to make sure that nothing really important is left behind? How to reconstruct a thinking and feeling mind from a database? See also ASIM Experts series: Reconstructing Minds from Software Mindfiles on carboncopies.org and the discussion in the article MIND and MAN: Getting Mental with Giulio Prisco on H+ Magazine. Watch also the short movie Bina48 Robot on YouTube (latest update of the video in the New York Times article).
Martine Rothblatt is an American lawyer, author, and entrepreneur. Rothblatt graduated from UCLA with a combined law and MBA degree in 1981, then began work in Washington, D.C., first in the field of communication satellite law, and eventually in life sciences projects like the Human Genome Project. She is currently the founder and CEO of United Therapeutics. In 2004, Rothblatt launched the Terasem Movement, a transhumanist school of thought focused on promoting joy, diversity, and the prospect of technological immortality via personal cyberconsciousness and geoethical nanotechnology. The purpose of the CyBeRev (cybernetic beingness revival) project of the Terasem Movement is to prevent death by preserving sufficient information about a person so that recovery remains possible by foreseeable technology.
Teleplace is one of the best 3D applications for telework, online meetings, group collaboration, and e-learning in a virtual 3D environment (v-learning). Those who already have Teleplace accounts for teleXLR8 can just ahow up at the talk. There are a limited number of seats available for others, please contact me if you wish to attend. You can also join the Facebook page for the event.
Abstract: “I do think, however, there is a (natural) tendency to way overestimate the importance of copying our brain structure to copying our minds. I think our minds will be uploadable in good enough shape to satisfy most everyone by reconstructing them from information stored in software mindfiles such as diaries, videos, personality inventories, saved google voice conversations, chats, and chatbot conversations. The reconstruction process will be iteratively achieved with AI software designed for this purpose, dubbed mindware.“
I met Martine online earlier today to prepare the talk. She told me that, in previous presentations of software mindfiles, many questions and comments have been of a philosophical or metaphysical nature and related to preservation of self (whatever that is). But I told Martine that I believe most of those who will attend the talk tomorrow are already prepared to accept that, depending on the amount of information stored and the accuracy of the reconstruction process, the upload copy may be (and feel like) a valid continuation of the original self. I expect that the audience will prefer leaving philosophy aside and be more interested in actual technologies and technical issues: How to extract enough information? How to prove that the information extracted is enough? How to quantify a critical treshold? How to make sure that nothing really important is left behind? How to reconstruct a thinking and feeling mind from a database? See also ASIM Experts series: Reconstructing Minds from Software Mindfiles on carboncopies.org and the discussion in the article MIND and MAN: Getting Mental with Giulio Prisco on H+ Magazine. Watch also the short movie Bina48 Robot on YouTube (latest update of the video in the New York Times article).
Martine Rothblatt is an American lawyer, author, and entrepreneur. Rothblatt graduated from UCLA with a combined law and MBA degree in 1981, then began work in Washington, D.C., first in the field of communication satellite law, and eventually in life sciences projects like the Human Genome Project. She is currently the founder and CEO of United Therapeutics. In 2004, Rothblatt launched the Terasem Movement, a transhumanist school of thought focused on promoting joy, diversity, and the prospect of technological immortality via personal cyberconsciousness and geoethical nanotechnology. The purpose of the CyBeRev (cybernetic beingness revival) project of the Terasem Movement is to prevent death by preserving sufficient information about a person so that recovery remains possible by foreseeable technology.
Teleplace is one of the best 3D applications for telework, online meetings, group collaboration, and e-learning in a virtual 3D environment (v-learning). Those who already have Teleplace accounts for teleXLR8 can just ahow up at the talk. There are a limited number of seats available for others, please contact me if you wish to attend. You can also join the Facebook page for the event.
Monday, September 13, 2010
Martine Rothblatt on Reconstructing Minds from Software Mindfiles, Teleplace, September 18, 10am PST
Martine Rothblatt will give an ASIM Expert Series talk in Teleplace on “Reconstructing Minds from Software Mindfiles” on Saturday September 18, 2010, at 10am PST (1pm EST, 6pm UK, 7pm CET). Those who already have Teleplace accounts for teleXLR8 can just ahow up at the talk. There are a limited number of seats available for others, please contact me if you wish to attend. You can also join the Facebook page for the event.
Abstract: “I do think, however, there is a (natural) tendency to way overestimate the importance of copying our brain structure to copying our minds. I think our minds will be uploadable in good enough shape to satisfy most everyone by reconstructing them from information stored in software mindfiles such as diaries, videos, personality inventories, saved google voice conversations, chats, and chatbot conversations. The reconstruction process will be iteratively achieved with AI software designed for this purpose, dubbed mindware.“
Martine Rothblatt is an American lawyer, author, and entrepreneur. Rothblatt graduated from UCLA with a combined law and MBA degree in 1981, then began work in Washington, D.C., first in the field of communication satellite law, and eventually in life sciences projects like the Human Genome Project. She is currently the founder and CEO of United Therapeutics. In 2004, Rothblatt launched the Terasem Movement, a transhumanist school of thought focused on promoting joy, diversity, and the prospect of technological immortality via personal cyberconsciousness and geoethical nanotechnology. The purpose of the CyBeRev (cybernetic beingness revival) project of the Terasem Movement is to prevent death by preserving sufficient information about a person so that recovery remains possible by foreseeable technology.
Teleplace is one of the best 3D applications for telework, online meetings, group collaboration, and e-learning in a virtual 3D environment (v-learning). Those who already have Teleplace accounts for teleXLR8 can just ahow up at the talk. There are a limited number of seats available for others, please contact me if you wish to attend. You can also join the Facebook page for the event.
Abstract: “I do think, however, there is a (natural) tendency to way overestimate the importance of copying our brain structure to copying our minds. I think our minds will be uploadable in good enough shape to satisfy most everyone by reconstructing them from information stored in software mindfiles such as diaries, videos, personality inventories, saved google voice conversations, chats, and chatbot conversations. The reconstruction process will be iteratively achieved with AI software designed for this purpose, dubbed mindware.“
Martine Rothblatt is an American lawyer, author, and entrepreneur. Rothblatt graduated from UCLA with a combined law and MBA degree in 1981, then began work in Washington, D.C., first in the field of communication satellite law, and eventually in life sciences projects like the Human Genome Project. She is currently the founder and CEO of United Therapeutics. In 2004, Rothblatt launched the Terasem Movement, a transhumanist school of thought focused on promoting joy, diversity, and the prospect of technological immortality via personal cyberconsciousness and geoethical nanotechnology. The purpose of the CyBeRev (cybernetic beingness revival) project of the Terasem Movement is to prevent death by preserving sufficient information about a person so that recovery remains possible by foreseeable technology.
Teleplace is one of the best 3D applications for telework, online meetings, group collaboration, and e-learning in a virtual 3D environment (v-learning). Those who already have Teleplace accounts for teleXLR8 can just ahow up at the talk. There are a limited number of seats available for others, please contact me if you wish to attend. You can also join the Facebook page for the event.
H+ Magazine - MIND and MAN: Getting Mental with Giulio Prisco
H+ Magazine - MIND and MAN: Getting Mental with Giulio Prisco
I have been interviewed by Natasha for H+ Magazine. See H+ Magazine - MIND and MAN: Getting Mental with Giulio Prisco. We talk about a bit of everything, telepresence, cyberspaces and metaverses, the transhumanist movement and the enabling role of telecom technology, life extension, mind uploading (oops sorry, substrate-independent minds), transcending biology and becoming substrate-independent minds, Randal and Suzanne's ASIM initiative (Advancing Substrate-Independent Minds, see carboncopies.org) including the online workshops and the recent mixed-reality ASIM 2010 Conference in San Francisco, moving from biological to robotic and virtual bodies, and the Teleplace -based teleXLR8 project, a “telepresence community for cultural acceleration” focused on science and technology education and outreach (with a transhumanist flavor). Perhaps we talk also of other things, the article is long.
I have been interviewed by Natasha for H+ Magazine. See H+ Magazine - MIND and MAN: Getting Mental with Giulio Prisco. We talk about a bit of everything, telepresence, cyberspaces and metaverses, the transhumanist movement and the enabling role of telecom technology, life extension, mind uploading (oops sorry, substrate-independent minds), transcending biology and becoming substrate-independent minds, Randal and Suzanne's ASIM initiative (Advancing Substrate-Independent Minds, see carboncopies.org) including the online workshops and the recent mixed-reality ASIM 2010 Conference in San Francisco, moving from biological to robotic and virtual bodies, and the Teleplace -based teleXLR8 project, a “telepresence community for cultural acceleration” focused on science and technology education and outreach (with a transhumanist flavor). Perhaps we talk also of other things, the article is long.
Ben Goertzel on The Cosmist Manifesto in Teleplace, September 12
Ben Goertzel gave a talk in Teleplace on his recent book “A Cosmist Manifesto: Practical Philosophy for the Posthuman Age” on Sunday September 12, 2010.
This talk was somewhat different from previous talks, and centered on a high level philosophical vision rather than on specific emerging technologies. But these are two sides of the same coin and, as it is well known, cultural and philosophical trends have a deep influence on technology development and vice versa. Thanks Ben for the great talk and thanks to the (about 25) participants who contributed to the discussion with very interesting questions and comments. For those who could not attend we have recorded everything (talk, Q/A and discussion) on video.
A Cosmist Manifesto: Practical Philosophy for the Posthuman Age, by Ben Goertzel, has been published by Humanity+ Press and is available on Amazon. See the review “A Cosmist Manifesto, an Advocacy“ on H+ Magazine. See also the online version of the Cosmist Manifesto.
The term Cosmism was introduced by Tsiolokovsky and other Russian Cosmists around 1900. Goertzel’s “Cosmist Manifesto” gives it new life and a new twist for the 21st century. Cosmism, as Goertzel presents it, is a practical philosophy for the posthuman era. Rooted in Western and Eastern philosophy as well as modern technology and science, it is a way of understanding ourselves and our universe that makes sense now, and will keep on making sense as advanced technology exerts its transformative impact as the future unfolds. Among the many topics considered are AI, nanotechnology, uploading, immortality, psychedelics, meditation, future social structures, psi phenomena, alien and cetacean intelligence and the Singularity. The Cosmist perspective is shown to make plain old common sense of even the wildest future possibilities.
Ben Goertzel, Chair of Humanity+, is founder and CEO of two computer science firms Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC, and of the non-profit AGIRI (Artificial General Intelligence Research Institute). He has served as a university faculty in several departments of mathematics, computer science and cognitive science, in the US, Australia and New Zealand. He is author of two books focused on the future of technology and society Creating Internet Intelligence (Plenum, 2001) and The Path to Posthumanity (Academica, 2006). He serves as Director of Research for the Singularity Institute for AI.
Teleplace is one of the best 3D applications for telework, online meetings, group collaboration, and e-learning in a virtual 3D environment (v-learning).
This talk was somewhat different from previous talks, and centered on a high level philosophical vision rather than on specific emerging technologies. But these are two sides of the same coin and, as it is well known, cultural and philosophical trends have a deep influence on technology development and vice versa. Thanks Ben for the great talk and thanks to the (about 25) participants who contributed to the discussion with very interesting questions and comments. For those who could not attend we have recorded everything (talk, Q/A and discussion) on video.
A Cosmist Manifesto: Practical Philosophy for the Posthuman Age, by Ben Goertzel, has been published by Humanity+ Press and is available on Amazon. See the review “A Cosmist Manifesto, an Advocacy“ on H+ Magazine. See also the online version of the Cosmist Manifesto.
The term Cosmism was introduced by Tsiolokovsky and other Russian Cosmists around 1900. Goertzel’s “Cosmist Manifesto” gives it new life and a new twist for the 21st century. Cosmism, as Goertzel presents it, is a practical philosophy for the posthuman era. Rooted in Western and Eastern philosophy as well as modern technology and science, it is a way of understanding ourselves and our universe that makes sense now, and will keep on making sense as advanced technology exerts its transformative impact as the future unfolds. Among the many topics considered are AI, nanotechnology, uploading, immortality, psychedelics, meditation, future social structures, psi phenomena, alien and cetacean intelligence and the Singularity. The Cosmist perspective is shown to make plain old common sense of even the wildest future possibilities.
Ben Goertzel, Chair of Humanity+, is founder and CEO of two computer science firms Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC, and of the non-profit AGIRI (Artificial General Intelligence Research Institute). He has served as a university faculty in several departments of mathematics, computer science and cognitive science, in the US, Australia and New Zealand. He is author of two books focused on the future of technology and society Creating Internet Intelligence (Plenum, 2001) and The Path to Posthumanity (Academica, 2006). He serves as Director of Research for the Singularity Institute for AI.
Teleplace is one of the best 3D applications for telework, online meetings, group collaboration, and e-learning in a virtual 3D environment (v-learning).
Thursday, September 9, 2010
REMINDER – Ben Goertzel on The Cosmist Manifesto in Teleplace, September 12, 10am PST
Ben Goertzel will give a talk in Teleplace on his recent book “A Cosmist Manifesto: Practical Philosophy for the Posthuman Age” on Sunday September 12, 2010, at 10am PST (1pm EST, 6pm UK, 7pm CET). Those who already have Teleplace accounts for teleXLR8 can just ahow up at the talk. There are a limited number of seats available for others, please contact me if you wish to attend.
A Cosmist Manifesto: Practical Philosophy for the Posthuman Age, by Ben Goertzel, has been published by Humanity+ Press and is available on Amazon. See the review “A Cosmist Manifesto, an Advocacy“ on H+ Magazine. See also the online version of the Cosmist Manifesto. In the picture above, Ben Goertzel (first from left) in a Teleplace meeting.
The term Cosmism was introduced by Tsiolokovsky and other Russian Cosmists around 1900. Goertzel’s “Cosmist Manifesto” gives it new life and a new twist for the 21st century. Cosmism, as Goertzel presents it, is a practical philosophy for the posthuman era. Rooted in Western and Eastern philosophy as well as modern technology and science, it is a way of understanding ourselves and our universe that makes sense now, and will keep on making sense as advanced technology exerts its transformative impact as the future unfolds. Among the many topics considered are AI, nanotechnology, uploading, immortality, psychedelics, meditation, future social structures, psi phenomena, alien and cetacean intelligence and the Singularity. The Cosmist perspective is shown to make plain old common sense of even the wildest future possibilities.
Ben Goertzel, Chair of Humanity+, is founder and CEO of two computer science firms Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC, and of the non-profit AGIRI (Artificial General Intelligence Research Institute). He has served as a university faculty in several departments of mathematics, computer science and cognitive science, in the US, Australia and New Zealand. He is author of two books focused on the future of technology and society Creating Internet Intelligence (Plenum, 2001) and The Path to Posthumanity (Academica, 2006). He serves as Director of Research for the Singularity Institute for AI.
Teleplace is one of the best 3D applications for telework, online meetings, group collaboration, and e-learning in a virtual 3D environment (v-learning). Those who already have Teleplace accounts for teleXLR8 can just ahow up at the talk. There are a limited number of seats available for others, please contact me if you wish to attend.
A Cosmist Manifesto: Practical Philosophy for the Posthuman Age, by Ben Goertzel, has been published by Humanity+ Press and is available on Amazon. See the review “A Cosmist Manifesto, an Advocacy“ on H+ Magazine. See also the online version of the Cosmist Manifesto. In the picture above, Ben Goertzel (first from left) in a Teleplace meeting.
The term Cosmism was introduced by Tsiolokovsky and other Russian Cosmists around 1900. Goertzel’s “Cosmist Manifesto” gives it new life and a new twist for the 21st century. Cosmism, as Goertzel presents it, is a practical philosophy for the posthuman era. Rooted in Western and Eastern philosophy as well as modern technology and science, it is a way of understanding ourselves and our universe that makes sense now, and will keep on making sense as advanced technology exerts its transformative impact as the future unfolds. Among the many topics considered are AI, nanotechnology, uploading, immortality, psychedelics, meditation, future social structures, psi phenomena, alien and cetacean intelligence and the Singularity. The Cosmist perspective is shown to make plain old common sense of even the wildest future possibilities.
Ben Goertzel, Chair of Humanity+, is founder and CEO of two computer science firms Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC, and of the non-profit AGIRI (Artificial General Intelligence Research Institute). He has served as a university faculty in several departments of mathematics, computer science and cognitive science, in the US, Australia and New Zealand. He is author of two books focused on the future of technology and society Creating Internet Intelligence (Plenum, 2001) and The Path to Posthumanity (Academica, 2006). He serves as Director of Research for the Singularity Institute for AI.
Teleplace is one of the best 3D applications for telework, online meetings, group collaboration, and e-learning in a virtual 3D environment (v-learning). Those who already have Teleplace accounts for teleXLR8 can just ahow up at the talk. There are a limited number of seats available for others, please contact me if you wish to attend.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Suzanne's talk in Teleplace slashdotted - Separating Hope From Hype In Quantum Computing
Suzanne Gildert's talk on Quantum Computing in Teleplace of September 4 has been covered by Slashdot Hardware Story | Separating Hope From Hype In Quantum Computing.
Of course the "Slashdot effect" (via Next Big Future | Quantum Computing: Separating Hope from Hype) has caused a massive surge of visits to the article on the teleXLR8 website and especially the teleXLR8 video channel on blip.tv (several thousands of video views in a few hours).
As it is usually the case, the comments on Slashdot are often off-topic and sometimes rude (there are some very interesting comments though). But I think a popular site like Slashdot is very useful to bring science closer to the citizens (this is not a "hardware story" but a fascinating and accessible scientific lecture), and I am happy that many people have had the opportunity to watch the talk on video.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Suzanne Gildert on Quantum Computing in Teleplace, September 4
Suzanne Gildert gave a talk in Teleplace on “Building large-scale quantum computers: Fundamentals, technology and applications” on September 4, 2010. See also Suzanne’s own post on “Online seminar on Quantum Computing“, where she has renamed the talk “Quantum Computing: Separating Hope from Hype“, abstract: “The talk will explain why quantum computers are useful, and also dispel some of the myths about what they can and cannot do. It will address some of the practical ways in which we can build quantum computers and give realistic timescales for how far away commercially useful systems might be.“ See this page with the full video of the talk, Q/A and discussion.
This has been a great talk on a very interesting subject area by an excellent speaker who makes things clear and as simple as they can be made. Thanks Suzanne for the great talk and thanks to the (about 30) participants who contributed to the discussion with very interesting questions and comments. For those who could not attend we have recorded everything (talk, Q/A and discussion) on video.
NOTES: We just uploaded all raw video files recorded with the video recording feature built in Teleplace, it takes much less work than video editing. To download the source .mp4 video files from blip.tv, open the “Files and Links” box.
Don’t mind the initial 2-3 minutes of audio noise caused by participants who had started playing recorded video files in Teleplace. Their state vectors have been collapsed to a harmless ground state by using a (patent pending) doomsday quantum processing device developed by the participant known as "Machine Overlord", a virtual version of which has been coded for Teleplace by the participant known as "Chris".
See also the News and discussion forum on KurzweilAI.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
REMINDER – Suzanne Gildert on Building large-scale quantum computers, Teleplace, September 4, 10am PST
UPDATED: VIDEO of Suzanne’s talk
Suzanne Gildert will give a talk in Teleplace on “Building large-scale quantum computers: Fundamentals, technology and applications” on September 4, 2010, at 10am PST (1pm EST, 6pm UK, 7pm CET). Those who already have Teleplace accounts for teleXLR8 can just ahow up at the talk. There are a limited number of seats available for others, please contact me if you wish to attend.
Suzanne is an excellent speaker and I am sure she will give a great talk. As she says in the abstract below, quantum computing is often over-dramatized by the popular press, and I look forward to hearing Suzanne’s explanations on how quantum computers work, how to build them, what they can do, what they cannot do, what they cannot do yet, and when. Suzanne’s blog “Physics and cake” is one of the best online references on quantum computing (and other imaginative technologies), at times highly technical but more often understandable and even entertaining. Suzanne’s company, D-Wave Systems, Inc. (see also the D-Wave blog), is pioneering the development of a new class of high-performance computing system designed to solve complex search and optimization problems, with an initial emphasis on synthetic intelligence and machine learning applications, by using a computational model known as adiabatic quantum computing (AQC).
In the picture above, Suzanne at the recent ASIM 2010 Conference, Advancing Substrate-Independent Minds, satellite to the Singularity Summit 2010, San Francisco, August 16-17th. Suzanne’s has been one of the most active participants in the ASIM 2010 Conference, and she has a nice writeup on “ASIM-2010 – not quite Singularity but close“. The picture, taken in the virtual conference room in Teleplace and with another view of the same virtual conference room in the background, is a nice reality cascade appropriate to the spooky image of quantum computing.
Suzanne Gildert will give a talk in Teleplace on “Building large-scale quantum computers: Fundamentals, technology and applications” on September 4, 2010, at 10am PST (1pm EST, 6pm UK, 7pm CET). Those who already have Teleplace accounts for teleXLR8 can just ahow up at the talk. There are a limited number of seats available for others, please contact me if you wish to attend.
Suzanne is an excellent speaker and I am sure she will give a great talk. As she says in the abstract below, quantum computing is often over-dramatized by the popular press, and I look forward to hearing Suzanne’s explanations on how quantum computers work, how to build them, what they can do, what they cannot do, what they cannot do yet, and when. Suzanne’s blog “Physics and cake” is one of the best online references on quantum computing (and other imaginative technologies), at times highly technical but more often understandable and even entertaining. Suzanne’s company, D-Wave Systems, Inc. (see also the D-Wave blog), is pioneering the development of a new class of high-performance computing system designed to solve complex search and optimization problems, with an initial emphasis on synthetic intelligence and machine learning applications, by using a computational model known as adiabatic quantum computing (AQC).
In the picture above, Suzanne at the recent ASIM 2010 Conference, Advancing Substrate-Independent Minds, satellite to the Singularity Summit 2010, San Francisco, August 16-17th. Suzanne’s has been one of the most active participants in the ASIM 2010 Conference, and she has a nice writeup on “ASIM-2010 – not quite Singularity but close“. The picture, taken in the virtual conference room in Teleplace and with another view of the same virtual conference room in the background, is a nice reality cascade appropriate to the spooky image of quantum computing.
- Suzanne's blog: Online seminar on Quantum Computing
- KurzweilAI News: Building large-scale quantum computers
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
ASIM 2010 Conference, Advancing Substrate-Independent Minds
About 30 persons attended the ASIM 2010 Conference, Advancing Substrate-Independent Minds, satellite to the Singularity Summit 2010, San Francisco, August 16-17th. Besides the participants in San Francisco, about 25 remote participants attended online in Teleplace. The two main organizers Randal A. Koene and Suzanne Gildert appear in the image above (right screen).
The interactive live streaming of the ASIM 2010 Conference has been covered by KurzweilAI News (TOP STORY of today): Advancing Substrate-Independent Minds conference to be streamed live. I think this has been a really excellent mixed-reality event (see below).
Previously the subject of the conference had been described by KurzweilAI as: "What might brains and minds look like in the future? It can be difficult to manage and organize ideas from many highly specialized fields of expertise that must necessarily converge to answer this intriguing question. Not only must one consider the areas of brain imaging, neuroscience, and cognitive psychology, but also artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, biotechnology, computational hardware architectures, and philosophy.
In the past, the transferal of minds into computer-based systems has been rather vaguely referred to as “uploading.” However, those hoping to advance this multidisciplinary field of research prefer to use the term Advancing Substrate Independent Minds (ASIM), to emphasize a more scientific, and less science-fiction approach to creating emulations of human brains in non-biological substrates. The term ASIM captures the fact that there are several ways in which hardware and software may be used to run algorithms that mimic the human brain, and that there are many different approaches that can be used to realize this end goal. On May 22, 2010, carboncopies was born in an effort to unite the disparate areas of research contributing to ASIM..."
Note: the term ASIM provides some plausible deniability to serious scientists, which is very useful. But I am not a serious scientist, and I think I will continue to use the good old term Mind Uploading. It is deliciously retro with a flavor of the wild, visionary, irresponsible and unPC transhumanism of the 90s. I am persuaded that future science and technology will permit achieving our wildest dreams, including mind uploading. In the meantime, the ASIM project will contribute to advancing step by step and developing enabling technologies.
The ASIM 2010 Conference featured 7 talks followed by lively discussions:
ASIM 2010 Conference, Advancing Substrate-Independent Minds, Day 1, with pictures and videos
Introduction to Advancing Substrate-Independent Minds, by Randal A. Koene
Computational complexity, by Suzanne Gildert
Advanced Tools – Synthetic biology, Nanotechnology, etc., by Mark Hamalainen
Preservation & large-scale high-resolution structural analysis, by Ken Hayworth (talk given via Teleplace)
ASIM 2010 Conference, Advancing Substrate-Independent Minds, Day 2, with pictures and videos
Fundamental Issues – Resolution & Scale, “Me” Programs, by Randal A. Koene
Actionable Approaches – ASIM Now, by Peter Passaro (talk given via Teleplace)
ASIM in Context – Ongoing Advances in neuroprosthetics, AGI, Cyber-augmentation, embodiment, VR, etc., by Monica Anderson
Remote participants in Teleplace were able to follow the talks via interactive video streaming, ask questions to the speakers, and contribute to the discussion. Two speakers (Peter Passaro on Day 2 and Ken Hayworth on Day 1) gave their talks via Teleplace. After attending both days of the conference remotely in Teleplace, I am very happy with the performance of the Teleplace system as a means to open up conferences to a global remote audience in “mixed reality”, with crisp video and audio (after properly setting up the microphones) and deep interactivity for all participants. I have participated in ASIM 2010 from the middle of nowhere in Central Europe, with a 3G phone link to the Internet and a very weak signal (in other words, my current Internet connection is VERY slow). Even with this poor connection, I have been able to participate in ASIM 2010 without any problem. There are, of course, special problems to deal with in mixed reality events. For example, in the first half of Day 2 remote participants could not hear well the on-site participants far from the microphone. In future events, we will use cordless microphones to give to on-site participants when they want to say something. In this case, the problem was solved by asking on-site participants to go to the microphone to comment and ask questions. Mixed reality via the professional and social collaboration platform Teleplace permits merging on-site and remote participants in one virtual group, and it is the best way to open up a conference to remote participants that I have seen. The 2-way video and audio link enables each participant, on-site or remote, to be seen and heard by all other participants, on-site or remote.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Remote access via Teleplace to the ASIM 2010 Conference, San Francisco, August 16-17
If you cannot be in San Francisco next Monday and Tuesday you can virtually attend in telepresence the Advancing Substrate-Independent Minds (ASIM-2010) conference, the satellite to the Singularity Summit arranged by carboncopies.org, focusing on the potential ways to realise substrate independent minds. The conference will take place on the 16th and 17th of August, in the evenings (after the Singularity Summit workshop sessions) at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in downtown San Francisco.
Those who already have a Teleplace account for teleXLR8 can just show up at the conference, others who wish to attend should contact the organizers. Note for European participants: the time is PST - the conference starts at 4am (in the middle of the night) continental EU time, 3am UK, on August 17 and 18 (the night between Mon and Tue for the first session, the night between Tue and Wed for the second session). Note for new participants: please read our Practical Teleplace Help page for new users.
This ASIM conference is the first of its kind, with previous workshops being held online. We are hoping that the enthusiasm for the topics and the discussion sessions displayed during these online events will carry over to the real life workshop. The conference has a practical, action-oriented structure that is aimed at inciting discussion rather than dissemination of points of view. Topics on day one (August 16th) and day two (August 17th) are divided into distinct categories: Day 1 - Practical and Immediately Actionable Directions. Day 2 - Fundamental and Long-term Considerations.
Several participants and speakers will be joining us remotely via Teleplace software, an increasingly useful virtual conferencing tool. The conference will also be webcast live using the same software. If any attendees have friends or colleagues who are unable to attend the real-life conference but would like to join us remotely, please contact us for information on how to set up a Teleplace account.
This formula permits full 2-way interaction between two groups of participants, those physically present at the conference, and those attending in telepresence ("mixed reality"). Through a combination of 2-way video and audio feeds, each participant in either group will be able to see and hear participants in the other group. In particular, speakers and participants attending via Teleplace will be able to give presentations, ask questions to other speakers, and participate in the discussions.
See Carboncopies–Realistic Routes to Substrate-Independent Minds on KurzweilAI: Advancing Substrate-Independent Minds 2010 (ASIM-2010) to be held after Singularity Summit. In addition to the virtual events, carboncopies is holding an official launching conference in real life: Advancing Substrate-Independent Minds (ASIM-2010) will take place at the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco on August 16 & 17, 2010, immediately after the Singularity Summit. A virtual link will also be provided for those who wish to attend remotely. Please join us in person, or through virtual presence in Teleplace on August 16 and 17, 2010, for an action-oriented event aimed at advancing substrate-independent minds. Contact us to find out more about each option. Regarding the ASIM-2010 conference, all are welcome and there is no registration fee -- although donations to offset our expenses are greatly appreciated. Please RSVP the organizers to secure your seat.
Friday, July 30, 2010
teleXLR8: ASIM 2010, Suzanne Gildert on Quantum Computing, Ben Goertzel on the Cosmist Manifesto
Next events in teleXLR8, a telepresence community for cultural acceleration:
Ben Goertzel will give a talk in Teleplace on his recent book “A Cosmist Manifesto: Practical Philosophy for the Posthuman Age” on September 12, 2010, at 10am PST (1pm EST, 6pm UK, 7pm CET).
Suzanne Gildert will give a talk in Teleplace on “Building large-scale quantum computers: Fundamentals, technology and applications” on September 4, 2010, at 10am PST (1pm EST, 6pm UK, 7pm CET).
We will (probably) be able to provide remote access via Teleplace to the ASIM 2010 Conference, San Francisco, August 16-17.
Teleplace is one of the best 3D applications for telework, online meetings, group collaboration, and e-learning in a virtual 3D environment (v-learning). Those who already have Teleplace accounts for teleXLR8 can just ahow up at the talks. There are a limited number of seats available for others, please contact me if you wish to attend.
Ben Goertzel will give a talk in Teleplace on his recent book “A Cosmist Manifesto: Practical Philosophy for the Posthuman Age” on September 12, 2010, at 10am PST (1pm EST, 6pm UK, 7pm CET).
Suzanne Gildert will give a talk in Teleplace on “Building large-scale quantum computers: Fundamentals, technology and applications” on September 4, 2010, at 10am PST (1pm EST, 6pm UK, 7pm CET).
We will (probably) be able to provide remote access via Teleplace to the ASIM 2010 Conference, San Francisco, August 16-17.
Teleplace is one of the best 3D applications for telework, online meetings, group collaboration, and e-learning in a virtual 3D environment (v-learning). Those who already have Teleplace accounts for teleXLR8 can just ahow up at the talks. There are a limited number of seats available for others, please contact me if you wish to attend.
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