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.

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."

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

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.

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.

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.

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/