Transhumanism forum in NYC
June 28, 2009
On a tip from Accelerating Future, I attended “Transhumanism Past, Present and Future” on June 25th, presented by the New York Transhumanist Association at the McNally Jackson bookstore in Manhattan, and thought I might try to summarize what was presented there.
The first of the three speakers was Clark Matthews, author of a column entitled “Technology & Liberty”. He is currently working on a book on “old futures”, or the future as it was envisioned in the past. Matthews spoke on “Transhumanism and Behavior Control”. The essential message of the talk, as I understood it, was that advances in psychology and brain science often have been seen as opportunities for enforcing social control. He discussed Jose Delgado’s development of and experiments with deep brain implants in the 1960s, and the mathematician and Marxist historian of science Samuel Lilley’s vision of establishing a tranquil, ordered society.
Matthews ended by saying that he expects governments and large organizations over the coming decades will throw up roadblocks to scientific progress and social innovation sufficient to push back considerably the date of any technological singularity that might otherwise occur.
The artist Shane Hope then presented slides of some works from his gallery showing entitled “Your Mom Is Open Source”, which opened the following day. His work addresses transhumanist hopes and concerns, such as the merging and forking of selves, in a compelling visual style full of detail and chaos. He also employs a number of neologisms such as “disasterbatory” — an interview covering some of these can be found here. Hope’s presentation at McNally Jackson led me to attend the opening, where I studied a few of the countless details in the 4-foot-square prints.
The final presenter was the writer Stuart Dambrot, who is working on a book on “the age of conflation”. His talk covered considerable ground and was necessarily speculative, in keeping with his responsibility for the “Future” segment of the forum. He projected the following sequence of developments leading to a radically changed world:
I. “R&D Convergence” — a continuation of the linking and merging of disparate fields of science and engineering we see now
II. “Recursive Emergent Complexity” — formerly separate disciplines jump to higher levels of explanatory power once merged
III. “Recombinant Technologenesis” — made possible by: 1. Strong AI; 2. Nonlocalization (quantum communications will drastically reduce constraints of distance); 3. Biorecalibration (not only life extension, but optimization and cloning); 4. Synthetic Biology; 5. Thermionic Conversion (the capture of waste heat as usable power); 6. Programmable Matter; 7. Molecular Assemblers (possibly mimicking evolutionary processes)
IV. “Singularity Genesis” — the combination of all the preceding leads to an unknowable future
Although he mentioned Vernor Vinge, Dambrot does not follow him in the use of the term “singularity” in this context to mean the point (hypothetical until it is imminent) at which a mind more powerful than any human’s starts to make discoveries and decisions that our “natural” — or as I might have it, “unimproved” — minds are not qualified to predict. He opts for the version in which change builds on change and compounds at such a frenetic rate that the mental and physical world will be noticeably transformed over ever-shorter periods.
Dambrot touched on some possible consequences of gaining control over mind and matter, such as the branching of human forms, “exocortical entanglement”, multiple instances of selves, the “uplift” of previously unintelligent organisms, the infiltration of AI into inorganic substrates, the merging into the physical world of virtual worlds, and utility fog. He suggested that in a post-scarcity world, money might be replaced by such abstract currencies as “reputation, inventiveness, equanimity and enablement”.
(My own view is that the human species may progress enough to agree upon a more enlightened use of limited resources well before molecular manufacturing effectively removes those limits.)
All in all, an interesting evening.
I attended this event as well. I was the guy that asked if the future needed us. Yup thats me.. Great summary of the event, I thought the event was decent. My only complaint is that a great deal of the talk was grounded in post singularity the point where our minds would not even be able to grasp.
My best guess about your question is that people who choose to abstain from incorporating any given alteration that becomes available will find their wishes respected. Since our presently modest gift of wisdom leads us to respect the lives and habitats of plants and amphibians, it seems likely that any form of thought extrapolated from ours would easily pass the lesser test of respecting human cultures.
On the sharing of political power, land and resources between humans and transhumans, there are probably too many factors to guess with much confidence. But I would be surprised if it falls out in a way that leaves unchanged people highly dissatisfied.
This is assuming AIs are held to no more than advisory roles. Much harder to say what a world run by AIs would look like, which certainly feeds into your complaint that there is not much point trying to look through a brick wall.
[...] here to see Shawn Thuris’ summary of the recent NYC Transhumanist Forum that I mentioned. [...]