Comments on: A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Post-Humanity

By: Miles

Miles — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 02:48:43 +0000

I also doubt that genetic engineering will ever allow us to evolve telepathy. But neuroscience advances already allow us to interface with computers via brain implants just by thinking. Commencing wild predictions based on flimsy evidence: as this technology becomes more accurate, easier to handle, and wireless, we may use it to access the internet and watch video feeds with our mind’s eye and control motors (i.e. to move stuff around by thinking). That might legitimately be called telepathy.

It might even redefine “you.” If you regularly move things around your house and use video cameras to see, all without moving so much as an eye-muscle, then the law might come to view possessions as part of one’s person. Or the law may limit “you” to your brain. Attacks on one’s body might be relegated to property offenses if medical science makes any organs replaceable.

Before we are able to digitize the brain and turn ourselves into software, the intermediate step of wireless internet access by thought sounds promising. Think of the possibilities! Virtual reality & video games would definitely feel a lot more real if you could do all the data processing on a server over the internet.

By: BRT

BRT — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 15:29:50 +0000

While science fiction is at its heart fiction, it is a way for humanity to dream… and when humanity dreams, it looks for ways to achieve those dreams. In some cases, we do not succeed… in other cases we do… but we should never stop dreaming. The moment that humanity stops dreaming, and stops exploring, is the moment that humanity is truly doomed (IMO).

We should treat technology as what it is: tools. Tools are not good or evil, they just are. It is what we do with those tools that is important.

By: Noggin Raisers Vol.9 « N e u r o n a r r a t i v e

Noggin Raisers Vol.9 « N e u r o n a r r a t i v e — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 15:37:49 +0000

[...] us on a joy ride to post-humanity, Science Not Fiction chats here about the graphic novel Transhuman, that’s more than just a thick comic [...]

By: Michael Smith

Michael Smith — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 17:18:27 +0000

Great discussion about a wonderful book that if nothing else makes you think “what if” and “could that really happen”. If you read the book, which everyone should because it is so good, there are several things that are not huge leaps and bounds from where we are now to where we could be.

Tell my grandpa when he is 7 years old that we would put a man in space and he would have said NO WAY.

Everyone should check out Transhuman

By: TaErog

TaErog — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 21:12:20 +0000

Beware of conformation bias! Science Fiction is not reality! and has a greater chance not to be correct then to come true. But we key in on the Hits anyway rather then all of the misses because it is more exciting.
Just like dealing with a Fortune Teller, a wildly general hit is no really hit at all. For example Science Fiction “gave us space flight” but a majority of scifi gives us space flight that is horribly wrong in most every way, and freely flaunt it. are these hits because of the simple fact they ARE in space? A rather wide criteria.
I tend to agree with earsz “science fiction, at its best, asks ?what if,? and then extrapolates possible (or perhaps probable) futures on the basis of the answers _ all while telling intriguing and engaging stories”
NONE of it HAS to become reality! for it is simply a story of “what if”, some of it may, most of it will not . . The “what if”s of the possibilities and the story are driving force of scifi, not some ?real? future prediction. . Though these may help us think differently, expand and may be eventually attain some new tech cited in some fiction or possibly something completely different.
Look back in history . . . did anyone predict accurately the changes made by The wheel, Clocks, electricity, Cars, flight, computers, the Internet, etc (and the 1000s of other advance?)
Does H.G Wells’s wonderful hit with the Submarine mean a time machine is even possible? Does anything what so ever in star wars can or have any basis in our reality (apart from very very general terms)? No? Science Fiction is one of my favored types of literature . . but it is fiction and no Crystal ball of the future . . but it may . .just may give us shadows and glimpses of what if . . but Reality is stranger still. .

By: Dr. Lightning

Dr. Lightning — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 19:35:32 +0000

re. CincyJeff’s list of visionaries:
Yes to daVinci, Tesla, Orwell, . . . but Bill Gates?!?!
You place him there because he happened to be the guy that IBM gave the Keys of the Kingdom to, and didn’t realize that hey had done so until ten years later? Gates BOUGHT the original, awful operating system know as DOS from a poor duped programmer who was more than happy to accept the $50,000 that Paul Allen offered to him. That is the ONLY reason that we have ever heard of a company called Microsoft. Incidentally, the guy Gates ripped off called it QDOS, which stood for Quick & Dirty Operating System. He knew what a POS it was. Visionary? When the Internet first came out, Gates didn’t think that it had any future. He vetoed the creation of a Microsoft browser until after Netscape had garnered 90% of the early market. If you want to put Gates in your list, then I guess you’d have to include Mark Cuban, Larry Ellison, and Michael Dell. After all, they became rich from being in on the ground floor of the computer industry boom too. Visionaries? Good business people, yeah; but visionaries? No way.

By: ddd

ddd — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 08:01:22 +0000

everyday scifi becomes part of the mainstream. indeed some, if not many, science fiction writers are more visionary than we often realize. not so long ago the idea of ionization to propel spacecraft through space was considered science fiction. yet today we use electronic rockets to fuel several satellites. indeed i am often pleased when mainstream science catches up to the inspiration of the fringe. as einstein remarked, “imagination is more important than knowledge.” using protons to treat disease not too long ago would have seemed like science fiction. nonlethal weaponary is another example. it is likely transhumanism and hybrid technologies will mainstream to increase the longevity and quality of life. my only reservation is the currently most vocal proponents seem to turn it into a quasireligion and philosophy. life extension is not eternal life so there is really little need to be so fanatical about it. i support human enhancement for the betterment of humanity and to increase the chance of survival of a viable civilization. resistance is futile!

By: earsz

earsz — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 02:55:13 +0000

It seems to me that science fiction, at its best, asks “what if,” and then extrapolates possible (or perhaps probable) futures on the basis of the answers _ all while telling intriguing and engaging stories. Within such contexts, authors may expose and explore our current foibles as well. That has always seemed to me to be quite a useful package, to gain insight with one’s entertainment. At the risk of being discourteous by mentioning one blog within another, one has but to drop by the Technovelgy site periodically to get an idea as to sci-fi’s often succesful foresight.

By: CincyJeff

CincyJeff — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 20:31:40 +0000

Perhaps David, (sci-fi and futurists are fantasy and bunk), should consider visionaries Leonardo da Vinci, Jules Verne, Nikola Tesla, H.G Wells, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Arthur C. Clarke, Bill Gates, William Gibson, Ray Kurzweil, Michio Kaku, etc. Although we may prove too socially primitive to survive our snowballing technologies, we’ve had a decent run, species-wise. And should we manage to dodge the bullet by evolving psychologically, which could also be aided by science, only our imaginations will set the limits.

By: JM Ringuet

JM Ringuet — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 17:20:53 +0000

Thank you very much for the nice review. We tried to talk about the future of humanity with tongues firmly planted in our cheeks and we also showed through satire how this future could be in the hands of a few companies – and the people that run them. It’s a very interesting read I think in this times of corporate greed and the desire of becoming better human beings.

And the book is very easy to order from Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Transhuman-Jonathan-Hickman/dp/1582409226

Since we own all the rights on the book every sale goes to supporting our creation and our future projects.