How to build a biological machine using engineering materials and methods

We present work in 3D printing electric motors from basic materials as the key to building a self-replicating machine to colonise the Moon. First, we explore the nature of the biological realm to ascertain its essence, particularly in relation to the origin of life when the inanimate became animate. We take an expansive view of this to ascertain parallels between the biological and the manufactured worlds. Life must have emerged from the available raw material on Earth and, similarly, a self-replicating machine must exploit and leverage the available resources on the Moon. We then examine these lessons to explore the construction of a self-replicating machine using a universal constructor. It is through the universal constructor that the actuator emerges as critical. We propose that 3D printing constitutes an analogue of the biological ribosome and that 3D printing may constitute a universal construction mechanism. Following a description of our progress in 3D printing motors, we suggest that this engineering effort can inform biology, that motors are a key facet of living organisms and illustrate the importance of motors in biology viewed from the perspective of engineering (in the Feynman spirit of "what I cannot create, I cannot understand")

Life Expansion: Toward an Artistic, Design-Based Theory of the Transhuman / Posthuman

The thesis’ study of life expansion proposes a framework for artistic, design-based approaches concerned with prolonging human life and sustaining personal identity. To delineate the topic: life expansion means increasing the length of time a person is alive and diversifying the matter in which a person exists. For human life, the length of time is bounded by a single century and its matter is tied to biology. Life expansion is located in the domain of human enhancement, distinctly linked to technological interfaces with biology. The thesis identifies human-computer interaction and the potential of emerging and speculative technologies as seeding the promulgation of human enhancement that approach life expansion. In doing so, the thesis constructs an inquiry into historical and current attempts to append human physiology and intervene with its mortality. By encountering emerging and speculative technologies for prolonging life and sustaining personal identity as possible media for artistic, design-based approaches to human enhancement, a new axis is sought that identifies the transhuman and posthuman as conceptual paradigms for life expansion. The thesis asks: What are the required conditions that enable artistic, design-based approaches to human enhancement that explicitly pursue extending human life? This question centers on the potential of the study’s proposed enhancement technologies in their relationship to life, death, and the human condition. Notably, the thesis investigates artistic approaches, as distinct from those of the natural sciences, and the borders that need to be mediated between them. The study navigates between the domains of life extension, art and design, technology, and philosophy in forming the framework for a theory of life expansion. The critical approach seeks to uncover invisible borders between these interconnecting forces by bringing to light issues of sustaining life and personal identity, ethical concerns, including morphological freedom and extinction risk. Such issues relate to the thesis’ interest in life expansion and the use emerging and speculative technologies. 4 The study takes on a triad approach in its investigation: qualitative interviews with experts of the emerging and speculative technologies; field studies encountering research centers of such technologies; and an artistic, autopoietic process that explores the heuristics of life expansion. This investigation forms an integrative view of the human use of technology and its melioristic aim. The outcome of the research is a theoretical framework for further research in artistic approaches to life expansion

The Nexus between Artificial Intelligence and Economics

This book is organized as follows. Section 2 introduces the notion of the Singularity, a stage in development in which technological progress and economic growth increase at a near-infinite rate. Section 3 describes what artificial intelligence is and how it has been applied. Section 4 considers artificial happiness and the likelihood that artificial intelligence might increase human happiness. Section 5 discusses some prominent related concepts and issues. Section 6 describes the use of artificial agents in economic modeling, and section 7 considers some ways in which economic analysis can offer some hints about what the advent of artificial intelligence might bring. Chapter 8 presents some thoughts about the current state of AI and its future prospects.

Cyber-Human Systems, Space Technologies, and Threats

CYBER-HUMAN SYSTEMS, SPACE TECHNOLOGIES, AND THREATS is our eighth textbook in a series covering the world of UASs / CUAS/ UUVs / SPACE. Other textbooks in our series are Space Systems Emerging Technologies and Operations; Drone Delivery of CBNRECy – DEW Weapons: Emerging Threats of Mini-Weapons of Mass Destruction and Disruption (WMDD); Disruptive Technologies with applications in Airline, Marine, Defense Industries; Unmanned Vehicle Systems & Operations On Air, Sea, Land; Counter Unmanned Aircraft Systems Technologies and Operations; Unmanned Aircraft Systems in the Cyber Domain: Protecting USA’s Advanced Air Assets, 2nd edition; and Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) in the Cyber Domain Protecting USA’s Advanced Air Assets, 1st edition. Our previous seven titles have received considerable global recognition in the field. (Nichols & Carter, 2022) (Nichols, et al., 2021) (Nichols R. K., et al., 2020) (Nichols R. , et al., 2020) (Nichols R. , et al., 2019) (Nichols R. K., 2018) (Nichols R. K., et al., 2022)https://newprairiepress.org/ebooks/1052/thumbnail.jp