78,598 research outputs found
Past Visions of Artificial Futures: One Hundred and Fifty Years under the Spectre of Evolving Machines
The influence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Artificial Life (ALife)
technologies upon society, and their potential to fundamentally shape the
future evolution of humankind, are topics very much at the forefront of current
scientific, governmental and public debate. While these might seem like very
modern concerns, they have a long history that is often disregarded in
contemporary discourse. Insofar as current debates do acknowledge the history
of these ideas, they rarely look back further than the origin of the modern
digital computer age in the 1940s-50s. In this paper we explore the earlier
history of these concepts. We focus in particular on the idea of
self-reproducing and evolving machines, and potential implications for our own
species. We show that discussion of these topics arose in the 1860s, within a
decade of the publication of Darwin's The Origin of Species, and attracted
increasing interest from scientists, novelists and the general public in the
early 1900s. After introducing the relevant work from this period, we
categorise the various visions presented by these authors of the future
implications of evolving machines for humanity. We suggest that current debates
on the co-evolution of society and technology can be enriched by a proper
appreciation of the long history of the ideas involved.Comment: To appear in Proceedings of the Artificial Life Conference 2018
(ALIFE 2018), MIT Pres
What is the human being, and what is our place in the Cosmos? Max Scheler's The Human Place in the Cosmos as a response to transhumanism, the technological singularity, and post-biological evolution.
n a 1926 essay entitled, ‘Mensch und Geschichte’ (‘Man and History’), German philosopher
Max Scheler (1874-1928) argued that the preeminent and most pressing philosophical task of
his era was the issue of Philosophical Anthropology, i.e., the problem of the human being.
This doctoral thesis aims to show that this issue is a concern that is as relevant now as it was
when Scheler was writing. The problematic character of human experience is thus explored
in light of the recent and ongoing developments of late-modern technology. Developments
that promise a solution to a multitude of human problems – the age-old issue of our
biological finitude being paramount amongst them. Such sentiments find their purest
contemporary expression within the philosophy of transhumanism and the associated
narratives of human enhancement, post-biological evolution, and the concept of the
Technological Singularity.
The question of human nature is a perennial issue; human reflection on the human
condition is a defining feature of our lived experience. Themes of post-humanity and post-
biology have long been explored within the realm of science fiction, now they have become
the practical concern of engineers and technologists, Hence, science fiction now deigns to
intrude into the realm of science fact. In our time, the idea of post-biological evolution, the
design paradigm of NBIC-convergence, and transhumanism – as a philosophy and a cultural
movement – all confront and confound traditional notions of human nature. But unlike
previous challenges to accepted and established images of the human being, this re-
assessment of human nature has a practical aspect – for technology now seems poised to
finally achieve the age-old aspiration of human control over human nature.
Since there is no single and uncontested definition of the human being, let alone
consensus on how to define the post-human, first and foremost we have a question of
Philosophical Anthropology: What is the human being and what is our place in the cosmos?
As such, Scheler’s Philosophical Anthropology serves as a response to the philosophical
challenge of transhumanism and post-biological evolution
Constructing Futures: Outlining a Transhumanist Vision of the Future and the Challenge to Christian Theology of its Proposed Uses of New and Future Developments in Technology
Transhumanists arc committed to re-evaluating the entire human condition and offering proposalsfor transcending mortality, principally by augmenting the human body with mechanical components or by transferring the human mind into intelligent hyper-computers. In this essay, the author\'s methodology is to critique the culture oftranshumanism, arguing, with Barbour, that all technology is tool whose use is determined by the cultural and socialframeworks within which it is utilized. Transhumanism is characterized as morally ambiguous, extremely individualistic, fixated upon health, vitality, and power, ideological, reductionist, and self-deluded. Its proposed use of technology is, thus, highly suspect and deserves a robust theological response
The future of human nature: a symposium on the promises and challenges of the revolutions in genomics and computer science, April 10, 11, and 12, 2003
This repository item contains a single issue of the Pardee Conference Series, a publication series that began publishing in 2006 by the Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. This was the Center's Symposium on the Promises and Challenges of the Revolutions in Genomics and Computer Science took place during April 10, 11, and 12, 2003. Co-organized by Charles DeLisi and Kenneth Lewes; sponsored by Boston University, the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future.This conference focused on scientific and technological advances in genetics, computer science, and their convergence during the next 35 to 250 years. In particular, it focused on directed evolution, the futures it allows, the shape of society in those futures, and the robustness of human nature against technological change at the level of individuals, groups, and societies. It is taken as a premise that biotechnology and computer science will mature and will reinforce one another. During the period of interest, human cloning, germ-line genetic engineering, and an array of reproductive technologies will become feasible and safe. Early in this period, we can reasonably expect the processing power of a laptop computer to exceed the collective processing power of every human brain on the planet; later in the period human/machine interfaces will begin to emerge. Whether such technologies will take hold is not known. But if they do, human evolution is likely to proceed at a greatly accelerated rate; human nature as we know it may change markedly, if it does not disappear altogether, and new intelligent species may well be created
Knowledge politics and new converging technologies: a social epistemological perspective
The “new converging technologies” refers to the prospect of advancing the human condition by the integrated study and application of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and the cognitive sciences - or “NBIC”. In recent years, it has loomed large, albeit with somewhat different emphases, in national science policy agendas throughout the world. This article considers the political and intellectual sources - both historical and contemporary - of the converging technologies agenda. Underlying it is a fluid conception of humanity that is captured by the ethically challenging notion of “enhancing evolution”
Re-writing the Bhabhian “Mimic Man”: Akin, the Posthuman Other in Octavia Butler’s Adulthood Rites
Cultural critics have sought to define the term posthuman1 as primarily a condition that does away with hierarchical forms of power and control. It recognizes a transformation of the human species into a subject position that moves from an oppositional politics of segregating the human “self” from the “other” to one of acknowledging the “other” as part of the human “self.” 2 With the advent of the posthuman condition comes the need to re-define human rights in a posthuman context. Octavia Butler’s science fiction novel Adulthood Rites3 introduces us to Oankali, gene-trading aliens who travel through space. They intercept and save the human species that is dying in a world ravaged by nuclear war. The Oankali mission of salvation has a hidden agenda,4 though: whoever opts to be saved needs to forgo the right to reproduce. Reproduction, in this new world where human beings are a salvaged species and not the predominant one, is on the terms laid out by the Oankali aliens. The terms of Oankali reproduction that start off with genetic modifications of the human Lilith, the Oankali nominated progenitor of the posthuman in Dawn, enforces the birth of a hybrid—a human-alien construct, Akin, who is related to both humans and aliens, the posthuman other. Built on a “postcolonial” definition of a “mimic man,”5 a product of what Bart Simon and Jill Didur call “critical posthumanism,”6 who sees the other in the self, Akin modulates and modifies his sense of agency and choice as he contends with complex political and ethical issues. Deployed as an Oankali informer among humans, Akin ultimately emerges as the savior, a spokesperson for the human species who adroitly balances contradictory roles in a culture seemingly “colonial” in its intent
Spartan Daily, February 12, 2009
Volume 132, Issue 11https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/10548/thumbnail.jp
Ambiguous Bodies, Biopower and the Ideologies of Science Fiction
Contemporary Hollywood film narrates the fear of monstrous science; attending to the
modulations of medicine, capital and the body. The filmic body is employed to illustrate the
power of the new biotechnologies to create and sustain life and the new sets of social relations
which are a consequence of the marriage of capital and medicine. In the Hollywood film,
persons who do not fit the ideal healthy persona have a moral duty to pursue repair and
transformation. Constructed as inherently lacking, the unhealthy body becomes a repository
for social anxieties about control and vulnerability, vis-à-vis the enormous and exponentially
expanding science and technology fields. Hierarchies of embodiment are played out on the Big
Screen as imperfect bodies are excluded from public life, power and status and urged to strive
for “optimization”. Late modern societies present the possibility of new technologies which
have the potential to radicalize bodies. However, these potential modulations are ultimately
derived from a set of ideologies around the body and the power of the individual to enact an
individualized solution. Contemporary narratives circulate around ownership of capital and
the price of “repair.” This marriage of science and capital in popular narratives may be
indicative of concerns for our future, as the power to make and repair life seems to rest
increasingly in the hands of an elite
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