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My interview on The Future and You podcast

I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Stephen Euin Cobb for his award-winning podcast The Future And You. Stephen is a U.S. science fiction author, futurist, a columnist and contributing editor for Jim Baen’s Universe Magazine, the online magazine from Baen Books. Within Second Life his avatar’s name is “Boc Cryotank.” Stephen is also a game designer, artist, essayist and transhumanist. In each episode of The Future And You Stephen interviews a variety of authors, scientists, celebrities and “pioneers of the future” as to what they believe both the near future and distant future will be like for individuals as well as for humanity in general.

My interview focused on Second Life, Virtual Reality technology and business, possible mid and long term evolutions of VR, Artificial Intelligence and other technologies, our work at metafuturing, transhumanism, the WTA, the IEET, and various thoughts about the future (and the present). Stephen’s thoughts on “schisms” in virtual and physical realities (at the beginning) are quite similar to my own.

Listen to the mp3 podcast (it is also archived on the metaXLR8 server).

Here is the text of Stephen’s blog post on the show website. See also the post on the Extropia Core blog - Extropia Core is the main meeting place for transhumanists in Second Life. Not much to add to my profile (too bad that I do not find enough time for some of the projects he mentions, such as the (almost) late lamented Fastra and FutureTAG). See my articles More voices from Second Life and Life 2.0 and Life 2.0: augmentationists in Second Life and beyond for more thoughts on the tension between immersionists and augmentationists within her virtual world.

Giulio Prisco (futurist, scientist, corporate consultant and until recently the Executive Director of the World Transhumanist Association) is today’s featured guest. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies and on the Global Task Force on Implications and Policy for CRN, the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology.

Argent Bury (a digital person living exclusively within Second Life) provides an essay concerning the tension between immersionists and augmentationists within her virtual world.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the February 20, 2008 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 79 minutes]

Giulio Prisco also covers the prejudice and intolerance between immersionists and augmentationists, and mentions that the day before the interview, Cervantes University held its very first college class within Second Life, and discusses many aspects of the future of virtual realities.

A virtual reality expert and consultant for companies wishing to use and benefit from many different VR platforms, Giulio describes what’s available now, and what will be available in the decades to come. From the current photorealistic graphics, to the total immersion through full sensory feedback directly wired into the human nervous system.

He describes various VR platforms including Second Life and its competitors, as well as the possibility that all the platforms will become linked together into a unified whole, just as the internet was once many separate little nets that could not share content.

Giulio Prisco is also the Director of the futurist consulting consortium called FutureTag, as well as founder and CEO of Metafuturing (a company specializing in Science and Technology Consulting, Internet Services and Virtual Reality). Based in Madrid, Spain, he founded the Spanish transhumanist group FASTRA. He is a former physicist and computer scientist, as well as a former manager at ESA: the European Space Agency.

Posted by G.P. on 02/21 at 07:33 PM
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Happy Valentine with chocolate to everyone from a transhumanist numbskull

I have given and received Valentine presents like last year. Next year I will certainly give some and hopefully receive some. Yesterday I reacted to a post titled Valentine’s Nay by an author (guess) who felt the need to inform his readers that Valentine is all about “cheap crap squirted into a heart-shaped mould on an assembly line in the presence of who knows what human suffering”, concluded that “I wish the Left would shed this elitism”, and was immediately labeled by the author as a “numbskull who idiotically accused him of being over-intellectual and elitist”.

I might comment about the manners of this gentleman, but I don’t really care too much and often the best policy is just ignoring aggressive ~~jer~~ persons. I will comment on another issue: he is, of course, (over)reacting not to what I actually said, but to the fact that a transhumanist dares to read and comment to his blog. Or, in his words: “Tell all the down home “folks” how you plan to become an immortal sooperhuman by uploading your brain into a computer and how you think a Robot God will direct the nanobots one fine day to make you rich beyond the dreams of avarice… the Robot Cultist brain trust members who like to lurk around the edges of my blog because I talk about the politics of emerging technoscience here among other things”. Oops, I almost forgot the “completely batshit crazy techno-utopian crap talk of the flavor my kooky crowd peddles”.

The interesting thing is that my post had NOTHING to do with sooperhumans, uploading, nanobots and Robot Gods. I was just trying to tell him that perhaps not all chocolate makers use “cocoa beans harvested by child slave labor on the Ivory Coast”, and that over intellectualism and elitism from exponents of the Left “often results in the Right winning the elections with the results that we all know”. But the gentleman did not even consider what I had actually written, perhaps did not even read it, and immediately launched one of his frequent anti-transhumanist rants which was, as everyone can see, COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT to the subject under discussion.

I can only conclude that these people are so obsessively focused on their visceral hatred against transhumanists that they see everything filtered by an anti-transhumanist polarized lens and are not capable of having a rational discussion about anything else. If they are what passes for intellectuals these days, I am happy and proud of being a numbskull.

Posted by G.P. on 02/16 at 12:39 PM
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Five Points for European (and World?) Transhumanism

The transhumanist movement faced with “political” issues.

In response to a some concerns recently raised in the framework of Associazione Italiana Transumanisti’s mailing list with respect to the positions within the transhumanist movement on a number of important issues, I came up with five points that I believe should denote the “party line” of this organisation, and that I would like to share here with a broader public.

1) The struggle for access to technologies cannot be ignored in favour of some eschatological vision of eternal solutions to all conflicts. I am referring here to access to both future, possibile technologies and already existing technologies; both at a social and at an international level; and especially to technologies that are crucial to individual and collective survival and self-determination (in fact, transhumanists are among those most likely to struggle everywhere for their own access, as well as that of their biological and spiritual children and of their communties however defined, against prohibitionisms and monopolies of all sorts).

2) It is not reasonable to expect that it be generally accepted that the amount of currency units an individual or an entity is credited with in the databases of financial institutions is a universal and “divine” sign implying an exclusivity (or priority) right in the access to technologies, so that those not profiting from such advantage should peacefully surrender to their lot.

3) Fundamental research and its technological and educational infrastructure are essential for our future. More importantly, to the kind of future we would like to live in, and to the values we promote. Now, the investments required by fundamental research cannot be adequately sustained by the mere funds possibly devoted to it by business organisations. In fact, it is disputable that the market can sustain breakthrough-oriented, high-risk, long-term research at all, let alone research the returns of which appear to be radically unpredictable.

4) No compromises are really acceptable with regard to freedom of research and to the freedom of biological and reproductive self-determination, especially in view of ideas aimed at the globalisation of absolute and universal values of a more or less overtly metaphysical foundation.

5) Technological developments cannot, and above all should not, be taken for granted. Specific technological achievements can never be presumed to self-produce irrespective of the legal framework, societal investments, and dominant cultural values, and are rather to be considered as the goal of a deliberate, political will able to establish the pre-requisites for their flourishing. Even supposed virtous circles, positive feedbacks and recursive technologies require bootstrapping and the maintenance of a compatible environment along their entire life cycles. Discussions on what to do best with future technologies and and how to “regulate” them are fine, but often sound too much like the proverbial cavemen fighting over the spoils of a mammuth they have not taken down yet in the first place. A continuing acceleration in the pace of techno-scientific progress, or any flavour of Singularity, are certainly a legitimate hope and a distinct possibility, but in no way a guaranteed outcome, especially with regard to the issues which are the most relevant for actual people, namely the “when?” and the “where?”. To opine otherwise involves tranforming transhumanism in a tea club, gathering people just in order to applaud politely from the side what is supposed to take place anyway, or in the kind of cults where no action whatever is prescribed, faith and contemplation being all they are about. Worse, it risks to induce some transhumanists to concentrate on a debate with neoluddites on how best to “govern” what for the better and the worse both sides consider, with a naive extrapolation of trends actually jeopardised from many angles, as largely inevitable developments; and desist from any initiative aimed at actually conquering the destiny envisioned by its leading thinkers and precursors.

Posted by Stefano Vaj on 01/21 at 11:20 AM
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The danger of a completely unaccountable power elite - an existential threat for humanity?

We have been discussing existential threats that threaten humanity, such as asteroids, rogue nanoids, diseases. However have we been ignoring the deeply corrupting of concentration of wealth? Has a very small elite of human beings become so rich they risk endangering the rest of humanity - especially of an approaching “singularity” keeps giving this elite ever more advanced means to project their will on the rest of humanity? Do we need to look at such extreme concentration of power and take steps to reduce the disparities, in order to protect us from these unaccountable, inherently self-serving, antidemocratic power elites?

Today I have written the lifeboat foundation with an urgent request to add a wholly new class of existential risk to humanity.

Lifeboat foundation lists an extensive list of socalled existentiial risks. These risks are all real dangers to the majority of humanity in the future. If we include those risks of that category I’d also include another risk, which seems to be completely ignored.

I’d add the dangers posed by of an elite of ultra-rich humans. Such an elite of humanity may very well decide to use robotics, nanotechnology, limited AI, nonlethal and lethal weapons, mind control and their already obscene affluence to consolidate their power over the world and simply exclude the rest of humanity. And personally I would regard that possibility as a bigger risk to the majority of humanity than any of the above risks listed. Is this an imagined risk? I think not. The track record of “the powerful” (other than governments) has been ghastly - even in recent history. I do not allege that such an elite will be a unified conspiracy dead set on making life miserable for the less fortunate of society - but even without resorting to projecting a conspiracy on these people, it’s quite clear what’s happening in the more affluent societies, such as the US - the elite uses already abuses political processes to deconstruct common national resources, reduce taxes for the privileged, enacts more draconian legal infrastructure, a morbidly skewed justice system and bizarre legal penalties. And the list goes on, a consistent pattern of the aflluent leveraging hidden costs to those with less economic power. Recent examples are in health care, the environment, global warming, security (enclaves), quality of food.

At some point in the next decades an ever increasing number of useful economic activity can be arguably done by machines. The humans left unemployed by such economic shifts could be left useless, excluded (especially in right-wing countries that have yet to accept welfare as a part of civilized society) and ultimately disallowed to reproduce, or similarly treated to reduce their imprint on the world. Retraining such huge numbers in the timespan is a ludicrous proposal and at best can serve to aggravate the situation - if a human being is left redundant in this new polarized economy he can easily be scapegoated, because “he should be flexible and retrain”. Again, this can be regarded as leveraging off the societal costs of automation off on society, where the rich (the corporate sector) keeps all benefits to themselves.

These elites will use means at their disposal (ad they clearly have a track record of doing already) to curtail space, resources, food, energy or opportunity to those they regard as useless, using whatever definition they themselves dictate. One look at how the rich and corporations have been treating the third world is a clear indicator of the inherent ruthlessness in people who are left unaccountable by the majorities. They can do as they please and have been doing so. And this trend is worsening.

Power begets power. People with power want more power, at the exclusion of all others. Te biggest risk to people living today is an terminal state of exclusion of the vast majority of humanity. The rich may act contrary to democratic principles, may do so with “us” being unable to do anything about it. They may decide the world is overpopulated (which is clearly is) and decide the unproductive and disowned are the biggest problem.

I urge the lifeboat foundation to start regarding the grossly inequitable disparities between obscene wealth in the hands of some and dehumanizing poverty in most others as one of the greatest existential threats to humanity - and to assertively act to oppose this ongoing degenerative process in todays world and economies. To refrain from acknowledging this risk would be negligent, cowardly and inconsistent.

Most poignantly, I urge all who read this to consider if he or she is part of this elite or has a fair chance of being part of it. This is an issue that clearly transcends ideological dualities such as right and left, socialist or globalist, progressive or conservative. When considering the dangers of an elite granted such clearly outrageous power and superiority over the rest of society, when technology will allow them to abuse any near-singularity advances, is extremely naive. If you consider this issue whether or not it is an existential danger I ask everyone - did you recently meet any of the 5% of humanity that ownes 75% of all things on this planet? Do you know any of those people? Do you think you have any chance of ever being part of this global power elite?

Posted by Khannea Suntzu on 01/12 at 06:22 PM
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Google Docs 2 blog

I just found out a very cool feature of Google Docs - publish to blog

Posted by G.P. on 01/05 at 08:47 AM
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Xmas 2007

Posted by G.P. on 12/24 at 09:09 AM
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Charlie Stross in Second Life

These days one just cannot keep up with all the interesting things that happen in Second Life. Today as soon as I went in I had the good luck to run into Sophrosyne Stenvaag who told me about their plans for Extropia Core in Second Life and that she was about to go to attend an interview with Charlie Stross (YES! The author of Accelerando - one of my 3 favorite SF writers with Rudy Rucker and of course Greg Egan). See a short videoclip of the interview on blip.tv. I talked to Charlie who promised to do a talk for transhumanists in Second Life. I will contact him to schedule the talk, in a format lecture + Q/A like we used for Kevin Warwick.

The interview with Stross took place at the amphitheater at Dr. Dobb’s Island (aptly named “Life 2.0"). About 70 avatars attended. There is a very good coverage at Information Week:

“Our guest for our next GridTalk is science-fiction writer Charles Stross, whose most recent novel Halting State, is set in the near future—just 11 years from now, when virtual worlds, massively multiplayer games, advanced mobile computing, and augmented reality are a part of daily life. Stross will discuss the world he created for Halting State, and how networked technologies are likely to evolve and affect our daily life and business over the course of the next decade. You can join the discussion in Second Life or on the Web, or listen afterwards as a downloadable audio file or a podcast. Scroll to the end of this post for more details how to participate.

It’s really hard to predict the future on the scale Stross does. Imagine yourself in 1996. Back then, would you have predicted the ubiquity of smartphones, user-generated content on the Internet (blogs weren’t even invented yet), Facebook, MySpace, the massive American entertainment industry grinding to a complete halt over a dispute over Internet video, and post-9/11 geopolitics? Could you have imagined, in your bones, what it would be like to live in that world?

That’s what Stross accomplishes with Halting State. In Stross’s year 2018, most people wear transparent eyeglasses that are hooked up to computers and networks that overlay electronic images and information over their view of the real world around them. These electronic glasses display electronic street signs and directions. Police see overlays of the criminal activity at every building they see. A fencing enthusiast gets to practice her swordplay in a visual representation of a gothic castle. Multiplayer games like World of Warcraft and virtual worlds like Second Life are part of day-to-day life. And the characters in Halting State take it all for granted. Halting State is a well-realized and intelligent treatise about near-future effects of networked technology. It’s also an extremely entertaining, thrilling, and funny crime caper novel”.

Posted by G.P. on 11/13 at 05:29 PM
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Posted by editor on 12/01 at 10:07 AM
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