VR
Lincoln Cannon of the Mormon Transhumanist Association in Second Life, March 30
Lincoln Cannon of the Mormon Transhumanist Association gave a presentation and a Q/A session in Second Life, on March 30 at 10:00 PST, at the virtual headquarters of SL-Transhumanists.
Abstract: Transhumanism is compatible with at least some religious forms, as illustrated by parallels between basic Transhumanist ideas and an authentic interpretation of Mormon metaphysics, theodicy, eschatology and soteriology. These parallels also provide a basis from which to judge the relative compatibility of other religious forms, such as Christianity, with Transhumanism.
SL-Transhumanists @ extropia core - SLURL
Video clip (4 min) with parts of Lincoln’s presentation and Q/A
Full audio recording of Lincoln’s presentation and Q/A (47M, right click to download)
The Mormon Transhumanist Association promotes practical faith in human exaltation through charitable use of science and technology. The association was founded on 3 March 2006 and affiliated with the World Transhumanist Association on 6 July 2006. Read the Mormon Transhumanist Affirmation: (1) We seek the spiritual and physical exaltation of individuals and their anatomies, as well as communities and their environments, according to their wills, desires and laws, to the extent they are not oppressive. (2) We believe that scientific knowledge and technological power are among the means ordained of God to enable such exaltation, including realization of diverse prophetic visions of transfiguration, immortality, resurrection, renewal of this world, and the discovery and creation of worlds without end. (3) We feel a duty to use science and technology according to wisdom and inspiration, to identify and prepare for risks and responsibilities associated with future advances, and to persuade others to do likewise.
Lincoln gave a talk last year at the Seminar on H+ and Religion in SL. His presentation is archived here. His conclusions: “We believe that scientific knowledge and technological power are among the means ordained of God to enable such exaltation, including realization of diverse prophetic visions of transfiguration, immortality, resurrection, renewal of this world, and the discovery and creation of worlds without end”. This is, I believe, a perfect explanation of why, despite what fundamentalists may say, transhumanism is not at all incompatible with religion but, on the contrary, each of the two sets of sensibilities can boost the other in a positive feedback loop.
I did not know much (still don’t) about Mormonism before meeting the people of the Mormon Transhumanist Association. My mental image of Mormons was (still is) derived from movies: people living in Utah, always well dressed, very hardworking and much too serious (and men with many wives). But my image of the MTA is that of a community of smart and motivated transhumanists who see no conflict, but on the contrary mutual reinforcement, between transhumanism and their faith. And there must be something true in the images of Mormons as very serious and hardworking people, because the MTA website is by far the best transhumanist community site in terms of both IT implementation and content. I consider the MTA as a transhumanist success story that may be (I will ask Lincoln on Sunday) “exported” to other religions and Christian denominations.
Update: I did ask this question to Lincoln, and it appears that Mormonism has indeed some specificities that make it more compatible with transhumanism than other religions or Christian denominations - for example its lack of emphasis on metaphysics or a supernatural God. As far as I understand it (Lincoln please correct me if I am wrong), Mormonism is quite compatible with the idea of a God evolving in and with the universe and achieving its Godhead via a technology enabled evolutionary process.
I was quite pleased with Lincoln’s answer to one of my questions, about the possibility that some future civilization may find a way, by extracting all relevant information from the past, to resurrect us by “copying us to the future”. Lincoln answered that this technological resurrection option is an element of his faith, and also mentioned alternative scenarios based on Nick Bostrom’s simulation theory: perhaps those who are running us as simulations may choose to continue running us after our physical death. This answer is in the video clip.
I was very pleased to hear that non Mormons are welcome in the MTA if they agree with the Transhumanist Declaration and the Mormon Transhumanist Affirmation and that, since I agree with both and signed up on the MTA website, I am a member of the Mormon Transhumanist Association. I don’t believe in a “conventional” supernatural God but am quite open to the possibility of a “natural” God in the sense outlined above. I will certainly continue to participate in the MTA, which is one of the most active and vibrant transhumanist communities.
David Pearce in Second Life on Utopian Neuroscience, March 23
David Pearce, co-founder of the WTA and creator of HedWeb (The Hedonistic Imperative), gave a talk and a Q/A session in Second Life yesterday March 23, 10am SLT, on Utopian Neuroscience. A summary of David’s talk is on his website Superhappiness.
David promotes nothing less than the abolition of suffering in all sentient life. He argues that the abolition of suffering can be accomplished through Paradise Engineering (The Hedonistic Imperative). David will try to distinguish between the Abolitionist Project -i.e. getting rid of suffering, from a much more controversial claim: “I predict that our superintelligent descendants will be animated by gradients of bliss orders of magnitude richer than anything physiologically accessible today”.
About 35 transhumanists attended the presentation and asked many question on utopian neuroscience, the meaning of happiness, the place of superhappiness among transhumanist goals, existing and available ways to enhance mood and happiness, future developments, and transhumanism in general. There was no time to answer all questions but Dave promised to show up at one of the next SL-Transhumanists office hours to discuss more.
Wikipedia: “David Pearce is a British philosopher and negative utilitarian. He promotes the abolition of suffering in all sentient life. His book-length internet manifesto The Hedonistic Imperative[1] details how he believes the abolition of suffering can be accomplished through “paradise engineering”. A transhumanist vegan, Pearce also calls for the elimination of cruelty to animals. Among his websites, there are many devoted to the plight of animals”.
Video clip of parts of Dave’s talk and Q/A
The next speaker will be Lincoln Cannon of the Mormon Transhumanist Association, on March 30. Starting from this next event we wish to record the full audio of presentations and Q/A sessions and making them available on the web and in SL as mp3 audio podcasts, please get in touch with us if you wish to help.
SL-Transhumanists @ Extropia Core
Religion, Spirituality and the Avatar
Sophrosyne’s Saturday Salon: Religion, Spirituality and the Avatar
From the announcement on Soph’s blog: Next week’s Salon kicks off a cycle of several months of absolutely fascinating guests. On Saturday, March 15, from 1-3pm at the Central Nexus in Extropia Core, our Salon Spotlight Guest will be Soren Ferlinghetti (Robert M Geraci). Robert M. Geraci is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Manhattan College in New York City. He studies the interactions of religion, science and technology with particular emphasis upon robotics, artificial intelligence and (more recently) online gaming. he has conducted fieldwork at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute and in Second Life through discussions and interviews. In addition to publishing a number of essays on religion and robotics, he has just finished a book on the subject (tentatively titled _Apocalyptic AI: Visions of Heaven in Robotics, Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality_) and is planning a new book about religion and online games.
Soren and I have spoken occasionally over many months about spirituality and identity in the digital world. We have profoundly different perspectives, and attitudes towards technology in general, but I’ve always found him curious, open-minded, warm-hearted and fascinating. Soren’s work was recently covered in New World Notes:
The Soul Of Second Life: In SL Spirituality Survey, 48% Open To Mind Upload, 62% To New SL-Based Religions
Thanks to Hamlet Au, we not only got Soren’s remarkable conclusions (more people go to church in SL than have sex, what?!), but the raw data supporting them. At the Salon we’ll discuss Soren’s research, the interplay between spirituality and identity in the digital world, the evolution of religion, and many more fascinating topics sparked by his work. This one’s a must-see!
I could not stay until the end but added Soren / Robert to the friends list and will get in touch with him soon. Until I left, there were two parallel talk / discussion threads. One about sociology: Second Life as a communication and outreach tool for traditional religions, Second Life as an incubator and breeding ground for new religions or spitirual movements, the attitude of SL users towards spirituality, the interfaces and communications between new religions born in the metaverse and traditional ones, the impact that new spiritual trends facilitated by VR worlds can (and should?) have on traditional ones. Robert thinks that the appeal of Second Life ("I think that SL is popular in large measure because it is a sacred space, one that has been separated out from the profane everyday… people are finding _meaning_ not just entertainment, in SL… an astonishing fact that demonstrates how attractive this world is for people… that very clearly means it is something a good deal more than escapism” may facilitate the creation of and hold together new movements that will have an impact on brickspace churches: “people in SL want some real influence upon their world. This is going to upend traditional religious hierarchies”.
Another discussion thread was about religion and spirituality proper (the sort of things discussed in last year’s Seminar on H+ and Religion in SL), and digital life in Second Life (and tomorrow much more sophisticated virtual realities) AS a spiritual experience. Robert says: “there’s a sense in which practice in VR is becoming all by itself a religious experience for people”, and “one aspect of this is the idea of mind uploading, which answers many of the same questions as do other religious groups. I was actually suprrised to find that more than 1/4 of respondents believe that uploading definitely or probably would be an attractve alternative to earthly life. That’s a lot of people! and I think it represents a kind of general mindset in which virtual life is more meaningful than earthly life”.
This was well received by the audience. We must of course acknowledge that yesterday’s audience is certainly not a representative sample of SL users, let alone the population at large. In particular, there were many “Digital Persons” like Soph, Khannea, Extropia and Galatea (I haven’t seen Argent, but there were more than 50 avatars and perhaps she was there): those who identify with a SL avatar instead of the person behind the avatar for whom SL is a primary reality and, while acknowledging a relation with a “primary” (Extropia) or “atomic person” (Soph) in the brickspace reality, think that this relation is tenuous and irrelevant (Soph) or even temporary (Extropia). Argent’s article Taking a Stand is often considered as a DP manifesto. I like and respect my Digital Friends and try to accept them on their terms instead of speculating about their life stories the life stories of their “other personalities”.
In a comment to Gwyneth Llewelyn’s Immersionism and Augmentationism Revisited, Extropia says: “an avatar is a particular pattern of information and there are no end of technologies in the pipeline that could copy and run that pattern. So long as A) the pattern of information that describes us is deemed valuable enough to preserve and B) there is some kind of information processing capability in place to seamlessly take over the job of modelling our thoughts and feelings, each and every avatar would have a life that went way beyond some meatbag’s”. A reply to her comment, with which I basically agree, says “As things stand at present, and for the foreseeable future, the avatar will simply be a superficial representation of a person - a means of communication, no more embodying the individual’s personality than her or his telephone or pen… Your vision may indeed come true in the extreme distant future (or, alternatively, it might not), but the theoretical possibility of such a distant advance in technology is not by itself something that has a significant effect on a significant number of people’s behaviour in virtual worlds”.
I am more optimist - I would say “far away” but not “extremely far away”, and I think we may see some significant development in the first half of this century - but basically agree. At the same time I defend the right of my sweet Digital Friends to exist and think Digital Persons are pioneers who are taking (or at least considering) the first baby steps towards decoupling lives from bodies. I am not too persuaded by the current experiments in “extreme lifelogging” as a means to generate mindfiles than can be later brought to life by human-equivalent computing (this is the most interesting experiment that I am aware of), in such a way as to ensure the continuity of consciousness. I am not persuaded by these experiments because I think the volume and texture of information that can be practically acquired and stored with today’s primitive and low bandwidth interface technologies is much too low. But things may change quite radically with fully immersive VR worlds able to generate a complete sensorial experience, and high bandwidth interface technologies based on direct neural coupling. The current brain to computer interfacing (BCI) experimental technologies, which are already finding their way to consumer videogames (see also First steps to neural interfacing for consumers) and even to Second Life, demonstrate the plausibility, and perhaps mid term feasibility, of very high bandwidth BCI technologies able to transfer high bandwidth, high volume mental information (thoughts, memories, emotions...) to machines for storage and processing. High performance BCI-based lifelogging could conceivably permit saving enough information about a person to convert the digital personhood dream to reality.
As far as the continuity of consciousness is concerned, I think after uploading (like after every significant change), I am still me if and only if both the previous me and the future me are willing to accept the future me as a valid continuation of the previous me. This is the most convincing approach that I can think of and, I think, is the reason why we think we are still ourselves when we wake up.
Next interesting events in Second Life
After Natasha’s and Anders’ talk last week, there will be three not-to-miss events in Second Life:
The first will take place Saturday:
Sophrosyne’s Saturday Salon: Religion, Spirituality and the Avatar
From Soph’s blog: Next week’s Salon kicks off a cycle of several months of absolutely fascinating guests. On Saturday, March 15, from 1-3pm at the Central Nexus in Extropia Core, our Salon Spotlight Guest will be Soren Ferlinghetti (Robert M Geraci). Robert M. Geraci is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Manhattan College in New York City. He studies the interactions of religion, science and technology with particular emphasis upon robotics, artificial intelligence and (more recently) online gaming. he has conducted fieldwork at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute and in Second Life through discussions and interviews. In addition to publishing a number of essays on religion and robotics, he has just finished a book on the subject (tentatively titled _Apocalyptic AI: Visions of Heaven in Robotics, Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality_) and is planning a new book about religion and online games.
Soren and I have spoken occasionally over many months about spirituality and identity in the digital world. We have profoundly different perspectives, and attitudes towards technology in general, but I’ve always found him curious, open-minded, warm-hearted and fascinating. Soren’s work was recently covered in New World Notes:
The Soul Of Second Life: In SL Spirituality Survey, 48% Open To Mind Upload, 62% To New SL-Based Religions
Thanks to Hamlet Au, we not only got Soren’s remarkable conclusions (more people go to church in SL than have sex, what?!), but the raw data supporting them. At the Salon we’ll discuss Soren’s research, the interplay between spirituality and identity in the digital world, the evolution of religion, and many more fascinating topics sparked by his work. This one’s a must-see!
The SL Spirituality Survey is very interesting. In the comment thread there is a discussion on the feasibility and possible timeline of mind uploading with, of course, a very wide range of opinions. My comments: Of course when mind uploading technology is perfected (I would say, minimum 2050 and it could be much much longer), Second Life will not be today’s Second Life and probably will not be called Second Life. At that moment there will be fully immersive, 100% realistic interfaces based on direct neural stimulation and a sort of instant telepathy between different users and groups. The concept of uploading to the metaverse is certainly interesting. Is what we are really doing in Second Life the preparation of a future home? To all those who are planning to upload to SL next week: unfortunately this technology is _very_ far in the future: some experts say 50 years, some experts say hundreds of years, some experts say never.
The next two events will be organized by the SL-Transhumanists group. Dave Pearce (yes, Dave, the hidden founder of the WTA and one of the most interesting transhumanist thinkers, will give a talk and a Q/A session on Utopian Neuroscience on Sunday March 23. Then Lincoln Cannon of the Mormon Transhumanist Association will give a talk on Transfigurism (the very interesting mix of Transhumanism and Mormonism of the MTA) and also discuss whether and how the “MTA model” could or should be used by transhumanists of other Christian denominations. Lincoln’s talk is scheduled for Sunday March 30 (to be confirmed). Watch translook.com for announcements.
Today: Natasha Vita-More & Anders Sandberg on Morphological Freedom in Second Life
Updated after the event - yesterday March 9 there has been a very interesting seminar on Morphological Freedom in Second Life, organized by the SL-Transhumanists group, by Natasha Vita-More & Anders Sandberg: Do individual humans have a natural right to Morphological Freedom - the right to seek augmentation and enhancement - and the right not to be coerced to augment and enhance?
Natasha and Anders are two of the principal transhumanist thinkers. Natasha has given a good definition of transhumanism in a recent interview: “Transhumanism is a set of ideas which represents a worldview to improve the current situation that we as humanity are facing, which includes short lifespan, limited cognitive abilities, limited sensoral abilities, erratic emotions…starvation, lack of housing, or lack of, basically, getting any of the necessary fundamental needs met. We look ardently at how technologies, including the NBIC technologies—nanoscience, bioscience, information science, and cognitive science – can possibly be used to help solve some of the problems in the world that address humans being stuck in a state of stasis.” See also Anders’ recent list of top genetic enhancements that have already been done in mammals (and hence could presumbaly be done in humans).
It was a good seminar of a couple of hours with about 40 participants. Natasha and Anders gave their talks with voice and switched to text for the long Q/A session - I hope the chatlog will be available soon. I have posted a 7 min video clip of some parts of the talks and hope somebody has recorded a the full seminar in video or audio. Some Europeans missed the beginning of the seminar because we were not aware of the hour change in the US. I almost missed it myself. During the talk, in parallel, I was trading insults in almost realtime with Dale Carrico on his blog (the fun thing is that I am still doing this _now_ in another browser window). Dale seems _wants_ to think that all transhumanists are fascists who want to enforce one or another body modification norm on the rest of humanity, but at some point he concedes that “this seminar you’ve advertized about morphological freedom may be a step in the right direction, depending on its seriousness”. I must have written hundreds of times that I think an enhancement is whatever the person concerned considers as an enhancement, but of course Dale prefers to ignore facts (facts have the annoying habit of getting in the way of serious rethorics). I hope the chatlog of the seminar will be published soon, as both the question asked and the replies of Natasha and Anders will show that Dale’s allegations are _very far_ from the truth.
During the seminar our tireless super organizer Khannea Suntzu issued this call for volunteers: “After our recent successes, we’d love to expand our SL-Transhumanists endeavor, and for that purpose we’d like to see volunteers. If you have the urgency to spread this viral meme around a bit do join us. Start by joining the SL-Transhumanists group (!!) and have a look at our online resources. We have regular office hours and we’d love to increase our coverage in that. Additionally expect a sizeable increase in the number of big events like today’s”.
Translook: new SL-Transhumanists website
Translook is a transhumanist website run by the SL-Transhumanists group. It is a site for transhumanist projects and events organized by SL-Transhumanists, transhumanist news and views, and a reference site on transhumanism. Translook = Transhumanism + SL + outlook. The SL-Transhumanists group organizes scheduled events and more informal events at office hours to offer an introduction to transhumanism to interested visitors.
Editorial policy: this is to be very simple - no policy, all relevant content is welcome. We give write access to a trusted few, who write whatever they like. Full articles and reports are welcome, but also quick pointers to other websites and blogs.
The Translook site is built on Mediawiki (the platform developed and used by Wikipedia). This platform is very fast, efficient and easy to use for both readers and editors. Unfortunately it is vulnerable to spam, so we have disabled account creation - please request an account if you are a SL-Transhumanists member. We have also disabled edit privileges for non sysop user - please request write-edit privileges if you wish to contribute to the website. Known and trusted transhumanists will get write-edit privileges immediately, for the others it may take a little more work.
All relevant content from the uvvy website, the first website for transhumanists in SL, has been copied to Translook.
More on Digital Persons, Immersionism vs. Augmentationism
I participated in this interesting debate on Immersionism vs. Augmentationism. Topic: These deep thinkers, all fairly well-known for their positions on immersion vs augmentation, will have an energetic debate about their differences in opinion. Expect the conversation to touch on issues such as avatar rights, voice verification, and avatars as legal entities. See ORANGE EXPLORES SL CULTURE! for background.
This discussion is always interesting. I was representing the attitude of “augmentationists”, for whom Second Life is a videoconferencing environment (a better phone call). Sophrosyne Stenvaag concisely states the issue as “is SL for you a place or a tool? Everything else, from standards of identity and trust to “A/S/L,” follows from that”, and quotes a post by Argent Bury on Digital Persons for whom SL is a place different from the atomic world, aka RL. In the debate Soph said “Giulio and I share a “live and let live” approach, the only difference between us really is the locus of our identities, I’m *here*, and he’s visiting from elsewhere”. And Gwyneth asked me “did you ever cry or laugh out loud when you read a book?” and welcomed me to immersionism when I answered yes.
Well. I can have emotional reactions to _good_ books, but I don’t consider Second Life that good yet. I don’t consider SL as a place because, for example, places have a distinctive smell and SL has none. Miami is hot and humid, Amsterdam is cold and humid, Madrid has hot dry summers, it is very nice to walk in the snow in Budapest. These are all places where I have _lived_ and know well. In Napoli, the city where I was born, the characteristic smell in the air is actually one of rubbish (!!!) but the food tastes like nowhere else. The point I am making of course is that the atomic world is sensorially rich while in Second Life the sensorial environment is very poor: pixels on a screen and poor audio with statics.
This will change with better virtual reality technology. Some day VR will offer a fully immersive environment, with stimulation of the five senses via direct brain to computer, brain to network and brain to brain links and sensorial experiences indistinguishable from physical reality. In my interview on The Future and You podcast I speculate on immersive neural interfaces to VR worlds and place them 20 years in the future. At that moment I will take virtual worlds as “places”, but now I see them only as advanced communication tools.
But I think the mini-trend toward immersionism and digital personhood is very important, and positive. Those who are psychologically able to really _be_ in a VR world even with the primitive VR technology of today are doing terribly important experiments with the very concept of identity, and I think we will soon need the results of their experiments and some practical guidelines for managing personal and social relations in a world that becomes more and more complex. One of the first results is there is room for more than one person in a brain.
One very important thing that digital personhood can facilitate is tolerance of diversity. Diversity is GOOD - how boring would be a world where everyone looks, thinks and acts the same. Let millions of flowers bloom, in virtual and real worlds. Live and let live, everyone should be free to do absolutely whatever she wishes as long as she does not do concrete harm to anyone else, victimless crimes are not crimes, and one should enjoy his own favorite lifestyle instead of criticizing the lifestyle of others.
Transhumanists talk of augmenting life in very radical terms. We want to merge biology with technology and eliminate disease, suffering, aging and death. Yes, death. Our generation may be among the last mortal generations, and by the end of the century our children may live in the Metaverse as disembodied software beings. Let’s call this Life 3.0: escaping the prison of the flesh and moving on. This will be a _very_ radical change of the nature of the game, and will bring much more diversity in human societies. It is important that we learn, now, to live with it. Of course there will be those who will prefer to stay in the old comfortable game instead of embracing change and moving on, but many others will run at full speed toward a speciation with the full range between organic humans 1.0 and conscious software beings in synthetic realities. It is going to be interesting, dangerous and fun. Let us consider our tiny, primitive and unstable SL as a workbench for first experiments and baby steps toward future humanity. To Gwyn, Soph and Argent: I will be an immersionist and a digital person (or many digital persons) then.
Perhaps the most interesting observation in the debate, by Aldon Huffhines, was about “the self as existing at the intersection of our inner neural networks and our external social networks”. Aldon Hynes/Huffhines has then expanded this very interesting point in his blog on The Virtual Self and R.
ORANGE EXPLORES SL CULTURE!
I will participate tonight in this interesting debate on Immersionism vs. Augmentationism. Topic: These deep thinkers, all fairly well-known for their positions on immersion vs augmentation, will have an energetic debate about their differences in opinion. Expect the conversation to touch on issues such as avatar rights, voice verification, and avatars as legal entities. This is a debate you won’t want to miss! Come to Orange Island tonight. See full article on metaXLR8.
First SL-Transhumanists workshop
The SL-Transhumanists group organizes scheduled events (don’t miss Natasha Vita-More & Anders Sandberg on Morphological Freedom in Second Life, March 9), and more informal events at “office hours” (picture below). See the event calendar at Extropia Core for office hours.
At yesterday meeting we decided to organize a “First SL-Transhumanists workshop” in the second half of March in Second Life. The workshop will permit advancing towards the group’s objective of using virtual reality to overcome the fragmentation of transhumanists in brickspace, and build a cohesive-in-diversity community. The format of the workshop will be four talks of 15 min each (I answered the question “why four” with “why not?") by transhumanist speakers, each in support of a different trend or faction (ugly word, but clear), followed by a one hour round table led by a moderator and a Q/A session. The topic: transhumanist outreach and “marketing”: how to use all options available in VR and brickspace to ensure that our beautiful vision reaches as many people as possible.
We will contact the “obvious” four main speakers and a moderator soon, but please send your suggestions. We hope to produce a fun and interesting event for the audience. with a substantial debate (within the limits of civilized behavior, and humor-impaired readers please ignore the line below).
May the Robot God be with you and upload your immortal mindfile to the angelic techno-Heaven of True Believers!
Natasha Vita-More & Anders Sandberg on Morphological Freedom in Second Life, March 9
Join us on March 9, 12:00-13:30 SLT (noon PST, 3pm EST, 9pm EU, 8pm UK) for a seminar on Morphological Freedom in Second Life, by Natasha Vita-More & Anders Sandberg:
Do individual humans have a natural right to Morphological Freedom - the right to seek augmentation and enhancement - and the right not to be coerced to augment and enhance?
Both Natasha and Anders have spoken at previous events organized by the SL-Transhumanist group, of which Natasha was one of the founding members, and this will be one of the main events ever.
Natasha Vita-More & Anders Sandberg
***
SUNDAY
MARCH, 9th
12:00-13:30 SLT
in Second Life
***
SL-Transhumanists@ extropia core
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.
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Natasha Vita More in Second Life on “Design Wars: Humanish vs. Postbiologicals (Singularity)”
Great talk of Natasha Vita-More in Second Life yesterday February 3rd, on “Design Wars: Humanish vs. Postbiologicals (Singularity)”. I am sure more pictures and transcripts will be posted soon to one of the SL-Transhumanists sites. See also this short video clip.
Natasha’s own announcement: This event is an open discussion. All SL-transhumanist participants’ ideas and/or humor will be credited/mentioned at the LABoral Industrial Design Institute conference in Spain. In the summer of 2008, LABoral Industrial Design Institute is hosting the “Homo Ludens Ludens” conference.
SL-Transhumanists are invited to have FUN with the content and context of the “Design Wars” of humanish vs. postbiologicals. A key consideration is the issue of species hierarchy and whether humanity ought to look biological as we merge with smarter-than-human intelligence. “In a perfect world, all species would learn to get along. Due to the Singularity, humanity learns they are not the only life form with consciousness and aesthetic taste”.
In this short video clip you can see the variety of body design styles of SL-Transhumanists, which was considered by Natasha as an example of things to come in brick-biospace. I was very pleased to see that the SL-Transhumanists group in Second Life has almost 100 members.
SNOWCRASHING INTO THE DIAMOND AGE 2 (PART 2-B): An essay by Extropia DaSilva.
Continued from PART 2-A
Is the latter peril really a bad thing? Such a declaration would appear to stand in contrast to the dream of a life free from toil. This vision can be traced back at least 23 centuries, to a time when Aristotle wrote, in ‘The Politics’, ‘we can imagine managers not needing subordinates and masters not needing slaves…if every machine could work by itself…by intelligent anticipation’. And here it is again, this time from a quote in ‘Time’ magazine, 1966: ‘By 2000, the machines will be producing so much that everyone in the US will, in effect, be independently wealthy. How to use leisure meaningfully will be a major problem’.
SNOWCRASHING INTO THE DIAMOND AGE 2 (PART 2-A): An essay by Extropia DaSilva.
IT’S THE ECONOMY, STUPID.
The ability to replicate the means of production themselves from cheaply available elements is what underlies most of the utopian expectations of a society with molecular nanotechnology. One commentator on an online forum asked ‘why the hell would anyone pay for something nano makes with no effort?’. Second Life, though, suggests such an argument holds no water. After all, this is a world whose content is built from resources instantly available wherever you happen to be at negligible cost, and which can be duplicated with no effort. But most reporting on Second Life does not describe a world where products are given away free. Instead, it’s all about the money. ‘None-existant’ objects being bought and sold for real cash, land barons earning fortunes from virtual property. Also, Gwyneth Llewelyn wrote about the socio-political beliefs that SL residents subsribe to (‘Anarcho-syndicalists, ‘Anarcho-capitalists’, ‘libertarian/neoliberalists’). Of these groups, only the first ‘idealise a SL where money, land and prim limits are unnecessary’. I don’t know how many residents consider themselves to be anarcho-syndicalists, but common sense dictates that the group believing money is unnecessary are in a minority compared to the many groups who consider it necessary, for the simple reason that the latter are many and the former is one.
SL banking ban: hot comments
I use two different blogs (Transumanar and metaxlr8) respectively for philosophy and metaverse technology-business, but sometimes an issue touches on both, so I am just posting this to both blogs. The fact: On the heels of banking scandals in the virtual world Second Life, its publisher Linden Lab announced Tuesday that it is effectively banning in-world banks.
Linden Lab’s justification: “Some may argue that Residents who deposit L$ with these “banks” must know they’re assuming a big risk – the high interest rates promised aren’t guaranteed, and the banks aren’t overseen by Linden Lab or anyone else. That may be true. But for all of the other reasons we’ve set out above, we can’t let this activity continue”. The comments of readers show mixed reactions, some in favor and some against.
My own reaction is also mixed. I run an IT and VR consulting and development company, and have often realized that many potential clients are scared of the bad press about Second Life and the frequent “scandals”, especially gambling, unregulated banking with Ponzi scams and such, and pornography. These things do not have the clean, crisp, mainstream and businesslike image that most firms and institutions wish to have. For this reason I was not too unhappy when the gambling ban was announced, am not too unhappy now after the announcement of the banking ban, and will not be too unhappy when the sex ban will be announced in a few months (wanna bet?). These bans permit me telling my clients that Second Life has outgrown its juvenile extremes and is on its way to becoming a mature, serious and sedate mainstream business platform in a black suit and a striped tie. These bans will actually help me making more money.
But due to philosophical and political considerations, I am _very_ unhappy with the turn things are taking. When I deposited some money in the BNT Bank run by my good friend IntLibber Brautigan, I was perfectly aware that the bank did not have an applicable license from a governing regulatory authority, that IntLibber & Co. could just run away with my money, and that I could lose my money due to poor business decisions of BNT management. I invested my money in BNT because no, I don’t have to justify it to you or to anyone. I invested my money in BNT because it was MY FUCKING DECISION TO MAKE with MY FUCKING MONEY. Period.
Of course Linden Lab claim that they made this decision to protect their users: “These “banks” have brought unique and substantial risks to Second Life, and we feel it’s our duty to step in. Offering unsustainably high interest rates, they are in most cases doomed to collapse – leaving upset “depositors” with nothing to show for their investments”.
But as a user, and as a citizen, I DO NOT WANT TO LIVE IN A NANNY STATE that protects me from things I don’t want to be protected from. I say ENOUGH, in both First and Second Life. What is next? Sex banned in Second Life because it scares teens? (BS: it would not have scared me when I was a teen, or you). Or sex banned in First Life because it can be a health risk? I am afraid that if this trends continue people will be"allowed" to have sex only in the presence of a qualified nurse. One word: ENOUGH.
Of course the real reason for the banking ban in SL is another: “The legal and regulatory framework of these non-chartered, unregistered banks is unclear… we will not apply this policy to companies who submit a registration statement, charter, or other applicable license from a governing regulatory authority”. Of course, Linden Lab is introducing the banking ban for fear of regulatory pressure from US authorities. And as the harsh logic of the business world goes, it is probably a sound decision, necessary for the survival of the company.
What can we, metaverse users, do to protect ourselves from excessive regulation? We already live under nanny states in RL, and can certainly do without nanny states in the metaverse. The answer is, I think, very simple: open standards, interoperability, technology diversification, platform diversification, and geographic diversification. We need alternative technologies and platforms - the banking ban in SL makes me even more interested in open standard, open source, non proprietary systems like OpenSim, and we need service providers in other, less fundamentalist and overprotective countries. I look forward to a metaverse operated by a network of interconnected and globally distributed service providers, and based on open standards and open code (well, like the Web).
I only wonder what we can do to protect ourselves from excessive regulation and nanny states in real life.
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World Transhumanist Association
Associazione Italiana Transumanisti
Transumanar is a transhumanist blog - online magazine on science, technology, politics and culture, edited by Giulio Prisco. See About (English) and Introduzione (Italiano).
Transumanar e' un blog - rivista online transumanista di scienza, tecnologia, politica e cultura, curato da Giulio Prisco. Vedi Introduzione (Italiano) e About (English).
SL-Transhumanists, a group for transhumanists in Second Life
metaXLR8 - acceleration in the metaverse
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- Digital Civilizations and their challenges
- Lincoln Cannon of the Mormon Transhumanist Association in Second Life, March 30
- Test Your Techno Tolerance!
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- Thank you, Sir Arthur
- Religion, Spirituality and the Avatar
- Next interesting events in Second Life
- Today: Natasha Vita-More & Anders Sandberg on Morphological Freedom in Second Life
- We The Poopers?
- Review of Stefano Vaj’s Biopolitica
- Translook: new SL-Transhumanists website
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- The Manifesto of Italian Transhumanists
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