Transumanar

Cosmic Transhumanism

This is a continuation of my articles on Manifest Destiny: To the stars and beyond and Soft Tiplerianism. After discussing them at length with friends on a mailing list, I have started using the label “Cosmic Transhumanism” to indicate a very broad and not precisely defined brand of transhumanism inspired by (among others) Ray Kurzweil‘s radical optimism, the cosmic visions of Frank Tipler and James Gardner, Sir Arthur C. Clarke‘s “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”, and Shakespeare’s “there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy”.

Image adapted from Orion’s Arm

I am persuaded that Cosmic Transhumanism as proposed by Kurzweil and Gardner, the idea that consciousness and intelligent life may become key factors in the future evolution of the physical universe (transcending biology, filling the universe, steering spacetime topology, spawning baby universes, “becoming gods” etc.), once developed and communicated as a strong memetic package, can provide an alternative to religion suitable for the forthcoming phase of our evolution as a species. The main point of my proposal is an explicit acknowledgment that the current scientific thinking, and some reasonable extrapolations from today’s engineering, *may* provide *some degree of* hope, grounded in technology and sciences, in some of the promises of traditional religions. Without, of course, the irrational faith, rigid dogmatism and intolerance that have plagued traditional religions.

The term “Tiplerianism”, be it hard or soft, does not summarize well this cosmic transhumanist sensibility. In addition, it is perhaps too compromised by negative associations to be acceptable by most transhumanists: even after I “renounced” Tipler explicitly on transhumanist lists, most replies were still focused on Tipler alone. In his book Tipler has proposed some valuable insighs (not always original), but mixed them with too many overstretched analogies with classic religions.

One difficulty is Tipler’s (and others’, e.g. Fedorov and Perry) resurrection idea: Future technology may be able to resurrect the dead of past ages by some kind of “copying them to the future”. I think this idea makes perfect sense and leave it to future engineers to find a way to implement it, but most hard rationalists find it outrageous. Perhaps because they had to make a big effort to free themselves from the old religious superstition, and are afraid of falling back into irrational belief. But technology-enabled resurrection is not irrational belief: it is a wild speculation, in the sense of Shakespeare’s and Clarke’s quotes above, on possibilities that may, or may not, be achieved at some point by science and technology. I have found that, while people converted from religious believers to rationalist believers immediately dismiss technology-enabled resurrection as unscientific, those who never cared too much about religion are basically open to considering it.

Universal Immortalism (resurrection of the dead by means of future technology) is not explicitly affirmed by Cosmic Transhumanism but is not incompatible with it: Kurzweil and Gardner would probably say “let’s wait and see”. I planned to ask them the question explicitly at Transvision 2007 in Chicago, but I did not go to Chicago. I hope next time.

However, even leaving the resurrection part aside, Cosmic Transhumanism makes perfect sense as a worldview. Thinking to be part of one of many intelligent species that will spread to the stars and beyond, leave biological and mental constraints behind, and participate in the cosmic destiny of a universe waking up to life and superhuman sentience, gives a certain nice feeling and a certain sense of wonder, permits seeing clearly one’s place in the universe, and provides a drive to try giving a small contribution to the cosmic adventure. Whitout, of course, forgetting the practical reality of today’s world.

Posted by G.P. on 07/28 at 07:16 AM
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The former Executive Director of the WTA is not going to Transvision 2007

I will not be able to attend Transvision 2007 in Chicago due to a combination of time and financial pressure. As founder and director of a growing but still struggling company, I really need to dedicate all my time and resources to the business.

Moreover, I have recently resigned as Executive Director of the World Transhumanist Association. This decision was partly motivated by the reason stated above. Another reason is that I do have opinions, and at times strong opinions, about some of the issues frequently discussed on the public lists. It has been suggested that the Executive Director should be above the parts and refrain from supporting one or the other side in a public debate, since his words could be constructed as official positions of the WTA. I basically agree with this interpretation, and I do not intend to refrain from expressing my ideas and opinions. So I remain a Board member of the WTA, but am no longer its ED. I have some concerns about how the transhumanist movement is developing, and will take some thinking, reading and writing time before resuming my previous level of involvement in organized transhumanism.

I feel closer and closer to the radical “lunatic fringe” of transhumanists who take wild ideas like immortality and uploading seriously, and do not wish to see transhumanism becoming a lukewarm, spiceless soup of boredom and political correctness.

I think that Fukuyama’s:

“For the last several decades, a strange liberation movement has grown within the developed world. Its crusaders aim much higher than civil rights campaigners, feminists, or gayrights advocates. They want nothing less than to liberate the human race from its biological constraints. As “transhumanists” see it, humans must wrest their biological destiny from evolution’s blind process of random variation and adaptation and move to the next stage as a species”

is the best short description of transhumanism that I have ever seen. If I had never heard of transhumanism before, I would start a google search immediately after reading these words, find one or another transhumanist network and join it.

Some bioluddites have a quite good understanding of what transhumanism is ultimately about. They say, with clear plain simple and understandable words, things similar to Fukuyama’s definition above. And I have known people whose reaction was “but wait a minute, this is something good. Let’s learn more...”.

I believe we have become far too much concerned with acceptability and political correctness. Let’s take example from our critics and state, in the simplest possible way and without any ambiguity, that transhumanism is about leaving all limits behind, including mortality and biological constrains, and move on to a cosmic destiny. Some people will hate it, and some people will love it.

Anyway. I will be writing more than enough on this in the next few months. Back to Transvision 2007.

I am very sorry not to go to Chicago, because this promises to be the most interesting Transvision ever. Besides seeing many old friends and making many new ones, I wanted to meet in person, for the first time, three exceptional thinkers and doers.

Ray Kurzweil‘s writings and books, e.g. The Singularity is Near, offer a very optimistic vision of our mid and long term future. Is he over-optimistic? Probably. Do I believe that his visions of boundless empowerment, immortality and merging with ultra technologies will come true before the end of the century? Not really. Does this matter? Not at all. Ray’s vision is a roadmap for something that will not happen spontaneously, but that we must achieve. Of course there will be interruptions and roadblocks, and we will have to find suitable workarounds. I find Ray’s optimism very refreshing compared to the endless hair-splitting, caveats and “ethical” qualifications that have become so common in transhumanist literature.

Philip Rosedale is the creator of Second Life. I have helped persuading him to come to Transvision, and I believe Second Life is very relevant for transhumanism. Why? For three reasons. One is that the routine magic of teleporting, flying, IMing, changing gender and body shape, etc., that we have in Second Life may well become part of our everyday reality according to the vision of Kurzweil. Another is that Second Life is a very good community building, outreach and recruiting platform for transhumanists. Last year we organized a mixed-reality Transvision 2006 event in Second Life, and I really hope another will be organized this year. The third (and most important) reason is that once mind uploading technology becomes an operational reality many persons may choose to be based in virtual reality, perhaps taking up a physical body on occasions, so what we are doing in Second Life can be seen as building our future home.

I have recently received my Amazon order of The Intelligent Universe and Biocosm by James Gardner, and read them cover to cover. You should also read these books: they will put your mind on fire. James’ cosmic vision is that intelligent life may become the force that steers the development of the Cosmos towards its destiny, acquiring awesome powers and eventually spawning new universes where conscious life may continue its endless journey. This is a vision that permits finding some meaning in our everyday lives on our little blue planet, even more so if it were to include some hint at a possibility of indefinite preservation of an individual consciousness stream (yes, you). I really wanted to discuss this with James.

Posted by G.P. on 07/15 at 07:41 AM
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The open distributed Metaverse

Beware Second Life and other proprietary virtual worlds, the open distributed metaverse is coming fast! Some of the most interesting initiatives are outlined below.

Yesterday I found some time to check what is going on at openmetaverse.org. OpenMetaverse hosts projects related to Open Source Metaverse development based on OS emulation of the Second Life platform. The OpenMetaverse project started with a Second Life reverse engineering initiative known as LibSecondLife and now has a server component known as OpenSim (see also the new website OpenSimulator). Last time I checked I was too lazy to install and test the OpenSim server, but yesterday I found out that there is a directory of public access servers run by the DeepGrid project.

I created a DeepGrid account and used the standard Second Life client to connect according to the instructions given here. It is very important that the standard Second Life client can be used to connect to the DeepGrid: no new software to install and no learning curve. Most of the regions available on DeepGrid did not respond, which is not too surprising since I believe most of them are hosted on home computers. The default region for a DeepGrid user is changed as a DeepGrid account option. I logged on the OpenSim IRC channel and asked which regions were up and running. I immediately received a reply, changed my home region, launched the Second Life client directed to DeepGrid, and my brand new avatar Giulio Beta appeared in the Open Metaverse (picture above) and had a chat with the server operator who was also there.

I could chat, walk and explore this almost desert world, but I could not (yet) dress my avatar properly: Poor Giulio Beta is still naked and freezing in the wild Open Second Life. I could not (yet) upload textures. I could build simple objects with the standard wood material and texture, but when I tried to edit them I found that a copy of the previous iteration of the object was left in-world. I built the green O of Open in the picture. Compared to the large and growing list of features of the Second Life built and operated by Linden Lab, this is really (still) a toy.

But, it is a start!

The development of commercial software development projects is linear and predictable (well...), but the development of OS software development projects is _exponential_! OS software development projects start with a few initially very committed developers on a volunteer, part-time basis. Most projects fail in the first few months and are forgotten, but a few projects manage to achieve a critical mass of developers, early users, motivating results and media visibility, and enter a phase of exponentially increasing growth. From that point on, a well managed OS project will produce better and more robust software than any commercial project, and much faster. Based on what I have seen and reasonable (even conservative) projections, I think the OpenSim project will produce a usable metaverse in a few months, say in Q1 2008, and break even with Second Life in Q1 2009. At that point, there will be a solid OS server and client platform that everyone on the planet can use to build and deploy Second Life -like virtual worlds that can be interconnected in a global grid like in the DeepGrid project. This global grid may then leverage the Second Life user base (tens or even hundreds of millions by 2009 according to current projections, already familiar with the Second Life system and with client software already installed) and become the main open distributed metaverse platform.

Linden Lab, creator of the proprietary Second Life, placed their client code in the OS domain a few months ago and are considering following up with OSing also the server code. This is, I believe, the smartest thing they could do. As soon as their OS counterpart grows beyond critical mass, there will be nothing a single company can do to compete with thousands of smart and motivated programmers and operators all over the world. Better if they take the lead in the development of the OS distributed metaverse.

I will install the OpenSim software on our metaxlr8 streaming media and game server, and start experimenting. Once the Second Life metaverse is based on OS software and runs on a distributed network of independent servers, I am sure there will be a market for professional independent hosting services, with a choice of different server-side features for different clients. For example, banks will certainly be interested an a strong encryption and authentication layer, and operators of popular SL worlds will certainly be interested in powerful hardware and optimization to increase the number of avatars that may use their server simultaneously.

Open Croquet is another example of emerging distributed metaverse development platform based on the OS language Squeak (a popular implementation of Smalltalk also used as development platform for other important initiatives such as e-learning systems for children). The picture above is a souvenir of my first visit to a remote Croquet virtual world a couple of months ago, showing how you can write on a whiteboard. Open Croquet itself is not a finished and usable virtual world, but a development kit for virtual worlds, entirely based on OS technology and with built-in P2P features. Open Croquet is a “swiss knife” that will permit building a distributed P2P metaverse of VR words, from MMOGs to e-learning systems. Open Croquet, that has been described as a “metaverse operating system” is certainly another very serious candidate development platform for the open distributed metaverse. Its native P2P features permit running a virtual world without central servers or, more realistically, with central servers only used to perform certain management tasks like directory services, access control and caching while the virtual worlds themselves live on their creator’s home systems.

The power of the Open Croquet development environment is demonstrated by Qwaq Forums, a commercial value added layer aimed at professional collaboration and productivity. It has integrated VoIP, collaborative document editing and web browsing. A minimalist avatar is browsing this website in the image above. Qwaq Forums is specifically aimed at corporate users as a virtual office / intranet infrastructure, but it demonstrates how very powerful end user applications can be built on top of the Open Croquet development platform.

Posted by G.P. on 07/07 at 09:30 AM
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