Transumanar

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.

Posted by on 03/12 at 06:35 PM