A blog focusing on some of the most prominent “-isms” surrounding humanity’s technological future: extropianism, transhumanism, posthumanism, the mouth-filling Singularitarianism, and others in that constellation.
April 17, 2015
[Continuing coverage of the UN’s 2015 conference on killer robots. See all posts in this series here.] If the ongoing process of deliberation under the auspices of the United Nations is to result in new law limiting the autonomy of weapon systems, at some point there will need to be lawyers involved. Court was in session on Wednesday...
April 15, 2015
[Continuing coverage of the UN’s 2015 conference on killer robots. See all posts in this series here.] In a well-attended lunchtime side event yesterday (don’t go to UN meetings for the free food; plastic-wrapped sandwiches and water or pop were the offerings, and these quickly disappeared at the hands of the horde of hungry...
April 15, 2015
[Continuing coverage of the UN’s 2015 conference on killer robots. See all posts in this series here.] Here’s my latest dispatch from the second major diplomatic conference on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems, or “killer robots” as the less pretentious know them. (A UN employee, for whom important-sounding meetings are daily...
April 14, 2015
[Continuing coverage of the UN’s 2015 conference on killer robots. See all posts in this series here.] I mentioned in my first post in this series that last year’s meeting on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems was extraordinary for the UN body conducting it in that delegations actually showed up, made statements and paid attention....
April 13, 2015
[Continuing coverage of the UN’s 2015 conference on killer robots. See all posts in this series here.] Things go wrong, with technology and with people. Case in point: this year, I arrived in Geneva on time after a three-leg flight, but last year’s trip was a surreal adventure. United’s hopelessly overworked agents didn’t...
April 12, 2015
[Continuing coverage of the UN’s 2015 conference on killer robots. See all posts in this series here.] Before I start blogging the kickoff of this week’s United Nations meeting on killer robots, a little background is called for, both about the issue and my views on it. I have worked on this issue in different capacities for...
April 11, 2015
[First post in a series covering the UN’s 2015 conference on killer robots. See all posts in the series here.] Over the next week, I’ll be blogging from Geneva, where 118 nations (if they all show up) will be meeting to discuss “Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems” (LAWS) and, you know, the fate of humanity. You may...
March 17, 2015
H.G. Wells I have recently been spending a fair amount of my time during my sabbatical year at Princeton as a Madison Fellow reading and thinking about H.G. Wells, in preparation for an upcoming Agora Institute for Civic Virtue and the Common Good conference. Wells was tremendously influential in the first half of the twentieth century...
February 17, 2015
A recent not-very-good article in The Independent presents as news what is really an ongoing debate within the relatively small community of scientists interested in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). The issue is whether or under what circumstances SETI should become “METI” — that is, Messages to Extraterrestrial...
February 12, 2015
Image: Wikimedia / Patche99z (CC) Today is “Darwin Day” — the anniversary of the great naturalist Charles Darwin’s birth in 1809 — which is as good a time as any to reflect on the complicated ways in which Darwinian thinking influences the transhumanists. This is discussed at several points in Eclipse of Man, the new book...