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R.U. Sirius Co-Authors New Book On Transhumanism
An anonymous reader writes "I've never been able to work up a fear of the robot apocalypse," admits R.U. Sirius, who more than 20 years after Mondo 2000's original guide to geek culture has again collaborated on a new encyclopedia of emerging technologies. As we progress to a world where technology actually becomes invisible, he argues that "everything about how we will define the future is still in play," suggesting that the transhumanist movement is "a good way to take isolated radical tech developments and bundle them together". While his co-author argues transhumanists "like to solve everything," Sirius points out a much bigger concern is a future of technologies dominated by the government or big capital.
It's the Google billionaires I think who recently declared that computers and the internet are going to get embedded in everywhere and will become effectively invisible.
In fact, computers have been embedded or "hidden" in consumer appliances since the 80s and the old stuff was sometimes more invisible than now (camera with automatic settings, car, washing machine). But now it's "on the internet" or at least on a local network ; sensors and wireless are considerably cheaper.
Before I was born there was hype about that kind of stuff already but it was with serial lines and an 8-bit computer with 40 column text display.