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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.
That mistook the headline's mention of RU Sirius for Yahoo Serious? Same era, same stupid sounding name, same flash in the pan. I wonder if they were separated at birth
I was just a small kid, but back then they called it an acid trip.
I think I'll wait until H++14 is fully supported before upgrading myself.
Come on, even Playboy has a nice cover. Let's see a chapter list and a summary of one of the ideas.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Want to know more about the new book by R. U. Sirius? Read our review, co-authored by I. Kannt and B. Lievtis...
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
It's like making a nazi supersoldier that shoots lightning, using suspiciously well conserved corpse parts from the 10th century and "Tesla" electric stuff.
Goffman is a huckster and charlatan, why is anyone still paying attention to this enemy of relevance ?
Kenny Boy Goffman has been the self appointed Court Jester to the psychedelic and transhumanist communities for far too many years. In reality, neither camp has anything in common and Kenny does great damage with his hucksterism and nonsensical gibberish. This crusty old hippy and now goofy shill for techno-fascism needs to shut up for once and for all. He damages what little remains of the potential for a real psychedelic culture with his boosterism for the truly evil transhumanist technocrats who oppose democracy and who cheer-lead for general mechanization and dehumanization. Kenny Boy Goffman, you are truly nothing at all but the Enemy of Relevance and the enemy of what is actually Human.
Professor Dale Carrico on his 'Amor Mundi' blog has (with razor wit and insight) completely destroyed the puny intellectual rationalizations and extremely flimsy philosophical foundations of the ridiculous "transhumanist" movement. In particular he more than makes the case that the bones of "transhumanism" are in fact : fascist, plutocratic elitist, sexist, racist and overwhelmingly adolescent ie the worst case of arrested development posing as science and sound thinking ; when it is in fact nothing more than terrible and gratingly naive science fiction which has had the temerity to form a little club for the lost fanboys, nerds and wannabee fascist dictators who live in efficiency apartments and are obsessed with Japanese anime. Some of these greasy manboys are libertarians, they are even more despicable and deluded. Ending death, even if possible, would only for these lads lead to one question : can I really play Dungeons and Dragons until the entropic heat death of the Universe and still remain sexually inexperienced? If Ayn Rand wrote terrible sci fi, that would be "transhumanism." Finally, transhumanists are profoundly anti-democratic and opposed to progressive politics, as their imaginary Robot God is gonna nano up some Cyber Paradise and bring on the Singularity Nerd Rapture (IN LESS THAN 20 YEARS) when we will be 'all watched over by Machines of Loving Grace.' They were saying "less than 20 years" to Machine Utopia back in the late 1980's when the middle brow lunatics Max and Natasha more started all this Extropian E-jacyoolation and Saturday morning kid's cartoon show rolling along on its square, lumpy wheels. Giving this book to a minor is child abuse, no different than warping kids' minds with the Book of Mormon.
Think of it as "brain implant", i.e. humans will, in effect, guide their own evolution by integrating relatively "low-tech" capabilities such as Googling for information or sending/receiving messages/emails directly into the human brain, where it then becomes very, very "high-tech". So it requires some advanced techniques in neural surgery (which are already becoming available) with computer technology that has existed for decades.
But, of course, such "transhumans" will be genetically identical sans surgery to us ordinary folk, but will appear to be omniscient and telepathic.
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.
AI has advanced, simply not in the way popular culture predicted it once would.
There will be little need for human-like replicants running about while humans themselves are inexpensively abundant.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Transhumanism is currently a hodgepodge of religious nonsense, visionary science fiction, and practical self-improvement. I confess I am a bit swept up in the romantic ideal of it. I love the idea of human improveability in the form of intellectual and technological advancement, extended lifespans, higher quality of life, and even post-scarcity economies.
The religious nonsense part of it is best embodied in Ray Kurzweil's singularity (also known as the nerd rapture), the idea that humanity will soon upload our minds to computers and live forever. I can't imagine us not having this technology before the end of the century--especially with efforts like the UK's Human Brain Project and America's BRAIN Initiative AND a proof of concept with researchers mapping a worm's brain into a legobot and having it "come alive". HOWEVER: I also don't pin any personal hopes for immortality on this research because we are making copies of our minds, so even if my mind joins the singularity, I will still die--probably bitterly jealous of my immortal self having all that virtual sex in technoheaven.
For me, the science fiction of transhumanism is all about vision and inspiration, and not about dreams of salvation and immortality like Kurzweil promotes. The science fiction part of it is most accessible through Star Trek, but in reality our transhumanist future will probably be more like the wild visions of Charles Stross' Accelerando, or my personal favorite the Quantum Thief Trilogy by Hannu Rajaniemi. These books drop you into settings filled with Matrioshka brains (Dyson Spheres made of computronium), and force the reader to confront all the uncomfortable otherness that comes with virtual life.
Another great science fiction resource is the Creative Commons Eclipse Phase RPG, which takes place in a future where humanity has colonized solar system and extended out into the Oort Cloud. Each planet and environment requiring different engineering and culture adaptations to survive. You can download all the books in PDF format. These books are a fantastic jumping-point for the imagining what a post-human future might look like.
This all said, I am not a fan of Sirius' encyclopedia. I was looking for practical, real-world things I can do right now to enhance my life through science and technology. Instead, I got very thin treatments of many subjects, overstatements of medical advances, important subjects left out (like the 19th Century Russian Cosmism movement (precursor to transhumanism)), and a general lack of leads to new areas to research. I get way more information from Wikipedia-surfing than I got from this book. I do appreciate his efforts though. If he gets more people into the idea of transhumanism, then more people will collaborate on it, we'll have more hacks for better living, and more people thinking about the future and human progress.
i ~ Celebrating Science, Cyberspace, Speculation
I was looking for practical, real-world things I can do right now to enhance my life through science and technology.
That doesn't look like it was the point of the book. It looks like an overview of the field, not a how-to guide.
Instead, I got very thin treatments of many subjects
I don't think that's fair. According to Amazon, the book covers 90+ topics in 288 pages. I don't see how they could be in-depth about any of them.
important subjects left out (like the 19th Century Russian Cosmism movement (precursor to transhumanism))
The Cosmism entry is on page 52.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
The book explicitly mentions Russian Cosmism, although in reference to contemporary Cosmism. Do encyclopedias usually tell you how to do practical things? That sounds more like an instruction manual than an encyclopedia. I think the book is a good introduction to the existence of the ideas and how they relate, and to Transhumanism as a *culture*.
I am the co-author of this book (and disappointingly unnamed in this discussion), so I thought I would register and reply to a few points.
Just as reporters often don’t get to write the headlines for their stories, authors don’t always have final say about the titles of their books. Our working title was “The User’s Guide to Transhumanism,” which I think would have been a little more on-point. The word “encyclopedia” notwithstanding, we couldn’t cover everything, certainly not in any depth, in the number of words we had to work with. However, contrary to a post above, we do have an entry on Cosmism. Since the entries are alphabetical, I don’t know how the commenter missed it.
We tried hard to be objective. While we are both largely supportive of transhumanism, neither of us are starry-eyed “believers,” and I think the book (and even the interviews linked in the story) make that clear. We at least mention the criticisms and potential downsides of transhumanism, and in fact there’s a relatively lengthy entry called “Criticisms of Transhumanism” which is online.
Unfortunately there is an "Anonymous Coward" trolling this discussion, making a lot of wild and baseless charges. I’ve known R.U. for nearly 30 years, and it’s completely absurd to call him “fascist"/"sexist"/"racist"/"elitist"/"technocratic" by any normal meanings of those terms. I’d describe him as somewhere on the left on many issues, but he’s hard to pigeonhole politically. I would never consider him a dogmatist or even much of a joiner. (For the record, I’m a sort of impure libertarian who tries to take a somewhat distant and objective view of politics, and is often more willing to compromise with the left or right than a libertarian is “supposed to.”)
Whatever Peter Thiel funds, sadly, he’s not funding me or R.U. We could use some of that money. The Anonymous Coward is seeing conspiracies where none exist (as far as I know, at least). Transhumanism is a large, diverse thing, with many political and personal divisions and factions. Some people in it one could fairly call “right-wing” or “neo-reactionary,” but there are also many who could be fairly called “left-wing” or “socialist.” Labeling all advocates of transhumanism as "fascist" or "technocratic" is simply ignorant.
It's self-interested of me to say this, but I would recommend that people buy and read the book, and make up your own mind. We think it will be entertaining and informative for people interested in transhumanism, or in the future in general. If you think we've made an error or left something out, contact us through our website and we'll fix it in the next edition (which we hope will happen). In any case, please don't jump to conclusions based on anonymous mud-slinging.