Transhumanism

Go to the Seattle Personal Transhumanism Group page

At its heart Transhumanism is the belief that we can become more than we currently are - that through technology, diligence, and daring we can transcend the current limitations we face and blossom into creatures we would not now recognize as human.

Transhumanist see many possible ways to achieve those goals, most of which are tied to ongoing technological advances. Some can also be acted on right now.

Life Extension

In universal or even geologic time, a human being lives for an incredibly brief amount of time. One of the paramount goals of tranhumanists is to extend our lives - perhaps long enough to enable us to upload and leave behind the notion of life span. Life extension can be accomplished both through behavioral changes (such as diet and exercise) and eventually via biotech techniques now being studied. Ready More > >

Intelligence Augmentation

The human mind is both incredibly powerful and frustratingly fallible. Various ways of organizing our thoughts, disciplining our minds, and recently studied nootropic drugs offer potential paths to improve our memory, concentration, and creativity, as well as improving our peace of mind and quality of life. Read More >>

Brain / Computer Interfaces

In the past year alone, the pipe dream of direct brain / computer interfaces has taken dramatic steps closer to reality. Paralyzed humans have been trained to move computer cursors via EEG or by electrodes implanted in their brains. Mice have learned to move levers by similar techniques. Information from neurons in the cat retina has been used to generate a recognizable image on a computer. We are learning to decode at least simple information in the brain, and the pace of progress will only accelerate. Read More >>

Uploading Consciousness

The logical conclusion of the continual increase of computing power, the sophistication of brain scanning equipment, and the research done in brain / computer interfaces is the ability to move the processes occurring within a human brain out of that brain and into a computer. Tranhumanists are materialists - we do not believe in a mystical force of mind that is separate from our brains. And so the logical conclusion is that we will be able to create copies of ourselves which run in software, and as a result may live forever, may grow progressively more powerful as computers grow more powerful, and which can experiment with their consciousness and their societies in ways totally inaccessible to us today. The projected date for this, based on long term trends in computing power, is sometime between 2020 and 2040. Read More >>

Nanotechnology

The history of technology has been the increasing miniaturization of components. This miniaturization reduces cost and power requirements while increasing speed. Smaller and smaller components have driven the advances in computer processing power and memory capacity for the past 50 years. Nearly that long ago, Richard Feynman pointed out that nothing in theory prevents us from building tools out of individual atoms arranged in the ways we want. At that nanometer scale, we can build devices that can re-arrange matter with amazing precision and speed, which can be injected into our bodies to repair damage or enhance our abilities, and which can eventually be taught to replicate themselves. Second only to uploading our minds, a fully mature Nanotechnology would alter everything we know about our reality. Read More >>

Other Technological Advances

Quantum Computing has the potential to radically change what computers can and can't do. Biotechnology, besides offering us extended lives, has huge potential impact on the world as we harness living things to perform tasks that today are handled by machines. Cheap and out of control space exploration will expand our knowledge of the universe. Ways to bypass the speed of light are theoretically possible. The future will be a strange and wonderful place. Read More >>

The Singularity

The history of human technological progress is one of ever accelerating growth. How far can that growth go? How much faster can it become? Plot out some measurements, like the computing power available on the earth, and you find them getting steadily closer to a vertical line as they approach an asymptote this side of 2050. How could this actually happen? Any one of uploaded human minds, sophisticated AI, or a mature nanotechnology could trigger an explosive growth spurt that outstripped centuries of scientific, technological, and economic growth in a year, or months, or perhaps even days. Read More >>

What We Can Do Right Now

We are on the cusp of major changes to what it means to be human. The next few generations will grow up with more and more options. For the current generations, there is some hope that survival into the new age will be rewarded with many of those same options - that those of us who live long enough, in good health, will see our lives and health extended even further, whether by biotech or uploading.

In that context, the most important thing we can do for ourselves is to extend our lives long enough to see the next age.

Eat right, Exercise, Supplement Your Diet, Stimulate Your Mind, Meditate, Give and Get Social Support, Consider a Cryonic insurance policy

Other Information

There are a great many other resources on the web with more detail on Transhumanism, each of these topics and more. Some of the best are linked from the Resources Page.