The Black Queen

And how many Black Queens exist in human society? Consider the teacher, who is vital for the continuation of the culture, but who is neither respected nor paid particularly well.

You are doubtlessly able to think of many other examples.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21629-black-queen-tells-microbes-to-be-lazy.html

I'm doing some art...

I'm playing around with some illustrations. I'm not sure what to call them. E-toons? Anyway, there are an attempt to hint at the feelings invoked by the idea of transhumanism.

See what you think. Do these evoke the future?

Oh, and they're all at deviant art and they're all under a creative commons mark.

transhuman6

Red Dwarfs and Immortality

The new issue of Scientific American has a fascinating article on the far future of the universe...or, at least, our universe, perhaps only one among many.

In any case, it got me to wondering. The article dealt with events almost fantastically distant in the future -- billions, even trillions of years away. But if stars (at least cozy little red dwarfs) can have such lifespans, could sentient beings? Transhumanists and posthumanists would suggest that this is possible, even probable.

Which brings up another question. Will any of us living today know immortality in some form? Even if that immortality involves only the survival of our intellects rather than our biological bodies?

If that should be the case, is it not possible that some of us living today will see the unimaginably distant future discussed in Scientific American? Will, in fact, watch the stars wink out, one by one?

When 14 Billion Years Just Isn't Enough Time

seasteading...

Let's admit it. There is something enormously attractive about the idea of seasteading. And it has nothing to do with economics or politics.

It has to do with that eternal and very human dream of having your own little country.

animals as peers?

Avatar Polymorph has an interesting piece on the ethics of increasing animal intelligence in the current H+ Magazine. Worth a look here.

I see no reason why animals couldn't be boosted to human or even super-human levels. The thing I wonder is how we and they will interact. How will, say, an intelligent cow regard the human race? How will we react when Spot responds to "roll over and play dead" by suggesting you put it you-know-where?

victor

employment crisis...for whom?

Saw an interesting review by Guillermo Santamaria of Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee's new book Race Against The Machine at H+ (see below). The book deals with the current unemployment problem and the changes in the economy that are causing it -- particularly the automation of so much labor.

In my comment I wrote that it must be difficult to write about the current employment crisis (or, indeed, any crisis). Naturally, we tend to interpret events from our own perspective. If developments seem to benefit our own sort of person, then the future appears dark in the short run and bright in the long. if they do not, however, then the future is uniformly horrible.

The question, of course, is whether we know who the developments in question will really benefit. Automation, for instance, is putting much of the industrial workforce out of business. But, I've heard it argued that increasingly sophisticated software is having the same effect on white collar workers. The managerial, service, and "human skills" workers may not, in the long run, be the winners they think they are.

http://hplusmagazine.com/2012/01/29/book-review-race-against-the-machines/

Sexbots?

I saw the following article a while back. It argues that soon enough we'll be able to construct robots with which we might fall in love...even marry. I suspect that this is the truth. Eventually, maybe quite soon, we'll produce something....if not robots, machines, then something biological...that could play the role of concubine.

What worries me is that men and women are already quite separate creatures. We *think* differently.  But we work to overcome our differences so that we can sex and families. And we quite like having sex and families.

But what if we don't have to do that?

http://www.livescience.com/1951-forecast-sex-marriage-robots-2050.html

Will start posting again soon...

Really I will.

Things have been a bit complicated. But, then, that's true for us all.