IEET Culture News

‪Jason Silva on Psychedelic Rapture, Ecstatic Awe‬ and Technology

2012-02-08T13:57:13+00:00

LUCID NYC is like TED at a Bar… Jason Silva speaking at LUCID NYC, which he describes as “like TED at a bar” - he talks about inspiration, techno-rapture, the mind-expanding aspects of technology and rapturous AWE.

Hank Pellissier I Want a God-Like Brain

2012-02-08T13:00:47+00:00

Is the human brain a magnificent, near-miraculous organ? Or a flawed, forgetful, feeble-minded, under-achieving blob? My POV is the latter. Brain 1.0 is laughably dysfunctional, teeming with weaknesses even in our finest specimens. Memories are dust in a hurricane, logic is lunatic, empathy thinner than the neocortex on a sociopathic toddler. I want Brain 2.0. Are you with me? Eager for an upgrade?

Martine Rothblatt Vitology is Life

2012-02-07T11:00:19+00:00

To avoid confusion we need a new, more appropriate term for the study of life than biology – which is now more properly understood as the study of life built from organic cellular chemistry. A better term for the study of life is Vitology.

“‪How Drugs Helped Invent the Internet & The Singularity: Jason Silva on “Turning Into Gods”

2012-02-05T14:47:25+00:00

Current TV’s Jason Silva, the director of the documentary - “Turning into Gods” - interviewed by Reason’s Zach Weissmueller. Silva looks at how technological progress allows humans to direct their own evolution.

A Bright and Shining Future Awaits

2012-02-05T13:18:59+00:00

We’ve looked into the future, and it’s dark. Increasingly, we’ve lost a progressive view of our future. Instead of seeing promise and lives made better by technology, we’re seeing lives filled with cyborgs and an uninhabitable society. Should we be afraid? Or are we being unnecessarily pessimistic? TVO’s The Agenda invited science fiction authors Robert Sawyer and Madeline Ashby, internet critic Jesse Hirsh, and the IEET’s James Hughes to address these topics.

‪Tunisia People and Cyber Revolution‬

2012-02-04T14:52:53+00:00

Tunisia People and Cyber Uprising leading to Revolution on January 14th, 2011

Sohail Inayatullah Say You Want a Revolution, or Five

2012-02-04T14:00:38+00:00

For centuries, world politics has been organized around nations and their official functionaries—with artificial borders drawn up, separating French from German, Australian from New Zealander. But this could all be blown away as technology and political movements reshape our understanding of world governance.

‪Robert J. Sawyer: “A Galaxy Far Far Away” - My Ass!‬

2012-02-03T09:09:18+00:00

Robert J. Sawyer - Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author - explains how the popularity of the Star Wars movies has “dulled the edge” that made science fiction such a pertinent film genre.

Patrick Tucker Will Artificial Intelligence be America’s Next Big Thing?

2012-02-03T08:28:53+00:00

In the next decade, the United States will use increasingly capable artificial intelligence (AI) to greatly reduce the cost of health care, accelerate research and development into new medicines, improve cars and roads to reduce gridlock, and even regain much of the manufacturing base we lost to countries like China, say researchers in computer science, robotics, and management. They claim that AI will soon change the work of doctors, nurses and teachers across the country, create entirely new businesses, and radically remake industries already in existence.

David Eubanks Breakfast Conversation

2012-02-03T05:03:58+00:00

In this piece David Eubanks asks how we might react to intelligence emerging from ubiquitous computing stuff in our environment. What if our imagination about where and how self-willed machine minds will arise is too narrow, and it might just pop up anywhere? What do we owe talking stuff?