The rapid development of technology in the modern era has inspired a movement known as transhumanism. Envisioned is a near future in which human bodies and minds will be transformed and enhanced through genomics, pharmaceuticals, nanotechnology, robotics, artificial intelligence, and any number of prosthetic devices inside and outside our bodies. Advocates also hold out the possibilities of radical life extension through rejuvenation technologies or alternately reincarnating individuals inside of computers. The proponents of transhumanism argue that the exponential growth in scientific knowledge and know-how is leading humanity to a “Singularity” sometime in the mid 21st century. In that Singularity, our technologies will cross a threshold. We will become post- or trans-humans. Required is a transdisciplinary conversation to explore the scientific possibilities and the cultural implications of this brave new world.
Image credit to artist Erica Vinskie.
All Helix Center events are free and open to the public, including this one!
Roundtables are streamed live our website and the recording remains available after the event events.
This is a past event that happened on 2:30pm-4:30pm, Saturday, March 10th, 2018.
Participants
William Grassie
William Grassie is an interdisciplinary scholar, academic entrepreneur, social activist, and author. Grassie received a B.A. in political science from Middlebury College and then worked for ten years on nuclear disarmament, citizen diplomacy, community organizing, and sustainability issues in Washington, D.C, Jerusalem, Philadelphia, and West Berlin. He completed a Ph.D. in Religion from Temple University, where... read more! »
Stephen Post
Director of the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care, and Bioethics, Stony Brook University School of Medicine
Stephen G. Post, Ph.D. has taught at the University of Chicago Medical School, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine (1988-2008), and Stony Brook University School of Medicine (2008-), where he is Director of the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care, and Bioethics. He is an elected member of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia,... read more! »
Francesca Rossi
IBM Fellow & IBM AI Ethics Global Leader
Francesca Rossi is an IBM Fellow and the IBM AI Ethics Global Leader. She is based at the T.J. Watson IBM Research Lab, New York, USA, where she leads AI research projects. She co-chairs the IBM AI Ethics board and she participates in many global multi-stakeholder initiatives on AI ethics, such as the Partnership on... read more! »
Lee Silver
Lee M. Silver is a professor of molecular biology at Princeton University and co-founder of GenePeek, a genetic research company which screens couples for possible prospective genetic disorders in their children. Silver is the author of the book Remaking Eden: How Genetic Engineering and Cloning Will Transform the American Family (1998) and Challenging Nature: The... read more! »
Hava Tirosh-Samuelson
Regents’ Professor, Irving and Miriam Lowe Professor of Modern Judaism, Director of Jewish Studies, and Professor of History, Arizona State University
Professor Hava Tirosh-Samuelson (Ph.D. Hebrew University, 1978) is Regents’ Professor, Irving and Miriam Lowe Professor of Modern Judaism, Director of Jewish Studies, and Professor of History at Arizona State University in Tempe, AZ. Her research focuses on Jewish intellectual history, religion and science, and religious environmentalism. In addition to over 50 essays, she is the... read more! »
My gut response to transhuman is that we ought to understand ourselves before we start to figure out what might be trans. Most discussions concern themselves with the intellect when we are mostly feeling. Technology has not helped answer the question: know thy self! To proceed with incomplete answers creates the kind of monsters Plato warned us about when he caricatured empirical knowledge. To push that into the territory of “singularity” appears to me to be a wild prediction.
I really agree.” Nosce te ipsum!” Our “spsum” is mainly made of atoms… about 70 billions of them; they somehow find convenient to join itch other and produce common good and eventually life…Lif is a circumstantial event…
Yes, science should go after and about promoting “circumstances” to experiment and so perhaps come out with something new and useful… But why start with something away from ourselves?!… What we know about the atoms is relatively insignificant….. We should have no higher priority to learn above what human beings are mainly made of…
Dear Bill and Steve,
Sounds like a fabulous conference!.
Sorry, I have to miss it this time because I have a previous engagement where I am speaking on Ninash Foundation as a Kitchen Table charity that promotes literacy among female and minority children by building schools in India. I am also giving yoga and meditation seminar during the same period.
Please keep me posted on future events where I might be able to offer my services as a presenters.
Stay well and healthy and have a great conference!
For those of us who have a need to explore, experiment, investigate, reach out into space, discover new habitats, investigate stable, sustainable ecologies in them in terms of matter, energy and information processes transhumanism is necessary and inevitable departure from the bindings of our limitations and the human condition.
History is the for the revisionists. Religion is just a class of characterized affinities for information processes to maintain or advance a particular ‘ecology’.