Transvision 2010 Website
Transvision 2010 is a global transhumanist conference and community convention, organized by several transhumanist activists, groups and organizations, under the executive leadership of the Italian Transhumanist Association (AIT) and with the collaboration of an Advisory Board. The event will take place on October 22, 23 and 24, 2010 in Milan, Italy with many options for remote online access.
While Transvision 2010 is not organized by or connected with Humanity+ (formerly WTA), the organizer of previous Transvision conferences, we wish to thank the Humanity+ Board for allowing the use of the name.
TransVision 2010 will be a very intense, informative, scientific as well as entertaining tour de force in contemporary transhumanist thinking, activism, science, technology & innovation and grand visionary dreams, with over 40 talks distributed over three days. Join us to explore the scientific, technological, cultural, artistic and social trends which could change our world beyond recognition and may result in a singularity in only a few decades.

Sprekers zijn o.a. Riccardo Campra, Lincoln Cannon, José Luis Cordeiro, Aubrey de Grey, Robert Geraci, Ben Goertzel, Miriam Ji Sun, Randal A. Koene, Eugen Leitl, Max More, David Orban, Giulio Prisco, Martine Rothblatt, Anders Sandberg, Rémi Sussan, Stefano Vaj, Giuseppe Vatinno en Natasha Vita-More, stuk voor stuk grote namen, waaraan wellicht nog wat mensen toegevoegd worden.

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Yesterday I spoke to Nikola Danaylov at the Singularity Weblog. The title of the podcast comes from a quote I made during the interview, when Nikola asked me whether or not he thought we would need to sacrifice aspects of our humanity to go through a Technological Singularity. My response was that if we do the Singularity right, we need not compromise in any fashion: human beings from techno-enthusiasts to the Amish will be enthusiastic with the results.

During the podcast, Nikola asked me what I thought humanity’s chance of surviving the Singularity would be, and I said that my current estimate was around 25%, but that could change depending on what happens, and how much effort is put towards a positive Singularity.

We’ve added John Tooby, the founder of evolutionary psychology, to our excellent roster for this upcoming August 14-15 conference at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco, along with Ramez Naam, author of More Than Human.

For those interested in technology and science, this is a star-studded roster. I’ve listed them before on this blog, but let me mention a few of the highlight speakers yet again: Ray Kurzweil, author of The Singularity is Near, the “world’s first cyborg” Stephen Mann, animal intelligence pioneer Irene Pepperberg, leading bionanotechnologist Dr. Anita Goel, bioethicist Gregory Stock, computational neurobiologist Terry Sejnowski, creator of the world’s most realistic humanoid robots, David Hanson.

Register now, and save $200 on the at-the-door price.

https://www.singularitysummit.com/registration/

We also still have discounted hotel rooms available at the Hyatt.

See you in San Francisco! This will be one of the best science/technology conferences ever.

Register today, before prices go up at midnight!

We still have discounted hotel rooms available, for $139/night instead of the usual $199.

Google… what the hell? I submitted some good ideas to that program.

Scientists at Tel Aviv University in collaboration with researchers at Harvard University have succeeded in tracking the progression of cell reprogramming (the process of coaxing adult cells to revert to an embryonic stem cell-like state, allowing scientists to later re-differentiate these cells into specific types with the potential to treat medical disorders). They used flourescent markers to develop their live imaging approach. During the reprogramming process, the team was able to visually track whole lineages of a cell population from their single-cell point of origin. Uniquely labeled inducible fibroblast populations during a reprogramming process (AFTAU) Cell lineage proved to be crucial for predicting how the cells would behave and whether or not they could be reprogrammed successfully, says Dr. Iftach Nachman of TAU's Department of Biochemistry. "By combining quantitative analysis of the data, we were able to see that these 'decisions' are made very early on. We analyzed the cells over time, and we were able to detect subtle changes that occur as early as the first or second day in a long, two-week process." While embryonic stem cells culled from live embryos can be manipulated to become new "replacement" tissues such as nerve or heart cells, these reprogrammed stem cells from adults represent a safer and ethically more responsible approach, some scientists believe. The next step for Dr. Nachman and his team is research into specific cell-type characteristics before adult cells even enter the reprogramming process. They will try to discover the molecular markers that differentiate between cells that successfully reprogram and those that do not. Several projects in their lab are now attempting to track different cell types and how they change under live imaging. More info: American Friends of Tel Aviv University news (Source: )

In the initial stages of sleep, energy levels increase dramatically in brain regions found to be active during waking hours, according to new research in the June 30 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience. These results suggest that a surge of cellular energy may replenish brain processes needed to function normally while awake. Levels of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the energy currency of cells, in rats increased in four key brain regions normally active during wakefulness. Shown here is the energy surge measured in the frontal cortex, a brain region associated with higher-level thinking. (Dworak et al. The Journal of Neuroscience 2010) The authors measured levels of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the energy currency of cells, in rats. They found that ATP levels in four key brain regions normally active during wakefulness increased when the rats were in non-REM sleep, but were accompanied by an overall decrease in brain activity. When the animals were awake, ATP levels were steady. When the rats were gently nudged to stay awake three or six hours past their normal sleep times, there was no increase in ATP. The authors conclude that sleep is necessary for this ATP energy surge, as keeping the rats awake prevented the surge. The energy increase may then power restorative processes absent during wakefulness, because brain cells consume large amounts of energy just performing daily waking functions. More info: Society for Neuroscience news (Source: )

Researchers have found daydreaming to be remarkably common -- and often quite useful. A wandering mind can protect you from immediate perils and keep you on course toward long-term goals. Sometimes daydreaming is counterproductive, but sometimes it fosters creativity and helps you solve problems. (Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/science/29tier.html?ref=science)

UCSD computer-science professors have developed software that lets desktop computers continue to function in sleep mode; it could reduce the energy consumption of office networks by around 60 percent. Software running on a remote server maintains a version of each PC's operating systems and applications. The software, called SleepServer, carries on tasks on behalf of the desktop machine while it is put into a low-energy sleep mode. The energy savings come from the fact that each server can host up to 500 virtual machines. (Source: http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/25677/?ref=rss&a=f)

Elisabeth Rieper at the National University of Singapore and colleagues have created a model that suggests that DNA may be held together by quantum entanglement. They say that one line of evidence for this is that a purely classical analysis of the energy required to hold DNA together does not add up, and an entanglement model plugs the gap. The entanglement may also have an influence on the way that information is read off a strand of DNA, and that it may be possible to exploit this experimentally. (Source: http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25375/)

From the Pope’s April 3rd (“Holy Saturday”) address, via Aubrey:

An ancient Jewish legend from the apocryphal book “The life of Adam and Eve” recounts that, in his final illness, Adam sent his son Seth together with Eve into the region of Paradise to fetch the oil of mercy, so that he could be anointed with it and healed. The two of them went in search of the tree of life, and after much praying and weeping on their part, the Archangel Michael appeared to them, and told them they would not obtain the oil of the tree of mercy and that Adam would have to die. Later, Christian readers added a word of consolation to the Archangel’s message, to the effect that after 5,500 years the loving King, Christ, would come, the Son of God who would anoint all those who believe in him with the oil of his mercy. “The oil of mercy from eternity to eternity will be given to those who are reborn of water and the Holy Spirit. Then the Son of God, Christ, abounding in love, will descend into the depths of the earth and will lead your father into Paradise, to the tree of mercy.” This legend lays bare the whole of humanity’s anguish at the destiny of illness, pain and death that has been imposed upon us. Man’s resistance to death becomes evident: somewhere – people have constantly thought – there must be some cure for death. Sooner or later it should be possible to find the remedy not only for this or that illness, but for our ultimate destiny – for death itself. Surely the medicine of immortality must exist. Today too, the search for a source of healing continues. Modern medical science strives, if not exactly to exclude death, at least to eliminate as many as possible of its causes, to postpone it further and further, to prolong life more and more. But let us reflect for a moment: what would it really be like if we were to succeed, perhaps not in excluding death totally, but in postponing it indefinitely, in reaching an age of several hundred years? Would that be a good thing? Humanity would become extraordinarily old, there would be no more room for youth. Capacity for innovation would die, and endless life would be no paradise, if anything a condemnation. The true cure for death must be different. It cannot lead simply to an indefinite prolongation of this current life. It would have to transform our lives from within. It would need to create a new life within us, truly fit for eternity: it would need to transform us in such a way as not to come to an end with death, but only then to begin in fullness. What is new and exciting in the Christian message, in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, was and is that we are told: yes indeed, this cure for death, this true medicine of immortality, does exist. It has been found. It is within our reach. In baptism, this medicine is given to us. A new life begins in us, a life that matures in faith and is not extinguished by the death of the old life, but is only then fully revealed.

It’s been more than 5,500 years, and God never showed up, so now what? In fact, it’s been 200,000 years since the beginning of Mankind. God, maybe you’re a little bit late, don’t you think? Also, note how the Pope casually mentions Christian readers “(adding) a word of consolation” about an Archangel to the text, and refers to Apocrypha as theologically meaningful. Does making stuff up count as theologically significant if it was done far enough in the past?

The Pope asks, “Would that be a good thing?”, in reference to living hundreds of years. Well, the average human lifespan used to be around 20, and now it’s roughly four times longer, so is that a good thing? Why do people have to live so long? Why does your criticism of hundreds of years of life not apply to today’s elderly folks?

The Pope says, “Humanity would become extraordinarily old, there would be no more room for youth.” This isn’t so, because old people will modify their neurology to make it more fluid, like that of youth, in unprecedented combinations that retain executive maturity while allowing youthful creativity and flow. If we can heal neural aging, then it will only be a matter of time before we can heal the neural rigidity that causes fluid intelligence to decline after roughly the age of 30.

Never mind a brain with a hundred billions neurons, like we have now — we ought to have brains with tens of trillions of neurons, not necessarily even in the same place. Once we expand and distribute our cognitive architectures, our lives really will be eternal, unless we are pursued by those with the ability to truly snuff out every branch of our mental tree.

The Pope says, “Capacity for innovation would die, and endless life would be no paradise”, but wasn’t that the idea behind the imaginary Paradise that you believe in? Wouldn’t God grant us endless life? Why would we retain our capacity for innovation in Heaven but not on Earth? I suppose that Catholics believe that God will magically restore our capacity for innovation if we make it to Heaven, but why do you believe that magic can do it and science never can? The Bible barely even says anything about Heaven — for all we know, references to being closer to God after death are probably entirely metaphorical. The detailed descriptions of New Jerusalem are a joke, obviously made up by Stone Age writers with Stone Age beliefs. Does God really think that a city of gold would impress people in the 21st century? No, because God has never communicated with humanity outside from delusional human beings today and delusional human beings from the past whose stories got transcribed into “sacred texts”.

The Pope says, “Man’s resistance to death becomes evident: somewhere – people have constantly thought – there must be some cure for death.” He expresses uncertainty because he doesn’t want to say outright that indefinite life extension is possible, but he implicitly acknowledges that life extension into centuries is possible. I’m tired of accusations that mix together incredulity with a moral response — if the technology isn’t feasible, then it doesn’t deserve a moral response. If it is feasible, then it deserves a stronger moral response, immediately.

The Pope reveals Christian deathism when he says, “A new life begins in us, a life that matures in faith and is not extinguished by the death of the old life, but is only then fully revealed.” Please then — look forward to your death. A corpse is nothing but worm-food, unfortunately. When the neurons stop firing and start being consumed by bacteria, you die forever. Only a crude simulacra can ever be assembled thereafter.

Eternal life on Earth is not necessarily incompatible with Christianity. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that life extension is a bad thing. We’ve been “creating life” for centuries by creating new plants and animals for agriculture. Why didn’t the Church speak out against that? Because the Church is ultimately forced to approve what people want, and it has no guidance of its own, because God is nowhere to be seen, and his manifest absence makes communication quite difficult.

Even if God did exist, his lack of communication with us, and his alleged genocidal acts in the past, his threats of Hell condemn him as an evil being. If God did exist, we ought to defeat him. We need to grow up and make our own rules — not depend on an invisible and silent Stone Age Hebrew deity.

Today I got a call from the Boston Globe letting me know that a member of the Lifeboat Foundation Scientific Advisory Board, “Don Heathfield”, turned out to be a Russian spy. What a surprise, huh? Naturally, I voted to remove him from the board.

The Lifeboat Foundation’s Scientific Advisory Board has 1,148 members. I guess this makes 1,147.

I've often thought that cryonics, the practice of storing tissue (namely the brain) in a vat of liquid nitrogen, may eventually come to be seen as a rather primitive and naive technique for preservation. While it may be the only current option for those hoping to capture and restore their brain states for future reanimation, cryonics as a concept may not stand the test of time. More sophisticated methods have already been proposed, including warm biostasis and plastination.

While warm biostasis remains a largely theoretical endeavor, brain plastination was recently given a considerable boost through the founding of the Brain Preservation Foundation. Launched by Accelerating Studies Foundation founder John Smart and Harvard neuroscientist Ken Hayworth, the BPF is seeking to facilitate the development of any technology that will effectively preserve the brain for eventual reanimation. While the foundation members' pet interest is in plastination, they are not married to any particular technique. As far as they're concerned, the successful development of any kind of brain preservation technology means that everyone wins.

To this end, the Foundation has launched the Brain Preservation Technology Prize – a prize for demonstrating ultrastructure preservation across an entire large mammalian brain and verified by a comprehensive electron microscopic survey procedure. Think of it as an X-Prize for brain preservation technology. The Foundation wants to encourage researchers to develop techniques “capable of inexpensively and completely preserving an entire human brain for long-term storage with such fidelity that the structure of every neuronal process and every synaptic connection remains intact and traceable using today’s electron microscopic imaging techniques.”

The current purse is for $100,000, but they expect this prize amount to increase as donors chip-in. And in anticipation of success, the BPF has created a mind uploader's bill of rights.

As noted, the BPF has a special interest in brain plastination, mostly on account of Smart and Hayworth's extensive work in this field. If you've ever seen seen a Body Worlds exhibit, then you know about plastination. It is thought that brain-state may be preserved through the chemical conversion of brain matter into a non-degradable substrate, which is why the proposed technique is also referred to as chemical brain preservation. For example, it might be possible to flood a brain shortly after death with glutaraldehyde to fix proteins, followed by osmium tetroxide to stabilize lipids and other compounds. Essentially, this process could turn a deceased brain into a chunk of plastic that will last indefinitely.

Smart envisions the day when this technology is refined and streamlined to the point where preservation may cost as little as $2,000. Not a bad price for a radically extended life.

I recently had the opportunity to speak with Smart and Hayworth about their project at the Humanity+ Summit that was held in early June. As a conference attendee, I was given a tour of Harvard's Center for Brain Science Neuroimaging where Hayworth works. In his lab, Hayworth uses electron microscopy to delineate every synaptic connection from plastinated mouse brains, a process that preserves both structure and molecular level information. Essentially, while they're working to preserve and analyse mouse brains, Hayworth and his team are developing the theory and technologies required to preserve human brains.

The tour of Hayworth's lab was jaw dropping on many levels. Not only did I get a chance to see slides of brains at the nanometer scale, I got a chance to see real researchers doing real work in a real lab. It's transhumanism under construction; this wasn't airy-fairy armchair futuristic fantasy - this research is actually happening.

Hayworth speculates that scientists will produce a synapse level map of an entire human brain over the next decade. As for mind uploading from a plastic embedded brain, Hayworth believes that's about 50 years off.

Make a donation to the Brain Preservation Foundation today. Your life may depend on it.

Frequent Nanodot readers know that our main interest is longer-term nanotech, but sometimes what’s happening today gets pretty exciting as well.  A quick summary  of recent advances in nanotech used to fight cancer appears in a Computerworld piece by Sharon Gaudin; some excerpts:

Rice University said yesterday that when the nanoparticles deliver dye to the cell, a small bundle of fiber-optic cables attached to a US$400 Olympus E-330 digital camera are used to capture images. The dyes cause the cell nuclei to glow brightly when lighted with the tip of the fiber-optic bundle…

“The dyes and visual techniques that we used are the same sort that pathologists have used for many years to distinguish healthy cells from cancerous cells in biopsied tissue,” said study coauthor Mark Pierce, Rice faculty fellow in bioengineering, in a statement. “But the tip of the imaging cable is small and rested lightly against the [patient's] inside the cheek, so the procedure is considerably less painful than a biopsy and the results are available in seconds instead of days”…

Scientists have been putting a lot of focus on nanotechnology in recent cancer research.

This past January, teams of researchers from three universities jointly developed a nanotechnology cocktail that should target and kill cancerous tumors. The mixture of two different-sized nanoparticles work with the body’s bloodstream to seek out, stick to and kill tumors, according to MIT.

And Stanford University researchers last October announced that they had used nanotechnology and magnetics to create a biosensor designed to detect cancer in its early stages, making a cure more likely. University scientists reported that the sensor, which sits on a microchip, is 1,000 times more sensitive than cancer detectors used clinically today.

A month earlier, researchers at the University of Toronto said they had used nanomaterials to develop a microchip that is sensitive enough to detect early stage cancer. The chip is designed to detect the type of cancer and its severity.

Good news for everyone who might get cancer, which is…everyone.  —Chris Peterson

Live map of London Underground trains - a beautiful hack that shows the approximate positions of all trains in the London Underground. A nice demonstration of what a real mashup means. Now I just want to see it as a... Anders3 http://www.aleph.se/ asa@nada.kth.se

In the book Six intuitions you shouldn't trust, psychologists explain why they put a person in a gorilla suit in the middle of a basketball game -- and why people don't see it. So far, no researcher has found anything that solidly predicts who is going to see it and who is not. (Source: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627660.900-gorilla-psychologists-weird-stuff-in-plain-sight.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news)

Kansas State University researchers are exploring the use of iron-iron oxide nanoparticle-induced hyperthermia to overheat or bore holes through cancerous tissue to kill it. An organic coating attracts the cancer cells to the nanoparticles. An external alternating magnetic field then causes the particles to produce friction heat, which is transferred to the cancer cells' surrounding proteins, lipids and water, creating little hotspots. With enough hotspots the tumor cells are heated to death, preserving the healthy tissue. If the hotspots are not concentrated, the heat destroys the cell's proteins or lipid structures, dissolving the cell membrane. This creates a hole in the tumor and essentially stresses it to death. Dye enclosed in each nanoparticle's encapsulating sphere is then severed by enzymes and used to mark cancerous masses within the body. More info: Kansas State University news (Source: )

An experimental chip that could one day provide therapeutic deep brain stimulation (DBS) for drug resistant epilepsy and other conditions has been developed by Tel Aviv University researchers. The Rehabilitation Nano Chip (ReNaChip) is implanted under the scalp and connects to DBS electodes implanted in the brain of animal models to rehabilitate motor-learning functions lost due to brain damage. The researchers hope that as chips become smaller, the ReNaChip could be etched right onto the electrodes themselves. More info: American Friends of Tel Aviv University (Source: )

A miniature glider robot capable of jumping, gliding and perching for search and rescue or detection of forest fires have been designed by researchers at EPFL's Laboratory of Intelligent Systems. The robot is constructed with two spring-loaded arms fitted with pins that dig into the surface, whether it is wood or concrete. The arms snaps snap forward to provide soft deceleration of the glider and avoid mechanical damage. A remotely controlled mini-motor then detracts the pins and allows the robot to continue on its way. Developer Mirko Kovac, currently a post-doc at UC Berkeley, imagines swarms of his robots equipped with different sensors and small cameras that could be deployed over devastated areas to transmit essential information back to rescue command centers. The robot design is scalable, he says. More info: EPFL news (Source: )

For years we’ve watched academic degree programs in nanotechnology being announced piecemeal, or in partial lists.  Now it looks like Nanowerk has stepped up to the task of keeping a complete list, sorted by level of degree and country.  See it here: http://www.nanowerk.com/nanotechnology/nanotechnology_degrees.php

A handy chart allows users to click through to see all the programs at a given level in a particular country.

From their press release announcing the new database:

Only three years ago, there were no more than 150 programs worldwide – now there are over 250 in more than 25 countries.

Reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of nanosciences and nanotechnologies, these specialized academic degree programs span many disciplines ranging from biology, chemistry, and physics to medicine, engineering, and electronics; even MBAs are offered as dual degree options for nanotechnology students.

While there is an emphasis on Master’s programs, with almost half of all degree offerings, roughly one half of all programs can be found in Europe and one third in North America.

The UK is the country with the most Master’s programs (30) and the U.S. by far has the most dedicated Ph.D. programs (24).

Not surprisingly, with 61 offerings the U.S. is the country with the single most nanotechnology degree and certification programs, followed by the UK (38) and Germany (30).

I wouldn’t want to be the one responsible for keeping this database current!  —Chris Peterson