Transhumanism 2024: A new future for politics?David Wood
Presentation made by David Wood on 2nd October 2021 to the London Futurists event "A new future for politics?" This includes 15 possible policies for mayoral campaigns in major cities in the UK in 2024.
A video recording of this presentation, along with subsequent discussion, can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJLHx5T8BFI
Kim Solez Singularity explained and promoted fall 2016Kim Solez ,
Dr. Kim Solez presents "The Singularity Explained and Promoted" September 6, 2016 in the Technology and Future of Medicine course LABMP 590 at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Copyright (c) 2016, JustMachines Inc.
In "Homo Deus", Yuval Harari proposes two speculations as answers to these questions: Techno-humanism and Data Religion. The former is growing from our urge to improve ourselves, the latter growing from our belief in everything that is measurable.
What are the strengths and weaknesses of these ideologies? How do they relate to current local and global problems: are there any connections at all? Shall humanity proactively seek new healthy narratives? How about today's religions: will they stand the test of time?
Kim Solez Singularity explained and promoted winter 2014Kim Solez ,
Dr. Kim Solez presents "The technological Singularity explained and promoted" in the Technology and Future of Medicine course on January 16, 2014, at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. Copyright (c) 2014 JustMachines Inc.
This article aims to present the great revolution represented by the human singularity that may occur in the future. What is Singularity? It is the characteristic of what is unique: infrequent, out of the ordinary or extraordinary. Singularity is a term that refers to something or someone who has a unique characteristic. The idea of uniqueness can be used to present physical characteristics and behaviors of human beings that are distinguished from what is considered standard. Human singularity refers to the use of science and technology to create a new category of more evolved human beings. Human uniqueness means making human beings defy the limits imposed by nature. This is the idea of transhumanism, a theory that believes that the use of science and technology can help to create a new category of evolved human beings even with the conquest of immortality. In the same way that technological singularity can arise with artificial superintelligence, so can human singularity with the formation of supermen.
Transhumanism and the idea of education in the world of cyborgs. Michal Klich...eraser Juan José Calderón
Transhumanism and the idea of education in the world of cyborgs. Michal Klichowski. Adam Mickiewicz University
We are cyborgs. We are transhumans; transitory people that exist in a luminal
phase2, waiting for a transfer to the posthuman world.3 Our children do not
need education; it is cyborgization that ensures their development. This is the
idea of transhumanistic philosophy, a thoroughly (non-/anti-)pedagogic idea.
In this paper, I will present basic transhumanism ideas and stress the criticism
on education created within this philosophy. This text is neither a systematic
study on transhumanism nor a pedagogical analysis. It is merely an attempt
at showing teachers how education can be deprecated in modern philosophies
that are technologically-oriented.
Transhumanism 2024: A new future for politics?David Wood
Presentation made by David Wood on 2nd October 2021 to the London Futurists event "A new future for politics?" This includes 15 possible policies for mayoral campaigns in major cities in the UK in 2024.
A video recording of this presentation, along with subsequent discussion, can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJLHx5T8BFI
Kim Solez Singularity explained and promoted fall 2016Kim Solez ,
Dr. Kim Solez presents "The Singularity Explained and Promoted" September 6, 2016 in the Technology and Future of Medicine course LABMP 590 at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Copyright (c) 2016, JustMachines Inc.
In "Homo Deus", Yuval Harari proposes two speculations as answers to these questions: Techno-humanism and Data Religion. The former is growing from our urge to improve ourselves, the latter growing from our belief in everything that is measurable.
What are the strengths and weaknesses of these ideologies? How do they relate to current local and global problems: are there any connections at all? Shall humanity proactively seek new healthy narratives? How about today's religions: will they stand the test of time?
Kim Solez Singularity explained and promoted winter 2014Kim Solez ,
Dr. Kim Solez presents "The technological Singularity explained and promoted" in the Technology and Future of Medicine course on January 16, 2014, at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. Copyright (c) 2014 JustMachines Inc.
This article aims to present the great revolution represented by the human singularity that may occur in the future. What is Singularity? It is the characteristic of what is unique: infrequent, out of the ordinary or extraordinary. Singularity is a term that refers to something or someone who has a unique characteristic. The idea of uniqueness can be used to present physical characteristics and behaviors of human beings that are distinguished from what is considered standard. Human singularity refers to the use of science and technology to create a new category of more evolved human beings. Human uniqueness means making human beings defy the limits imposed by nature. This is the idea of transhumanism, a theory that believes that the use of science and technology can help to create a new category of evolved human beings even with the conquest of immortality. In the same way that technological singularity can arise with artificial superintelligence, so can human singularity with the formation of supermen.
Transhumanism and the idea of education in the world of cyborgs. Michal Klich...eraser Juan José Calderón
Transhumanism and the idea of education in the world of cyborgs. Michal Klichowski. Adam Mickiewicz University
We are cyborgs. We are transhumans; transitory people that exist in a luminal
phase2, waiting for a transfer to the posthuman world.3 Our children do not
need education; it is cyborgization that ensures their development. This is the
idea of transhumanistic philosophy, a thoroughly (non-/anti-)pedagogic idea.
In this paper, I will present basic transhumanism ideas and stress the criticism
on education created within this philosophy. This text is neither a systematic
study on transhumanism nor a pedagogical analysis. It is merely an attempt
at showing teachers how education can be deprecated in modern philosophies
that are technologically-oriented.
https://open.academia.edu/DavidRoden/Drafts
I argue that the aesthetics of Weird literature is more serviceable as a model for our relationship to the speculative posthuman than any totalizing conception of agency or interpretation.
My Crazy Journey on Understanding 'Transhumanism'Firdaus Ahmad
This slides is about my journey on understanding the meaning of 'transhumanism', as the title suggested.
Previously I wanted to relate this topic with a personal experience I have with one of my family members, but the topic is more complicated that I thought it is. Hence I shifted the focus to me understanding what is and also the meaning of 'transhumanism', and everything around it.
Se define la Segunda Ley de Newton, así como los conceptos de la primera y tercera leyes de Newton. Se dan ejemplos acerca de la Segunda Ley de Newton, además se describen las fuerzas, el reposo y el movimiento útiles para resolver problemas de esta famosa ley.
Transhumanism is the belief or theory that the human race can evolve beyond its current physical and mental limitations by means of science and technology. The more we explored this subject, the more we got fascinated to see how people are riding on the current era technologies to surpass the capabilities of human body. If the current explorations in transhumanism are anything to go by, then, we believe the future will be very exciting!
In this report we explore the various technologies, people involved and the advancements made in the field of Transhumanism. We would love to hear your feedback, comments and suggestions. Please mail us at ice@humanfactors.com
Health Futures: Participatory Medicine and Crowdsourced Research StudiesMelanie Swan
There are numerous participatory health initiatives underway ranging from light-touch to heavy engagement including social media, mobile health applications, personal health records, consumer genomics, health social networks, and crowdsourced health studies. Crowdsourced health studies are emerging as an important new investigatory tool in a multi-tier research ecosystem that includes quantified self-experimentation, participant-organized studies, and traditional researcher-led clinical trials. Accessing crowdsourced cohorts for health studies is a significant emerging opportunity that could have a positive impact on public health research, particularly as outcomes are shifting to the personalized, preventive medicine of the future.
In this original Digital Art and Philosophy class, we will become familiar with different forms of digital art and related philosophical issues. Digital art is anything related to computers and art such as using a computer to create art or an art display that is digitized. Philosophical aspects arise regarding art, identity, performance, interactivity, and the process of creation. Students may respond to the material in essay, performance, or digital art work (optional). Instructor: Melanie Swan. Syllabus: www.MelanieSwan.com/PCA
Philosophy of Big Data: Big Data, the Individual, and SocietyMelanie Swan
Philosophical concepts elucidate the impact the Big Data Era (exabytes/year of scientific, governmental, corporate, personal data being created) is having on our sense of ourselves as individuals in society as information generators in constant dialogue with the pervasive information climate.
Software update for human brain, at a large scale2co
If we can download "Kung Fu Master skills", would we do the same for "Greatest Thinker skills?" Could we software-update ourselves to be a better person? How, from technological and engineering point of view? What would happen if millions did download such skills and became Greatest Thinkers?
What kinds of ethics should nanorobotic cognitive aids have? Cognitive nanorobots, an analog to medical nanorobots, could have applications in cognitive enhancement and perceptual aid such as bias reduction, memory management (access, suppression), and personalized ethics optimization. It is important to consider what kinds of ethics modules may be appropriate for inclusion in cognitive nanorobots. A number of core philosophical questions arise such as the possibility and desirability of knowing a true and objective reality, and selecting different realities. The philosophy of Bergson and Deleuze is used to investigate and propose an ethics of perception.
This presentation considers the philosophical implications of current neuroscience advance. The brain is the final frontier, and thinking, cognition, emotion, and consciousness remain some of the most important unsolved mysteries. It is still unknown how ideas are actually represented in the brain. However, the expectation from neural nanotechnology and nanomedicine is that some of these mysteries will be revealed, in not just pathology resolution but also enhancement capabilities. There are already some translational research applications for cognitive enhancement. The fast pace of scientific advance in neuroscience is prompting the consideration of these kinds of questions involving personal identity, human potential, and societal coordination, and how we might eventually transition to a future of radically augmented post-biological entities and multispecies intelligence.
(SLIDES)Rohingya People Living Conditions---(Housing) and .docxraju957290
(SLIDES)
Rohingya People : Living Conditions---(Housing) and Access to Services (Healthcare)
1. Historical Content
2. Living Conditions (Housing)
3. Access to Services (Healthcare)
4. Capabilities Approach taken to help them
5. Conclusion
6. Questions (3) on their living conditions (housing) and Access to services (Healthcare)
Running Head: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE 1
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE 2
Artificial Intelligence, the Monster we are feeding-outline
Students Name
Professors Name
Course title
Date
The monster called Artificial Intelligence
Thesis: Major laboratories have been built all over the world to prototype and generate intelligent machines through deep learning. In this paper, I will argue that Artificial Intelligence is a monster that the humans are feeding and it will one day turn and overthrow man, leaving the world in the hands of machines.
I. Introduction
A. Thesis
B. Definition the terms intelligence, deep learning, programing, machine learning
C. History of artificial intelligence.
D. Major scientists who developed AI.
E. Trends in AI
II. Machine learning
A. Supervised learning
B. Non supervised learning
C. Comparison between supervised and non-supervised learning
III. Major advantages of AI
A. Real time assistance
B. In the business field
C. Industrialization
D. Efficiency
E. Accuracy
IV. Limitations of AI
A. Cost implication
B. Threats prevention
C. Loss of metal capability
D. Social factors
E. Ethical factors
F. Men becoming slaves
G. Emotions not guaranteed
H. Rigidity in thinking and execution of instructions
V. Criticism
The divine instruction was for man to steward and subdue the world, such innovations makes the human being achieve the divine instruction. This criticism is worth because it discusses part of the work in AI as divine instruction.
There is power and happiness if a creator creates something more powerful than itself. It is the happiness of a teacher to see their students do well and even pursue a course far much better. With such social theories supporting the work of artificial intelligence, it is making sense that the same AI should not be demonized but rather be seen as a human achievement.
VI. Conclusion
All the sections and subsections are discussed in a brief, precise and clear way ranging from the definitions, the implications and how negative artificial intelligence should be depicted in this section.
References
Boddington, P. (2017). Towards a code of ethics for artificial intelligence. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.
Lu, H., Li, Y., Chen, M., Kim, H., & Serikawa, S. (2018). Brain intelligence: go beyond artificial intelligence. Mobile Networks and Applications, 23(2), 368-375.
Osoba, O. A., & Welser IV, W. (2017). An intelligence in our image: The risks of bias and errors in artificial intelligence. Rand Corporation.
Rosé, C. P. (2017). Artificial intelligence: A social spin on language analysis. Nature, 545(7653), 166.
Russell, .
Sticky Data and Superstitious Patterns: Visualization beyond CognitivismDietmar Offenhuber
Visualization is often exclusively treated as an affair between the eye and the mind, based on the idea that perceiving and thinking are forms of pattern recognition and computation. But patterns can be misleading, and visual languages play a much larger role in mediating our interactions, facilitating, and constraining our awareness of the systems we are embedded in. My work deals with the roles of visual representations for understanding and governing large urban systems. Using examples from remote sensing, waste systems, street lighting and others, I will discuss critical issues of working with data in the context of socio-technical systems.
Talk at the Data Visualization program at the New School, NY, Nov. 3, 2015
The ethics of perception will be concretized in machine ethics interfaces. A core upcoming realization could be the notion that ethics and perception become explicitly a matter of choice. An ethics interface is envisioned as a module with selectable parameters, a user interface, just like any other drop-down menu for technology feature selection. An ethics buffer or a perceptual interface could be selected in the same way that brightness, font, or other parameters are set now in our technology gadgetry. An interesting issue arises as to the ethics of reality - it may likely be more humane not to perceive reality directly.
Psychology is the science that studies the behavior and mental functions. Technological advances have proved useful in many areas of science. Like other sciences, Psychology has taken advantage of this technological advance to perfect your research techniques and thus the practices that guide its professionals. It was from the advent of imaging techniques it became possible to observe the brain in action, and so, call the 1990s the "Decade of the Brain" with research in neurosciences with a leading character in the scientific revolution. The Psychology of the future will have greater emphasis on science, more emphasis on social issues, theories and use of mathematical models, work on complex problems, greater professionalism and specialization and integration of psychology around a unifying paradigm. The future of Psychology is associated with the future of technology.
Smart Data for you and me: Personalized and Actionable Physical Cyber Social ...Amit Sheth
Featured Keynote at Worldcomp'14, July 2014: http://www.world-academy-of-science.org/worldcomp14/ws/keynotes/keynote_sheth
Video of the talk at: http://youtu.be/2991W7OBLqU
Big Data has captured a lot of interest in industry, with the emphasis on the challenges of the four Vs of Big Data: Volume, Variety, Velocity, and Veracity, and their applications to drive value for businesses. Recently, there is rapid growth in situations where a big data challenge relates to making individually relevant decisions. A key example is human health, fitness, and well-being. Consider for instance, understanding the reasons for and avoiding an asthma attack based on Big Data in the form of personal health signals (e.g., physiological data measured by devices/sensors or Internet of Things around humans, on the humans, and inside/within the humans), public health signals (information coming from the healthcare system such as hospital admissions), and population health signals (such as Tweets by people related to asthma occurrences and allergens, Web services providing pollen and smog information, etc.). However, no individual has the ability to process all these data without the help of appropriate technology, and each human has different set of relevant data!
In this talk, I will forward the concept of Smart Data that is realized by extracting value from Big Data, to benefit not just large companies but each individual. If I am an asthma patient, for all the data relevant to me with the four V-challenges, what I care about is simply, “How is my current health, and what is the risk of having an asthma attack in my personal situation, especially if that risk has changed?” As I will show, Smart Data that gives such personalized and actionable information will need to utilize metadata, use domain specific knowledge, employ semantics and intelligent processing, and go beyond traditional reliance on ML and NLP.
For harnessing volume, I will discuss the concept of Semantic Perception, that is, how to convert massive amounts of data into information, meaning, and insight useful for human decision-making. For dealing with Variety, I will discuss experience in using agreement represented in the form of ontologies, domain models, or vocabularies, to support semantic interoperability and integration. For Velocity, I will discuss somewhat more recent work on Continuous Semantics, which seeks to use dynamically created models of new objects, concepts, and relationships, using them to better understand new cues in the data that capture rapidly evolving events and situations.
Smart Data applications in development at Kno.e.sis come from the domains of personalized health, energy, disaster response, and smart city. I will present examples from a couple of these.
Research Frontier: Cognitive Performance GenomicsMelanie Swan
Research Frontier: Cognitive Performance Genomics
New category in personal genomics research
Working with the brain: virtually all cognitive performance and mental health issues are a question of awareness of state or behavior
Smart Data - How you and I will exploit Big Data for personalized digital hea...Amit Sheth
Amit Sheth's keynote at IEEE BigData 2014, Oct 29, 2014.
Abstract from:
http://cci.drexel.edu/bigdata/bigdata2014/keynotespeech.htm
Big Data has captured a lot of interest in industry, with the emphasis on the challenges of the four Vs of Big Data: Volume, Variety, Velocity, and Veracity, and their applications to drive value for businesses. Recently, there is rapid growth in situations where a big data challenge relates to making individually relevant decisions. A key example is personalized digital health that related to taking better decisions about our health, fitness, and well-being. Consider for instance, understanding the reasons for and avoiding an asthma attack based on Big Data in the form of personal health signals (e.g., physiological data measured by devices/sensors or Internet of Things around humans, on the humans, and inside/within the humans), public health signals (e.g., information coming from the healthcare system such as hospital admissions), and population health signals (such as Tweets by people related to asthma occurrences and allergens, Web services providing pollen and smog information). However, no individual has the ability to process all these data without the help of appropriate technology, and each human has different set of relevant data!
In this talk, I will describe Smart Data that is realized by extracting value from Big Data, to benefit not just large companies but each individual. If my child is an asthma patient, for all the data relevant to my child with the four V-challenges, what I care about is simply, “How is her current health, and what are the risk of having an asthma attack in her current situation (now and today), especially if that risk has changed?” As I will show, Smart Data that gives such personalized and actionable information will need to utilize metadata, use domain specific knowledge, employ semantics and intelligent processing, and go beyond traditional reliance on ML and NLP. I will motivate the need for a synergistic combination of techniques similar to the close interworking of the top brain and the bottom brain in the cognitive models.
For harnessing volume, I will discuss the concept of Semantic Perception, that is, how to convert massive amounts of data into information, meaning, and insight useful for human decision-making. For dealing with Variety, I will discuss experience in using agreement represented in the form of ontologies, domain models, or vocabularies, to support semantic interoperability and integration. For Velocity, I will discuss somewhat more recent work on Continuous Semantics, which seeks to use dynamically created models of new objects, concepts, and relationships, using them to better understand new cues in the data that capture rapidly evolving events and situations.
Smart Data applications in development at Kno.e.sis come from the domains of personalized health, energy, disaster response, and smart city.
This presentation explains five strands of research that are blending in my approach to building sensory literacy tools that empower children to understand their sensory sensitivities as gifts instead of pathologies and to develop sustainable sensory life skills.
Crazy Futures aka Rx for Leadership Scotomas (why plausibility is maladaptive)Wendy Schultz
Short slidedeck on overcoming mental boundaries and expanding conceptual horizons in considering what possible futures may emerge, as a means to avoiding decision blindspots and black elephants / black swans.
AI Health Agents: Longevity as a Service in the Web3 GenAI Quantum RevolutionMelanie Swan
Health Agents are a form of Math Agent as the concept of a personalized AI health advisor delivering “healthcare by app” instead of “sickcare by appointment.” Mobile devices
can check health 1000 times per minute as opposed to the standard one time per year doctor’s office visit, and model virtual patients in the digital twin app. As any AI agent, Health Agents “speak” natural language to humans and formal language to the computational infrastructure, possibly outputting the mathematics of personalized homeostatic health as part of their operation. Health Agents could facilitate the ability of physicians to oversee the health of thousands of individuals at a time. This could ease overstressed healthcare systems and contribute to physician well-being and the situation that (per the World Health Organization) more than half of the global population is still not covered by essential health services.
The computational infrastructure is becoming a vast interconnected fabric of formal methods, including per a major shift from 2d grids to 3d graphs in machine learning architectures
The implication is systems-level digital science at unprecedented scale for discovery in a diverse range of scientific disciplines
We know that we are in an AI take-off, what is new is that we are in a math take-off. A math take-off is using math as a formal language, beyond the human-facing math-as-math use case, for AI to interface with the computational infrastructure. The message of generative AI and LLMs (large language models like GPT) is not that they speak natural language to humans, but that they speak formal languages (programmatic code, mathematics, physics) to the computational infrastructure, implying the ability to create a much larger problem-solving apparatus for humanity-benefitting applications in biology, energy, and space science, however not without risk.
This work introduces “quantum intelligence” as a concept of intelligence for operating in the quantum realm may help in a potential AI-Quantum Computing convergence (~2030e), and towards the realization of SRAI for well-being (economics, health, energy, space). “Scale-free intelligence” is formulated as a generic capacity for learning.
AI did not spring onto the scene with chatGPT, but is in an ongoing multi-year adoption. A transition may be underway from an information society to a knowledge society (one tempered and specifically using knowledge to improve the human condition). AI is a dual-use technology with both significant risk and upleveling possibilities.
SRAI for well-being is a social objective, and also a technological objective. SRAI is part of AI development and within the technological trajectory of harnessing all scales of physical reality ranging from quantum materials to space exploration.
Conceptually, thinking in quantum and relativistic terms expands the physical worldview, and likewise the social worldview of entities inhabiting the larger world. Practically, SRAI may be realized in phases: short-term regulation and registries, medium-term agents learning to implement human values with internal reward functions, and long-term responsible human-AI entities acting in partnership in a future of SRAI for well-being.
The Human-AI Odyssey: Homerian Aspirations towards Non-labor IdentityMelanie Swan
The visionary progression in The Odyssey from shipbuilding to seafaring to advanced civilization informs contemporary tension in the human-AI relation forcing a broader articulation of human-identity beyond labor-identity. Edith Hall analyzes why one of the earliest known literatures, The Odyssey, remains a central cultural trope with numerous references in the storytelling vernacular of all eras, ranging from 1860s British theater to a highly-watched 1990 episode of The Simpsons. The argument is that The Odyssey provides a constant aspirational reference for human identity – who we think we are and where we are going on the epic journey of life, especially at the current crossroad in our relationship with technology.
The contemporary moment finds humanity, and the humanities, experiencing an identity crisis in the relationship with technology. Information science is having an ever more pervasive role in academia, and the machine economy continues to offload vast classes of tasks to labor-saving technology giving rise to two questions. First, at the level of labor-identity, humans wonder who they are as they have long defined their sense of self through their professional participation in the economy. Second, at the level of human-identity, with AI now performing cognitive labor in addition to physical labor, humans wonder if there is anything that remains uniquely human.
The effect of The Odyssey is to provide world-expanding imaginaries to change the way we see ourselves as subjects; in this way, Homer is an early modernist in reconfiguring our self-concept.
This work applies a philosophy (of literature)-aided information science method to discuss how Homer’s Odyssey persists as a literary imaginary to help us think through potential futures of human-AI flourishing as rapid automation continues to impact humanity. The intensity of the human-AI relation is likely to increase, which invites thought leadership to steward the transition to a potential AI abundance economy with fulfilling human-technology collaboration.
The shipbuilding-seafaring-advanced civilization progression in The Odyssey identifies that the human-AI relation is not one of the labor-identity-crisis of “robots stealing our jobs,” but rather one of the more difficult challenge of envisioning who we can be in the new larger world of human-AI partnership addressing a larger set of planetary-scale problems. Towards this new configuration of human-AI relation, the longer-term may hold radically different notions of identity, as we become physical-virtual hybrids, augmented post-disease entities in the health-faring, space-civilizing, energy-marshalling post-scarcity cultures of the future.
AdS Biology and Quantum Information ScienceMelanie Swan
Quantum Information Science is a fast-growing discipline advancing many areas of science such as cryptography, chemistry, finance, space science, and biology. In particular AdS/Biology, an interpretation of the AdS/CFT correspondence in biological systems, is showing promise in new biophysical mathematical models of topology (Chern-Simons (solvable QFT), knotting, and compaction). For example, one model of neurodegenerative disease takes a topological view of protein buildup (AB plaques and tau tangles in Alzheimer’s disease, alpha-synuclein in Parkinson’s disease, TDP-43 in ALS). AdS/Neuroscience methods are implicated in integrating multiscalar systems with different bulk-boundary space-time regimes (e.g. oncology tumors, fMRI + EEG imaging), entanglement (correlation) renormalization across scales (MERA, random tensor networks, melonic diagrams), entropy (possible system states), entanglement entropy (interrelated fluctuations and correlations across system tiers), and non-ergodicity (implied efficiency mechanisms since biology does not cycle through all possible configurations per temperature (thermotaxis), chemotaxis, and energy cues); Maxwell’s demon of biology (partition functions), conservation across system scales (biophysical gauge symmetry (system-wide conserved quantity)), and the presence of codes (DNA, codons, neural codes). A multiscalar AdS/CFT correspondence is mobilized in 4-tier ecosystem models (light-plankton-krill-whale and ion-synapse-neuron-network (AdS/Brain)).
Humanity’s constant project is expanding the range of attainable geography. Melville’s romance of the sea gives way to Kerouac’s romance of the road, and now the romance of space. In expanding into new geographies, markets (commerce) is the driving impulse, entailing a legal and judiciary system to order the new larger continuous marketplace, which brings a bigger overall scope of world under our control, and hence a new idea of who we are as subjects in this bigger domain.
Space Humanism is a concept of humanism based on the principles of inclusion, progress, and equity posited as a condition of possibility for a potential large-scale human movement into space. A philosophy of literature approach is used to contextualize Space Humanism, first through Melville-Foucault to articulate the mind-frame of extra-planetary geographies as one of human expansion, and second through posthuman philosophy extending from Shakespeare’s Renaissance humanism to contemporary enhancement-based theories of subjectivation.
Historical imaginaries outline subjectivation moments that have changed the whole notion who we are as humanity. Four examples are: the concept of the “new world” in Hegel’s philosophy, von Humboldt’s infographic maps, Baudelaire as the Painter of Modern Life, and Keats’s seeing the world in a new way upon reading an updated translation of Homer.
The reach to beyond-Earth geographies is a two-cultures project involving both arts and science. Technical competence is necessary to realize the aspirational, explorational, and survivalist aims of humanity pushing beyond planetary limits. Space was once a fantastic dream that is becoming quotidian with fourteen U.S. spaceports, six completed Blue Origin space tourist missions, and SpaceX having over 155 successful rocket launches including human space flights to and from the International Space Station. The notion of Space Human articulated through Shakespeare, Moby-Dick, and neuroenhancement informs the project of our reach to awaiting beyond-Earth geographies.
Quantum Information Science and Quantum Neuroscience.pptMelanie Swan
Mathematical advance in quantum information science is proceeding quickly and applies to many fields, particularly the complexities of neuroscience (here focusing on image-readable physical behaviors such as neural signaling, as opposed to higher-order operations of cognition, memory, and attention). Quantum mathematical models are extensible to neuroscience problem classes treating dynamical time series, diffusion, and renormalization in multiscalar systems. Approaches first reconstruct wavefunctions observed in EEG and fMRI scans. Second, single-neuron models (Hodgkin-Huxley, integrate-and-fire, theta neurons) and collective neuron models (neural field theories, Kuramoto oscillators) are employed to model empirical data. Third, genome physics is used to study time series sequence prediction in DNA, RNA, and proteins based on 3d+ complex geometry involving fields, curvature, knotting, and information compaction. Finally, quantum neuroscience physics is applied in AdS/Brain modeling, Chern-Simons biology (topological invariance), neuronal gauge theories, network neuroscience, and the chaotic dynamics of bifurcation and bistability (to explain epileptic and resting states). The potential benefit of this work is an improved understanding of disease and pathology resolution in humans.
Quantum information science enables a new tier of scientific problem-solving as exemplified in early-adopter fields, foundational tools in quantum cryptography, quantum machine learning, and quantum chemistry (molecular quantum mechanics), and advanced applications in quantum space science, quantum finance, and quantum biology
Grammatology and Performativity: A Critical Theory of Silence: Silence is a crucial device for subversion, opposition, and socio-political commentary, the theoretical underpinnings of which are just starting to be understood. This work illuminates another position in the growing field of critical silence studies, theorizing silence as an asset whose ontological value has been lost in a world of literal and figurative noise. Part 1 philosophizes silence as a continuation of Derrida’s grammatology project. Such a grammatology of silence valorizes silent thinking over noisy speaking, and identifies the deconstructive binary pairing not as silence-speaking, but rather as silence-noise. Noise has a simultaneous physical-virtual existence as Shannon entropy calculates signal-to-noise ratios in modern communications networks. Part 2 employs the philosophy of noise to assess what is conceptually necessary to overcome noise in a critical theory of silence. Malaspina draws from Simondon to argue that noise is a form of individuation, essentially a living thing with unstoppable growth potential, not defined by a binary on-off switch but as a matter of gradation. Hence different theory resources are required to oppose it. Part 3 then develops a critical theory of silence to oppose noise in both its physical and virtual instantiations, with the two arms of a deeply human positive performativity (Szendy, Bennett) and a beyond-computational posthumanism (Puar). The result is a novel critical theory of silence as positive performativity that destabilizes noise and recoups the ontological status of silence as not merely an empty post-modern reification but a meaningful actuality.
Philosophy-aided Physics at the Boundary of Quantum-Classical Reality The philosophical themes of truth-knowledge and appearance-reality are used to interrogate the contemporary situation of the quantum-classical boundary, and more broadly the quantum-classical-relativistic stratification of physical scale boundaries. The contemporary moment finds us at breakneck pace in the industrial information revolution, digitizing remaining matter-based industries into a seamless exchange between physical-digital reality. Digitized news is giving way to digitized money and perhaps in the farther future, digitized mindfiles (such as personalized connectome files for precision medicine, autologous (own-DNA) stem cell therapies, and CRISPR for Alzheimer’s disease prevention). Our technologies are allowing us control over vast new domains, the relativistic with GPS and space-faring, and the quantum with quantum computing, harnessing the properties of superposition, entanglement, and interference. Philosophy provides critical thinking tools that can help us understand and master these rapid shifts in science and technology to avoid an Adornian instrumental reality (subsuming humanity under societal structures) and to maintain a Heideggerian backgrounded and enabling relation with technology (versus technology enframing us into mindless standing reserve).
The philosophical theme underlying the investigation of the scales of planets, persons, and particles is the relationship between truth and knowledge (or appearance and reality). The truth-knowledge problem is whether knowledge of the truth, true knowledge, the reality under the appearance, is even possible. Three salient moments in the history of the truth-knowledge problem are examined here. These are the German idealism of Kant and Hegel, the deconstructive postmodernism of Foucault and Derrida, and the unclear leanings of the current moment. The German idealism lens incorporates the self-knowing subject as agent into the truth and knowledge problem. The postmodernist view breaks with the subject and emphasizes the hidden opposites in the formulations, the constant reinterpretation of meaning, and porous boundaries. The contemporary moment wonders whether truth-knowledge boundaries still hold, in a Benjaminian view of non-identity between truth and knowledge, and truth increasingly being seen as a Foucauldian biopolitical manufactured quantity. Contemporaneity has a bimodal distribution of the subject: the hyperself (the constantly digitally represented selfie self) and the alienated post-subject subject.
These moments in the truth and knowledge debate inflect into the scale considerations of relativity, classicality, and quantum mechanics. Whereas general relativity and quantum mechanics are domains of universality, totality, and multiplicity, everyday classical reality is squeezed in as a belt between the two multiplicities as the concretion of drawing a triangle or tossing a ball. Recasting truth and k
Comprehensive philosophical programs arise within a historical context (for Hegel and Derrida in the democracy-shaping moments of the French Revolution (1789) and the student-worker protests (1968) in which French politics serve as a global harbinger of contemporary themes). In the Derrida-Hegel relationship, there is more rapprochement concerning core notions of difference, history, and meaning-assignation than may have been realized. In particular, Hegel’s philosophy, despite being assumed to be a totalizing system, in fact indicates precisely some of the same kinds of revised metaphysics-of-presence formulations that Derrida exhorts, namely those that are flexible, expansive, and include non-identity and identity.
A crucial Derrida-Hegel interchange is that of différance and difference. Derrida develops the notion directly from Hegel (“Différance,” “The Pit and the Pyramid”), but only draws from the Encyclopedia, not Hegel’s masterwork, the Phenomenology of Spirit. For Derrida, the “A” in différance is inspired by the form of the pyramid in the capitalized letter and in Hegel’s comparing the sign “to the Egyptian Pyramid” (“Différance,” p. 3). Derrida invokes the symbolism of the pyramid, antiquity, and Egyptian hieroglyphics as an early semiotic system. However, when considering Hegel’s central definition of difference in the dialectical progression of thesis-antithesis-synthesis in the Phenomenology of Spirit (§§159-163), the articulations of différance and difference are remarkably aligned.
Parallel formulations are also seen in history as a series of reinterpretable events, and indexical wrappers as a mechanism for meaning assignation. The thinkers examine the universal and the particular by exploring regulative mechanisms such as law (natural and social). In Glas, Derrida highlights not the singular-universal relation, but the law of singularity and the law of universality relation as being relevant to Hegel’s Antigone interpretation (Glas, p. 142a), a theme continued in “Before the Law.” Finally (time permitting), there is a question whether the most valid critiques of Hegel (Nietzsche’s unreason and Benjamin’s non-synthesis), as alternatives to Hegelian dialectics, are visible in Derrida’s thought.
The upshot is that the two thinkers produce similar formulations, derived from different trajectories of philosophical work; a situation which points to the potential universality of fundamental solution classes to open-ended philosophical problems, including the future of democracy.
Quantum Moreness: Kantian Time and the Performative Economics of Multiplicity
There is no domain with greater moreness than that of the quantum. A philosophy-aided physics approach (postmodernism and Continental philosophy) examines the contemporary situation of quantum moreness (more time and space dimensions than are available classically). Quantum moreness is configured by quantum reality being probabilistic; a multiplicity of outcomes all co-existing in superposition until collapsed in measurement. The quantum mindset uses quantum moreness to solve problems by thinking in terms of the greater scalability afforded in time and space with the quantum properties of superposition, entanglement, and interference. Quantum studies fields proliferate in arts and sciences, raising the Levi-Straussian raw-cooked dilemma of how “traditional humanities” are to be named alongside “digital humanities” and “quantum humanities.” Kant facilitates the conceptualization of quantum moreness by insisting on the dual nature of time as transcendentally ideal and empirically real. Kant’s moreness is allness, the absolute totality and multiplicity of time at the ideal level. Each faculty (sensibility, understanding, reason) has its own species of the a priori synthetic unity of ideal time that precedes and conditions the operation of the faculty. Each faculty also has a concretized formulation of empirically-real time as the time series, which is the basis for the faculties to interoperate to perform the conception of any empirical object. Kant’s achievement of time interoperability has potential extensibility to other areas of temporal incompatibility such as the scales of general relativity, Newtonian mechanics (human-scale), and quantum mechanics. The quantum moreness mindset with which Kant connects the ideal-real is visible in the domain of economics, itself too an ideal-real construction. The quantum moreness of money configures the postmodern abstraction of global cryptocurrencies and smart contract pledges, the implicative hope of which is a post-debt capital world that restores the human esprit in the face of an increasingly intense technologized reality.
Blockchain Crypto Jamming: Subverting the Instrumental Economy
The ultimate subversion is money, refusing the pecuniary resources of the state. This project applies a philosophical and critical theory lens to examine the use of nomenclature in one of the most radical longitudinal transformations in contemporary times, the shift away from state-run monetary resources towards cryptocurrencies and smart contracts in citizen-determined decentralized financial networks.
A Cryptoeconomic Theory of Social Change is presented in which linguistic progression serves as a tracking mechanism. The steps to lasting change have their own vocabulary (Brandom). First, there is the social critique, the complaint about what is wrong, the negative side (Adorno and Horkheimer highlight instrumental reason and the empty culture industry). Second, there is the antidote, an alternative that can overcome the complaint, the positive side. Third, the solution becomes the new reality, and as a consequence, the whole of reality is now seen in this context, adopting its vocabulary (“fiat health” system for example, referring to the antiquated method). The social movement graduates from language game (Wittgenstein) to form of life (Jaeggi).
Blockchains are Occupy with teeth, notable in the level of personal responsibility-taking by individuals to steward their own financial resources. The crypto citizen is not merely trading CryptoKitties and Bored Ape Yacht Club tokens, but getting blocktime loans through DeFi liquidity pools instead of fiat banks, earning labor income in crypto, and shifting all economic activity to blockchain networks. The artworld signals mainstream acceptance with Christie’s non-fungible token digital artwork auctioned from Beeple for $61 million. At the global level, coin communities constitute a new form of Kardashev-level (planetary-scale) democracy. Blockchains emerge as a robust smart network automation technology for super-class projects ranging from space-faring to quantum computing and thought-tokening. The further stakes of this work are having a language-based theory of social change with broad applicability to social transformation.
This work argues that the emerging understanding of time in quantum information science can be articulated as a philosophical theory of change. Change and time are interrelated, and one can be used to interrogate the other, namely, a theory of change can be derived from a theory of time. What is new in quantum science is time being regarded as just another property to be engineered. At the quantum scale, time is reversible in certain ways, which is quite different from the everyday experience of time whose unidirectional arrow does not allow a dropped egg to reassemble. At the quantum scale of atoms, though, a particle retains the history of its trajectory, which may be retraced before collapsed in measurement.
Quantum scientists evolve systems backward and forward in time, controlling phase transitions with Floquet engineering. Quantum systems are entangled in time and space, with temporal correlations exhibiting greater multiplicity than spatial correlations. The chaotic time regimes of ballistic spread followed by saturation are implemented in quantum walks for faster search and heightened cryptosecurity. In quantum neuroscience, seizure may be explained by chaotic dynamics and normal resting state by Floquet-like periodic cycles. Time is revealed to have the same kinds of repeating structures as space (described by entanglement, symmetry, and topology), differently instantiated and controlled.
The quantum understanding of time can be propelled into a macroscale-theory of change through its connotation of a more flexible, malleable, probabilistic interface with reality. Change becomes less rigid. Probability is the lever of change, but notoriously difficult for humans to grasp, as we think better in storylines than statistics. The idea of manipulating quantum system properties in which time, space, dynamics (change), are all just parameters, is an empowering frame for the acceptance of change. The quantum mindset affords greater facility with probability-driven events (change).
Blockchains in Space: Non-Euclidean Spacetime and Tokenized Thinking - Two requirements for the large-scale beyond-terrestrial expansion of human intelligence into the universe are the ability to operate in diverse spatiotemporal regimes and to instantiate thinking in various formats. Newtonian mechanics describe everyday reality, but Einsteinian physics is needed for GPS and the orbital technologies of telescopes and spacecraft. Space agencies already integrate the Earth-day and the slightly-longer Martian-sol. A more substantial move into space requires facility with non-Euclidean spacetimes. One challenge is that general relativity and quantum mechanics are non-interoperable. However, the theories can be formulated together when considering black holes and quantum computing since geometric theories and gauge theories are both field-based. Quantum blockchains instantiate blockchain logic in quantum computational environments. Blockchains have their own temporal regime (blocktime: the number of blocks for an event to occur), and hence quantum blocktime is a non-classical functionality for operating in diverse spatiotemporal regimes. Thinking is a rule-based activity that is unrestricted by medium. Central to thinking is concepts, which are referenced by words. Word-types include universals, particulars, and indexicals which can be encoded into a formal system as thought-tokens, and registered to blockchains. Blockchains are contemplated as an automation technology for asteroid mining and space settlement construction, and thought-tokening adds an intelligence layer. Time and tokenized thinking come together in the idea of smart networks in space. In blockchain quantum smart networks, spatiotemporal regimes and thought-tokens are simply different value types (asset classes) coordinated with blockchain logic, towards the aim of extending human capabilities into the farther reaches of space.
Cryptography, entanglement, and quantum blocktime: Quantum computing offers a more scalable energy-efficient platform than classical computing and supercomputing, and corresponds more naturally to the three-dimensional structure of atomic reality. Blockchains are a decentralized digital economic system made possible by the 24-7 global nature of the internet.
Quantum Neuroscience: CRISPR for Alzheimer’s, Connectomes & Quantum BCIsMelanie Swan
This talk provides an introduction to quantum computing and how it may be deployed to study the human brain and its diseases of pathology and aging. Refined to its present state over centuries, the brain is one of the most complex systems known, with 86 billion neurons and 242 trillion synapses connected in intricate patterns and rewired by synaptic plasticity. Research continues to illuminate the mysteries of the brain. Quantum computing provides a more capacious architecture with greater scalability and energy efficiency than current methods of classical computing and supercomputing, and more naturally corresponds to the three-dimensional structure of atomic reality. The vision for quantum neuroscience is to model the nature of the brain exactly as it is, in three-dimensional atomically-accurate representations. Neuroscience (particularly genetic disease modeling, connectomics, and synaptomics) could be the “killer application” of quantum computing. Implementations in other industries are also important, including in quantum finance, quantum cryptography using Shor’s factoring algorithm (“the Y2K of Crypto”), Grover’s search, quantum chemistry, eigensolvers, quantum machine learning, and continuous-time quantum walks. Quantum computing is a high-profile worldwide scientific endeavor with platforms currently available via cloud services (IBM Q 27-qubit, IonQ 32-qubit, Rigetti 19Q Acorn) and is in the process of being applied in various industries including computational neuroscience.
Art Theory: Two Cultures Synthesis of Art and ScienceMelanie Swan
Thesis: Aesthetic resources contribute broadly to the human endeavor of progress, self-understanding, and science, beyond the immediate experience of art. Aesthetic Resources are frameworks, concepts, and modes of expression in art, literature, and philosophy that capture the imagination and the intellect through the senses. The role of art is to inspire the future: the romance of the sea, the open road, space.
The arts are a hallmark of civilization, but can their benefit be crystallized as aesthetic resources that can be mobilized to new situations? How can aesthetic resources help in moments of crisis?
A worldwide social identity crisis has been provoked by pandemic recovery, politics, equity, and environmental sustainability. Philosophical and aesthetic resources can help. Understanding art as a reflection of who we are as individuals and groups, this talk explores conceptualizations of art, with examples, in different periodizations from the 1800s to the present. A marquis definition as to what constitutes an artwork is Adorno’s, for whom the work must promulgate its own natural law and engage in novel materials manipulation. For many theorists, art is the pressing of our self-concept into concrete materiality (whether pyramids, sculpture, or painting). What do contemporary periodizations of art mean to our current and forward-looking self-concept? Recent eras include the neo-avant-gardes of 1945, the conceptual art of the 1960s, and post-conceptual art starting in the 1970s, produced generatively with found materials, the digital domain, and audience interactivity. What is the now-current idea of art? Is today’s Baudelairian flâneur and Balzacian modern hero incarnated in the quantum aesthetic imaginary and the digital cryptocitizen? Far from an “end of art” thesis sometimes attributed to Hegel, aesthetic practices are more relevant than ever. Individually and societally, we are reinventing creative energy and productive imagination in venues from science, technology, health, and biology to the arts.
Epistemic Interaction - tuning interfaces to provide information for AI supportAlan Dix
Paper presented at SYNERGY workshop at AVI 2024, Genoa, Italy. 3rd June 2024
https://alandix.com/academic/papers/synergy2024-epistemic/
As machine learning integrates deeper into human-computer interactions, the concept of epistemic interaction emerges, aiming to refine these interactions to enhance system adaptability. This approach encourages minor, intentional adjustments in user behaviour to enrich the data available for system learning. This paper introduces epistemic interaction within the context of human-system communication, illustrating how deliberate interaction design can improve system understanding and adaptation. Through concrete examples, we demonstrate the potential of epistemic interaction to significantly advance human-computer interaction by leveraging intuitive human communication strategies to inform system design and functionality, offering a novel pathway for enriching user-system engagements.
Accelerate your Kubernetes clusters with Varnish CachingThijs Feryn
A presentation about the usage and availability of Varnish on Kubernetes. This talk explores the capabilities of Varnish caching and shows how to use the Varnish Helm chart to deploy it to Kubernetes.
This presentation was delivered at K8SUG Singapore. See https://feryn.eu/presentations/accelerate-your-kubernetes-clusters-with-varnish-caching-k8sug-singapore-28-2024 for more details.
Transcript: Selling digital books in 2024: Insights from industry leaders - T...BookNet Canada
The publishing industry has been selling digital audiobooks and ebooks for over a decade and has found its groove. What’s changed? What has stayed the same? Where do we go from here? Join a group of leading sales peers from across the industry for a conversation about the lessons learned since the popularization of digital books, best practices, digital book supply chain management, and more.
Link to video recording: https://bnctechforum.ca/sessions/selling-digital-books-in-2024-insights-from-industry-leaders/
Presented by BookNet Canada on May 28, 2024, with support from the Department of Canadian Heritage.
UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series, part 4DianaGray10
Welcome to UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series part 4. In this session, we will cover Test Manager overview along with SAP heatmap.
The UiPath Test Manager overview with SAP heatmap webinar offers a concise yet comprehensive exploration of the role of a Test Manager within SAP environments, coupled with the utilization of heatmaps for effective testing strategies.
Participants will gain insights into the responsibilities, challenges, and best practices associated with test management in SAP projects. Additionally, the webinar delves into the significance of heatmaps as a visual aid for identifying testing priorities, areas of risk, and resource allocation within SAP landscapes. Through this session, attendees can expect to enhance their understanding of test management principles while learning practical approaches to optimize testing processes in SAP environments using heatmap visualization techniques
What will you get from this session?
1. Insights into SAP testing best practices
2. Heatmap utilization for testing
3. Optimization of testing processes
4. Demo
Topics covered:
Execution from the test manager
Orchestrator execution result
Defect reporting
SAP heatmap example with demo
Speaker:
Deepak Rai, Automation Practice Lead, Boundaryless Group and UiPath MVP
Builder.ai Founder Sachin Dev Duggal's Strategic Approach to Create an Innova...Ramesh Iyer
In today's fast-changing business world, Companies that adapt and embrace new ideas often need help to keep up with the competition. However, fostering a culture of innovation takes much work. It takes vision, leadership and willingness to take risks in the right proportion. Sachin Dev Duggal, co-founder of Builder.ai, has perfected the art of this balance, creating a company culture where creativity and growth are nurtured at each stage.
Software Delivery At the Speed of AI: Inflectra Invests In AI-Powered QualityInflectra
In this insightful webinar, Inflectra explores how artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming software development and testing. Discover how AI-powered tools are revolutionizing every stage of the software development lifecycle (SDLC), from design and prototyping to testing, deployment, and monitoring.
Learn about:
• The Future of Testing: How AI is shifting testing towards verification, analysis, and higher-level skills, while reducing repetitive tasks.
• Test Automation: How AI-powered test case generation, optimization, and self-healing tests are making testing more efficient and effective.
• Visual Testing: Explore the emerging capabilities of AI in visual testing and how it's set to revolutionize UI verification.
• Inflectra's AI Solutions: See demonstrations of Inflectra's cutting-edge AI tools like the ChatGPT plugin and Azure Open AI platform, designed to streamline your testing process.
Whether you're a developer, tester, or QA professional, this webinar will give you valuable insights into how AI is shaping the future of software delivery.
Kubernetes & AI - Beauty and the Beast !?! @KCD Istanbul 2024Tobias Schneck
As AI technology is pushing into IT I was wondering myself, as an “infrastructure container kubernetes guy”, how get this fancy AI technology get managed from an infrastructure operational view? Is it possible to apply our lovely cloud native principals as well? What benefit’s both technologies could bring to each other?
Let me take this questions and provide you a short journey through existing deployment models and use cases for AI software. On practical examples, we discuss what cloud/on-premise strategy we may need for applying it to our own infrastructure to get it to work from an enterprise perspective. I want to give an overview about infrastructure requirements and technologies, what could be beneficial or limiting your AI use cases in an enterprise environment. An interactive Demo will give you some insides, what approaches I got already working for real.
The Art of the Pitch: WordPress Relationships and SalesLaura Byrne
Clients don’t know what they don’t know. What web solutions are right for them? How does WordPress come into the picture? How do you make sure you understand scope and timeline? What do you do if sometime changes?
All these questions and more will be explored as we talk about matching clients’ needs with what your agency offers without pulling teeth or pulling your hair out. Practical tips, and strategies for successful relationship building that leads to closing the deal.
Neuro-symbolic is not enough, we need neuro-*semantic*Frank van Harmelen
Neuro-symbolic (NeSy) AI is on the rise. However, simply machine learning on just any symbolic structure is not sufficient to really harvest the gains of NeSy. These will only be gained when the symbolic structures have an actual semantics. I give an operational definition of semantics as “predictable inference”.
All of this illustrated with link prediction over knowledge graphs, but the argument is general.
Neuro-symbolic is not enough, we need neuro-*semantic*
Principia posthuman
1. Elements of a
Principia Posthuman
Human Body 2.0 Redesign,
Democracy, and Next-
generation Intelligence
Image credit: Natasha Vita-More, Primo Posthuman
Melanie Swan
MS Futures Group
+1-650-681-9482
@LaBlogga, @DIYgenomics
March 31, 2012, Sunnyvale CA
www.MelanieSwan.com
Slides: http://slideshare.net/LaBlogga m@melanieswan.com
2. About Melanie Swan
Founder DIYgenomics, futurist and applied
genomics expert
Current projects: MelanieSwan.com
Education: MBA Finance, Wharton; BA
French/Economics, Georgetown Univ
Work experience: Fidelity, JP Morgan, iPass,
RHK/Ovum, Arthur Andersen
Sample publications:
Swan, M. Crowdsourced Health Research Studies: An Important Emerging Complement to Clinical
Trials in the Public Health Research Ecosystem. J Med Internet Res 2012, Mar;14(2):e46.
Swan, M. Scaling crowdsourced health studies: the emergence of a new form of contract research
organization. Personalized Medicine 2012, Mar;9(2):223-234.
Swan, M. Steady advance of stem cell therapies. Rejuvenation Res 2011, Dec;14(6):699-704.
Swan, M., Hathaway, K., Hogg, C., McCauley, R., Vollrath, A. Citizen science genomics as a model for
crowdsourced preventive medicine research. J Participat Med 2010, Dec 23; 2:e20.
Swan, M. Multigenic Condition Risk Assessment in Direct-to-Consumer Genomic Services. Genet Med
2010, May;12(5):279-88.
Swan, M. Emerging patient-driven health care models: an examination of health social networks,
consumer personalized medicine and quantified self-tracking. Int J Environ Res Public Health 2009, 2,
492-525.
March 31, 2012 Source: http://melanieswan.com/publications.htm
2
Principia Posthuman
3. CONTACT presentations
Data Visualization in Second Life
(2008)
Future of Life Sciences: the Great
Convergence of Life and
Technology (2009)
Revolutionizing Biology with
Personal Genomes (2010)
Principia Posthuman (2012)
Slides: http://slideshare.net/LaBlogga Image credit: Natasha Vita-More, Primo Posthuman
March 31, 2012
3
Principia Posthuman
4. The future is notoriously hard to predict
Positional nanoassembly
Young lady’s illustrated primer
March 31, 2012
4
Principia Posthuman
5. Simple models for thinking about the future
Past Present Future
March 31, 2012 Image: http://www.sydmead.com
5
Principia Posthuman
6. The role of time in thinking:
GPS for the Mind exercise Image: http://www.mindtime.com
Plot time orientation: certainty, possibility, probability
www.mindtimemaps.com/start/contact
probability
certainty possibility
March 31, 2012 Source: Fortunato, VJ and Furey, JT. The theory of MindTime: The relationships between Future, Past, and Present thinking and
psychological well-being and distress. Personality and Individual Differences. January 2011, 50(1), pp. 20-4. http://www.miindtime.com 6
Principia Posthuman
7. GPS for the Mind exercise
Image: Salvador Dali
CONTACT GPS for the Mind exercise (4 minutes)
Sign up for a free account at www.mindtimemaps.com
(use an anonymous name if you prefer)
Complete the GPS for the Mind exercise at the
community site: www.mindtimemaps.com/start/contact
Results: return to the community site
www.mindtimemaps.com/start/contact and click on the
Groups icon, then CONTACT to see the results
March 31, 2012 Source: http://www.mindtimemaps.com
Principia Posthuman 7
8. Agenda
Context for Principia Posthuman
Elements of a Principia Posthuman
Quantitative: science, human body 2.0 redesign
Qualitative: social constructs, democracy
Concepts: philosophy, next-generation
intelligence
Conclusion
March 31, 2012
Principia Posthuman
9. Aspen rhizome
Elements of a Principia Posthuman
Image: http://integral-options.blogspot.com
Philosophy Next-generation
Concepts Concerned with: Understanding intelligence
Art, aesthetics, economics, politics,
Qualitative societal design Democracy
Concerned with: Experience
Science and technology Human Body
Quantitative Concerned with: Characterization 2.0 Redesign
March 31, 2012
9
Principia Posthuman
10. Agenda
Context for Principia Posthuman
Elements of a Principia Posthuman
Quantitative: science, human body 2.0 redesign
Qualitative: social constructs, democracy
Concepts: philosophy, next-generation
intelligence
Conclusion
March 31, 2012
Principia Posthuman
11. Miniaturization trend, next node: microdots
10-100 years ago 2000s 2050s 2100+
Room(s) size Handheld Invisible Non matter-
based?
Computing
machinery
Information
storage
DNA
sequencing
March 31, 2012
11
Principia Posthuman
12. (Kuhnian paradigms,
Information transmission eras Foucauldian epistemes)
Analog Digital Life code ?
17,300 years ago 1455 & 1950-2000 2000-2100 2100+
Painting, scrolls Press, Transistor DNA ?
March 31, 2012
12
Principia Posthuman
13. Prominent artificial intelligence eras
Enumeration Biomimicry Big data ?
1950s 1990s+ 2000s+ 2100+
Expert syst, CYC NLP, HTM, NCC Google, Watson ?
March 31, 2012
13
Principia Posthuman
14. Big data: personal health informatics
DNA:
SNP mutations RNA expression
profiling
Health 2.0: Proteomics
DNA: Structural Personal health
variation informatics
Epigenetics Microbiomics
Metabolomics
March 31, 2012 Academic papers re: integrated health data streams: Auffray C, et al. Looking back at genomic medicine in 2011. Genome Med. 2012 Jan 30;4(1):9.
Chen R et al. Personal omics profiling reveals dynamic molecular and medical phenotypes. Cell. 2012 Mar 16;148(6):1293-307. 14
Principia Posthuman
15. Biology is an information technology
DNA sequencing:
10x/yr improvement
I love you
010010010010000001101100011
011110111011001100101001000
00011110010110111101110101
I hate you
010010010010000001101000011
000010111010001100101001000
00011110010110111101110101
Image credit: http://pubs.acs.org/cen/_img/87/i50/8750cover2_law.gif
March 31, 2012
15
Principia Posthuman
16. Biology is the information technology
Organ regeneration (urethra) Algal biofuel
Image credit: Anthony Atala lab Image credit: http://www.rexresearch.com
Artificial cell booted to life Whole organ decellularization and DNA nanotechnology latch
Image credit: J. Craig Venter Institute
recellularization (heart) box for drug delivery
Image credit: Thomas Matthiesen Image credit: Aarhus University
March 31, 2012
16
Principia Posthuman
17. Agenda
Context for Principia Posthuman
Elements of a Principia Posthuman
Quantitative: science, human body 2.0 redesign
Qualitative: social constructs, democracy
Concepts: philosophy, next-generation
intelligence
Conclusion
March 31, 2012
17
Principia Posthuman
18. Agency: collective intelligence computing
Crowdsourcing
Concierge research
Consumer genomics Citizen science
Health 2.0:
Consumer blood tests Crowdsourced
health computing
DIYbio labs
Continuous Ambient mental
sampling performance
Quantified self-
optimization
tracking
March 31, 2012
18
Principia Posthuman
19. Mobile is the platform
Explosive growth Image credit: http://www.psfk.com
US: more cell phones (328 m) than people (315 m) 1
One billion+ worldwide smartphone users by 20132
App downloads: 5 bn in 2010 versus 300 mn in 20094
Health-related apps: 7,0004
81% physicians using smartphones 20123
Studies: thousands recruited in months2
Intimate continuous interaction platform Image credit: tehgaygeek.blogspot.com
Phone loss noticed within 5 minutes vs. 1 hour for wallet loss
Kids chat with Siri as virtual friend
1
Kang C. Number of cell phones exceeds US population. Washington Post. October 11, 2011.
March 31, 2012 2
Dufau S. Smart phone, smart science: how the use of smartphones can revolutionize research in cognitive science. PLoS One. 2011.
3Kiser K. 25 ways to use your smartphone. Physicians share their favorite uses and apps. Minn Med. 2011. 19
Principia Posthuman
4
Boulos MN. How smartphones are changing the face of mobile and participatory healthcare. Biomed Eng Online. 2011.
20. Participatory health activity landscape
(Light) Level of Engagement (Intense)
Social Mobile PHRs Consumer
media health apps (personal genomics Citizen Quantified
science self-tracking
health
records)
DIYbio
(do-it-yourself
biology)
March 31, 2012 Image credit: Getty Images
20
Principia Posthuman
21. Concepts in participatory health
Citizen science Quantified self-
tracking
DIYbio
(do-it-yourself
http://ezramagazine.cornell.edu
biology)
http://thecoolgadgets.com
http://www.iab.keio.ac.jp
March 31, 2012
21
Principia Posthuman
22. Citizen science definition
Performing scientific investigation
without professional training in the field Image credit: http://www.southernfriedscience.com
Institutional science
research
Citizen science health
and biology
Citizen
science: 200+
organizations1
March 31, 2012 1
http://scienceforcitizens.net/finder
22
Principia Posthuman
23. Citizen science health – why now?
Tools
Plummeting cost of genome sequencing
Availability of consumer blood tests
Online bioinformatics tools
Education and support
Local DIYbio labs, online forums
Image credit: http://diybionyc.blogspot.com Image credits: http://www.biocurious.org
March 31, 2012
23
Principia Posthuman
24. Goal: personalized knowledge through
quantified self-tracking
Format: monthly ‘show n tell’ meetups
Outcome: optimality and improvement
Example: personalized interventions for
depression, low energy, sleep quality
Image credit: http://www.nationalpost.com Image credit: Quantified Self
March 31, 2012 Source: Swan, M. Overview of Crowdsourced Health Research Studies. 2012. Forthcoming.
24
Principia Posthuman
25. Quantified self study examples
Food consumption (1 yr)1 and the Butter Mind study2
Study
Low-cost home-administered blood, urine, saliva tests
Cholestech LDX OrSense continuous non-invasive ZRT Labs dried
home cholesterol test glucose monitoring blood spot tests
March 31, 2012 1
Source: http://flowingdata.com/2011/06/29/a-year-of-food-consumption-visualized
2
Source: http://quantifiedself.com/2011/01/results-of-the-buttermind-experiment 25
Principia Posthuman
26. Health social networks and collaboration
Health social Health
networks collaboration
(global & local) communities
Source: Extended from Swan, M. Emerging patient-driven health care models: an examination of health social networks, consumer
March 31, 2012 personalized medicine and quantified self-tracking. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2009, 2, 492-525. 26
Principia Posthuman
27. Agenda
Context for Principia Posthuman
Elements of a Principia Posthuman
Quantitative: science, human body 2.0 redesign
Qualitative: social constructs, democracy
Concepts: philosophy, next-generation
intelligence
Conclusion
March 31, 2012
Principia Posthuman
28. Professionalizing participative health:
Philosophical validation
Towards an epistemology of citizen science
Provide a structure and context for participant-derived health
knowledge
Q1: Are new kinds of knowledge are being formed
through group collaborations such as wikipedia and
health social networks?
Q2: How to characterize the knowledge generated by
traditional medicine, self-experimentation, and health
collaboration communities?
Image credit: http://inkingrey.com
March 31, 2012
28
Principia Posthuman
29. Ontological shift
Image credit: http://efx3.com
Old thinking:
My health is the responsibility of my physician
New thinking:
My health is my responsibility
… and I have the tools to make managing it easy
March 31, 2012
29
Principia Posthuman
30. Genome politics and regulation
Our world is not Gattaca
Personal genomics has
destigmatized health issues
Issues: human cloning, sex selection,
genetic privacy, non-discrimination
UN Convention on Human Rights and
Biomedicine 1997 (Ch IV Human Genome) Image credit: http://www.sonypictures.com
U.S. Genetic Information Nondiscrimination
Act (GINA) 2008
Biocitizenry, health as a human right Image credit: http://sciencephoto.com
March 31, 2012 30
Principia Posthuman
31. Role of participative health: future medicine
1. Continuous health information climate
Automated digital health monitoring, self-tracking devices,
and mobile apps providing personalized recommendations
2. Peer collaboration and
health advisors
Health social networks, crowdsourced
studies, health advisors, wellness
coaches, preventive care plans,
Individual boutique physicians, genetics coaches,
aestheticians, medical tourism
3. Public health system
Deep expertise of traditional health system
for disease and trauma treatment
March 31, 2012 Source: Extended from Swan, M. Emerging patient-driven health care models: an examination of health social networks, consumer
personalized medicine and quantified self-tracking. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2009, 2, 492-525. 31
Principia Posthuman
32. Health self-management
A new model of health and health care
March 31, 2012 Source: Extended from Swan, M. Emerging patient-driven health care models: an examination of health social networks, consumer
personalized medicine and quantified self-tracking. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2009, 2, 492-525, Figure 1. 32
Principia Posthuman
33. Biotechnicity and computational philosophy
Metaphysical shift: new ways of being
Concepts •Meaning of health and health outcomes
•Sense of self and group identity, biocitizenry
Image credit: http://stemcellresources.org
Epistemic advance: new knowledge generation
•Content: New data streams, larger data sets, more granular data, higher
Qualitative order magnitude science
•Process: New algorithms and new models
Computational tools of health-related philosophical discovery
•Hardware and software devices and algorithms: quantitative health data streams, health-
related smartphone applications, personal electronic health records, quantified self-
tracking devices
•Crowdsourced human computing networks: crowdsourced disease prediction, health
social networks, quantified self n=1 health self-experimentation, crowdsourced health
research studies, DIYbio labs
Quantitative
March 31, 2012 Source: Swan, M. Biotechnicity 2.0: Computation-enabled Philosophical Advance in the Epistemology of Human Biology and the
Ontology of Bioidentity. 2012. Submitted. 33
Principia Posthuman
34. Agenda
Context for Principia Posthuman
Elements of a Principia Posthuman
Quantitative: science, human body 2.0 redesign
Qualitative: social constructs, democracy
Concepts: philosophy, next-generation
intelligence
Conclusion
March 31, 2012
34
Principia Posthuman
35. GPS for the Mind exercise
Image: Salvador Dali
CONTACT GPS for the Mind exercise (4 minutes)
Sign up for a free account at www.mindtimemaps.com
(use an anonymous name if you prefer)
Complete the GPS for the Mind exercise at the
community site: www.mindtimemaps.com/start/contact
Results: return to the community site
www.mindtimemaps.com/start/contact and click on the
Groups icon, then CONTACT to see the results
March 31, 2012 Source: http://www.mindtimemaps.com
Principia Posthuman 35
36. GPS for the Mind results
Image: Salvador Dali
Past, present, future
Self, group, country
March 31, 2012 Source: http://www.mindtimemaps.com
Principia Posthuman 36
37. Aspen rhizome
Elements of a Principia Posthuman
Image: http://integral-options.blogspot.com
Philosophy Next-generation
Concepts Concerned with: Understanding intelligence
Art, aesthetics, economics, politics,
Qualitative societal design Democracy
Concerned with: Experience
Science and technology Human Body
Quantitative Concerned with: Characterization 2.0 Redesign
March 31, 2012
37
Principia Posthuman
38. Principia
Posthuman
Thank you!
Questions?
Image: AmericanThinker.com
Image: Natasha Vita-More, Primo Posthuman
Melanie Swan
MS Futures Group
Slides: http://slideshare.net/LaBlogga +1-650-681-9482
@LaBlogga, @DIYgenomics
www.MelanieSwan.com
Creative Commons 3.0 license m@melanieswan.com
39. DIYgenomics participant-organized studies
7 studies in open enrollment (vitamin deficiency, aging, and
mental performance); 5 in design (oncology, calcinosis)
March 31, 2012 Source: Swan, M., Crowdsourced health research studies. J Med Internet Res 2012, Mar;14(2):e46 39
Principia Posthuman