Ethical Technology

Imagination Experiment: Visualizing Transformative Tech

director@ieet.org (IEET) — 2013-05-21T20:29:+00:00

Time for another thought experiment. Or, rather, a puzzle without a good answer yet.

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From Mars to the Multiverse

director@ieet.org (IEET) — 2013-05-21T19:29:+00:00

2012 Newton Medal winner, Professor Martin Rees gives a one hour astronomy lecture titled From Mars to the Multiverse. Martin Rees is a Fellow of Trinity College and Emeritus Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics at the University of Cambridge. He holds the honorary title of Astronomer Royal and also Visiting Professor at Imperial College London and at Leicester University. In this lecture he touches on finding life on other planets, the science of stars, and all things universe.

The singularity: merging human/machine to achieve immortality

director@ieet.org (IEET) — 2013-05-21T14:36:+00:00

By around mid-century, many future followers predict the pace of technological progression in genetics, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence will become so fast that humans will undergo radical evolution. Advances that provide a forever youthful and healthy state of being could be realized.

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Feel the Pulse - 2013 MIT Image Award Winner

director@ieet.org (IEET) — 2013-05-20T23:57:+00:00

Kwabena Badu-Nkansah explains the science behind his beautiful image, Feel the Pulse: Smooth Muscle Cells Respond to Stretching Forces. Kwabena image was selected as a winner of the 2013 Koch Institute Image Awards. See all the winners at http://ki-galleries.mit.edu.

credit

The David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research @MIT

CubeSats: Tiny satellites work at MIT, U. Mich.

director@ieet.org (IEET) — 2013-05-20T14:40:+00:00

A video reflection of work at MIT, the University of Michigan and other institutions on small satellites and the technology that will contribute to overcoming the challenges facing interplanetary CubeSat and iCubeSat missions.

Produced for the first Interplanetary CubeSat Workshop, May 29, 2012, at MIT.

Video by Gwendolyn Gettliffe, music by Stephen Gettliffe, animations by Benjamin Schweighart, and RAX videos courtesy University of Michigan News Service.

Should Transhumanists Abandon the Corporatist Capitalist model?

director@ieet.org (IEET) — 2013-05-20T14:10:+00:00

In Khannea SunTzu remarkable new novel she’ll never write - The NeoProgressive’s New Deal - the leader character, Cassandra Assange (Daughter of Julian Assange, born in 2003), is the target of literal micro drone assassination attempts, a vicious media campaign and endless incapacitating litigation. She became a political activist like her father in the mid 2020s, and exemplified the new counter-cultural ideal. Militantly lesbian and technoprogressive she gave birth of a clone of her wife, and her wife gave birth to a clone of Cassandra in the late 2020s.

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The Far Futures Project

director@ieet.org (IEET) — 2013-05-20T12:47:+00:00

When I was a kid there was a series on Nostradamus narrated by an Orson Welles surrounded in cigar smoke and false gravitas. I had not seen The Man Who Saw Tomorrow for over 30 years, though thanks to the miracle of Youtube I was able to find it here. Amazingly enough, I still remember Part 9 of the series in which the blue- turbaned, Islamic, 3rd antichrist allied with the Soviet Union plunges the world into thermonuclear war. I also remember the ending- scenes of budding flowers and sunshine signaling the rebirth of nature and humanity, a period of peace and prosperity to last 1,000 years.

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Mixed News from Space

director@ieet.org (IEET) — 2013-05-18T13:49:+00:00

Amid fretful resignation, we learn of the likely loss of the magnificent Kepler mission...which discovered as many as three thousand planets beyond our solar system. (About 10% of them now confirmed.) Only two of the four gyro systems are still working, not enough for the probe to aim at more than a hundred thousand stars with uncanny accuracy, each day. While this will be a sad loss, the epoch introduced by the Kepler Mission bodes well for you understanding of the universe.

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Woman who lost limbs to flesh-eating bacteria gets bionic hands

director@ieet.org (IEET) — 2013-05-18T13:36:+00:00

Aimee Copeland, the woman who lost her hands, one leg and her other foot to flesh-eating bacteria after a zip-line accident last year, spoke with WXIA.com and “Today” about her new bionic hands, which are helping her return to a normal life.

Copeland, 24, is in the process of learning to use two state-of-the art prosthetic hands called iLimbs. A fast learner, she has the basics down and says she is looking forward to using them for more advanced tasks like driving, according to WXIA.

Present Shock- explained in 15 minutes

director@ieet.org (IEET) — 2013-05-17T13:58:+00:00

In this very brief talk for PSFK Douglas Rushkoff, IEET Fellow, talks about his new book Present Shock. The talk gives a good summary explaining what Present Shock is all about.

Rushkoff is a media theorist and the bestselling author of Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now. His earlier books include Life Inc, Program or Be Programmed, and Media Virus. He made the PBS Frontline documentaries The Merchants of Cool, The Persuaders, and Digital Nation, and speaks around the world about media, technology, and change.