Developments in biotechnology and neuroscience have the potential to unleash an engineering of human beings previously inconceivable. Proper ethical governance and a new understanding of humanism, are necessary to steer these technological developments in the direction of supporting sustainable, just and peaceful futures. Such futures will depend on open data, open science and an expanded understanding of the right to education to include the right to data, to information and to the protection of privacy.
UNESO, International Commission on the Futures of Education, p.8 et seq.
“It is, however, essential that eugenics should be brought entirely within the borders of science, for, as already indicated, in the not very remote future the problem of improving the average quality of human beings is likely to become urgent; and this can only be accomplished by applying the findings of a truly scientific eugenics.”
Sir Julian Sorell Huxley
From UNESCO Its Purpose and Its Philosophy
Keywords: Population-wide genetic sequencing, eugenics on steroids, full-spectrum surveillance, bio-sensors, bio-hacking, bio-data, big-data, population control, population surveilance, brain-computer interfaces, nano-technology, scientific propaganda, technocratic agenda, silicon valley, ray kurzweil, singularity, academic prostitution, intellectual sell out.
Selected publications:
Huxley, J. (1968). Transhumanism. Journal of Humanistic Psychology. doi.org/10.1177/002216786800800107
Kurzweil, R. (2008). The Coming Merging of Mind and Machine. Scientific American Sp. doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican0208-20sp
Sorgner, S. L. (2008). Nietzsche, the Overhuman, and Transhumanism. Journal of Evolution & Technology.
Carafides, J. L. (2003). Nietzsche, Godfather of Fascism? Philosophical Inquiry, 25(1), 259–260. doi.org/10.5840/philinquiry2003251/222
Mead, W. R., & Kurzweil, R. (2006). The Singularity Is near: When Humans Transcend Biology. Foreign Affairs. doi.org/10.2307/20031996
Kurzweil, R. (2013). How to create a mind: The secret of human thought revealed. New York Review of Books. doi.org/10.5860/choice.50-6167
Goertzel, B. (2007). Human-level artificial general intelligence and the possibility of a technological singularity. A reaction to Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity Is Near, and McDermott’s critique of Kurzweil. Artificial Intelligence. doi.org/10.1016/j.artint.2007.10.011
Kurzweil, R. (2014). The Singularity is Near. In Ethics and Emerging Technologies. doi.org/10.1057/9781137349088_26
Kurzweil, R. (2004). The Law of Accelerating Returns. In Alan Turing: Life and Legacy of a Great Thinker. doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-05642-4_16
Kurzweil, R. (2010). How my predictions are faring. How My Predictions Are Faring.
Ray Kurzweil. (2010). In Talking About Life. doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511763328.033
Kurzweil, R. (2008). The singularity: The last word. In IEEE Spectrum. doi.org/10.1109/MSPEC.2008.4635038
Reed, C., & Galeon, D. (2017). Kurzweil Claims That the Singularity Will Happen by 2045. Futurism.
Kurzweil, R. (2013). How to make mind. Futurist.
McDermott, D. (2006). Kurzweil’s argument for the success of AI. Artificial Intelligence. doi.org/10.1016/j.artint.2006.10.006
Berman, A. (2016). Technology Feels Like It’s Accelerating — Because It Actually Is. In Singularity Hub.
Butler, D. (2016). Tomorrow ’ S Technological Change Is Accelerating Today At an Unprecedented World. Nature.
Calwalladr, C. (2014). Are the robots about to rise? Google’s new director of engineering thinks so…. The Guardian.
Gidley, J. M. (2019). Transhumanism. In Critical Terms in Futures Studies. doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28987-4_49
Bostrom, N. (2005). A History of Transhumanist Thought. Journal of Evolution and Technology.
Persson, I., & Savulescu, J. (2010). Moral transhumanism. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy. doi.org/10.1093/jmp/jhq052
Fukuyama, F. (2004). Transhumanism. In Foreign Policy. doi.org/10.2307/4152980
Porter, A. (2017). Bioethics and transhumanism. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy (United Kingdom). doi.org/10.1093/jmp/jhx001
