Some transhumanists have advocated the “uplifting” of primates. Do you see any merit in this idea?

The inspiration for this Brain Parade comes from my readings of thinking in the transhumanist movement. I agree with the transhumanists in a lot of things. They’re right to say that our response to ethical challenges posed by future technologies should be informed by something more than yuk factor.

We’ve interviewed a number of transhumanists over the past month. This week we interview technoprogressive Dale Carrico, a lecturer with the Department of Rhetoric at the University of California. I’ve read some of his writing on the IEET (link) and am impressed by his point of view.

Nick Bostrom is the co-founder of the World Transhumanist Association. In 2004, along with James Hughes, Bostrom co-founded the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. In 2005 he was appointed Director of the newly created Oxford Future of Humanity Institute.

Kevin Warwick is Professor of Cybernetics and carries out research in artificial intelligence, control, robotics and biomedical engineering. I first heard of Kevin Warwick on the news several years ago when his nervous system was wired up to a computer. I didn’t take much notice of him at the time but I saw him again on Building Gods (a documentary available on Google Video- link)

I had the pleasure of interviewing Natasha recently, a transhumanist theorist and futurist with a background in the arts. She was kind enough to answer a few questions about transhumanism and futurism for us.

You’ve heard me mouth off last week about the Geek Rapture (a utopian Singularity scenario) and why I liken it to a religion (link). A few science fiction authors were kind enough to throw in their two cents. We’ll also be touching on this subject in the episode 7 of Meme Therapy the science fiction podcast which is going online in a few days.

It’s probably the circles I move in but when I usualy hear about the rapture, an event where us lowly mortals get uplifted into an indescribably wonderful higher state, its not in reference to the christian rapture but the geek one. The Geek Rapture refers to a utopian Singularity scenario.

We didn’t get into the concept of the Singularity in the last podcast. And while we will do a podcast on that topic in the future I came across a flick on the subject that is so good that I want to commend it to your attention now. It’s called Building Gods and you can download it off Google Video (link). I don’t normaly link to cool bits of media on the web but this nugget warrants a finger pointed at it.

As a warm up for our Transhumanim episode that we’re releasing this tuesday we conducted a short email interview with Mac Tonnies, a transhumanist and writer.

Continuing on with the transhumanist vein there’s a very interesting discussion paper published by Demos and the Wellcome trust available for download here discussing arguments both for and against various life / longevity / intelligence enhancing technologies. The potential social and political impacts of some of these future technologies are truly mind boggling and raises the possibility that within the next few decades the world could become a truly strange place.

If you want a dose of Transhumanism check out Dr. J’s Changesurfer radio. There’s some thought provoking interviews and speeches from scientists and science fiction writers. These guys aren’t just speculating on a transhumanist future they’re advocating it politicaly.