The Strange Neuroscience of Immortality

The Chronicle Review interviews Ken Hayworth  a neuroscientist who believes that "By 2110, mind uploading—the transfer of a biological brain to a silicon-based operating system—will be as common as laser eye surgery is today."

The Technium: Next Transitions

As a follow on to the recent post about future filters civilization may have to survive, the Technium provides this post that considers possible transitions civilization may go through in the foreseeable future:

Next Transitions in the Technium

"What kinds of developmental thresholds would any planet of sentient beings pass through? The creation of writing would be a huge one. The unleashing of cheap non-biological energy is another. The invention of the scientific method is a giant leap. And the fine control of energy (as in electricity) for long-distant communications is significant as well, enabling all kinds of other achievements. Our civilization has passed through all these stages; what are some future transitions we can expect -- no matter the fashions and fads of the day? What are the emergent thresholds of information and energy organization that our civilization can look forward to? Most of these thresholds are gradual, so we can't assign dates, but each of these structures seem to be a natural transition that any civilization must reach sooner or later."

A Neophyte’s Guide to the Singularity

From emotional intelligence:

A Neophyte’s Guide to the Singularity

Anyone who’s just learning about the Singularity undoubtedly begins, as I did, with Ray Kurzweil. Prolific inventor, future thinker, it was his 2005 book, The Singularity is Near, that pushed the concept of the Singularity into the public’s consciousness, and he’s been the relentless public face of the idea since. I started with the recent documentary about him, Transcendent Man.

The take aways: Kurzweil is not the only advocate of the Singularity, the concept has its detractors, and there are many lesser riffs on the idea–ways in which technology may amp and extend our performance, capabilities, without taking over.

Opencog roadmap for the development of advanced human-level general intelligence

roadmap for OpenCog development in the next 12 years of advanced human-level general intelligence

Opencog Roadmap for Human Level Artificial General Intelligence

Time Magazine on the Singularity- 2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal

Time magazine furthers the popularization of the concept of the Singularity

2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal

New York Times Article on the Singularity Movement

Humans are so yesterday

Juan Enriquez presentation on advances in medicine and robots leading to the "big reboot"

Article on Ray Kurzweil's predictions: mind upload by 2040?

This article interviews Ray Kurzweil and summarizes some of his predictions for the next forty years.

Kurzweil is the author of "The Singularity is Near" and is well known for his predictions about technological developments in the coming century, particularly in the areas of artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, and in improving longevity and quality of life.

New York Times Begins to Worry About Computers Smarter Than People

I have notice a few stories in the New York Times discussing the possibility of superhuman artificial intelligence this summer. Links Here and Here.

School for futurists

Singularity University

Ray Kurzweil: Reinventing Humanity

The Author of The Singularity is Near provides an article published in the March-April 2006 edition of Futurist Magazine that summarizes the predictions from his book regarding the near term future of human and technological evolution.

Will the dead twitter by the end of the century?

Cliff Pickover discusses mind uploading and simulated afterlife as he makes a sales pitch for his book on these topics: The Heaven Virus.

Next Big Future: Achieving a Mundane Technological Transhuman Singularity

Next Big Future: Achieving a Mundane Technological Transhuman Singularity

Links to a series of mind upload pages

related to my recent link to the IEEE special report on the technological singularity, here are links to several sources of information on the prospect of "mind uploading."

Wikipedia Mind upload page (good source for basic overview)

"The Mind Uploading Home Page"

Uploading (Anders Sandberg)

Mind Uploading (Transtopia)

Minduploading.org

Foresight.org Uploading page

Computational Neurophysiology at the Boston U. Center for Memory and Brain

Paper explores feasibility of different upload strategies

IEEE Spectrum special issue- The Singularity

IEEE Spectrum special issue on the Technological Singularity.