Daniel Rourke /stream

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Hi folks and welcome to the anarcho-transhumanist AMA. The term "anarcho-transhumanism" is a relatively recently one, barely mentioned in the 80s, publicly adopted in the early oughts and only really popularized…

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Genomes are so regularly represented as strings of letters—As, Gs, Cs, and Ts—that it’s easy to forget that they aren’t just abstract collections of data. They exist in three dimensions. They…

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Is humanity’s impact on its environment so huge that the planet has entered a new geological era: the Anthropocene? The idea is gaining ground—and dividing scientists. Helen Gordon investigates

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Like much of her work, Ashley Zelinskie eludes a one-dimensional definition. She is a Star Trek-obsessed nerd who studies electrical engineering, theoretical physics, and space in her spare time.

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Explorers happened upon the bones after squeezing through a fissure high up in the rear wall of the Rising Star cave, 50km from Johannesburg, before descending down a long, narrow chute…

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Earlier this month, scientists working in South Africa made an exciting announcement: They had discovered a new species of human ancestor.

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“Ban sex robots!” scream the tech headlines, as if they’re heralding the arrival of the latest artificial intelligence threat to humankind since autonomous killer robots.

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If we hope to preserve the knowledge and art produced by human civilization long after we are gone, or send a message to beings far from us in space of billions…

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Australian bioethicist Julian Savulescu has a knack for provocation. Take human cloning. He says most of us would readily accept it if it benefited us.

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Face it: Siri sucks. So often, she has no clue what you’re saying. And when she does, there’s a pretty good chance she’ll respond with nothing more than a page filled…

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…suicide is the decisive political act of our times.― Franco “Bifo” Berardi, Precarious Rhapsody It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.

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Describing the McDonald’s double cheeseburger as “the cheapest, most nutritious, and bountiful food that has ever existed in human history” might seem beyond fanciful, but according to the author of Freakonomics,…

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Let’s say someone successfully cloned human ancestors. Then what? Are they like chimps, to be put in a zoo or a nature reserve? Do they need carers? Should we enroll them…

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From Reza Negarastani's blog: It is through this operative fog that some of the more insidious mechanisms of neoliberal capitalism are directly plugged into the cognitive infrastructure under the guise of…

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In the movie Sliding Doors (1998), a woman named Helen, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, rushes to catch a train on the London Underground, but just misses it, watching helplessly from the…

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If Baudrillard observed the disappearance of tools adapted to the human form in favour of the button[1], we will observe the disappearance of the button in favour of fully-automatic predictive operation…

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All technologies rely on specific materials that support communication, materials that leave their mark on the environment in a way that exceeds human imagination.

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Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006) presents a dystopian vision of a near-future world in which most organic vegetation has died and human life is becoming increasingly rare.

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Telofossils II, 2015. Images courtesy XPO Gallery and the artist We don't have a time machine (that we know of—yet), but we can still get a theoretical idea about what our…

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Hi folks and welcome to the anarcho-transhumanist AMA. The term "anarcho-transhumanism" is a relatively recently one, barely mentioned in the 80s, publicly adopted in the early oughts and only really popularized…

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Genomes are so regularly represented as strings of letters—As, Gs, Cs, and Ts—that it’s easy to forget that they aren’t just abstract collections of data. They exist in three dimensions. They…

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DOUGLAS LAIN’S latest novel depicts an alien invasion set in an alternate near-past where people have been dehumanized by the worn-out specter of consumer-capitalism and electronic media.

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Like much of her work, Ashley Zelinskie eludes a one-dimensional definition. She is a Star Trek-obsessed nerd who studies electrical engineering, theoretical physics, and space in her spare time.

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Explorers happened upon the bones after squeezing through a fissure high up in the rear wall of the Rising Star cave, 50km from Johannesburg, before descending down a long, narrow chute…

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Scientists recently suggested that the Earth’s sixth mass extinction has begun.

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“Ban sex robots!” scream the tech headlines, as if they’re heralding the arrival of the latest artificial intelligence threat to humankind since autonomous killer robots.

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If we hope to preserve the knowledge and art produced by human civilization long after we are gone, or send a message to beings far from us in space of billions…

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When it comes to artificial intelligence, we may all be suffering from the fallacy of availability: thinking that creating intelligence is much easier than it is, because we see examples all…

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Face it: Siri sucks. So often, she has no clue what you’re saying. And when she does, there’s a pretty good chance she’ll respond with nothing more than a page filled…

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Describing the McDonald’s double cheeseburger as “the cheapest, most nutritious, and bountiful food that has ever existed in human history” might seem beyond fanciful, but according to the author of Freakonomics,…

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The text below is a paper I wrote to correspond to my presentation at the first 100YSS Symposium in 2011. 0. Preamble1. The case against civilization2. The evils of civilization3. The…

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Let’s say someone successfully cloned human ancestors. Then what? Are they like chimps, to be put in a zoo or a nature reserve? Do they need carers? Should we enroll them…

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From Reza Negarastani's blog: It is through this operative fog that some of the more insidious mechanisms of neoliberal capitalism are directly plugged into the cognitive infrastructure under the guise of…

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In the movie Sliding Doors (1998), a woman named Helen, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, rushes to catch a train on the London Underground, but just misses it, watching helplessly from the…

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If Baudrillard observed the disappearance of tools adapted to the human form in favour of the button[1], we will observe the disappearance of the button in favour of fully-automatic predictive operation…

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Creativity is one of humanity’s uniquely defining qualities. Numerous thinkers have explored the qualities that creativity must have, and most pick out two important factors: whatever the process of creativity produces,…

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All technologies rely on specific materials that support communication, materials that leave their mark on the environment in a way that exceeds human imagination.

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Telofossils II, 2015. Images courtesy XPO Gallery and the artist We don't have a time machine (that we know of—yet), but we can still get a theoretical idea about what our…

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Humanity inscribes itself into the rock record of Earth’s history. People now move more sediment than all the world’s rivers combined. Fossil fuel burning has changed the composition of the atmosphere.