You can read the first post of this interview if you click on QUESTION #1

CHRIS WILLIAMSON:
What is new about Humanity+? Are there any exciting new projects or changes we should know about?

JAMES HUGHES:
Humanity+ has three programs of action:

1. Campaign for the Rights of the Person
2. Campaign for Longer Better Lives
3. Campaign for a Future Friendly Culture

http://transhumanism.org/index.php/WTA/programs/

In the coming year the Board will be revisiting and refining these agendas.

We will be holding an international meeting somewhere, probably in the Netherlands.

We have a large, expensive new project, H+ Magazine, edited by RU Sirius and managed by Ben Goertzel. We’ve published one well-received issue, will be bringing out the second shortly and are hoping to publish quarterly.

The new website should be up by February and will be much sexier and more modern than the existing website.

We will also be working with our student chapters to build transhumanist study groups and activism on college campuses.

Click here for an article describing the project.

Per Wikipedia, “Prof. Hugo de Garis has recently received a 3 million RMB, 4 year grant to build China’s first artificial brain, starting in 2008″.

Click below for a video featuring Dr. Hugo De Garis’ AI concerns -

Click here to access the Wikipedia entry for Dr. Hugo De Garis.

Ok, I don’t speak up too often in this blog. It’s not that I can’t write. I actually write fairly well. I just like to write many drafts of something before someone else reads it. That might be why I prefer writing news stories and essays as opposed to blogging.

[In truth I am currently editing this post the day after posting it, and I'll probably change it again later today]

I do feel that BTS makes a great weblog. It does a good job of logging our apparently accelerating ascent into a future that makes even the best crystal balls go static-y.

Now, if you want to read some really good blogwriting go check out Micheal Anissimov’s famous blog. Of course, most of you have read his work and many of you know him personally.

Micheal…you are my blog hero.

With that said I’d like to move on and let you know that I’ve been conducting an email interview with James Hughes, Secretary of the transhumanist organization Humanity+, formerly the World Transhumanist Association. Instead of waiting to finish the interview I will go ahead and post the first question and response today.

Before I launch into the interview, I’d like to mention that the new H+ magazine that Humanity+ is putting out is wonderful. RU Sirius and the copy editors have a done a great job and most of all I’d like to thank the donors that made it possible.

After reading the new H+ mag I’d have to say: “Wired is expired!”

Here’s the interview:

Chris Williamson asks:
What sparked the recent decision to change from the World
Transhumanist Association to Humanity+?

James Hughes replies:
In January 2008 we elected some new members to the Board who had experience with more sophisticated fundraising and marketing than the previous Board members had. Tyler Emerson, director of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, in particular had a very ambitious set of ideas about updating the transhumanist message to make it more broadly attractive.

We reflected on a lot of internal research we had done on how we were perceived by our members and fellow-traveling friends in that process that Tyler promoted. The first question was whether a new name for the WTA would be more inclusive, and sound less like a scary “ism” with a lot of baggage that people didn’t understand and might not want to associate with.

We had slowly adopted the shorthand of H+ to stand for “transhumanism” in our internal communications, so that led naturally to the decision to adopt the name Humanity+. It captured our central message of human enhancement, but was much more affirming of humanity than the initial impressions some had from “transhuman” or “posthuman.”

Researchers at MIT have shown that they can use rubber stamps to deposit quantum dots–tiny light-emitting crystals–on a surface. The technique lets them put rows of different-colored dots next to each other, a crucial step in the development of color quantum-dot displays, which promise to be thinner, more flexible, brighter, sharper, and more power efficient than flat-panel LCDs.

Startup QD Vision, based in Watertown, MA, is commercializing the approach, which was described online in Nano Letters. Affordable displays based on the technique could be on the market as soon as 2011, says the company’s chief technology officer, Seth Coe-Sullivan, one of the coauthors of the Nano Letters paper.
Read the rest of this entry »

Do you really want to read this?

If so, click here.

Humanity’s future could take one of several routes…
Click here for an in depth article found in Scientific American Magazine that reviews the evolution of humans and projects several alternative futures.

TechCrunch is todays featured weblog with this fine post by Michael Arrington:

April 9,2008:
A few years from now we’ll use our mobile devices to help us remember details of people we know, but not well. And it will help us meet new people for dating, business and friendship. Imagine walking into a meeting, classroom, party, bar, subway station, airplane, etc. and seeing profile information about other people in the area, depending on privacy settings. Picture, name, dating status, resume information, etc. The information that is available would be relevant to the setting – quick LinkedIn-type information for a business meeting v. Facebook dating status for a bar. more>>>

Click HERE to view a PDF from the Future of Humanity Institute of University of Oxford.

Whole brain emulation, often informally called “uploading” or “downloading”, has been the
subject of much science fiction and also some preliminary studies (see Appendix D for history
and previous work). The basic idea is to take a particular brain, scan its structure in detail,
and construct a software model of it that is so faithful to the original that, when run on
appropriate hardware, it will behave in essentially the same way as the original brain. more>>>

To steer this German-designed diagnostic pill, a doctor simply moves a magnetic remote control over the patient’s body. The extra maneuverability lets doctors scan the stomach and esophagus for disease from multiple angles. more>>>

Chemical engineers use carbon nanotubes to monitor chemotherapy, detect toxins at the single-molecule level

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.–MIT engineers have developed carbon nanotubes into sensors for cancer drugs and other DNA-damaging agents inside living cells.

The sensors, made of carbon nanotubes wrapped in DNA, can detect chemotherapy drugs such as cisplatin as well as environmental toxins and free radicals that damage DNA.

“We’ve made a sensor that can be placed in living cells, healthy or malignant, and actually detect several different classes of molecules that damage DNA,” said Michael Strano, associate professor of chemical engineering and senior author of a paper on the work appearing in the Dec. 14 online edition of Nature Nanotechnology. more>>>

Tracking tools: ThingMagic’s Mercury5e, above, is the embedded radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology that powers Tool Link, a product that helps users keep track of tools. An RFID reader embedded in a vehicle reads tags on tools in order to sense which ones are in the truck bed. Tool Link will be available in 2009 Ford Work Solutions E-series and F-series vehicles.
Credit: ThingMagic

Monday, December 15, 2008
It’ll be harder to lose things once containers learn to keep track of their contents. That’s the idea behind Tool Link, a product created by Cambridge-based company ThingMagic, working with Ford and toolmaker DeWalt. Tool Link, which will be installed in 2009 Ford Work Solutions E-series and F-series vehicles, can take inventory of the tools packed in a truck using radio-frequency identification (RFID) and alert the user if any are missing. more>>>

Imagine a world where combat soldiers look at a paper-thin, bendable electronic device
sewn onto their uniforms to get real-time readouts of military positions and battle
operations.
How about one where everyday consumers carry around a similar device that can
download the latest news and headlines from around the world?
These are among the concepts the Flexible Display Center at Arizona State University
hopes to turn into reality in the near future.more>>>

With a title like that, of course I had to check it out. You should too.
Click here.