The Singularity Is Here, Software News, Impromtu Dinner Parties

[tcpip]

Spent a very large portion of the weekend at the inaugural Australian Singularity Summit, where I gave a presentation on Social Formations in a Transhumanist World (plus notes from the presentation). Unexpectedly, I also ended up on two panels "Cultural responses to futurism" and "Future Dystopia or Utopia?". Was impressed with all the speakers at the conference - even when there was substantial disagreements; the intellectual and passionate battle at different times between Robert Sparrow, Hugo deGaris and Kevin Korb was just great. Spent a fair bit of time with _fustian, who engaged very intelligently throughout the conference. Possibly as a direct result of being at the conference, I have been invited (and accepted) membership to the Lifeboat Foundation advisory boards on Economics and Human Trajectories.

On a related topic Software Freedom Day is next Saturday at the State Library. In a possibly entirely accidental lead-up, Richard Stallman is speaking at the University of Melbourne and at RMIT the following day. Obviously, I intend to go to both meetings. Finally NVIDIA provides a surprisingly entertaining video of CPUs vs GPUs.

In the social agenda, caseopaya and I planned to have dinner with devilgirly on Thursday; received a 'phone call from darklion just before we were about to kick off mentioning he hadn't seen enough of us whilst he was over in Melbourne; so suddenly had a dinner party which included the aforementioned plus kremmen and Karen. Great night had by all, although Willsmere Estate did prove to be somewhat wheelchair-unfriendly.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

It was great that you could accommodate us all at such short notice; it was great fun. And you did your best trying to bypass as many stairs as possible without being too round about.

[darklion.livejournal.com]

Looks like I commented before logging in; in summary: it was great seeing you all.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Looks like you did. You must be out of practise on commenting on lj :)

The stairs have been an issue we've previously noticed and that's why I guess we were a bit sensitive about it. The place shouldn't have been designed without that sort of accessibility in mind.

All said tho', it was just fabulous having y'all over. Look forward to next time.

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

Is there some source storage where i could read some more on the Social Formations in a Transhumanist World subject?

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

More? The slides and the notes weren't enough? ;)

No storage that I know of off-hand, but you may wish to consider working your way through the books and people I referenced in the talk. So everyone from Kurzweil's "Age of Spiritual Machines" and "The Singularity Is Near", Bruce Sterling's "Schismatrix Plus" and David Brin's "Uplift" series for the sf side of things, Eric Drexler's "Engines of Creation", Jean Baudrillard, "Simulation and Similcra", Jurgen Habermas "Legitimation Crisis"...

That should keep you going for a while :)

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

Sheesh. Thx a lot hehe :)
But i meant some links maybe, where i could d/l them.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Well, I have to confess there isn't really that much. The transhumanist writings have mainly come from people with a strong sciences background and most of my experience from those in sociology has been quite antithetical to the entire possibility... Russell Blackford is perhaps an exception (http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/) and the Journal of Evolution and Technology http://www.jetpress.org/index.html