Category — Philosophy

I found this video the other day and had to share:

I’ll have more to say on this soon, but for now give it a watch (or three) and tell me what you think.

Japanese researchers at ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories have managed to externally reconstruct images being perceived by  a person’s brain.  By measuring blood flow in the visual cortex using an fMRI machine and interpreting it correctly, the images being shown to subjects could be determined and visualized.  This is of course only a start; the researchers used very low resolution images, and were only attempting to retreive the images currently being seen by the eyes.  They hope in the future to make it possible to see the images a person is perceiving non-visually, and even to view people’s dreams.

It’s hard not to think about the implications of this technology.  While it’s not likely to pose a threat to personal privacy any time soon, it’s easy to see how some people will be extremely wary of the ability to read what a person is seeing.  Personally, I’m most excited at the prospect of seeing my dreams played out for me in full colour the next day!

Humanity+ (recently re-branded from the creepy-sounding ‘World Transhumanist Association’) has released their first issue of H+, a webzine that follows the development of the various technologies that show promise of leading us into our post-human future.  The first issue is free, and available in PDF format on their website.

It’s an interesting read, covering everything from the battle to stop ageing to genetic engineering to the efforts being made to improve the human brain.  Not all the technologies described are quite so ambitious, of course.  The magazine also covers more “mundane” technologies (such as robotics, advanced nutrition, and some very cool gadgetry) that should improve our lives in more subtle ways.

A big part of the challenge for transhumanists worldwide is gaining acceptance for their vision of the future.  The magazine by necessity devotes some of its pages to the social and ethical issues surrounding these technologies, in an attempt to show that even the most ardent transhumanist considers fair and responsible use of the technology to be the main priority going forward.

Once again, it’s FREE, so download it and see what you think!

Last week, I had the privilege of hearing one of my favourite authors speak. Neal Stephenson was in Toronto promoting his latest book, Anathem – another gargantuan effort on his part.  The event was organized by This is Not a Reading, and I really have to thank them because it’s refreshing to attend events like these where the author does more than just read a passage from their latest book, and maybe answer a few questions.

Neal Stephenson is one of those authors that got pigeonholed early: his first novel to draw a lot of critical acclaim was a brilliant work of cyberpunk.  Ever since, his books have been shelved in the Sci-fi section, even though many (myself included) would argue that his last few books are so expansive in scope that they defy any attempt at categorization.  I suppose they have to go somewhere, but anyone who’s read Cryptonomicon or (especially) The Baroque Cycle will tell you that his work doesn’t fit very neatly onto any particular shelf; his work is truly baroque, in the sense that it displays a rich amount of detail (some might say an excessive amount) and draws from many sources and traditions all at once.  Anathem bucks this trend a bit, landing definitively between Sci-fi and Fantasy, but is still far wider in scope than most traditional entries in those genres.  For myself, I loved it, and if I can find the words to properly encapsulate all the ideas presented in the story, I’ll try to write a full review.

Upon entering the auditorium, I immediately noticed the music being played; it sounded like Gregorian or Byzantine chants.  This seemed appropriate, as there’s a monastic group of theorists portrayed in Anathem that uses this type of music to extol their appreciation for the beauty and order they perceive in the mathematical and philosophical ideas they devote their lives to studying.  Only later in the evening did I learn that the music was from a CD made by a musician friend of Mr. Stephenson’s who’d taken the musical concepts from the book and applied them to some of his favourite mathematical concepts.  One chant encoded the decimal expansion of pi, another was generated using cellular automata, and a third described a quantum spin network of some kind.

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