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Archive for the ‘transhumanism’ category: Page 3

Jul 5, 2024

Continuous neural control of a bionic limb restores biomimetic gait after amputation

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, cyborgs, neuroscience, transhumanism

In this study we show that residual muscle–tendon afferents enable a person with transtibial amputation to directly neuromodulate biomimetic locomotion, enabling neuroprosthetic adaptations to varying walking speeds, terrains and perturbations. Such versatile and biomimetic gait has not been attainable in contemporary bionic legs without the reliance upon predefined intrinsic control frameworks1,2. Central to the improved neural controllability demonstrated in this study are muscle–tendon sensory organs26,27 that deliver proprioceptive afferents. The surgically reconstructed, agonist–antagonist muscles emulate natural agonistic contraction and antagonistic stretch, thereby generating proprioceptive afferents corresponding to residual muscle movements.

During the ground contact phase of walking, the reconstructed muscle–tendon dynamics of the AMI do not precisely emulate intact biological muscle dynamics. The residual muscles of the AMI contract and stretch freely within the amputated residuum, only pulling against one another and not against the external environment. In distinction, for intact biological limbs, the muscle–tendons span the ankle joint, exerting large forces through an interaction with the external environment. These interactive muscle–tendon dynamics in intact biological limbs are believed to play a critical role in spinal reflexes, in addition to providing feedback for volitional motor control12. Therefore, for this study, the demonstrated capacity of augmented afferents to enable biomimetic gait neuromodulation is surprising given that their total magnitude is largely reduced compared with those of intact biological limbs26,27,45,46.

Jun 27, 2024

Organ-on-chip market for drug testing expected to see tenfold growth to $1.3 billion by 2032

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, computing, cyborgs, transhumanism

Is this the beginning of the age of bionic humans?

Jun 20, 2024

Why Politicians Need to Stop Getting in the Way of Technological Progress

Posted by in categories: economics, education, robotics/AI, transhumanism

Dr. Ben Murnane has published an Opinion piece in FEE, the Foundation for Economic Education, a major US think thank. The essay covers #transhumanism and the new biography Transhuman Citizen, out in 10 days.


It’s telling that with the rise of AI the first instinct of many politicians is to regulate it.

May 26, 2024

Training Transhumanists at Oxford University

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, ethics, mobile phones, neuroscience, transhumanism

Those who know Oxford University for its literary luminaries might be surprised to learn that some of the most important reflections on emerging technologies come from its hallowed halls. While the leading tech innovators in Silicon Valley capture imaginations with their bold visions of future singularities, mind-machine melding, and digital immortality by 2045, they rarely engage as deeply with the philosophical issues surrounding such developments as their like-minded scholars over the pond. This essay will briefly highlight some of the key contributions of Oxford University’s professors Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, and Julian Savulescu to the transhumanist movement. It will also show how this movement’s focus on radical autonomy in biotechnical enhancements shapes the wider global bioethical conversation.

As the lead author of the Transhumanist FAQ, Bostrom provides the closest the movement has to an institutional catechism. He is, in a sense, the Ratzinger of Transhumanism. The first paragraph of the seminal text emphasizes the evolutionary vision of his school. Transhumanism’s incessant pursuit of radical technological transformation is “based on the premise that the human species in its current form does not represent the end of our development but rather a comparatively early phase.” Current humans are but one intriguing yet greatly improvable iteration of human existence. Think of the first iPhone and how unattractive 2007’s most cutting-edge technology is in 2024.

Continue reading “Training Transhumanists at Oxford University” »

May 25, 2024

What If We Accessed The 10th Dimension?

Posted by in categories: augmented reality, bioengineering, business, genetics, robotics/AI, time travel, transhumanism

This video explores the 4th to the 10th dimensions of time. Watch this next video about the 10 stages of AI: • The 10 Stages of Artificial Intelligence.
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May 17, 2024

Built-in bionic computing

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, cyborgs, robotics/AI, transhumanism

Creating robots to safely aid disaster victims is one challenge; executing flexible robot control that takes advantage of the material’s softness is another. The use of pliable soft materials to collaborate with humans and work in disaster areas has drawn much recent attention. However, controlling soft dynamics for practical applications has remained a significant challenge.

In collaboration with the University of Tokyo and Bridgestone Corporation, Kyoto University has now developed a method to control pneumatic artificial muscles, which are soft robotic actuators. Rich dynamics of these drive components can be exploited as a computational resource.

Artificial muscles control rich soft component dynamics by using them as a computational resource. (Image: MEDICAL FIG.)

May 11, 2024

“Bionic eye” discovers Plato’s final resting place

Posted by in categories: cyborgs, robotics/AI, transhumanism

This led to the creation of a “bionic eye” that uses a combination of AI and several advanced scanning techniques, including optical imaging, thermal imaging, and tomography (the technique used for CT scans), to capture differences between parts of the scrolls that were blank and those that contained ink — all without having to physically unroll them.

Where’s Plato? On April 23, team leader Graziano Ranocchia announced that the group had managed to extract about 1,000 words from a scroll titled “The History of the Academy” and that the words revealed Plato’s burial place: a private part of the garden near a shrine to the Muses.

The recovered text, which accounted for about 30% of the scroll, also revealed that Plato may have been sold into slavery between 404 and 399 BC — historians previously thought this had happened later in the philosopher’s life, around 387 BC.

May 2, 2024

Eternity At Last — Transhumanism Trailer

Posted by in category: transhumanism

Apr 19, 2024

Prometheism, by Jason Jorjani (updated review)

Posted by in category: transhumanism

Who could tolerate “being the plaything of fifth-dimensional gods?” Jorjani answers: “No one other than the Prometheist who joins their ranks himself…”

“It is possible that this means something like hacking through the coding matrix of a simulation and becoming one of its programmers… to access and recode this matrix… to embark on a cosmic conquest to recode the matrix of what has been mistaken for ‘reality.’”

And this is visionary transhumanism at its best, on steroids. This is my philosophy. I’ll forgive Jorjani for mixing it with conspiracy theories and some proposals that I dislike.

Apr 5, 2024

Our Posthuman Future — Revisited

Posted by in category: transhumanism

Not as big a success as his The End of History (1989), nevertheless along with Marlyn Manson this book by Fukuyama helped propel the posthuman movement (1988) more into the mainstream discussion.


Review of Francis Fukuyama’s 2002 bestseller.

Not as big a success as his The End of History (1989), nevertheless along with Marilyn Manson this book by Fukuyama helped propel the posthuman movement (1988) more into the mainstream discussion. Nothing much dates as quickly as futurism, and looking at this volume today it is thin on the ground on A1, and a little bit preoccupied with ‘designer children’ pros and cons which maybe was a hot topic 22 years ago, but doesn’t get much current press. My pre-release copy (see photos) is titled “The Posthuman Future”, but overwise doesn’t much differ from first and subsequent editions. Other academics followed Fukuyama onto the bandwagon after this publication, all of them quite far from the 1988 posthumans and the transhuman/ radical futurist movement more generally. Anxieties about the future take over from optimism and inventiveness in this book, in which Fukuyama extensively references early eugenics and various dystopian future scenarios.

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