Table of Contents Contributor Biographies ix Part I Roots and Core Themes 1 1 The Philosophy of Transhumanism 3 Max More 2 Aesthetics: Bringing the Arts & Design into the Discussion of Transhumanism 18 Natasha Vita-More 3 Why I Want to be a Posthuman When I Grow Up 28 Nick Bostrom 4 Transhumanist Declaration 54 Various 5 Morphological Freedom -- Why We Not Just Want It, but Need It 56 Anders Sandberg Part II Human Enhancement: The Somatic Sphere 65 6 (...) Welcome to the Future of Medicine 67 Robert A. Freitas Jr. 7 Life Expansion Media 73 Natasha Vita-More 8 The Hybronaut Affair: A Ménage of Art, Technology, and Science 83 Laura Beloff 9 Transavatars 91 William Sims Bainbridge 10 Alternative Biologies 100 Rachel Armstrong Part III Human Enhancement: The Cognitive Sphere 111 11 Re-Inventing Ourselves: The Plasticity of Embodiment, Sensing, and Mind 113 Andy Clark 12 Artificial General Intelligence and the Future of Humanity 128 Ben Goertzel 13 Intelligent Information Filters and Enhanced Reality 138 Alexander “Sasha‘ Chislenko 14 Uploading to Substrate-Independent Minds 146 Randal A. Koene 15 Uploading 157 Ralph C. Merkle Part IV Core Technologies 165 16 Why Freud Was the First Good AI Theorist 167 Marvin Minsky 17 Pigs in Cyberspace 177 Hans Moravec 18 Nanocomputers 182 J. Storrs Hall 19 Immortalist Fictions and Strategies 196 Michael R. Rose 20 Dialogue between Ray Kurzweil and Eric Drexler 205 Part V Engines of Life: Identity and Beyond Death 213 21 The Curate’s Egg of Anti-Anti-Aging Bioethics 215 Aubrey de Grey 22 Medical Time Travel 220 Brian Wowk 23 Transhumanism and Personal Identity 227 James Hughes 24 Transcendent Engineering 234 Giulio Prisco Part VI Enhanced Decision-Making 241 25 Idea Futures: Encouraging an Honest Consensus 243 Robin Hanson 26 The Proactionary Principle: Optimizing Technological Outcomes 258 Max More 27 The Open Society and Its Media 268 Mark S. Miller, with E. Dean Tribble, Ravi Pandya, and Marc Stiegler Part VII Biopolitics and Policy 279 28 Performance Enhancement and Legal Theory: An Interview with Professor Michael H. Shapiro 281 29 Justifying Human Enhancement: The Accumulation of Biocultural Capital 291 Andy Miah 30 The Battle for the Future 302 Gregory Stock 31 Mind is Deeper Than Matter: Transgenderism, Transhumanism, and the Freedom of Form 317 Martine Rothblatt 32 For Enhancing People 327 Ronald Bailey 33 Is Enhancement Worthy of Being a Right? 345 Patrick D. Hopkins 34 Freedom by Design: Transhumanist Values and Cognitive Liberty 355 Wrye Sententia Part VIII Future Trajectories: Singularity 361 35 Technological Singularity 365 Vernor Vinge 36 An Overview of Models of Technological Singularity 376 Anders Sandberg 37 A Critical Discussion of Vinge’s Singularity Concept 395 David Brin, Damien Broderick, Nick Bostrom, Alexander “Sasha‘ Chislenko, Robin Hanson, Max More, Michael Nielsen, and Anders Sandberg Part IX The World’s Most Dangerous Idea 419 38 The Great Transition: Ideas and Anxieties 421 Russell Blackford 39 Trans and Post 430 Damien Broderick 40 Back to Nature II: Art and Technology in the Twenty-First Century 438 Roy Ascott 41 A Letter to Mother Nature 449 Max More 42 Progress and Relinquishment 451 Ray Kurzweil Index 454. (shrink)

_I am. We are. That is enough. Now we have to start._ These are the opening words of Ernst Bloch's first major work, _The Spirit of Utopia,_ written mostly in 1915-16, published in its first version just after the First World War, republished five years later, 1923, in the version here presented for the first time in English translation. _The Spirit of Utopia_ is one of the great historic books from the beginning of the century, but it is not an (...) obsolete one. In its style of thinking, a peculiar amalgam of biblical, Marxist, and Expressionist turns, in its analytical skills deeply informed by Simmel, taking its information from both Hegel and Schopenhauer for the groundwork of its metaphysics of music but consistently interpreting the cultural legacy in the light of a certain Marxism, Bloch's _Spirit of Utopia_ is a unique attempt to rethink the history of Western civilizations as a process of revolutionary disruptions and to reread the artworks, religions, and philosophies of this tradition as incentives to continue disrupting. The alliance between messianism and Marxism, which was proclaimed in this book for the first time with epic breadth, has met with more critique than acclaim. The expressive and baroque diction of the book was considered as offensive as its stubborn disregard for the limits of "disciplines." Yet there is hardly a "discipline" that didn't adopt, however unknowingly, some of Bloch's insights, and his provocative associations often proved more productive than the statistical account of social shifts. The first part of this philosophical meditation—which is also a narrative, an analysis, a rhapsody, and a manifesto—concerns a mode of "self-encounter" that presents itself in the history of music from Mozart through Mahler as an encounter with the problem of a community to come. This "we-problem" is worked out by Bloch in terms of a philosophy of the history of music. The "self-encounter," however, has to be conceived as "self-invention," as the active, affirmative fight for freedom and social justice, under the sign of Marx. The second part of the book is entitled "Karl Marx, Death and the Apocalypse." _I am. We are._ That's hardly anything. But enough _to start._. (shrink)

This book might be said to be the exploration, first, of the 'fateful' consequences, and subsequently -- by a poetic transference of situation -- of the ...

Examining how the `here and now' of space, territory, the body, are being redefined by new technologies and how this undoes simplistic versions of the globalization thesis, Paul Virilio demonstrates how technology has made inertia the defining condition of modernity. An instantaneous present has replaced space and the sovereignty of territory; everything happens without the need to go anywhere. This book will be a key reference for students and scholars of the latest thinking in social theory.

'This is easily Baudrillard's most important work. It is a key intervention in the debates on modernity and postmodernity and the site of his postmodern turn. Anyone who wants to understand the complexity and provocativeness of Baudrillard's richest period must read this text' -Douglas Kellner.

Francis Fukuyama's controversial new book, Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution, has elicited varied reactions, but like it or not, it seems likely to be influential. Here are three opinions. —Ed.

This volume examines the nature/politics relationship anew in the wake of recent critiques of the category of "nature." Its essays draw on contemporary and canonical thinkers to reflect on "second nature" as a site or paradigm of political contest and intervene into debates about environmentalism, human rights, and more.