[Sixstrings]

Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntY01qoIdus

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')n Transcendent Man, Ptolemy follows Kurzweil around the globe as he presents the daring arguments from his best-selling book, The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. Kurzweil predicts that with the ever-accelerating rate of technological change, humanity is fast approaching an era in which our intelligence will become increasingly non-biological and millions of times more powerful. This will be the dawning of a new civilization enabling us to transcend our biological limitations. In Kurzweil's post-biological world, boundaries blur between human and machine, real and virtual. Human aging and illness are reversed, world hunger and poverty are solved, and we cure death.

Ptolemy explores the social and philosophical implications of these changes and the potential threats they pose to human civilization in dialogues with world leader Colin Powell; technologists Hugo deGaris, Peter Diamandis, Kevin Warwick, and Dean Kamen; journalist Kevin Kelly; actor William Shatner; and musician Stevie Wonder. Kurzweil maintains a radically optimistic view of the future, while acknowledging new dangers.
http://transcendentman.com/

[steam_cannon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', '[')b]Can the two visions of the future co-exist? Can we at the same time have peak oil / climate chaos / collapse of capitalism all going on and yet still develop sentient robots and nano-bots in our bloodstream plus our brains hooked up...

[Beery]

Has anyone read 'Feed' by M.T. Anderson. It presents a realistic view of what a 'brain hooked up to a futuristic internet' would look like. It ain't pretty.

[peripato]

As I've said before, in relation to the singularity hypothesis, that the only thing increasing exponentially today is human stupidity and that rather than technology transcending biology, it will be nature that transcends us, in the form of dieoff.

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('steam_cannon', 'Y')ou ever see bladerunner?

[mos6507]

It's merely a matter of the gulf between the haves and the have nots. Today it's the difference between a first worlder and a starving ethiopian. Tomorrow it may be a select few people living to 200 having their organ replacements grown in vats and all that other Brave New World stuff and, you guessed it--- starving ethiopians.

Seems like there will always be some people at the very bottom rung of the ladder, no matter what the technocopians think.

[ritter]

I'm not convinced that the whole "cure death" thing is a good idea.

[Carlhole]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', 'W')hat I find interesting is how hopeful the futurist vision is, but I can't see how that fits with all the bad stuff going down right now.

[americandream]

This is how ponzi schemes flourish. And there is no shortage of dimwits who would rather buy snake oil than use reason.

No matter what sort of singularity device the scheme managers concoct, we haven't moved past using fire to energise the scheme. A scheme which invariably involves selling as much obsolete junk to as many numbskulls as we can con.

[Carlhole]

Charlie Rose to interview Ray Kurzweil and Barry Ptolemy about Transcendent Man film on March 3

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'C')harlie Rose will interview Ray Kurzweil and Barry Ptolemy about the movie Transcendent Man and its themes March 3, 2011 (Thursday) on PBS (60 minutes). The interview will re-air March 4, 2011 (Friday) on Bloomberg Television.

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Carlhole', 'N')o one has answered my years-long question: "If our imminent doom is assured, when will we see Peak Science?" Because there is sure no indication whatsoever that science is peaking in any way. In a crisis, the acceleration of sci/tech only increases.

[americandream]

High tech alone will not redeem capitalism which is notoriously destructive the further it is scaled out. We simply cannot clean up a system which revolves around selling as many plastic ducks in a year as it can, and to hell with the ones that have to be dumped to make way for the next generation of ducky.

[vision-master]

I'm telling ya, just around the corner will be an energy source that will change the entire World. TPTB will be TPTwuz. We are living in the dark ages right now, so many things have been surpressed from us plebs. Take outer space for example, Nasa knows a bunch more than they are telling the sheeple, they don't want to upset the church and it's power ya know.

[timmac]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', 'H')igh tech alone will not redeem capitalism which is notoriously destructive the further it is scaled out. We simply cannot clean up a system which revolves around selling as many plastic ducks in a year as it can, and to hell with the ones that have to be dumped to make way for the next generation of ducky.

[americandream]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('timmac', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', 'H')igh tech alone will not redeem capitalism which is notoriously destructive the further it is scaled out. We simply cannot clean up a system which revolves around selling as many plastic ducks in a year as it can, and to hell with the ones that have to be dumped to make way for the next generation of ducky.

[timmac]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('timmac', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', 'H')igh tech alone will not redeem capitalism which is notoriously destructive the further it is scaled out. We simply cannot clean up a system which revolves around selling as many plastic ducks in a year as it can, and to hell with the ones that have to be dumped to make way for the next generation of ducky.

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('timmac', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', 'H')igh tech alone will not redeem capitalism which is notoriously destructive the further it is scaled out. We simply cannot clean up a system which revolves around selling as many plastic ducks in a year as it can, and to hell with the ones that have to be dumped to make way for the next generation of ducky.

[Dezakin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', 'A')s for the singularity, that would be the deathknell of capitalism. We've talked about it before in other threads.. in short, there will *have* to be a new kind of communism because the majority of jobs will be automated. Consumer capitalism can't sustain itself without consumers who get paid for doing jobs, without jobs we'd have no money to buy the Stuff.

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dezakin', '
')I'll worry about that after automated work generates enough capital to finance our entitlement programs. When that happens you'll just see larger and larger entitlement programs I imagine, until work becomes largely recreational or the province of the few high demand jobs that can't be done by machines yet (entertainment, hookers, etcetera)