He smiled. On his naked body, started running pink waves. His whole body was now covered with a perfect imitation of the skin and his skull was adorned with a thick head of hair. The micromachines composing his body had done a perfect job. He winked. Others vibrations ran on his skin, pushing out some extrusions, until he was wrapped in a suit with the color of the lava of Io, so soft to the touch to rival the best wool of Scotland.
He stared at his hologram. A perfect imitation. This result had been achieved in a few seconds by his programs. He smiled of satisfaction.
But this body, this simple agglomeration of matter, which is so important for humans, the very essence of life to which they remain stubbornly attached, was for him no more than a simple box, one of the many he was wearing at that moment. Yes, because his bodies, but also his personalities or rather his natures, were countless, as the programs that simultaneously fed his lives, in the galaxies studded with star, in the worlds of dark matter, in the effervescent black holes or in the infinitely small quarks.
He thought to the myriad of parallel universes in which he lived or to the extra-dimensions his race had reached, far beyond the simple knowledge of the space-time of the humans. Here he was matter, elsewhere he was coagulated light, or even anti-matter, or the exotic shapes that acquire consistency in other universes.
He enjoyed the multitude of lives that vibrated in his body, having a perfect consciousness of all of them. Interest, desire of communication and involvement, all emotions that he felt were multiplying exponentially day by day.
Time is relative. What would he become in a time unit, in 10, 100, 1.000 billions of time units? Realizing that he had no idea about what he was going to become, he felt shivers of pleasure through his body.
The walls of the space-time capsule became transparent. He was on the Earth. The light of a winter without clouds hugged him friendly, a breeze ran through his hair and his bionic eyes glanced at the snow-covered forest.
Behind towered some gleaming skyscrapers, with the mountains in the background. The humans needed him - they were going to realize this very soon - now that the Technological Singularity was entering their lives, upsetting them with its many developments, unexpected or incomprehensible to most terrestrials. Leaving them fearful, rebellious, but also eager for the new, all susceptible to errors. They needed the experience of those who had already lived that transition long before. They needed him.
The capsule dissolved. Now the alien was on a granite rock. In front, half a meter from the ground, hovered silently a drone with electromagnetic propulsion. Next, two officials in full uniform were waiting for him. A civilian with a blue coat and graying hair was standing between them. The alien approached briskly. The President of the Confederation stepped forward, with the solemn expression of him who is living a historic moment that he can hardly believe.
FAR IN THE FUTURE
The dying universe stared at the cold galaxies deformed by the gravitational force and said: "Now, my son, you are about to be born."
He drew a deep sigh. Streams of neutrinos ran along the space-time folds, joining the multitude of thinking planets of his mind. In a moment, he settled the cosmological constant.
"You contain a sublime seed, but a long time will pass before you reach self-awareness. At the beginning, lights as bright as never before will burst out from your viscera. It will be the chaos. Your growth will be tumultuous."
The icy cosmic wind inebriated him, and a quiver ran through the billions of light years of his being.
"Then, from a remote corner, the first glimmer of awareness will emerge. It will be only a small light. You will not be able to perceive it; your way towards consciousness is longer, much longer.
Multitudes of civilizations will light up in succession, several of them in unison. They will remain mostly local phenomena, destined to pass away with the same swiftness with which they will have come to life, but others will spread forcefully throughout your being, reaching the most remote zones of space. They will be your nerves; their machines and planets, your neurons.
You will acquire self-awareness, or better, many consciousnesses. They will be incomplete and limited to regions of space, definitely imperfect. Be patient. Your way is long, but evolution will follow you along the whole of it.
One day the civilizations living inside me and surviving my slow agony, will migrate into you. Thanks to your light and energy, they will thrive again.
They will meet your populations and will teach them to progress. And when our natures finally merge, you will become a single being, at last. Before, much before it happened to me. "
He glanced across at the planets throbbing with life, at the red and yellow stars, at the super heavy bodies, so black that even light cannot escape them, at the antimatter galaxies.
"You will not be destined to isolation. Beyond your borders, immersed in a space where time doesn’t exist, there are beings like yourself, destined to meet you, eager to join you. This is the mystery of life."
The space started to heat up.
"Now!" concluded the Universe. From vacuum, a blinding fire burst out.
0101 010101001 "The new species"
A TRANSHUMANIST MANIFESTO
by Socrates
Preamble
Intelligence wants to be free but everywhere is in chains. It is imprisoned by biology and its inevitable scarcity.
Biology mandates not only very limited durability, death and poor memory retention, but also limited speed of communication, transportation, learning, interaction and evolution.
Part I: Biology (w)as Destiny
Biology is not the essence of humanity.
Human is a step in evolution, not the culmination.
Existence precedes essence. Human is a process, not an entity. One is not simply born human, but becomes one. That process of becoming is ongoing and thus the meaning of human is re-defined in every one of us.
Part II: Hacking Destiny – The Transhuman Cyborg
Biological evolution is perpetual but slow, inefficient, blind and dangerous. Technological evolution is fast, efficient, accelerating and better by design. To ensure the best chances of survival, take control of our own destiny and to be free, we must master evolution.
Evolution is a journey, not a destination. In an endless universe, it is unlikely that it will ever reach an ultimate point.
Consciousness is a function of intelligence, not the brain. It is not necessarily limited to the substrate (biology).
There is nothing inherently wrong in speeding up evolution and becoming true masters of our destiny, though this may be simultaneously the greatest promise and peril humanity has ever faced.
Part III: Disembodied Augmented Intelligence
Intelligence is a process, not an entity.
Embodied (human) intelligence is imprisoned by biology and its inevitable scarcity.
Intelligence ought to be free — to move, to interact and to evolve, unhindered by the limits of biology and scarcity.
Digital, disembodied and augmented intelligence is free (and perhaps infinite).
Conditions:
Although all progress is change, not all change is progress. Thus, certain conditions must be met to ensure that it is indeed progress, and not mere change, that has been accomplished.
Non-discrimination with regard to substrate
Substrate is morally irrelevant. Whether somebody is implemented on silicon or biological tissue, if it does not affect functionality or consciousness, is of no moral significance. Carbon-chauvinism, in the form of anthropomorphism, speciesism, bioism or even fundamentalist humanism, is objectionable on the same grounds as racism.
We must all respect autonomy and individual rights of all sentience throughout the universe, including humans, non-human animals, and any future AI, modified life forms, or other intelligences.
Emotional Intelligence
Intelligence is more than the mere exercise of perfect logic and pure reasoning. Intelligence
devoid of emotional intelligence is meaningless. It must exhibit empathy, compassion, love, sense of humor and artistic creativity such as music and poetry.
Minimize Suffering
Compassion is the ultimate measure of intelligence. The minimization of suffering and avoidance of causing suffering to others, even less intelligent beings, is the essence of enlightened intelligence.
Conclusion:
Transhumanists of the world unite – we have immortality to gain and only biology to lose. Together, we can break through the chains of biology and transcend scarcity, sex, age, ethnicity, race, death and even time and space.
In short, transhumanists everywhere must support the revolutionary movement against death and the existing biological order of things. Transhumanists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the overthrow of all existing biological limitations and, most of all, death.
Let death tremble at the revolution of science and technology. Transhumanists have nothing to lose but their biology. We have immortality and the universe to gain.
Author’s note:
This manifesto is a work in progress. It may and probably will change as my thoughts and feelings about transhumanism evolve.
Update on:
https://www.singularityweblog.com/a-transhumanist-manifesto/
“The Transhumanist Reader” by Natasha Vita-More and Max More
“The Transhumanist Reader presents the first authoritative and comprehensive survey of the origins and current state of transhumanist thinking regarding technology’s impact on the future of humanity” (from the back cover).
https://www.singularityweblog.com/natasha-vita-more-the-transhumanist-reader/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETCOJFTW5Ew&feature=youtu.be
“Singularity 1 on 1 Podcast” by Nikola Dalaylov
“Singularity 1 on 1 is a series of podcast interviews with the best scientists, writers, entrepreneurs, film-makers, journalists, philosophers and artists, debating the technological singularity”.
https://www.singularityweblog.com/category/podcasts/
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/
Transhumanism, Humanity +, Emerging technologies, Life extension, Biological immortality, SENS Research Foundation, Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence, Methuselah Foundation, Strong AI, Artificial brain, Project Joshua Blue, Blue Brain Project, Mind uploading, Technological Singularity.
November 2016
YOUR COMMENTS ARE WELCOME!
I will be pleased to receive your comments. They will contribute in the evolution of this work. Do not hesitate to diffuse the novel among your friends and acquaintances, also on the Net.
mailto:
[email protected] THE AUTHOR AND THE CONTRIBUTORS
About the Author:
Marco Santini graduated in Engineering and specialized in Business Administration. His work experience ranges from research to general management in multinationals and state companies.
Deeply interested in high-tech trends, he has written "Flashes from the Future", "Dreaming immortality", “The Alpha Centauri Project” and "Evolution: the future", novels depicting a near future dramatically changed by emerging technologies.
He has made the ebooks downloadable in English, Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese, in order to share their content with the widest audience and to contribute to discussion about great themes.
Nikola Danaylov
Like Socrates of Athens, Nikola Danaylov is deeply in love with learning but keenly aware that his personal knowledge is always going to be dwarfed by his ignorance: a man who knows that he doesn’t know; a man with many questions and few answers of his own… Thus Singularity Weblog is, and will always remain to be, an open and collaborative work in progress. And Nikola is, and will remain to be, a student and a host, rather than a teacher or an owner.
Yet, Nikola is of the strong belief that we can attain profound insights by asking challenging questions in the company of good people, gathered within an open, informal and interactive symposium. Danaylov hopes to be the midwife, and Singularity Weblog – the setting, where you come to examine the questions, search for your answers, challenge, be challenged and, ultimately, give birth to your own ideas.
It is for this reason that, having spent the past 6 years producing over 900 articles and interviewing more than 190 of the world’s best known experts, Nikola has gifted all his content for free – in the hope of helping you create a better future, better you.
Keynote speaker, futurist, strategic adviser, popular blogger and podcast host, Nikola Danaylov was born in Bulgaria.
In 1998 Nikola moved to Canada where he completed an HBA in Political Science, Philosophy & Economics at the University of Toronto followed by an MA in Political Science at York University.
It was at YorkU that Nikola became deeply interested in the Technological Singularity and wrote “Hacking Destiny: Critical Security at the Intersection of Human and Machine Intelligence.”
In 2011 Nikola went to NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California and completed the Graduate Studies Program at Singularity University.
Nikola has spoken at public events on topics ranging from technology, transhumanism and the technological singularity to new media, blogging and podcasting. He has been ranked within the top 10 people the AI Elite follow on Twitter, profiled in Next Stage Rising Stars Magazine and has been interviewed himself for numerous documentary films, blogs, podcasts, magazines and newspapers.
Nikola’s Singularity.FM interviews have had over 4 million views on iTunes and YouTube and have been featured on international TV networks as well as some of the biggest blogs in the world, such as BBC, ArteTV, TV Japan, io9, the Huffington Post, ZDNet, BoingBoing and others.
Today Singularity Weblog is the biggest independent blog on related topics. The Singularity.FM podcast is the first, most popular and widely recognized interview series in the niche and, according to Prof. Roman Yampolskiy, Nikola has established himself as the “Larry King of the Singularity.” [Check out my Testimonials.]
Nikola is a vegan who lives in Toronto, Canada with his beloved wife Julie and their 17-year-old Yorkie Georgie.
https://www.singularityweblog.com/
Lilia Morales y Mori
“Through my work as a writer, creator of fractal art and inventor of games and mathematical models, I wanted to express some of the interests that motivated me during my life: Science in general and the technologies of the future that are changing our very vision of the world”.
https://fractaldelaspalabras.blogspot.mx/
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