X-Message-Number: 19703
From: "Mark Plus" <>
Subject: Transhumanism isn't just for cranks anymore.
Date: Tue, 06 Aug 2002 17:29:57 -0700

From:

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2120374,00.html

Report predicts 'wired brains'
11:42 Tuesday 6th August 2002
Ed Frauenheim, CNET News.com


A report by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Commerce 
in the US says the right investment in IT and biotech could have startling 
results
People linking their brains together to form a global collective 
intelligence. Humans living well beyond 100 years. Computers uploading 
aspects of our personalities to a network. These could all happen this 
century with the proper investments in technology, according to a recent 
report from the National Science Foundation and the Department of Commerce.

Titled Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance: 
Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology, and Cognitive 
Science, the 405-page report calls for more research into the intersection 
of these fields. The payoff, the authors claim, isn't just better bodies and 
more effective minds. Progress in these areas of technology also could play 
a key role in preventing a societal "catastrophe." The answer to human 
brutality and new forms of lethal weapons, it suggests, is a kind of 
tech-triggered unity: "Technological convergence could become the framework 
for human convergence."

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Mark resumes:  Why don't they just come out and say that they recommend 
assimilation into the Borg?  When mainstream organizations put out reports 
like this, you have to wonder why bio-deathicists, Secular Humanists & 
traditional religionists all gang up on cryonics & engineered negligible 
senescence as outrageous & irresponsible.  At least we are trying to defend 
the value of human individuality.

Mark Plus

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