Category Archives: futures

waiting for the techno-rapture

An embarrassing cartoon of n guys with beards, glasses and hats not entirely unlike mine, babbling about the Singularity and stuff, in 1993. Heh. It’s a scene from The Guy I Almost Was, a story by one Patrick Farley, who … Continue reading

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fossils

Found in the archives (1999 Jul 15): What might be the biggest event of our time of which the only surviving evidence, a thousand years from now, will be indirect allusions rather than direct records? For example: the life of … Continue reading

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a narrow view

US judge rules that The X-Men (and a number of other Marvel characters) are not human. Worse, she did so at Marvel’s request. (Link from Eliezer S. Yudkowsky, from John Hughes.)

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dialect, chronolect

Ken MacLeod’s novel The Sky Road is set at least a few centuries in the future. I once argued that there’s a limit to how far it can be, because the protagonist plays some voice-recordings from our time without mentioning … Continue reading

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the balance

Cloning is quite interesting, to be sure, but have you considered the evil twin problem?

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twelve good algorithms and true

“Jury Service” is an amusing transhuman story by Charlie Stross and Cory Doctorow.

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a pox on bioethicists II

Apparently Mr Bush has created something called the President’s Council on Bioethics. Now, I’ve never heard that term except in connexion with some chin-puller’s opinion that it’s naughty to tamper with God’s Will Nature by curing infertility or whatnot; so … Continue reading

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