Lifeboat Foundation

Cannot wait to hear Mckenna’s perspective on BMIs for brain connection to all things digital, and microbots used to extend life as well as bionic body parts.

Famed psychonaut Terence Mckenna envisioned a very radical approach of bridging psychedelics with virtual reality to create a supercharged version of consciousness in which language, or rather the meaning behind what we speak, could be made visual in front of our very eyes.

In Mckenna’s “cyberdelic” future of virtual reality, artists and the revival of art, would be at the forefront of innovation, according to a talk he gave to a German audience in 1991.

Continue reading “Terence Mckenna’s ‘cyberdelic’ predictions for Virtual Reality 25 years on” »

A story from Salon on transhumanism:

While we have a rare combination of candidates with a real chance of taking the White House — a woman, a Jewish socialist and a real estate magnate — there’s another you probably haven’t heard about: a Transhumanist.

Zoltan Istvan, 43, the leader and founder of the Transhumanist party, has entered the race as a third-party candidate promising the “facilitation of immortality.” Istvan, who lives in California, first made headlines when he set out on a cross-country campaign tour in a bus shaped like a hearse last September. His main philosophy: enliven America’s technological advancement by combining humans with machines, to improve and prolong life.

Continue reading “Now this is an ‘outsider candidate’: Zoltan Istvan, a Transhumanist running for president, wants to make you immortal” »

Interview with Zoltan Istvan, US presidential candidate and leader of the Transhumanist Party. He supports basic income as part of his campaign platform.

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“We will find new things everywhere we look.” –Hunter S. Thompson

At the rate of 21^st century technological innovation, each year brings new breakthroughs across industries. Advances in quantum computers, human genome sequencing for under $1,000, lab-grown meat, harnessing our body’s microbes as drugs, and bionic eye implants that give vision to the blind —the list is long.

Continue reading “Inside SU’s First Salon: Lab-Grown Organs, Cybersecurity, and AI Music Apps” »

This bionic spine could help paralyzed patients walk again.

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The Rise of the Rest and Mars Colonization
The Chinese word for crisis has two characters (危機). The first character represents danger and the second can be interpreted as opportunity, change of time, moment or chance. Even though the meaning of these Chinese characters can vary according to the context and nearby characters, the understanding of crisis (危機) as danger (危) plus opportunity (機) can help us think about the challenges faced by humanity in 2030.

In the coming years, China will have the largest economy of the planet, dethroning the USA to number two, both economically and scientifically. India will also be catching up fast as the third largest economy in the world, and its population will continue increasing after overtaking that of China in 2025. The re-emergence of Asia, as represented by China and India, will create a dramatic shift in power and geopolitics from what has been called the West to the East. The international hegemony enjoyed by the West during the last half millennium will move back to the East, which already led the world in many areas before the European Renaissance.

Fortunately, during the next two decades, the world economy will keep expanding and human conditions will get better throughout the whole planet. Indeed, a rising tide lifts all boats. Poverty will be substantially reduced and the environment will be significantly improved thanks to a growing global conscience and continuous advances in technology. Even Africa, the historic cradle of civilization, but considered a basket case during the last few centuries, will experience its own re-emergence in the world stage. After experiencing growth of 5% during the 2010s, and even higher during the 2020s, most African countries will be joining the rapid development of China and India, like most of the rest of the world.

Continue reading “Humanity in 2030: 危機” »

Cool new story and video on transhumanism:

SANTA CLARA (CBS SF) –During Super Bowl 50, the world saw the Denver Broncos throttle the Carolina Panthers. The game’s MVP Von Miller dominated Cam Newton in a display of super human strength and skill.

You may not know it, but a growing number of engineers, biohackers and entrepreneurs hopes one day we’ll all be super human as well.

Continue reading “Engineers, Entrepreneurs Hoping To Re-Engineer Humans For Skill, Strength” »

A DARPA-funded research team has created a novel neural-recording device that can be implanted into the brain through blood vessels, reducing the need for invasive surgery and the risks associated with breaching the blood-brain barrier. The technology was developed under DARPA’s Reliable Neural-Interface Technology (RE-NET) program, and offers new potential for safely expanding the use of brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) to treat physical disabilities and neurological disorders.

In an article published in Nature Biotechnology, researchers in the Vascular Bionics Laboratory at the University of Melbourne led by neurologist Thomas Oxley, M.D., describe proof-of-concept results from a study conducted in sheep that demonstrate high-fidelity measurements taken from the motor cortex—the region of the brain responsible for controlling voluntary movement—using a novel device the size of a small paperclip.

This new device, which Oxley’s team dubbed the “stentrode,” was adapted from off-the-shelf stent technology—a familiar therapeutic tool for clearing and repairing blood vessels—to include an array of electrodes. The researchers also addressed the dual challenge of making the device flexible enough to safely pass through curving blood vessels, yet stiff enough that the array can emerge from the delivery tube at its destination.

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Australian scientists hope that a tiny device just 3cm long and a few millimetres wide will enable paralysed patients to walk again by allowing them to control bionic limbs with the power of subconscious thought.

The new device, dubbed the “bionic spine”, is the size of a small paperclip and will be implanted in three patients at the Royal Melbourne hospital in Victoria next year. The participants will be selected from the Austin Health spinal cord unit, and will be the first humans to trial the device, which so far has only been tested in sheep.

Doctors will make a tiny cut in the neck of the patients and feed a catheter containing the bionic spine up through the blood vessels leading into the brain, until it rests on top of the motor cortex, the part of the brain where nerve impulses that initiate voluntary muscle movements come from. The catheter will then be removed, leaving the bionic spine behind.

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