IEEE-USA E-Books

• Enhancing Brain by Transforming Human to Transhuman : Vision & Possibilities

  Man is always for hungry for innovation. Over the last decade there has been spark to significantly increase the human mental and physical power for extended life spans. This innovation is taking shape day by day by the efforts of some leading computer scientists, neuroscientists, nanotechnologists and researchers, who are at the forefront of technological development. They are thinking and taking challenge to alter the human condition at their will. They are trying to fine tune the human condition. Undoubtly with the pace of technology and research, it will be possible to face the prospect of such technologies as real artificial intelligence, new kinds of cognitive tools that combine artificial intelligence with new interface technology, powerful new molecular biological engineering and non-biological molecular nanotechnology. In the coming decades, technologies like genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, and nanotechnology will transform human condition. A strange new world is unfolding - nightmarish to some, Utopian to others. Soon we'll have the power to reshape our children's genes, build machines that think, and upload our minds into computers. This paper has attempted to understand the concept and implementation of transhumanism and its vision. The paper has defined in short the transhumanism, its evolution and possibilities from the academic point of view.

• Engineering greater resilience or radical transhuman enhancement?

  This article investigates the conceptual distinctions between therapy and various forms of human enhancement. It begins by proposing a typology of human enhancements in order to make more rigorous and grounded discussions about the distinction between therapy and enhancement. Three types of human enhancement are proposed: 1) engineering traits of accepted value, 2) engineering traits of contested value and 3) radical transhuman enhancements. Subsequently, the paper explores the distinctions between the ethical justifications that are advanced for therapeutic interventions, comparing them with human enhancements, concluding that the salient characteristic of health-related suffering enables enhancement to gain legitimacy from the perspective of traditional medical ethics. Finally, the paper considers a number of practical obstructions to the realization of radical transhuman enhancements. Specifically, it discusses procedural obstacles to approving experimental medical research for human enhancements, the likely commercialization of human enhancements that would ensue from their development, and the need to develop experimental medical interventions via animal models.

• Tools and techniques for transhumanism - A future way of life? (non reviewed)

  The relationship between human and artificial intelligence has borne the idea of transhumanism which is a new technology for the enhancement of human's physical mental abilities i.e. to select or alter human aptitude and other characteristics which are beyond the existing human range by using specific applications of technologies like neuro, cyber, gene and nanotechnology to human biology. Transhumanisms involves improvement of human heredity (transfer of characteristics from parent to child through genes). Transhumanisms also involves bio-diversity and neuro- diversity. Biodiversity here refers to (a) genetic diversity {i.e. genetic variation of in the same species), (b) species diversity (i.e. diversities among group of organisms which are capable of reading and producing off spring (c) ecosystem diversity (i.e. diversity among plants, animals and micro-organisms). Moreover, Transhumanism is combination of genetic engineering and information technology and specially molecular nanotechnology and artificial intelligence.

• A Conversation with Lazar Puhalo [Interview]

  On December 17, 2014, T&S Editor-in-Chief Katina Michael interviewed Archbishop of Ottawa (Ret.) Lazar Puhalo, of the Orthodox Church in America. Their discussion focused broadly on transhumanism.

• Law and policy in an era of cyborg-assisted-life¹: The implications of interfacing in-the-body technologies to the outer world²

  Medical technology verges on incorporating directly into our anatomy processors with the computational power of the famous Watson IBM computer and Internet-like communications. As the size of computers spiral downward, their wholesale use (as well as RFID-type technology) will extend lifetimes, enhance our intellect, and assist in controlling technology outside the body via digital I/O and thought. This includes the eventual merging of synthetic DNA and artificial intelligence that together will bring new diagnostics, medical treatment and smart nano-prosthetics well within the horizon of the next generation. A prosthetic genome hastens the day when enhanced life forms, such as human organs, can be made entirely from a fusion of living organisms and non-living materials. Widespread diffusion of this technology into populations risk creating a world of “haves” that can afford and “have nots,” that cannot afford enhanced intellect and longevity. Without changes to current U.S. patent law, commercial interests might jeopardize our well-being through patent monopolies, market forces might squeeze out efficiencies at the expense of performance and reliability, and wrongdoers might dare to unleash digital viruses into a world filled with anatomically installed biomedical devices receptive to Internet-style communications. Overtime artificially altered and controlled metabolisms may begin to alter the progression of natural biological evolution and force an examination about what the notion of “human” means in the age of human cyborgs.

• Accelerating Economic Inequality and the Moral Responsibilities of Corporate-Employed Technologists

  Corporate-employed technologists have a special moral responsibility to themselves and to others to help oppose the dynamics of accelerating inequality in the US and globally. They have distinctive capabilities in this respect and they are in a special position to do so. There exists a moral- responsibility-to-self in this context, involving meta-coherence and integrity. Responsibility-to-others can be enacted by attempting to inject scientific and ethical habits-of-thought into the global distributed governance process, but also by standing in opposition to corporate-level strategies and practices that make inequality worse.

• Exoskeletons, Transhumanism, and Culture: Performing Superhuman Feats

  In this article we study how exoskeletons are construed through three dominant but interrelated presentations: 1) popular science journalism, 2) advertisements of military innovation, and 3) blockbuster science fiction film. We address how these media function to alter attitudes about the future. The attitudinal framing of the exoskeleton asks that people aspire to transhumanism, and that they “imagine the possibilities in the near future of dramatically enhance[ed) human mental and physical capacities” [4). In this case, they are being encouraged to visualize a militarized future. More so, the rhetorical proposition calls upon people to identify personally with the technology. The rhetoric conveys a militarized identity through celebration, anticipation, and to an extent, panic. It unites excitement and fear through entertainment, but it also succeeds in distorting the conversation of what exoskeleton technology would actually mean in a nonfictional, socio-political, or military context. Michael, Fusco, and Michael [5) identify the “socio- ethics” concerning emerging inventions, as “the moral principles which govern a particular society at large.” We seek in our work to disclose some of the socio-ethical cultural manipulation conveyed through popular channels concerning exoskeletons.

• Augmentation and Transcendence [T&S Interview]

  As an inventor, the website kurzweilai.net notes that Kurzweil was the principal inventor of the first CCD flatbed scanner, the first omni-font optical character recognition, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, the first music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments, and the first commercially marketed large-vocabulary speech recognition. Mr. Kurzweil was appointed Director of Engineering at Google, Inc., in December 2012. We interviewed Mr. Kurzweil via email in summer 2012.

• James A. Herrick

  Technologists, research scientists, communication professionals, and others involved in computer and internet technologies, including graduate students, will find this book both relevant and prescient. Readers interested in philosophy, futurism, or the fate of humanity will like it too. The book achieves its purpose of outlining, with salient references and a sense of history, the prominent strains of thought in the transhumanist and human enhancement communities - and their philosophical forebears - along with critical responses. The book stands out as a comprehensive, measured look at technology, its future, and its narratives. The author's well-researched, historical look at the stories we tell ourselves about the future—and, crucially, how those stories drive technological advances and policies—details the beliefs of transhumanism: where those beliefs came from and how they are driving the shape of our future. The author also balances the book with critical responses to each of these narratives. The book is focused more on the mythology of the future and technology, rather than on practical applications of any of the technologies discussed. Therefore, it would be most suited to a graduate-level course, or for consideration by policy makers and designers who are potentially influenced by these myths. The book’s value - and its contribution to its field - is in its scope and context, as well as its critical balance.

• Beyond Human: Lifelogging and Life Extension [Editorial]

  Presents the editorial for this issue of the publication.