Barbara Lindsey's List: Clones, Drones and Cyborgs

In contrast to contemporary arguments that using the web is making people and culture dumber and shallower, Andy Clark advocates the idea that knowledgeable use of digital media might, as Doug Engelbart put it, raise the collective IQ of cultures and extend the minds of individuals.

With unprecedented leaps in human longevity over the last century, are drastically longer lives within our grasp?

Could it be that, in some sense, the point of evolution has been to create these social brains, and maybe even to weave them into a giant, loosely organized planetary brain?

By the year 2020, you won't need a keyboard and mouse to control your computer, say Intel Corp. researchers. Instead, users will open documents and surf the Web using nothing more than their brain waves.

Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.

The Environmental Protection Agencydetailed its plans on Tuesday for research into the possible health and environmental risks of nanomaterials, tiny substances that are finding growing use in products like sunscreens and industrial adhesives.

We released a new report, "Ethics of Human Enhancement: 25 Questions & Answers", funded by the US National Science Foundation.

According to some thinkers technology is what makes us human. Others argue that new technologies threaten human dignity and our very existence.

How should we think about ‘nature’ vs ‘nurture’? The issue has been resolved for decades. From On the Brain by Dr. Mike Merzenich,Ph.D.

In the 25 years since the iconic film adaptation of George Orwell's dystopia, US society has crept ever closer to its bleak vision of paranoia, surveillance, perpetual war and unthinkingness, fears Tom Palaima (Times Higher Education)

From cancer treatments to self-cleaning windows and clear solar panels, nanotechnology is revolutionizing medicine, renewable energy and computing. Chemists Mark Ratner and James Gimzewski discuss what's special about nanoscale particles, and how they may shape the future.

A cornucopia of drugs will soon be on sale to improve everything from our memories to our trust in others

Finding genes that have evolved in humans among our genome's 3 billion bases is no easy feat. But now, a team has pinpointed three genes that arose from noncoding DNA and may help make our species unique. Pennisi 2009 (901): 2 -- ScienceNOW

In a Swiss laboratory, a group of ten robots is competing for food. Prowling around a small arena, the machines are part of an innovative study looking at the evolution of communication

The End of History was a book about progress and how the evolution of human politics had led to liberal democracy and market-oriented economics. Marxists believed in a progressive history which would lead to a socialist utopia. I argued that at the end of the 20th century what we saw instead was a progressive history, which, instead of leading to socialism, was leading to democratic capitalism to which there were not any really clear alternatives.

Facebook encourages narcissistic blabbering, video and PowerPoint have replaced carefully crafted essays, and texting has dehydrated language into "bleak, bald, sad shorthand" (as University College of London English professor John Sutherland has moaned). An age of illiteracy is at hand, right?

Access to the nanoscale is advancing extremely rapidly now. How long until we have nanoscale machines capable of building improved nanoscale machines? (Responsible Nanotechnology)

This paper traces the cultural and philosophical roots of transhumanist thought and describes some of the influences and contributions that led to the development of contemporary transhumanism. JET 14(1) - April 2005 - Bostrom

This edition of the AAAS Science and Technology Policy Yearbook
coincides with both the start of the new millennium and the 25th
Anniversary of the AAAS Colloquium on Science and Technology
Policy. In recognition of these events, it takes both a retrospective and prospective look at S&T policy, and examines the mutual impacts of technology and society.