posthuman

Robots and humans always seem to end up at odds, whether it's battling over pieces of NASA's budget or literally fighting in science fiction stories such as "The Matrix" and "Battlestar Galactica." Now a former NASA historian and an American University professor suggest that the future of space exploration could very well depend on a merging of metal and flesh.

It looks unlikely that medical science will abolish the process of ageing. But it no longer looks impossible

Brain-computer interfaces are on the verge of commercialization in medicine, robotics, and gaming, say a panel of heavyweight neuroscientists.

We are nearing a tipping point in life extension, thanks to technologies that enhance our health and maximise resources

In advance of the World Transhumanist Society's annual confab, Transvision 2007, the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET) held a pre-conference meeting in a non-descript ballroom at the Fairmont Hotel. The room was packed with 50 or so people interested in the issue of securing the "longevity dividend." Not everyone in the audience would call themselves "transhumanists" but all were interested in figuring out how to sell longer lives to the public.

Technology is about to rewrite what it means to be human, according to a convention of futurists. Meeting at the Singularity Summit in San Francisco, hundreds of scientists, engineers and technology experts discussed a future in which robots wrote their own code, and implants allowed the human brain to process data at incredible speeds.

This simulation would be similar to the one in “The Matrix,” in which most humans don’t realize that their lives and their world are just illusions created in their brains while their bodies are suspended in vats of liquid. But in Dr. Bostrom’s notion of reality, you wouldn’t even have a body made of flesh. Your brain would exist only as a network of computer circuits.