Transhuman

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.

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.